Today, I sent my chapbook Hearts and all the other appropriate files to Kelsay Books so that the layout process can begin.
Yay!
It will be a number of months before I get to hold my first book in my hands, but it definitely seems more real now.
One of the most emotional things for me is reading the blurbs from other poets that will go on the back cover.
I wonder how long it will be before I can read them without tearing up…
So, it’s late afternoon on January 31st and I’m just getting the chance to write my final post for Linda’s Just Jot It January.
Linda’s prompt for today is “write” and my original intent had been to write about the end of Just Jot It January, so two birds with one stone.
I had been trying for the month to prepare my posts a day ahead in order to get them out in the morning, but I didn’t manage it today. I didn’t even check my blog this morning, as I had decided to do some more work on the final layout for my chapbook manuscript, Hearts, to send to Kelsay Books, my publisher.
Of course, I got distracted and wound up sending out a submission of three ekphrastic poems for a contest, which meant writing a more-involved-than-usual cover letter. (I did get some manuscript work done, too.)
I also wound up contributing to a couple of “poetry business” email threads, one for the Grapevine Poets and one for the Boiler House Poets Collective.
I wrote a birthday card and note to a friend – longhand and everything!
And now, finally, this post.
I am happy and relieved to have managed to post every day this month for #JusJoJan. I wrote more “heavy” posts than I intended, but it’s been that kind of month.
I’m not planning to post every day in February, though.
I need to spend some time on other projects and to get ready for a trip to the UK to visit our family there.
That should generate a few posts…
*****
I hope you’ve enjoyed Linda’s Just Jot It January. Thanks so much, Linda, for making it possible! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/01/31/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-31st-2023/
I’m thrilled to share the new issue of Portrait of New England, which includes my poem “State Line” and my very first published interview!
Those of you who are regular readers here at Top of JC’s Mind know that I usually post here about the story behind the writing of my published poems but the featured Q&A handles that, with shout-outs to the Boiler House Poets Collective and MASS MoCA.
Many thanks to editor Matthew Johnson for the honor of being chosen as featured writer for this amazing issue! In addition to sixteen poems, there are pieces of fiction and creative non-fiction to enjoy, all by writers who have a connection to New England. I also love the wintry cover art by Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
Comments are always welcome here. Please also feel free to share the issue with your friends and family. (The link in the first paragraph is permanent, so if you are visiting this post in 2023 or later, you should still have access.)
I’m pleased to share the news that Jessica Dubey’s newest chapbook, All Those Years Underwater, is now available, either from Kelsay Books or from Amazon. If you happen to order from Amazon and don’t yet have Jessica’s chapbook For Dear Life, be sure to add it to your cart, too.
Jessica is one of my local poet-friends, part of the Grapevine Poets here in Broome County, New York, as well as the Boiler House Poets Collective. It has been my privilege to see the poems in both manuscripts develop over time and come together into power-packed chapbooks.
Jessica has a special talent for writing about difficult issues in a way that is beautiful, but searing. As Marilyn McCabe notes on the back cover of All Those Years Underwater, “Danger is so delicate in these poems; it slides like a stiletto between the ribs. The poems stare you down with their lovely eyes, even as they insert the blade.”
For more information, links to previously published poems, and contact information, visit Jessica’s website. I’m sure she would love to hear from her readers!
The Design Thinking Initiative and the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, my alma mater, are currently spearheading a Common Reassemble project using the works of Emily Dickinson.
To participate in the Emily Dashes project, members of the Smith community take a page or two of Dickinson’s poems and create a response to the work using whatever materials they see fit.
I have submitted two pages. Being more of a poet than a visual artist, I relied on erasure style with a bit of added decoration.
The pages will be displayed at the Poetry Center and may be shared on social media. At the conclusion of the project, they will be assembled and housed at the library as part of the Mortimer Rare Book collections.
What a fun and innovative way to leave a bit of myself “in residence” at Smith!
I’m pleased to announce that I have two new poems published in the Fall-Winter issue of Rat’s Ass Review! (In case you are wondering about the somewhat unusual name, read the longer version of their submission guidelines, which is one of the most informative, honest, and entertaining I’ve ever encountered.) Many thanks to current editor Roderick Bates for choosing my work for inclusion in this issue.
There are 61 contributing poets plus cover art, so there’s lots to enjoy! Contributors are arranged alphabetically, so you will find my poems listed under Joanne Corey. Clicking on any poet’s surname takes you to their bio in the last section.
The inspiration for my first poem “The Banned Bookmobile” is a project under development at WordPlace, the Southern Tier Literary Center at the Bundy Museum, Binghamton, NY. J. Barrett Wolf, director of Wordplace, is planning to assemble a collection of banned/challenged books in a bus that can travel about to present programs on the First Amendment, censorship, and other topics. (Editor Rick Bates helpfully made the title of the poem a link to the web page for the project.)
For those of you who may not be familiar, in rural/underserved communities, it was common to have a bookmobile visit several times a year, giving schoolchildren and adults the chance to borrow a wider range of books than were available in town. I remember the excitement in my rural New England town of 200 when the bookmobile visited. Although I loved our town library, it was very small and the bookmobile offered many more options.
My poem references several books/series that have been banned from various schools or libraries in the United States, including And Tango Makes Three, the Harry Potter series, The Bluest Eye, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
“Video Chat with our 95-year-old Father” was written in early 2021, shortly after Paco had moved into the assisted living unit of his senior community. Due to pandemic restrictions, my sisters and I weren’t allowed to visit his place, even though I lived nearby. The staff would set up a video session with their iPad and then leave to attend to other duties. Unfortunately, Paco had difficulty grasping the situation and the technology involved.
As always, comments are welcome!
I am thrilled to announce that Hearts, my first chapbook, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2023! I don’t yet have an exact release date but expect it to be around September.
Kelsay Books was founded by poet Karen Kelsay in 2012 and currently has over a thousand titles listed in its bookstore. This makes it a much larger press than most of my previous submissions, some of which went to presses that only publish one or two titles a year. I took a chance submitting to Kelsay because two of my local Grapevine Poets, Jessica Dubey and Burt Myers, have books forthcoming from them. I’ll be sure to post their books here at Top of JC’s Mind when they become available.
Kelsay publishes poetry exclusively under four different imprints: Aldrich Press for free verse poetry up to 90 pages; White Violet Press for formal poetry up to 100 pages (Burt’s category); Alabaster Leaves for chapbooks under 50 pages (Jessica and my books will be under this imprint); and Daffydowndilly for rhyming poetry by adults for children.
Another welcome feature of Kelsay is that they respond very quickly, generally within fourteen days of submission. I received word of acceptance on day ten. This is blazingly fast. The typical response time for prior submissions I had done was six months, with a few taking more than a year to send out rejections.
Hearts centers around my mother, known here at TJCM as Nana, particularly in the last years of her life as she struggled with heart failure. The first incarnation of the chapbook was assembled in fall of 2017 as an entry into the QuillsEdge Press contest with the theme “Transitions.” It was named a finalist and the poem “Sixteen Hours” was included in an anthology that was published in conjunction with the winning manuscript, Skin Gin. That version also placed in the top 1% of submissions in another contest.
That early positive feedback proved to be important in the following years. As Nana’s health continued to decline, I wrote poems to help me process but couldn’t think about reworking the manuscript. After her death in May, 2019, I took some time to extend, workshop, and edit the chapbook and started sending it out in spring of 2020. That version was a semifinalist in a contest but was also getting a lot of rejections from contests and open submission periods.
I continued to do edits and added a new poem in spring, 2021. At that point, my father, known here as Paco, was entering the last few months of his life, so doing submissions faded into the background. He passed away last September and I returned to doing a few submissions before the end of the year. I was doing submissions for my full-length manuscript, as well.
Kelsay was the 34th submission for Hearts in its various forms.
There is a difference of opinion on whether that is a lot or just run-of-the-mill. Most of the people that I’ve told have noted my perseverance and commitment in the face of rejection but a few, who have decades-long experience as poets, think thirty-four isn’t that bad or unusual.
For now, I’m still feeling joy mixed with relief. In these past years, I’ve watched many of my poet-friends publish their first books and had begun to wonder if I just wasn’t good enough. Now, I’m coming to think of it more as finding the right match. Kelsay Books makes clear they are seeking manuscripts that are accessible to a general audience. I consider myself a community poet, as my experience has come through workshopping with fellow poets and community poetry sessions with the Binghamton Poetry Project and others, instead of from academic studies. I tend to write in a narrative style. While I occasionally write in Chinese/Japanese-derived forms like tanka, I have never written anything decent in traditional European forms, like sonnet or villanelle. Every once in a while, a rejection email comes with a bit of feedback, which tends to run along the lines of my work not being crafted well enough or sophisticated enough. While I do continue to work on craft and revision skills, I will never write like someone with an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree.
And that’s okay.
It’s just easier to believe now that I can say I have a book forthcoming.
I’m sure I will post more about this as I work through the process of publication and gain more skills along the way. Style guidelines. Fonts. Cover art.
One of the blessings of being in a community of poets, though, is that help is available if I need it. I also now have a publisher with a team of professionals to get my book out into the world.
It still feels strange to be able to say that.
But I think I could get used to it.
I’m excited to share this post from Marilyn McCabe, announcing her newly published video chapbook, She Quits the Garden.
Marilyn had shared these poems with the Boiler House Poets Collective at one of our residencies at MASS MoCA before their remarkable transformation into a multivoice video chapbook. Enjoy!
Thrilled that this project found a home on PoetryFilmLive. As it’s a video chapbook, it’s a bit longer than my usual work, so I hope you’ll hang in there for the 10 minute run time.
https://poetryfilmlive.com/she-quits-the-garden/
Following up from this post about the National Poetry Month events with the Tioga Arts Council, I’m pleased to say that the reading yesterday at their gallery in Owego (NY) was a great success!
We had six poets, including my friends Merrill Oliver Douglas and Jessica Dubey, who each read a poem by another poet and one of our own. The selections were varied and I was introduced to some poets who were new to me.
We then heard from several people who are working with poetry in translation. Being able to translate poetry into a different language is an art form in and of itself and we were treated to hearing poems that were originally written in Bosnian, Slovene, and German. We even got to hear the poet Adin Ljuca read his work in Bosnian! Thanks to Erin Riddle, who coordinated that part of the program.
And thanks again to Christina Di Stefano for her leadership of the Tioga Arts Council, for her inclusion of poets and writers along with the visual and performing artists, for her gracious introductions at the reading, and for all the organizing that brought us together.
Revisiting last year’s Broome County Arts Council’s recorded readings for National Poetry Month, with Yours Truly in week three: https://broomearts.org/education/the-gift-of-poets/
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/04/20/one-liner-wednesday-love-and-compassion/
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