Montaigne Medal Finalist!
Just had a little good news this morning, after a week of on-and-off flu and accompanying blues…that my second book, She Returns to the Floating World, is an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist! If it wins, this means the book will get coverage in the US Review of Books, which would be pretty great for a little poetry book like mine, so cross your fingers for me!
I’m not even sure who nominated me, but whomever it was, thanks a big bunch!
In other news, I wrote a new poem yesterday. I’ve been feeling a bit blue with the illness stuff and maybe a bit of burnout and missing AWP and doing all those grant applications where you feel your chances are one in a billion…sometimes the poetry world can get us a little down. So every piece of good news should be celebrated! A new poem! A little award finalist news!
Going to see a house this afternoon that might be the one, though it’s a little pricey. In lovely Kirkland, a community I like a lot, woods in the backyard…but it’s a re-done 1950’s house so we have to see the inspection before we decide anything…Cross your fingers for me house-wise too!
Thanks again, blog readers, for your encouragement and support. It means a lot. I think this little community of folks is like my almost-family.
Teaching persona poetry, and a Face to Meet the Faces
Happy Mardi Gras! Appropriate for a day of masks, today I had the lovely opportunity to teach the persona poem to a great group of students at Cascadia Community College. It was a lovely and enthusiastic group of people and I always enjoy talking about persona poetry, which I happen to still feel passionate about. We talked about zombies, the Hunger Games, Buffy versus The Vampire Diaries, anime and haibun, as well. Good times.
Arriving about two hours too late for the class, my contributor copy of the persona poetry anthology A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry came in the mail today. I was happy to be keeping company with wonderful poets like Collin Kelly, Jericho Brown, Ivy Alvarez…an interesting aspect is that the editors had the writers write a short note about their use of persona at the end of the book, so if you’re using this as a teaching tool, that would be great for students! It is true there is not a lot of material available for those teaching persona poetry, so this anthology is a welcome addition. I’m looking forward to using it next time I teach persona poetry!
Happy Fat Tuesday! AWP is almost upon us. I’m sad to be missing it but hope you will all have a great time and bring home to your blogs lots of gossip. I am so ready for February to be over already – this is Seattle’s meanest month, for sure. I saw a branch of cherry (or plum?) blossoms outside of a decaying barn on the way to see a house a few days ago, I think that was the first sign that indeed there may be life in this earth after the long winter…
Interview at Collin Kelley’s blog, last night’s reading video, and The Pinch
Collin Kelley graciously asks me five questions at his blog today. Thanks, Collin!
http://collinkelley.blogspot.com/2012/02/five-questions-for-jeannine-hall-gailey.html
If you are interested, you can see video of last night’s Redmond reading with Martha Silano at SoulFood Books:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/20496574
There’s some odd guitar music over part of the reading, I think I start reading at about minute five. There’s also an odd extreme closeup around minute 6.
Got my contributor’s copy of the Spring 2012 The Pinch in the mail, which contains two of my poems, “Lessons in Poison” and “She Ought to Be In Politics.” It’s a lovely well-produced magazine, with color art, as well as poems from Marge Piercy and Alison Pelegrin.
I also got a real-live medal from the FPA President’s award for my book, and a $10 check from Indiana Review. All in all, a good mail day for a poet.
Happy Valentine’s Day and an upcoming reading with Martha Silano in Redmond
Happy Valentine’s Day out there! Today is a day for exuberance. For chocolates and flowers and celebration! I used to love getting Valentines in that little cardboard box in grade school…and later in junior high and high school, at my school you could buy pink and red carnations and have them sent to someone’s locker and someone always left me one anonymously each year, and I never found out who, but the mystery of it cheered me up! So today, give someone something unexpected. Leave a bigger tip, give them a kiss on the cheek, stay on the phone a little longer than usual. Show yourself more love too.
Glenn made me pink marshmallow hearts dipped in dark chocolate for Valentine’s Day. Gluten-free and delicious! He gets an “A.” And, after getting stuck with needles at the allergist’s all day yesterday, I think I deserve a day of fun, so we are going to see that new meaningless-yet-fun looking movie with Reese Witherspoon and spies.
To honor the day, here’s one of my favorite love poems, by Robert Graves, short but perfect:
She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.
And now, make sure you mark on your calendars – I’m reading with Martha Silano in two days at Soul Food Books in Redmond! 7 PM February 16th, Soul Food Books. Be there!
Cosmic Fire, Lost Icons, and New Laureates
I was fascinated by the news story about a heart-shaped coronal mass coming from a solar storm that will hit earth around Valentine’s Day. The headline Cosmic Log went with was somewhat less romantic than I would have chosen…
Sorry to lose Whitney Houston, if not surprised. In the eighties I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, and what a gorgeous voice. Losing a lot of my teen icons, these days…
A new Poet Laureate of Washington State was announced, and it was Seattle’s Kathleen Flenniken. Her second book, Plume, I’m reviewing soon deals with subject matter close to my heart – the complicated environmental, personal and political history of Hanford, Washington state’s nuclear plant. Congrats to Kathleen!
(Kathleen is the tall brunette in the middle of this lovely group of poets at Open Books last year:)
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
