Sometimes you get to a certain point and you just don't know what to do with a poem. You might have many drafts and you don't know what's working anymore. You've lost perspective. And on top of that, maybe you're surrounded by a whole bunch of other discarded poems […]
As people, we often like to put ourselves into categories. As writers, we tend to do the same thing. We say things like, "I'm a fiction writer" or "I'm a poet" or, if you're me, "I'm, like, kind of a poet, I mean, I like to write poetry, […]
Here are some of the lessons I've learned and decisions I've made in the area of literary submissions. Some of these I consider hard and fast rules, others are more like guidelines, and finally some are my preferences representing decisions I've made about how to conduct my own […]
For my previous poetry collections, I had kept my endorsements close to home, inviting poets I knew personally and whose passionate support I could trust. In all honesty, I also feared it an imposition to contact "big names" in our poetry community whose work I admired yet to […]
It’s so important to do your homework before sending your manuscript to a publisher. Make sure to take notes for each publisher you research. You will most likely want to compare them to each other before deciding where you want to submit. Make sure the press is the […]
Poetry film is often seen as having its roots firmly in the Avant-garde film tradition and in the work of the experimental filmmakers. And why not? After all, much of what we see today is influenced by artists such as Maya Deren, Man Ray and Hans Richter. The […]
I admit it. I used to sit down with every intention to write a poem and only stared at the empty page in my journal. It seemed so foreboding and austere, so empty, and the responsibility to write something worthy, so overwhelming. It was times like those that […]
When I got a "real world" job after years of intermittently waitressing and staying at home, I stopped writing. Not because I wanted to. I found myself so drained of inspiration that I simply couldn't put pen to paper. Instead, I spent my days rushing to get my […]
I went to a good poetry reading the other evening. But, boy, I wish I the poet hadn't kept doing things that undermined his own presentation of his own work. The poet violated almost every rule in my unwritten how-to-do-a-poetry-reading rule book. Which spurred me to write down […]
Every emerging writer dreams of finding herself in a conversation with the editor of an esteemed literary magazine. For the new writer, especially, there are hundreds of unanswered questions about the submission process. So you can imagine my excitement when I found myself speaking with Ralph Hamilton, the […]
