February First Flowers, Floods, Supermoons, and Superbowls, plus Poetry Grant Writing

Pink Camellia, first flowers of spring

First Flowers of the Year in February

In my yard, the first thing to bloom is usually our pink camellias, and they opened spectacularly yesterday, despite a week of hail, snow, flooding, wind, and other February nonsense. It makes me think spring might be around the corner – a cheering thought, after a terribly gloomy winter.

People all around us were flooded out of our homes – river trails and trees disappeared under water, cars were swallowed, people evacuated – we are lucky to live on top of a hill, and the river is a few miles away, but all week I’ve been watching the news every morning, flooding/road closures/power outages and coronavirus the two top stories, and then the politics, oy. So that put me in an apocalyptic mindset. Yesterday we went to the local gardening store to get a few sweet pea starts, which it might be a little early to plant, but we goofed around with the faux flower Valentine’s Day displays too, which was very cheering. I snapped a picture of what was normally a tiny creeklet across from one of our local winteries, but as you can tell, this is a tiny creeklet when it floods.

 

Snow Supermoon

Superbowls and Supermoons

The Seattle family during the Superbowl

We’re having the first Supermoon of 2020 – the Snow Supermoon.  Speaking of all things super, we were happy to have my brother and sister-in-law – aka our Seattle family – over for the Superbowl. It was great to visit with them and Glenn got to practice his Superbowl snack-making skills, and this year we had a sprinkling of snow, but nothing like last year’s blizzard.

Poetry Grant Writing – A Chore That Doesn’t Seem to Get Easier

Every two years I go through the grueling ritual of applying for the NEA grant. I don’t know that these kinds of applications get easier – well, they don’t for me – but they seem like a necessary ritual when poetry, teaching, and freelancing don’t add up to enough to really pay the bills. I looked at the last application and didn’t like my last poetry sample at all. I feel more confident about this one, but who knows what the NEA readers will like? It’s always a gamble and a mystery. There are a couple of state grants in Washington for writers but they’re much smaller so it seems worth it to take the time on this, even though I’ve been sending for years only to be rejected.

It takes focus to finish this kind of thing – at least as much effort as, say, doing your taxes – so I’m trying to get it in so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I think about what I could do with this grant – make my house a little more handicapped-accessible, or pay off some of my student loans – not glamorous goals, but they certainly would improve my quality of life. So cross your fingers for me – and if you’re going through the same motions right now, good luck to you! And if anyone has any tips they’d like to share (ahem, previous NEA grant winners) I’m sure I and all the readers would appreciate it!

 

Finally February: A Feature for Women in Horror Month, Proofs from Poetry, and a Little About Royalties for Poets

Sunrise in a rare rainless moment

Finally February! And a Feature for “Women in Horror” Month!

OK, January is over and can I say, “Finally!” Deaths in the family, volcanos, earthquakes, Australia on fire, Coronovirus, Impeachments – oh and the gloomiest (by rain levels and lack of light) month on record in Seattle. I’m ready for February.

And February is “Women in Horror” month and I’ve been featured – with an interview and some of my horror poems – on Colleen Anderson blog. Check it out here! I bet some of you don’t even think of me as a “horror” writer – but look, I really am!

Proofs from Poetry – Look for the April Issue!

My last week was brightened by getting my proofs for two poems in Poetry Magazine – which means it’s really happening and that acceptance wasn’t just a dream – and the news the poems would be in their April issue. Since that’s National Poetry Month AND my birthday month, it couldn’t seem like better timing. I sent my first submission to Poetry when I was 19 years old, and I have my own archive of Poetry back issues going back at least ten years. Now I’ll get to actually be in the archive! So it’s been a goal for more than twenty years.

A Little Talk About Royalties and Poetry

Another thing that cheered me up was getting a royalty check from Two Sylvias Press to deposit in my bank account. If you are a poet, even if you sell a lot of books, you might not always have a publisher who is good about getting you your royalties – not because those publishers are corrupt, but they tend to be poets, and poets tend not to be good at things like “keeping track of books sold” and things like that. I feel really lucky when I get my checks, especially when they are for more than it costs to buy lunch. Anyway, if you can discreetly check on a publisher before you do a book with them – a good way is to ask another author with the press if they’ve ever received a royalty check – that’s probably good. I mean, none of us poets are doing it for the money – but if you’re like me, you appreciate getting feedback on how your books sold in a royalty statement, and a little tangible evidence with money is even better.

I once told a friend, years ago, than royalty contracts did not matter with poetry books. So many poets just feel lucky to have their books published! I’m not so sure, after five books, that I’d say the same thing. Read that royalty contract, see how often you can expect to receive royalties and royalty statements, what rate you’ll get, etc. Don’t make it the most important thing in your decision, but consider it among other things – like distribution, quality of books, aesthetics of book covers and fonts – that help you decide which publisher to go with. Some publishers pay royalties with copies – which was always just fine with me – the most important thing was that someone, somewhere was keeping track of how many copies each book sold. It’s getting feedback on that stuff that helps tell you what you can do better. You wouldn’t expect a football quarterback to get better without feedback from a coach, videos, stats, etc, right? It’s the same with poets! (See? I even got some Superbowl into this blog post – LOL.)

 

 

 

Sunbreaks in the Rain, Surviving My First Root Canal, Finding Flowers in Our Darkest Winter Month

Sunbreak in the rain

Sunbreaks in the Rain

This has been the wettest January on record for Seattle and its environs, and I have definitely felt it. You have to try to get out in the rain, and hope you’ll be lucky enough to catch a sunbreak or a rainbow, the way I did right after I shot this photo. January is also so dreary and dark here, that even people without clinical seasonal affective disorder can feel a little depressed and stifled.

I don’t hate the rain, or the cold, or the dark, at least not individually, but when they all gang up on you…

Post-Root Canal smile

Surviving My First Root Canal

I had my first root canal, with no Novocain, but with sedation. It wasn’t too bad, but it turned out my tooth’s infection was bad enough to take me down for a few days while I recovered with the aid of antibiotics. And the bad news is, the tooth right next to it – which already has a crown – needs another one. At least I won’t be so afraid of the next one. Anyway, if any of you have been scared to get one, it wasn’t so bad! I remember thinking, even through the sedation, that it didn’t even hurt very much! Now I have to wait a couple of weeks to have a crown on that broken tooth, which is nerve-wracking, because if I hurt that tooth’s temporary bonding, I might have to get an extraction instead of a crown.

Sleeping does lie

Anyway, yay, I survived, and even though I was a weirdo dental patient  – a little out of the ordinary, the endodontist had to use a special filling, my root was shaped unusually, and all that no Novocain thing – everything was just fine. The funny thing was, they tell you not to sign any contracts or shop while you’re on the sedation drug, called Versed – but I submitted three book manuscripts that night, which I don’t remember, and bought two lipsticks and a shampoo – I guess it could have been worse! And a couple of days later, mostly sleeping I stumbled out into the rain…and found deer in the yard! They had munched on a bit of our camellias, but I guess that’s all right. And I’ve been trying to take advantage of all the sunbreaks and rainbows I can.

Pink Blossoms, after snow

Finding Flowers in January

I was determined, in the heart of January cold and dark, to discover some signs of spring. A few hyacinth plants are starting to shoot up, and this blooming shrub did not get killed by the snow. I ventured out to our local nursery, to see what they had to offer – a bunch of faux flowers, a few camellias, primroses, and cyclamen in bloom, and mostly bare-root plants. It was still fun to try to plan a little bit for spring, or at least pretend for a little bit.

Flowers seem like a metaphor for hope to me. If you’re in that time in between good things, a long losing streak when you’re waiting for good news or the right publisher, just watch. It could be closer than you think.

 

A Week of Being Snowed In, Art Date at the SAM, and a Little Poetry Catchup

Lamplight on Snow

A Week of Being Snowed In

Here in Seattle, we don’t get snow very often, but this last week brought a combination of freezing temperatures, a ton of snow over four days, black iced roads (including a 30 car pileup on the Floating Bridge) – that kept us mostly indoors all week. Root canal? MRI? Running errands? No dice.

So I got a lot of reading done. I started watching Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon adapted on PBS (and read the original 11 chapters, which took me 45 minutes and renewed my appreciation for Austen’s funny asides.) We also had a modem go out, so one whole day we didn’t have phone, internet, or cable. So, yes, if you’re asking, I am going a little stir crazy.

Mysterious Night of the Fox by Phyllis Emmert

An Art Date at Seattle Art Museum

So, periodically, and especially after a week of being trapped in my house AND awaiting a Monday root canal, I take myself on an art date. Today we went down to SAM and waited for four different elevators (SAM could use a little work on the accessibility front – we had to wait for a staff member to call someone else to get one elevator that was the only way to access the actual Flesh and Blood exhibit we’d paid to see and that cost us fifteen precious minutes. We got there an hour and fifteen before close, but it literally took me twenty-five minutes to get to the exhibit because I’m handicapped. Not cool, SAM – not everyone can climb a bunch of different confusing stairways to get to everything!) We enjoyed the art, but not the frustratingly designed for only able-bodied journey to getting to see it. My favorite things were the Titian, Parmigianino’s portrait of a young girl named Antea, and discovering a new local artist’s work at the end of the show. Oh, and the whole reason I went to the show – this amazing and disturbing painting!

Artemesia’s Judith and Holofernes

Anyway, there was a Titian, a Raphael, and several El Greco paintings, but that painting is one I had been obsessed with since I saw a slide of it in in Art Appreciation Class when I was 19 – a painting of Judith Beheading Holfernes by Artemisia Gentileschi. The painting itself is striking, the portrayal of the female body in struggle amazing,  but the story behind it even more so – Artemesia was seventeen and an apprentice to another painter who violently raped her. Her father, also a renowned artist, took the rapist artist to court, but it was a strung out procedure and Artemesia did not find justice. She did, however, find the inspiration to paint her new subject – female saints and Biblical figures, usually unfairly attacked or in the middle of attack.  My art history teacher said that Judith is modeled on Artemesia and Holfernes on her rapist. The dark and light, the shadow, the blood, and the odd muscularity of the action would all make this a fascinating piece even without the history. They recently discovered a self-portrait of the artist and she did, indeed, resemble this Judith very much. I just ordered a book about her history because it deserves more study, don’t you think? Fascinating?

A Little Poetry Catchup – and the Benefits of Downtime

So, I’ve been writing, sending out work, sending my book manuscripts out to publishers, you know, the usual. I didn’t finish a book review I meant to do during the “snow days.” I got the proofs for my poem upcoming in Ploughshares (!!) about which I’m tremendously excited. I also found an e-mail in my junk folder that was the editors letting me know they were passing on my poems to the featured editor – but I never got the e-mail so I missed being nervous about it for months! Ugh. Technical glitches (Submittable? My e-mail service?) can make getting and receiving poetry news a tense uncertain situation.

January seems like a good time for sending out work, and I find I tend to write a lot in January too. How about you? It’s also a good time for finishing reading projects. I finally saw the new Star Wars movie too, on one of the snowy afternoons we were able to get down the street to the virtually empty theater, and am happy to report I was pleased that they showed the porgs again, albeit briefly. I read some “for fun” fiction and it felt good! I need to remember to read sometimes for fun more often. That’s what downtime is for!

I was reminded, during this week of snow days, of the importance of “poetry downtime.” The time when you don’t feel like anything is happening – you’re not actively inspired for a new series of poems, you’re not hearing back from anyone – can be the most important times for your work. These are the times when you get a chance to look at your poems without the rush – you may find the typo, or adjust your line breaks, or decide one of your poems needs a new ending. If you’re working on a manuscript (or two) like I am, this is a good time to re-check that your manuscript order still works – maybe there’s a new poem you need to put in to give the book more momentum, or something you need to take out or shift around. If you lack downtime, you never get that truly relaxed time to revise and reshuffle, to do the things that might take your work from “pretty good” to “excellent.” You can’t rush revision – for me, it happens a little at a time, usually on a poem after a week or a month after I’ve written it, when you re-read it and notice the little things that make the poem happen or slow it down. It’s also the time to research new journals or publishers you might have overlooked – poetry journals are continuously being born and closing down, so it’s hard to keep your finger on the pulse of things. Check your subscriptions – do you want to try a new journal for a while? And check the submissions times of your favorite publishers – they can shift from year to year. See? Now you’re caught up, you’ve had a little time to breathe, and you can make all those little tweaks that you might otherwise overlook. The importance of downtime, whether snow-day-induced or not! Wishing you a great writing week.

 

 

Sharing a Little Good News, The First Reading of 2020, and Learning to Balance with MS

First Rainbow of New Year

Some Good News, Finally, in 2020

Hello my friends! After a very rough beginning to the new year, the metaphoric rainbow has appeared (and also the first real rainbow!)

This week I can finally share with you a little good poetry news, and I had a wonderful time catching up with poetry friends and has my first reading of 2020 – in fact, the first reading I’ve done since last year’s AWP in Portland.

 

Poetry Magazine

Two Poems in an Upcoming Issue of Poetry Magazine

Remember that good news I vaguely referred to last month? This is really exciting to me, because I remember sending out my first poetry submissions at nineteen, and Poetry Magazine was one of them. I even think the editor sent back a sweet encouraging rejection note. Now, at 46, my first acceptance – and two poems! I am over the moon. And my mother-in-law bought me a new subscription to Poetry Magazine. Isn’t that sweet?

 

On the way to the Feminist Speculative Reading at Open Books, goofing with Glenn with the camera

Speculative Feminist Poets at Open Books

January, usually a dismal month here (we have a week of snow coming up in the forecast, odd for us) was also the Seattle’s MLA Conference, and so I got the chance to visit with long-time friend (but seldom seen, as she lives in Virginia) Lesley Wheeler. We hung out and caught up at the Bookstore Bar at the Alexis (after being turned away from the Sorrento’s Fireplace Room because of “silent reading night.” That’s fine! We’ve got multiple great meeting places for writers in this time. But I will hold a grudge!) Then tonight we got together with another local speculative poet, Jessica Rae Bergamino, to do a Feminist Speculative Poetry night at the lovely local bookstore Open Books. (I came home with three books on top of Jessica’s terrific Unmanned – and I’m really looking forward to Lesley’s new book due out in two months.) I was worried people would stay away because of the unwelcoming weather, but we had a great crowd, not only a good sized crowd but a warm and appreciative crowd, and listening to Lesley and Jessica read was a real pleasure. There were poems about space, robots, foxes, Nancy Drew, apoclaypses, Princess Leia, David Bowie…let’s just say this was not your grandmother’s poetry night.

Learning to Balance with MS

One thing the beginning of 2020 is bringing home to me that I need to learn to balance my life with my MS. When my dad was in the hospital and my grandfather passed away, I hated that I couldn’t just jump on a plane to be with my mom in Missouri or my dad in Ohio. Unfortunately, with MS (and I had the flu and was awaiting an emergency root canal), I’m just not able to do the kind of spontaneous last minute travel – or the caretaking – that I used to be able to do. I would have to book an accessible flight, accessible rooms at hotels, which is not always easy at the last minute. And I’ve learned if I push myself when I’m sick, MS will raise it’s ugly head in unexpected ways, and I can end up in the hospital. So I don’t want to live an overly limited life but I also have to learn where my limits are.

It’s the same with readings – I don’t do as many as I used to because asking my brain to stand, read, and breathe at the same time is asking a lot. Within a few minutes, I start to shake, my breath is hard to catch, and every word sounds a little wobbly. That didn’t used to be the case. I still love to do readings, but I have to limit them to when I have the physical energy to do them, and I have to take a down day before and after just to be able to do that. It kind of sucks. I still love seeing other people read, and enjoy sharing my work, but I just don’t have confidence the way I used to. On the other hand, visiting with friends one on one, even in a crowded area, is still fine, as long as I put my whole focus on my friend and not the surroundings. So, yay to the things I can still do pretty well!

So I’ve lost the ability to travel easily, or appear effortless at readings. I have to plan things in advance, and literally put “rest” on the schedule. It’s an adjustment, still, even two years after my diagnosis. I still walk with a cane, and wobble if I try to walk across the room without it. Lack of balance is a well-known MS symptom and it’s also a metaphorical problem – how do you balance a “normal” life with MS? I had a friend at the reading who told me it was helpful to read my writing about these things, because it’s hard to understand MS and it hits everyone differently. So I hope this has been helpful! I hope the rest of 2020 is kinder to us all.

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Jeannine Hall GaileyJeannine 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.

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