The Girl and the Fox, the MFA and tea parties, chronic illness and academia, and other assorted bits

As some of you might now, I have a thing for the connections between women and foxes, and they show up frequently in my poems. But even if you haven’t written a whole bunch of poems about fox-girls, you should drop everything and immediately watch this gorgeous short film with no dialogue called “The Girl and the Fox.” It also reminded me of the new novel, The Snow Child, about a feral girl in Alaska whose only companion is her fox. I love all alternative re-tellings of fairy tales, and I liked the way this one combined the gritty realities of homesteading in Alaska in the twenties with the Russian fairy tale, “The Snow Child,” which I’ve always loved. Thought a little slow at times, I really enjoyed this for the most part, and her delicate balance between aforementioned realistic grittiness and magical realism was pretty interesting!

Two articles were really interesting to me recently. One was from The Millions, called “From Teaching to Tea Parties,” discussed the difficulty of making a living as a writer and teacher with an MFA. The expectations of many of my students at National is that they will get their MFA and automatically get a teaching job that will support them. But the reality is much different. I often hesitate to tell my students how hard the path is for most writers, even writers with books and teaching experience who really hustle. Most of us are cobbling together a living from multiple jobs, most, sadly, less glamorous than high tea and vintage fashion.

The other article tackles the difficult problem of having chronic illness in academia, how it might interfere with the job path and create awkward situations with work. Of course, that would be true in any work or social situation, but I thought it was interesting to examine it through the lens of teaching:
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2012/MJ/Feat/good.htm

Sorry to hear about Ray Bradbury’s passing, who was one of my favorite childhood writers; his Illustrated Man still influences the way I think about tone in successful short narratives, and I admit to some compulsive memorization of literature due in part to reading Fahrenheit 425 at an impressionable age. But celebrating new Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, who, yes, already won the Pulitzer, you know, no big deal, and what is she, 45? It’s a lot to live up to! Her book that really won my affection was Belloq’s Ophelia, which contains some really beautiful persona poetry and interesting character/historical storytelling work. Now I will have to check out her new book as well.

I’ve turned in my final grades and am finally able to turn my attention back to my own reading, writing, and submitting, which unfortunately, between the class and the move and other distractions, had gone by the wayside for a while. I wrote a new poem, sent out some work, and am finally turning my attention to the new townhouse’s smaller pleasures: planting in the tiny little outside back plot, putting miniature roses in the window box. Still dealing with the grand space issue in townhouses (where in the heck do you store things? Where can we put towels? Why does the bathroom have no place to put anything? Thank goodness for the handy husband who keeps installing shelving in every possible space…) but all the downstairs bookshelves (all five of them) are now filled – filled! – with books. That’s just the necessary, needed-to-get-to-them-right-away books. The rest of the books are still hiding away. And I think we’ve got all the cardboard boxes out of the downstairs living area, if not from the upstairs OR the garage yet. Thought it’s June and I see blah-blah news about hottest spring on record, we have had nothing but chilly rain here in the Northwest for as long as I can remember. I think we’re going to get some sunshine soon…send some of that warm sunshine our way, rest of country! I didn’t move back to Seattle to get depressed by record rain and cold!

Atticus Review Feature, and I’ve Been Tumblr’d!

Thanks to the Atticus Review, who today is featuring an interview with me and several fresh brand new poems! (Including one inspired by Secret Circle, and another inspired by Algebra!) Check it out!

Tumblr! What is it? I’m still not quite sure. However, I know that right now, poems from my first book have been Tumblr-ing around the internet, and I wasn’t sure if this was important or alarming or what til my friend Ivy Alvarez, dynamite, plugged-in poet that she is, twittered me this morning with this message: “Wow, your poem was blogged on Hello, Tailor! Gurl, that’s major! 🙂 http://hellotailor.tumblr.com/post/24411614478/vega-ofthe-lyre-the-villainess-by-jeannine-hall”
Thanks to Ivy for alerting me to this, and for telling me some more about tumblr. Are you guys using this tool? Has it been good for poetry? Please comment and tell me your thoughts!
I will say this? Since my Tumblr flurry (poems up include, from the first book, “Femme Fatale,” “The Villainess,” “Becoming the Villainess,” and a couple of others…) my Amazon ranks for both books have gone inexplicably under 100K. Which is always good!

My second (and upcoming third) book’s publisher, Kitsune Books, is having Open Submissions right now. You should check them out and think about sending your manuscript. But remember, they like longer poetry books!

Unexpected Collaborations…Perfume, Songs, Jewelry, and Jobs

So, I found out I still can’t make my announcement yet. Beginning of next month. Sigh. But I can tell you I really enjoyed meeting with our mayor! He had even read some of my poetry. How cool is that? It makes me feel more civic-minded, that’s for sure…

I was thinking about the unexpected collaborations that sometimes we wonder into, like my work with painter Deborah Scott on my upcoming book, Unexplained Fevers. I didn’t plan for that collaboration to happen; she just happened to ask to meet for coffee one day last year, and we got to talking and here our plan is now, actually happening! Poets and artists, working together.

So when I was up at the Skagit Valley Poetry Festival, I ran into someone working at one of the cute retail shops there that I had chatted with a few times before – she has an advanced degree in Medieval Literature, so we have a lot in common – and she told me about some jewelry she was designing that was sold in the local museum gift shop. She showed me some of her designs, and, as she and I had talked before and she knew a little bit about my writing, offered to do a custom “book pendant” – a tiny book, with usable paper pages, with layers of stamped-and-etched metal as the “binding.” Here’s one of her designs for my “She Returns to the Floating World” book, named after one of my poems:

Isn’t that amazing? Her name is Melinda Erickson, and her work can be found in galleries and gift shops, including the La Connor’s Museum of Northwest Art. And here’s a link to her blog.

Another happy accident has been working with poet and perfumer Karen Carissimo, who contacted me because of a mutual poet friend down in San Francisco. I have a bit of a passion for perfume, as those of you who’ve been following my ramblings for some time might know; my first job out of school with my pre-med degree was managing a small perfumerie in Cincinnati that specialized in hard-to-find European perfumes, so now I have a terrible addiction to difficult-to-find perfumes like Cartier’s Panthere or Caron’s Blond Tabac. Besides being a wonderful writer herself, she’s talented at creating custom perfumes, and through correspondence she’s working on a perfume for me, with notes that belong to my second book – the bright top note of cherry blossom, the coolness of bamboo and peony. Really an amazing honor! 

And of course the experience, which also happened recently in some kind of lucky coincidence, of working with Seattle musician Joy Mills, who created a song out of my poem “Sleeping Beauty Loves the Needle.” I just loved it. You can see/hear our collaboration here on YouTube: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5-Zw9yJ3WY&feature=relmfu

So I was thinking about the opportunities the universe might provide us with, things we might not even think to ask about but that we’ve always wanted…my upcoming announcement has to do with this too, something I hadn’t thought to ask the universe for but something I’ve wanted since I moved to the Northwest thirteen years ago.

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  Melinda Erickson

  melinda.erickson@hotmail.com

Sudden Flurry of New Reviews and a Meeting with the Mayor…

Sometimes, a book can be out for a while, and it can be kind of quiet; then, for no reason, a sudden flurry of book reviews come out! Such is the case for She Returns to the Floating World. Yesterday I received a copy of the new issue of one of my favorite lit mags, The Mid-American Review, to find a wonderful review in the back of the issue.
Then, Galatea Resurrects issue 18 came out, with not just a fab review by Kathleen Kirk but a close reading of one of the poems from the book by John Bloomberg-Rissman.
A banner day!

Though we are still in the middle of cleaning the old apartment and trying to unpack the new townhouse full of boxes at the same time, life continues to spin around – yesterday there was a horrible group of killings in Seattle near the University of Washington, and crime has just generally been up downtown over the past few weeks. It’s so chilling in such a beautiful, laid-back city to have people suddenly murdered in a drive-by or random shooting.

In other more cheerful news, tomorrow, for some mysterious reason, I am going to be meeting with the Mayor of Redmond. I hope I am able to find both a blowdryer and an appropriate suit from the cardboard boxes…And why, you ask? Well, I can announce that…tomorrow!

I Review Plume, Saying Goodbye to C. Dale’s blog, In Between Boxes

Well, we survived our holiday-weekend-move with very few major injuries, so I consider it a success! Never mind I can’t find anything and that our house is a labyrinth of boxes…

My new review of Washington State Poet Laureate’s second book, Plume, is up at The Rumpus:
http://therumpus.net/2012/05/lie-down-patriot-dont-ask/

Super Secret announcement coming soon!

Got my first blurb for the third book, Unexplained Fevers. Nothing could have made me happier this weekend…thanks R.G.!

C. Dale Young says goodbye to blogging after all these years. His was one of the first blogs I read, along with Kim Addonizio’s and Kelli Agodon’s…don’t go anywhere Kelli!

 I was joking that our moving truck was filled with fifty percent boxes of books, twenty percent furniture, and 30 percent kitchen stuff. I’m afraid that might be true. We have two bookshelves Glenn built by the fireplace, plus three Ikea seven-foot bookshelves, and they’re all already full. But the books still surround us! Do I have a problem?