Finally, something about poetry

If you’ve been following my posts over the past month, you know I’m working on openness, I guess vulnerability, with the people in my communities. It seems urgent for whatever reason, and it feels urgent *right now*, so I’m trying to follow through with it.

As part of that, I’ve decided to talk more in this “notebook” about my publishing-and-contest life, such as it is. That means...rejections! So many rejections. But also celebrations of near-misses and, maybe, of rare wins. I don’t know that I’ll name every publication, but I plan to talk about the rejections and my experience of them, at least.

I also don’t know that all of this is what, like, a highly successful writer would do. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe there’s something in my persona and not just my writing preventing that (the high level of success). But at this point my mental health is more important than external barometers of my writing success.

So here’s a near-miss I’m trying to celebrate rather than bemoan: I was named a finalist (already know I didn’t win) for an awesome fellowship given by Frontier Poetry and Antioch College MFA.

Was hoping for a free week in LA, but I’ll take a very nice note instead. I’ll post an announcement link when I get it.

One of the things I’m most excited about is that the four poems I applied with are from my newest manuscript, which is about pregnancy, motherhood, and the environment. These specific poems felt like risks to me, and I’m very pleased that they got any traction at all. I can’t wait to share them with you once they get picked up.