(Part 1 of the Conversation With Matt Mason.)

“Matt, for fiction writers who want to take a stab at writing poetry, what do you think are the essential elements a poem should have?”

“I would love to see more fiction writers writing poetry because it expands what we see as poetry. I would love to see these writers taking elements that they put into their fiction and just try it in the shape of a poem, even if you’re not sure it is a poem. Try the shape of a poem, work in some different uses of language and line breaks and shapes of what you’re looking at and have fun with it. There’s a book called Final Girl by the poet Daphne Gottlieb that is all about the final girl in the horror movie who survives, and it’s an amazing book. And I would love to see more books of poetry like that that take on elements of what we consider more like movies or like fiction. I would love to see someone writing a book of, you know, thriller noir poetry. Why not? Any creative writing is about experimentation. It’s about trying different things in different fashions, and I love seeing when that comes out.”

“Can you give some other examples of genre poetry?”

“Crazy Horse in Stillness (William Heyen) is a great book of poetry that’s mainly about Crazy Horse and Custer. What the Ice Gets (Melinda Mueller) is basically a nonfiction historical imagining of Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition. I mean, I love books of poetry that take on these things in different ways and teach me something, make me feel something I didn’t expect to feel, and just see what happens.”

“I was trained, and I studied profusely to try to be a good poet, which I don’t know if I’ve ever attained, but some topics seem to be subjects that appeal to me, and some of those seem to be styles that have been thrown out the window by the current trends. I’m going to ask you a few things, and you tell me where we are in reference to writing publishable poetry. Meter?”

“I think steady meter is difficult to come by. Steady meter was under assault by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot 110 years ago. It’s something you don’t see much of. You’ll still see some iambic pentameter, some blank verse, various things in poems, but not a lot. And when I’m writing poems, I don’t write in steady meter for the most part, unless it accentuates something that I’m talking about.”

“Then how do you define it as poetry?”

“I pay attention to the rhythm of what I’m writing and how I’m writing it.”

“Rhythm, not meter?”

“It tends to be more the rhythm of my voice, which is much more of a jazz rhythm. I think we need to pay attention to the rhythm of our poetry and figure out what we’re doing and why because it is an important consideration. But meter is less of a focus, I would say.”

“I guess some of that is reading out loud and seeing how it seems to pounce along?”

“That definitely helps.”

“Because, in the end, poetry is traditionally meant to be read aloud. What about rhyme?”

“Rhyme is absolutely crucial in a lot of poetry. Not all. Again, similar to meter, it’s changing rather than being eliminated. I don’t use the AB/AB sonnet format all that often, but I do use rhyme to connect parts of poems, to end a poem on a musical note, things like that. So, I love using rhyme in a different way than the classical uses of rhyme. I absolutely love rhyme because it is musical, it is powerful, and it is just kind of fun to work with. It’s also frustrating to work with because the English language is terrible for rhyming, but, you know, we do as best we can.”

“What about stanza form? And how do you determine how the poem is laid out on the page?”

“I really look for how my poems look on the page to match how I think the poem should be read out loud. It’s hard for me to write in paragraphs. I don’t write fiction partly because I am so used to poetry and what you can do with whitespace.”

“Whitespace?”

“It frames the urgency.”

“How do you mean?”

“It frames the feeling of sections of a poem in such a fun way that I love playing with that, and I love the use of a stanza, the use of a line, the use of just space on a page is so much fun to me. There’s the kind of traditional way. You can use line breaks to accentuate a word at the end or beginning of a line, or mark off a phrase that’s important. I forget who wrote it, but there’s a great essay on the line break that regards a line break as being like half a comma. It’s that little bit of a partial pause as we read a poem out loud, and I think stanza breaks even more so for me. I work hard on how a poem sounds out loud, and I would love as much as possible to be able to put that on a page in a way where someone else can read it in essentially the voice I hear in my head. I really work on how it looks on the page for readers to find that.”

“Do you have resources that you would recommend for learning how to write poetry? I mean, the best source is finding great poems that appeal to you, I would say. But is there a book on that? Most of the books that I’ve seen are on that traditionalist rhythm, meter, looking at Chaucer types of instructional books. And then there’s the other frame of thought of just, I don’t really understand what in the world this person is saying. And then there’s someone like you who’s writing accessible poetry that I get. I think most fiction writers are probably going to fall in my group because we’re used to communicating clearly and making sure that the reader understands exactly what we’re saying, and yet at the same time the brevity, and the line breaks, and all of this other stuff, and the meter may be foreign to us. So do you have any kind of resources where our kind of poet could go, ‘Okay, if I wanted to learn more about writing poetry as a fiction writer, where would I go?’”

“That’s the hard part with poetry and why most people are frightened of poetry, or hesitant to dive into poetry in that there’s no RottenTomatoes.com for poetry for us to find the poems we like, or that would appeal to us. Entertainment Weekly is going to put a review of a book of poetry maybe twice a year. It’s hard to find that kind of review. If we want to find music we like, there’s so many resources out there. It’s fairly easy to narrow things down and find something. Poetry, for whatever reason, is a lot tougher right now. One book I love for writing poetry is Ted Kooser’s Poetry Home Repair Manual. I think it’s aimed towards you. It’s aimed towards me. It’s aimed towards pretty much any reader. Kooser is amazing, too. He’s trying to write poems that people will understand, will read, and get something from, and I love him for that. That is probably the main one. There’s an old textbook, The Discovery of Poetry, by Frances Mayes, which is probably out of print. But I had it when I was in college in the late 80s, which I just thought was really helpful, and it has all the different styles, and it’ll tell you how to write a villanelle, and it’ll tell you about free verse, and it’ll give you all the vocabulary. So, if that’s something you’re looking for, that’s a good one, too. Also, Billy Collins did a couple of different anthologies called Poetry 180 or 180 More, which I love. Find a good poetry anthology and flip through it. If you’re five lines into a poem and you’re not interested, flip the page. I think sometimes we feel like we have to read the whole poem and figure it out, and if we’re just trying to find some poets we like, go quick through an anthology, figure out who in there appeals to you, who in there doesn’t, and look up more by the poets who jump out to you. You can usually figure that out within a few lines. Of course, there are some brilliant poems that start at like line 30. I mean, John Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn has one of the worst openings of a poem I’ve ever read, but the ending is my favorite ending of a poem I’ve ever read. So, it’s not a perfect technique, but you do what you can, and most of it is about finding those poets who you want to write like. That was my problem. That was what was difficult for me. As I was trying to research poetry, I would read these books that had won awards, and it’s like, I don’t want to write poems like this. I have no interest in writing a poem like these poems in this book. But it’s finding the poets that you hear or read, and it’s like, ‘Oh. That’s something different. I like that.’ That you could see yourself modeling yourself after, at least in some respects, or at least see yourself as a poet in the vein of that person. So, it’s all about finding the genres of poetry that appeal to you, and that you want to write like.”

“How do you find out where to submit your poetry? There are literary magazines, and tons of them, and you can probably spend weeks finding a place to submit five lines, and that doesn’t seem like a cost-effective use of time. What do you recommend? Where do you find where to go to submit?”

“I think the most useful thing for me is when you find those poets who you like, who you see yourself in the vein of your own writing, look at their books and see where they publish. So, if you like my book, look at the places where I’ve been published, and maybe consider those magazines.”

“I’ve never thought of that before. In a lot of poetry books, they put in the front where they were originally published, so people could find publishing opportunities that way in the books that they are looking at.”

“Any book of poetry should have that acknowledgments page so you can see what magazines poems from that book have been published in, and I use those a lot. I will flip through the books that I enjoy reading and that I think I write something similar to, or at least am trying to, and I’ll try those magazines. Otherwise, I’ll flip through the Poets & Writers online listing of magazines and just see if something’s description matches something I’d be interested in. I’m Facebook friends with a lot of poets, so I see where they’ll put up a notice, ‘Hey, I’ve got a new poem in Hawaii Pacific Review.’ It’s like, oh, I should look into that and look at the magazine, read a couple poems online in that magazine. If you feel like, ‘I like these poems, I could see myself next to these poems,’ send it in. It’s mostly about using your contacts and using your own bookcase, but then a little bit of blind searching on Poets & Writers and other publishing resources can help, too. And partly it’s being a little audacious. I mean, I’ve sent poems in for calls for anthologies that end up getting 8,000 or 9,000 submissions. And every now and then I’ve gotten something published, which is amazing. Don’t spend a ton of time on a farfetched possibility, but if it takes just as much time as anything else, try for those because you never know.”

“Fiction writers are trained to think a certain way, and you see Submittable where it says, X amount of dollars to submit your poem. And you’re thinking, ‘Okay, is this vanity press?’ Or should we go, ‘Oh, this is part of making sure they stay in business?’ And how should we feel about these submission fees?”

“That’s always a mix. I look for free submission periods. With poetry magazines, there’s a fair amount of those. Many magazines, even some big ones, have free periods, so I watch for those. When I find a magazine I really want to submit to, and the submission period is not open, or it’s not the free period and there is one, I’ll put it on my calendar. It’s like, ‘send some poems here.’ It’s a quick and easy way to kind of schedule yourself. If it’s a $2 or $3 submission, I figure when I first started sending things to magazines, you would have to put a stamp on the envelope, you would have to have a self-addressed stamped envelope inside, you would have printing fees. It probably came out to a couple of bucks for every submission anyway.”

“So that’s an operating expense, basically. What about $25 entry fees?”

“Yeah, $25 entry fees, I figure the odds are so far out of my favor. If it includes a subscription, then I might do that to get a year of the magazine, or something like that. Especially contests—I don’t generally enter those because they tend to cost $10 or $20, and the math is not in my favor.”

“As a parting word: Do you have any advice for writers such as us? Fiction writers wanting to write poetry?”

“I would say, try to forget what you’ve been told poetry is supposed to be and write what you wish poetry had more of. Why are you writing fiction? Why are you reading fiction and not poetry? What kind of poetry would make you as interested in reading poetry as you are interested in reading fiction? Write those poems, grow, make yourself more of a reader of poetry that way, and maybe inspire audiences. Poetry really needs a broader range of audience, and I would love to see fiction writers trying to break into it. As much as that annoys me, though, too, because you know, I’ve studied poetry forever, and I’m sure you know fiction writers will jump into poetry and do better than I. It’s like, dang it! I always hate it. Every now and then a book of poetry will come out from like a physicist or someone like that, and it is so damned beautiful, and I hate them for that because they’ve studied some other subject their whole life and then wrote a brilliant book of poetry, and I’ve been trying to make it with poetry my whole life. But, fiction writers, jump in. Come on. Enter the pool. A lot of fiction writers could look at poetry as something in a completely different way, which would have quite an audience, and I would love to see what they do with poems, what they do with form, and the more people trying different things the better.”

“So, what are we waiting for?”

“Grab a pen.”

___________________

Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and has run State Department poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times, Rattle, Poet Lore, and hundreds more. He’s received a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. https://midverse.com/

The post A Conversation With Matt Mason on Writing Genre Poetry, Part 2 (Killer Writers) appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(100+ Poetic Forms for Poets to Try.)

One of these is poet Matt Mason, Nebraska State Poet, and author of the poignant book At the Corner of Fantasy and Main, a book of poetry reflections on Disneyland through the eyes of mid-life. I love the poetry of the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Peter Straub. I have shelves of books of story poem collections such as Eccentric Orbits, Empty Bottles Full of Stories, The Pocket Book of Story Poems. It’s been one of my goals at Killer Nashville to encourage fiction writers to consider writing poetry and, in my many conversations with Matt, he agreed.

“So, Matt, I’ve really been trying to expand the idea of writing poetry for people who normally write genre fiction: mystery, thriller, suspense, noir, sci-fi, western. I love reading these when I can find them, but unfortunately, they are few and far between. I’ve found there is an interest among fiction writers in writing poetry, but they really don’t know how to start. Of course, they’ve tinkered with poems—what writer hasn’t?—but they’re not really sure how to begin or how to take their own writing of poetry seriously. What is poetry for the non-poet writer who wants to pursue and experiment with that?”

“Well, for me, poetry is telling stories that someone can feel as much as they understand intellectually. I love the old Bill Kloefkorn definition of poetry, that a poem is an attitude looking for something solid to sit down on, just meaning that a poem is a feeling, an attitude, an emotion that needs solid details or specifics to frame it so that someone else can both understand it and feel it. Poetry started thousands of years ago as basically a fancy way of fiction, fiction with rhyme and meter so that it could be memorized and passed down before there was written language. We’ve definitely gotten away from that, especially in the last hundred years, to where poetry is more of an intellectual exercise that’s about difficulty and a difficult way of communicating. I like poems where I see it fitting more genres of being horror-poetry, thriller-poetry, something that appeals to fiction writers and fiction audiences is what I’m really shooting at for poetry.”

“So, if poetry began as ‘a fancy way of fiction,’ is poetry story?”

“I think so. I mean, sometimes it’s stories, sometimes it’s a snapshot, but I think it is very similar to what a short fiction writer might be going for. It is different from fiction in how it is done, but I think it’s going towards much of the same purpose. It’s a little bit less speaking to the brain and more speaking to the heart and the stomach of a reader. Trying to really make someone feel an experience as much as they intellectually grasp it.”

“So what does it take to write poetry, and how do you know if you’ve written a good one?”

“For me it is starting with an idea, an image, a particular feeling, and then trying to find the right words for it. Anyone who’s tried to translate emotion into language so that other people will feel that knows how difficult that is. Writing a love letter? You know, good luck. We’ve all done that poorly at some point in our life, and hopefully we’ve all done that well at some point in our life. But we are all brought up wherever in the world we are brought up. We are brought up with different cultures, different languages, and everywhere everyone wrestles with trying to say things in a way that someone else will be able to grasp the feelings that we are experiencing. And poetry is putting that into language. And it has been something that has been part of human culture as long as we’ve had human culture. It is part of who we are as humans. And so, it’s got that importance. And it’s not just an intellectual exercise like it has kind of been looked at for these last 100 to 120 years. It really is something about us communicating our own experiences in a way that someone else will really be able to feel. It’s not just brain-to-brain communication. It’s more of a heart-to-heart or stomach-to-stomach, or whatever kind of communication.”

“Is that what differentiates it from a short story or something else? You’re actually going heart-to-heart?”

“Yeah, I think that’s more of what does differentiate it. I put the border lines as pretty blurry, though. You know you read a novel like The Bell Jar written by someone well-known in poetry…”

“Sylvia Plath.”

“Yeah, Plath. And it is doing what a poem does, I think through most of that novel and making you feel what she’s going through. That is really what she’s trying to communicate as much as the story of the book.”

“How do you know that you’ve written a good poem that you feel confident that you’re not going to be so stupid sharing it with someone else, or even, audaciously saying, ‘I think I’m going to send this to a literary magazine and see if they will take it?’”

“That is the question. I’m certain I’ve sent terrible poems to literary magazines.”

Check out Matt Mason’s Rock Stars here:

Button Poetry

“And probably got some accepted because you don’t know how the reader is going to take it.”

“That’s it, and that is where the poem goes from something of your own to something of the culture. If an editor loves a shitty poem, then is it a shitty poem? I don’t know. These are the things we wrestle. This is why it stinks to be a writer. We’re sitting here trying to do our best and hopefully doing it well, but who knows? If a poem is going to be something I send out, I don’t just send away something I wrote yesterday because I’m still so deeply into the experience of writing it that I don’t know how good or bad it is. It might resonate with me, but I’m not sure how well it stands up for other readers. So I like holding onto a poem a little while, reading it out loud plenty, putting it in a drawer for at least a week so that when I pull it out maybe I don’t remember the emotion I had when I was writing it. But if, after I put it away for a little bit, I can still feel what I was feeling that day and if it recalls that like a time capsule, then I think it’s got a chance. At that point, I’ll send it out to magazines, or I’ll read it at a reading or an open mic and see how it feels in front of an audience. It’s not so much the audience reaction. It’s, as I read a poem to an audience, do I feel like an idiot? And you know, sometimes you do. Sometimes you don’t. It is an odd thing. The best we can do is write what we think is good and hope that that resonates and works. I spent a good amount of my time writing poetry not being sure if what I wrote was poetry or was good poetry. After college I kept studying poetry, and I would go to a bookstore, get a book of poems that won some award and go, ‘Oh, if I’m studying poetry, I want to study this book.’ And I would read it and maybe hate it, maybe think, ‘I don’t write anything like this. I don’t enjoy reading this. What am I? Is that on me? Is that on them?’ And it took a little while before I found poets. At some point I stopped believing that what I was writing was poetry, but it was just things in the shape of a poem, until I found writers like Galway Kinnell or Denise Duhamel, or others who are writing poems that were socially conscious, but also a little bit of humor, a little bit of strangeness in them in ways that connected to me, in ways that those other books I had read just kind of pulling randomly from a bookstore shelf didn’t. It’s kind of realizing the different genres of poetry. That it’s not just one thing that we like or don’t like, or we write like, or we don’t write like. But there’s so many different forms of poetry out there right now. It’s figuring out what we enjoy, what you enjoy, what I enjoy, what works for me, what doesn’t work for me. The poems I read that I don’t connect with don’t make them bad poems, but it’s just poems of a genre that I don’t necessarily connect with.”

“So, we think of poetry in genre much as we do with stories of fiction. Do you ever feel stupid sometimes when you read some poetry? Like, ‘I just don’t get this?’”

“I used to. But now I don’t as much. There are some very complicated, intricate poems that I do enjoy, and some I will read and it’s like, ‘Wow, this is really complicated and intricate, and I just think it’s shitty.’ So, I mean, I’m less critical of myself these days as a reader and more critical of poetry in general. Not the poets, but the publishers who choose to put out a book that has no appeal for an audience or something like that. You know, the poets are doing as best they can. They’re writing what they find is interesting, so good on them. But it’s the publishers, and how they put out a book, and where they put it out, and all that I think I’m more critical of. So to answer your question about being lost in some poetry, always. Always. Constantly. Yeah, so I’ll pick up a book like Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler, which is a book of poems written from the perspective of Hurricane Katrina, and it is wrenching, and heartbreaking, and beautiful. And I read that book, and I love the book, but it’s just makes me realize that I’ve got a lot of work to do…”

“Even as the Nebraska State Poet?”

“It’s a challenge. I want to be that good. It doesn’t make me think, ‘Oh, I’m never going to write a poem again.’ I want to figure out how I can write poems in my own way of a magnitude like that. And it’s a challenge, and it spurs me on.”

“And you’re going to tell us how to do that?”

“I’m going to try.”

“This is Part One of a two-part interview. In Part Two, let’s talk about elements relating to poems and how genre writers can capitalize on those, as well as suggestions on where to submit poetry, and thoughts for how genre writers can enter the poetry market.”

“Let’s do it.”

___________________

Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and has run State Department poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times, Rattle, Poet Lore, and hundreds more. He’s received a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. https://midverse.com/

The post A Conversation With Matt Mason on Writing Genre Poetry, Part 1 (Killer Writers) appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this post, Kate discusses moving into a new direction for her new poetry collection, And Yet, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Kate Baer
Literary agent: Joanna MacKenzie at Nelson Literary
Book title: And Yet
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: November 8, 2022
Genre/category: Poetry
Previous titles: What Kind Of Woman, I Hope This Finds You Well
Elevator pitch for the book: A full-length book of poems exploring themes of womanhood, motherhood, grief, love, and hope.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I have been writing since the second grade. So, I guess the question is what hasn’t stopped me yet?

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

It’s hard to calculate time spent on a poetry book. Some poems had been sitting for five or six years, waiting to find the right time to fully form. Others were written quickly and furiously. Overall, it took me a little over two years to put together this collection.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I am always surprised by the publishing world. Usually it isn’t a good surprise, but there are some nice moments. I loved this book’s cover very much. They let me commission artist Amy Ross, and I’m in love with her and all she does.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I had to get out of my own way and allow playfulness and joy back into my writing. I felt an immense amount of pressure at first to recreate What Kind Of Woman, and it took some time to let go of that expectation and move on to something new.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

A love of poetry and mirror into their own human experiences.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

No one cares if you’re a writer except you. This goes for most venturers, but especially artists. No one cares if you write or not. No one is going to take away your phone, force you to sit down, and stand over your shoulder while you work it out. You have to care. You have to start and continue the forward motion. It’s entirely up to you.

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In this post, Huey explains how he hit a creative roadblock after publishing his latest poetry collection Dad Jokes From Late in the Patriarchy. He shares his cure (and more!) here.

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Name: Amorak Huey
Book title: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy
Publisher: Sundress Publications
Release date: May 15, 2021
Length: 120 pages (54 poems)
Previous titles by the author: Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank Books, 2018), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015)

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How long did it take you to write this book?

The oldest poem in the book was written in 2012. The newest was written in summer 2020. Most of them were written between 2015 and 2017.

(Tension in Poetry: The Hidden Art of Line-Writing)

How did you go about getting it published?

I compiled the initial draft of the collection in the summer of 2017 and worked with brilliant poet and freelance editor Maggie Smith to get the draft ready to send out. After she helped me get it into shape, I started submitting the manuscript to contests and open-reading periods for poetry presses that publish books I admire. I was trying not to hurry the process, trying to be choosy about where I sent it. After two years and eight rejections, it was accepted by Sundress Publications during their 2019 open reading period. Sundress had published two of my first three books, so I knew they’d be a great home for this one, too.

How many of your poems were previously published?

All but three of the poems in the book have been published in literary journals.

(Creativity Exercises: 3 Ways to Awaken Your Mind to Poetic Thinking)

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Not so much surprises, but reminders of how hard it is to get a book of poems published. I have been sending poetry manuscripts into the world since 2008. That’s a whole lot of rejections, and enough money in contest and reading fees to buy a decent used car. I am well aware of how lucky I am to be able to have spent this money in this way. I don’t have any answers, but our model for publishing poetry books is broken. The pay-to-play process enforces the status quo and is a barrier against those who cannot pay. It’s a problem. But I know there’s no simple solution. Publishing a book costs money, and it’s not like most poetry sells enough to recoup those costs. Still, the primary source of funding for books should not be poets whose manuscripts were rejected; that’s preying on people’s hopes.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book? 

The surprise came after the book when my poetry writing seriously stalled in a way it hadn’t in years. I finally figured out that it was because I had seen the book as sort of a stopping place. Like, I’d been working toward it for so long, and then I finished it, and I didn’t know what to do next. It turned out that I wasn’t done writing poems about the things the book is about: fatherhood, masculinity, mortality. I had to grant myself permission to write more poems engaging these themes even if they wouldn’t go in this particular collection.

(Poetry FAQs: When is something considered published?)

Did you revise any of your poems between acceptance and publication?

Yes, I did, though not to the extent I have with some of my previous collections. I made one pretty thorough editing pass on my own post-acceptance before working with my editor, Sundress’ Jeremy Michael Reed, to go through the whole collection. We made smallish changes here and there, adjusted a title or two, did some reordering, took out a couple of poems, and added a few newer pieces. One of the questions I often get from my students is how do you know when a poem is done, and the same question applies to a manuscript, and I don’t know, “done” is kind of a myth. A book is sort of like a photograph, a snapshot of the collection at a particular point in time, locked into physical form, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the poems are more or less finished than they were before that point, and if the print deadline had been, say, two months later, the book would be different.

Who or what are you currently reading?

Always reading Traci Brimhall, Layli Long Soldier, Jorie Graham. Just finished Hannah Vanderhart’s What Pecan Light and Kendra DeColo’s I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World, and I’m re-reading Collier Nogues’ On the Other Side, Blue.

If you could share one piece of advice with other poets, what would it be?

My go-to advice has been, “Always be writing the next poem.” (A bit of advice I forgot when I finished the Dad Jokes manuscript.) I still think that’s useful, but, you know, we’re all dealing with a global pandemic, and so I’d add: “Give yourself a break. Making poems is not a race.” 

The post Amorak Huey: On Stalling Out After Publication appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this post, Barksdale discusses how she decided which poems would be included in her latest collection, Grim Honey, why drafting each poem was a learning experience, and more!

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Name: Jessica Barksdale Inclán
Title: Grim Honey
Publisher: Sheila-Na-Gig/Ingram
Release date: April 1, 2021
Length: 47 poems
Previous titles by the author: The author of 15 novels and two poetry collections, Jessica Barksdale’s latest novel, The Play’s the Thing, will be published May 18^th.

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How long did it take you to write this book?

During lockdown, I participated in several writing round robins—poets/writers are paired up for a week and commit to sending each other work each day—and a couple of poetry retreats through Two Sylvias Press. Many of these poems came out of the early part of the pandemic, and these great writing experiences provided accountability, inspiration, and salvation.

Some of these poems were written after my first collection went into production, and I was very happy to have a nice home for them in Grim Honey.

How did you go about getting it published?

I was lucky enough to have the poet Maggie Smith edit my first collection, When We Almost Drowned, and I used her hints and tips to put together this collection. Once I felt it was in good form, I began to submit it to contests, a common way for poetry books to get published. My editor at Sheila-Na-Gig was really helpful, too, with thoughts and suggestions, and we worked well together to come up with the finished book.

How many of your poems were previously published?

18 of these poems were previously published, and another couple were prize-winners in poetry contests.

(Poetry FAQs: Having what it takes to be a poet)

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I will say immediately that this was the swiftest, most collaborative, most supportive publishing experience I have ever had. Haley Haugen invited me in and allowed me to make choices. She never made me wait and wonder. She was present and willing. All of that is totally surprising!

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book? 

Every poem is a learning experience, and then putting these packets of learning close to each other is always kind of mind-boggling. I can see my current themes and obsessions pretty clearly. Also, the notion of grim honey—the dark and the sweet—really sort of expressed what has been going on in the world this past year. What kind of horrifying amazement has this past year been? It’s so, so dark, and yet, yes, so sweet in many surprising ways.

(Finding Success as a Poet)

Did you revise any of your poems between acceptance and publication?

Yes. I had one error, in fact (I won’t say what or in what poem), and I also took two poems out that ultimately made me uncomfortable. I like the poems, but words can be weapons, and really, why? We don’t need anything else out there hurting anyone, even if that was not the intent.

Who or what are you currently reading?

I am currently reading Alicia Hoffman’s new collection Animal. Full disclosure, I blurbed the manuscript, but it was amazing to hold it in hard copy, turning each and every page.

If you could share one piece of advice with other poets, what would it be?

Write every day. I mentioned the round robins and the poetry retreats. Both provided me with that simple task. Write every day. Revise later.

The post Jessica Barksdale: On How Every Poem Is a Learning Experience appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Fast forward two years and I stumbled on the writing of Nick Laird in much the same way. Shelving books at Borders Books & Music, the story told through illustrations on the cover of Glover’s Mistake caught my eye. Then, the multi-layered story of James, David, and Ruth and their life in London drew me in and I couldn’t put the book down.

It was a quick reference to Zadie Smith on the acknowledgments page of that book, and then a brief name-check of “Nicky Laird” while reading White Teeth a few months later when I started putting two and two together. Nick Laird and Zadie Smith could be added to the list of literary power couples who live, write, and edit together.

Known collectively for their novels, poetry, short stories, and essays, they met when Laird was editor of The Mays anthologies (a collection of writing from the students of Oxford and Cambridge) and Smith submitted her writing for consideration. Laird, who has written four collections of poetry, three novels, and has several other projects in the works, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize for his most recent collection of poetry, Feel Free, and is a professor of poetry at Queen’s University in Belfast and at New York University. Smith is a tenured professor of fiction at NYU and is the author of five novels, three essay collections, and a collection of short stories. In addition to splitting their time between writing and teaching, they also split their time between New York City and London.

Laird’s most recent novel, Modern Gods, hits on the intersection of politics, religion, and culture in a captivating tale of reinvention, and Smith’s newest essay collections Feel Free (2018) and Intimations (2020) address similar topics with the same level of depth and nuance as On Beauty, so that’s where we began our conversation.

Both of you write about topics that hit on politicized themes, and Nick, you’ve said in previous interviews that writing is inherently political. Do you think writers have a social responsibility and if so, what is it?

Nick Laird: I think one has a responsibility to tell it like it is, and I think writing is inherently political because deciding what to look at or prioritize or highlight is a question of ethics and motivation and history. Poems deal in meaning, purposes, and human values so they are always political in some sense. Being interested in relationships between truth and authenticity is political, but I’m not interested in fiction or poetry that is motivated solely by politics: We resist work that has, as Keats said, a “palpable design on us.”

As for resistance poetry, I find that poetry is too large and various to be reduced to a focus on Donald Trump. The problems—and the joys—of life are much deeper and wider than that. If he comes up in the poems because I’m exercised by him—and I am, and he does—I try to also make sure it has an eye to the wider story. Why he’s here, what historical patterns he embodies, etc. I don’t want poems that just say racism is wrong. I’m not so interested in poems that tell me what I already know.

Poetry is language where the meaning or the signified is the whole process of signification itself: It’s how it is said, as well as what is said. It’s form and content. To attend to the multiple aspects of words, their sonic qualities, their history and connotations, is to resist a world where language is worn to a purely functional leanness by commerce, capitalism, bureaucracy. That’s a political—and radical—act in itself.

Zadie Smith: There’s a lot of pious, self-aggrandizing stuff you hear from writers on this point: They’re giving a “voice to the voiceless,” etc. … As if they’ve been elected to the task. I don’t presume to imagine what political effect my writing has—that’s not something that can be predetermined. But I do hope to model a kind of thinking that might have some utility. Alternative ways of conceiving of arguments and ideas, for example. My first commitment is to beauty, which is in no way apolitical, in my view. I think of my favorite Marxist aesthete William Morris: “I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.”

[Read our interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen.]

You’ve both commented that neither of you have smartphones and don’t participate in social media. How has that choice has affected your writing?

NL: Yeah, no smartphones. I have a dumb phone that my family has the number for but I don’t carry it around. I don’t do social media, though I’m Professor of Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University in Belfast, as well as teaching at NYU, and I have an account on Twitter to publicize scholarships or events that the Centre is doing, but I try not to use it. In the early days someone was impersonating Zadie on Twitter so I had to contact them to get it taken down and I got an account then in my name. I used it a bit in the early days of lockdown, and now I look at it maybe once a fortnight. I do find myself occasionally retweeting a grizzly bear righting traffic cones or a cat playing the piano, but mostly I find it embarrassing, like being party to an argument at the next table. It’s a terrible format for intelligent discourse and becomes a weird glimpse into private neuroses masquerading as public acts. As an experiment, Twitter is certainly an interesting experiment, but unfortunately, it’s an experiment that’s ruined the world. It’s a race to the bottom of the human psyche.

Still, it’s impossible to be immune to the moment: Writers are sunk waist-deep in the times and we all know it when we see it—a kind of platform manners in the work. But I’d hope that not participating in social media, not writing for response, or not for the quick response, not hoping for likes or clicks or retweets, might allow a certain freedom to the work, and in the long term this would be a good thing.

ZS: At first, for me, it was mainly a selfish time issue. I didn’t have the time. It was either kids and books, or Twitter and kids, or books and Twitter, but it couldn’t be all three. But I realized it was, for me, also a mental health issue. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Addictive personality plus self-involvement plus tendency to want to escape reality … it would have been the death of me. I understand it’s “my privilege” not to have to have one, and I’m very grateful for that privilege, but I also know that if I’d had a smartphone these past 10 years I would be a vastly different writer, a much more depressed person, not to mention the fact I’d have a completely different relationship with my kids … I’ve regretted a lot of things in my life but not that choice—not for a second. That doesn’t mean I’m not online: I’m on my computer plenty. But having it in my pocket 24/7 would have been, for me, totally destructive.

Those are all selfish personal reasons. Of course, there’s also the political aspect. It’s become clear over the past decade that one of the biggest battles in front of us, as citizens, is the wholesale corporate colonization of our minds and free will by enormous capitalist conglomerates. In my view all our other, urgent resistance movements will be either rendered toothless or seriously diverted from their aims if a mass abdication and/or transformation of these monopolistic platforms doesn’t at some point take place. It’s not a luddite position—to me it’s about resistance. I don’t have anything against “technology.” I have something against the way the technology is currently being exploited as a medium of behavioral experimentation and modification on an unprecedented scale. I cannot pretend I didn’t get a phone for this reason but at this point I’m very glad that I happen to not have one.

Both of you teach literature, writing, and/or philosophy at a college level. What impact does that interaction with students have on your writing?

NL: I find my students’ interest in poetry—at least the students who are interested in reading it as well as writing it—contagious, and exciting, and renewing. I try to teach students to be alert to a poem’s mood, its tone and pitch and rhythm and texture, and not just “what it says.” I do worry that there is a tendency to police each other in workshop, and there is a certain right-thinking now that is rigorously enforced. I find my Irish and British students perhaps more open to discussion, though the U.S.—as it has done since the ’50s—is remarkably successful at exporting its culture, and I see this culture of thought policing creeping into my classes in Europe.

ZS: You get to see, in real time, the total dismantling of your world and all your ideas about the world. And then perhaps if you stay long enough you get to see the cyclic nature of some of these deconstructions and reconstructions. … Either way, it’s bracing.

You’ve both escaped pigeon-holing yourselves into a writer of a specific form—Nick is known for his poetry and novels; Zadie is known for her novels, essays, and short stories. Often we hear that if a writer writes one thing well, publishers want more of the same. How did you escape that fate? Was there ever a point when you had to convince a publisher to take a chance on something new?

ZS: I know my experience is not representative so I’m not sure how to answer it. I’ve always just thought of it as “writing” and not worried too much about what form I’m writing in. I’d never write poetry, because that’s a completely different formal challenge, but the difference between lengths—short stories versus novels—never struck me as very important, nor the difference between fiction and nonfiction. I’m sure they make an enormous difference to publishers: A novel is no doubt always more welcome than essays. But again, I’ve been fortunate to write the things that feel urgent to me at the time: not urgent financially or because a publisher demanded them, but because I needed to write them. I’m very fortunate to able to write what I feel I need to write rather than what an audience or publisher wants me to write. It’s a form of leeway that came my way because of White Teeth, which earned money for my publisher and freed me to follow my nose as far as the choice of projects goes. I hope I would have written freely with or without the cushion of White Teeth, but it’s a counterfactual. I’ll never know.

NL: I’ve never thought of it in those terms. I imagine if I sold millions of books that there would be some pressure to repeat the formula, but fortunately or unfortunately my lack of sales frees me into writing what I want. As for fiction, my publisher after my first novel asked me not to make any characters in my second novel Northern Irish, as the British public aren’t interested in people from Northern Ireland she said—which is, or was, true. And I went along with it. I wouldn’t do that now. Though comprising a significant proportion of the U.K.’s population, the Northern Irish are not represented in British life at all really—not in the media or on television—and to the extent that they are represented it’s always through the prism of the Troubles—as bigots or terrorists or victims … In any event, I’m working on a couple of nonfiction books—one a guide to poetry, and the other reworking various essays and lectures about Irish and American poets.

Nick, I’ve read that you’ve been working on several scripts/film projects, and Zadie, I read that you were as well, but decided it wasn’t for you. Nick, what appeals to you about working on scripts?

NL: I like working with other people. I was a lawyer for a few years after college and enjoyed working on a team. The life of a writer is one of intense loneliness, and scripts are a way to work with other people. I also enjoy the speed of it. You can get it done quickly.

Zadie, what didn’t you like about it?

ZS: The fact that I’m no good at it! My structural mind and my plot mind are the weakest part of my writing game. My dream film-wise is to be hired to polish dialogue—but nobody ever asks me to do that. They ask me sometimes to write films or TV but I find creating plot from whole cloth incredibly hard to achieve. I’m the person who watches a TV show and has no idea who the murderer is till the last 10 minutes of the last episode. Nick’s the one who knows a few minutes after the opening credits are finished. It’s a different skill set.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Is “the writing life” what you imagined it would be?

ZS: I just wanted to be in the word business. I would have been happy as an editor or a teacher or a book reviewer. I always wanted to be a writer at some level but when I was a kid it seemed fantastical as a job. I thought only about passing my exams, and then the next exams, and then reading one book, and then the next. The writing came out of the reading. Even now, though I am aware I obviously have a “career,” in order to do it effectively I have to keep to the same student-like routines. Here are the books I want to read this month. Here are the essays (now self-assigned) I have to complete. Here is the novel I have in my mind. That’s how I work.

NL: I think of it less that I wanted to be a writer, and more that, like all kids, I made up stories and poems when I was little but I never quite grew out of it.

Nick, before becoming a full-time writer, you practiced law and wrote, until you got two book contracts at the same time, at which point writing during lunch and in the evenings didn’t cut it. You gave up law and switched to focusing on writing full-time. Now, you teach and write. How are you able to do both now?

NL: The last six months have just been childcare, cooking, cleaning. When the lockdown started Zadie was depressed and locked herself in the basement of the friend’s house we were staying in, then came out with a book of essays. But I can’t work like that. I need the kids to go back to school. I’ve been able to teach during this time but not write creatively. Simply to feel like I was doing something I wrote 20,000 words of a children’s novel, which I might continue with, but it was a matter of just getting an hour and then frantically banging out 500 not-very-good words. I needed to feel like I was doing something, anything. If the kids go back to school I’m hoping to sit down and see what I’ve got.

Many interviews have documented that you share your work with each other and edit each other. Do either of you share your work with anyone else before your agent or editor sees it?

NL: Zadie shares her work with everyone. She wants a daily cheerlead. I share mine with no one. I pooter along. At the end I give it to her to read—and in the case of a review or an essay or fiction, to edit—but then it goes to the actual editor.

ZS: Nick first. But also many friends and other writers. It’s harder than you’d think to get someone to read an unpublished novel. … It’s a time commitment and everyone’s busy. But I really value the opinions of others. I’m thankful to anyone who reduces the possibility of me making a fool of myself in front of strangers.

Zadie, you made a name for yourself very early on (White Teeth was published when you were just 22) and you’ve talked about how a writer’s prose changes over time just as painters have periods. What writing (craft) or publishing (business) knowledge do you have now that you wished you’d had then?

ZS: My publishing knowledge remains paltry. But craft-wise I hope I’ve come on quite a bit. The main things that have changed for me is that I now know good dialogue requires no italics, that silence can be as useful as noise, that the reader needs space to have their own thoughts, that happy endings are not a part of my duty, that aphorisms about life are usually fraudulent and self-regarding, that wisdom—if it exists—means understanding what you don’t know, and that most people are so much more mysterious than you could ever imagine, and this should be reflected in any writer’s approach to “character.”

Zadie, in your essay “Some Notes on Attunement,” you mentioned that one summer you made a point of reading writers who’d made sex their primary concern. And Nick, while you were researching for Modern Gods you collected dozens of books about Papua New Guinea. Writers can spend years researching—how do you push yourself out of that reading/research stage and into the writing?

ZS: That can be hard. A habit left over from college, for me, is completism. I have to read the whole stack of intended books and make notes before I start. But sometimes it’s a mistake. Last year I read a load of books in preparation for a historical novel but then I didn’t start writing and none of the reading has stayed with me so I’ll have to start again. And the task starts to look endless …

NL: Shame. Boredom. Bills.

In a conversation with Michael Chabon, Nick talked about the idea of creating an origin myth for a new book—something to tell interviewers and the press that gets attention. In 2018, you both had collections called Feel Free published (Nick’s, a collection of poetry; Zadie’s, a collection of essays) and the origin myth is that the title was Nick’s first and Zadie borrowed it. After reading the conversation with Chabon, I wonder, is that really how it happened? It certainly is effective.

ZS: I’m afraid that was no ploy. That was a genuine fuck-up on my part, for which I may never be entirely forgiven. I don’t consciously create origin myths. But I realize during the press part that small narratives get solidified and get dispersed and obscure the much more vague truth of the writing process which, for me, is usually “I started at page one and kept going” or “I was struck by some tedious trauma from my childhood and had to make it into a novel to be free of it.”

Order a copy of Feel Free by Zadie Smith.

Bookshop.org | IndieBound | Amazon

[WD uses affiliate links.]

NL: I don’t think I was suggesting that one consciously creates an origin myth. I only meant that the genesis of any work is complicated and nuanced. One tries to scratch one’s psychic itch, but to articulate that means having to reduce it to an anecdote, and that becomes solidified in one’s own mind. I had a long poem in The New Yorker years ago called “Feel Free,” and was always going to call a collection that. I was writing into the title for a couple of years. Then Zadie couldn’t find a title for her book of essays and wanted it. We tussled, I gave in and was going to change my title, then my editor said I couldn’t or shouldn’t, and by then it was too late. Zadie’s book was called that too. That’s what happened. My new collection is called Resolving Host and she’s already made noises about liking that title, but it’s not happening again.

Order a copy of Feel Free by Nick Laird.

Bookshop.org | IndieBound | Amazon

Nick, you’ve said that you’re not very good at sending out poems to literary journals or magazines, and that you often save them up until you’re making a new book. So, what is the impetus to create a new collection? When have you saved up the poems long enough to warrant a new collection?

NL: I like the collection to hang together as a work in its own right. I want poems to inform each other, and inform on each other—to whisper behind each other’s backs, as it were. After a few years you start to think about the bunch of poems you have and notice themes or motifs, then you print them out and play around with them.

Zadie, in your essay “The I Who Is Not Me,” you wrote that you don’t plan your novels very much in general. So it seems in the plotter vs. pantser debate, you’re more on the “write by the seat of your pants” camp. If that’s an accurate interpretation, why do you prefer to write that way? How do you make it work for you?

ZS: I don’t know any other way. For me to plan is to be bored senseless. I try to have chords—the way you do in a jazz quartet. If I sing with a band we all know the chords to “Autumn in New York.” But each person in that band will play something different each time and I’ll sing it different each time. That’s how I write a novel. I have some thematic “chords.” I know On Beauty is going to be about beauty. But beyond that I want to be able to move freely. I’m addicted to freedom. I couldn’t write by numbers or by instruction, even instructions I’d written myself.

Do either of you have any final writing advice for the readers of Writer’s Digest?

NL: Just get the words down on the page and try to be truthful to your lived experience, not what you think you ought to say.

ZS: The first duty of a writer is to write the best book they can write. Every other duty is secondary to that one. If the first duty seems ridiculously indulgent or impractical to you then you may be in the wrong vocation. Vocation—not business. WD

The post Zadie Smith + Nick Laird: The WD Interview appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(21 authors share one piece of advice for writers.)

In this post, White shares how she was able to piece together her past with her present, how some works freed her to write, and more!

*****

Name: Arisa White
Title: Who’s Your Daddy
Publisher: Augury Books
Release date: March 1, 2021
Genre: Poetry/Memoir
Previous titles: You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened; Biddy Mason Speaks Up; A Penny Saved; Hurrah’s Nest; Black Pearl
Elevator pitch for the book: A lyrical, genre-bending coming-of-age tale featuring a queer, Black, Guyanese American woman who, while seeking to define her own place in the world, negotiates an estranged relationship with her father.

IndieBound | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links.)

What prompted you to write this book?

My mother, Dr. Denise White, and then my undergraduate professor from Sarah Lawrence, Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi. My mom had an address to my father in Guyana and asked if I wanted to write him, after 30+ years of estrangement. A few years past, I travel to Guyana on the funds received from a grant, and in response to my newsletter I sent out about the trip, Ogunyemi said: “Do try to write something about fathers, if you can do without bashing them.” These kinds of tensions send me to the page.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication?

Seven years. It started as a series of epistolary poems, which I then self-published into a limited edition chapbook called dear, Gerald. The chapbook I also exchanged for letters written to estranged, dead, absent fathers and patriarchal figures. I wanted to create centos from them, respond to them as if I was the father, because something felt important about this shared and collective father-wound. 

During my trip to Guyana to meet my father, I kept a travel journal, and I wanted to incorporate that moment into the work as well. What I began to embrace throughout the book’s development is that the question of who’s your daddy could be answered in multiple ways, within different modes, and with different narrative structures.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

My editor Kate Angus made the suggestion of including childhood sections after reading the first draft, which concentrated more on my visit to Guyana to meet my father and a series of pivotal romantic relationships, interlaced with citations. I was very much trying to avoid writing about those younger years—I did it before and felt that the terrain of those memories was already explored. What more could be uncovered? 

After sitting with the first draft for a few months, the latter half of the book taught me what I needed to call up from my childhood and adolescence to deepen and extend the metaphors that were appearing.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Spill by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Alexis DeVeaux’s Yabo, Cynthia Dillard’s concepts on endarkened feminism, and Rasheedah Phillips’ theories on Black quantum futurism offered strategies for how to move across and through time, to incorporate ritual, to be rooted in Black cosmologies and ways of knowing and being so that I could imagine beyond tropes of failed black fatherhood and criminality. So I could reimagine beyond a belief of incompleteness. (Also writing along with these texts encouraged me to exercise and access unexplored parts of my voice.) 

These books were a revision in consciousness, a freeing from linearity, and master narratives so I could re-see and trust myself, trust all those Black queer woman technologies I’ve inherited.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

The permission to create narrative structures that best support the stories they need to tell.

If you could share one piece of advice with other authors, what would it be?

This quote from the astrologer Chani Nicholas: “Our self-worth is always bolstered by being able to use our resources to deepen our connections, not our competitiveness.” It’s a reminder for how I want to be in relationship with others, with the industry, in the now and future.

*****

Build your poetry writing skills by working with a highly accomplished poet! The workshop will consist of six one-week sessions, focused on individualized feedback and critique. Through detailed discussions of your own work, you will learn the kinds of questions editors ask of poems submitted to literary magazines. As a result, you will learn to revise and polish with an editor’s eye, gaining insight into how to craft poems suited for publication.

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My experience reading Bully Love by Patricia Colleen Murphy was remarkable. If you are looking for a collection of contemporary poetry to read, I highly recommend this book. Bully Love is Murphy’s second collection of poems, chosen by Tom Lombardo as the winner of the 2019 Press 53 Award for Poetry.

Bully Love explores the writers’ move from Ohio to Arizona. The opening poems of the collection explore the disorienting effects of familial relationships—particularly an ailing father and mentally ill mother—and contrasts them with the grounding but sometimes mysterious nature of our daily activities, such as cutting grass in “Time to Shear the Earth’s Hair.”

Later in the collection, Murphy leaves the domestic with poetry exploring the profound impacts natural places can have on an individual. Each location the speaker explores becomes a character in the poem that can often seem to behave in a more understandable and ‘human’ way than the other humans that make appearances throughout the collection.

The title of the poetry collection comes in the poem: “Day Trip, Cave Creek Guided Tours”:

Our wonderfully conditioned

and well-mannered horses nod

across state trust land, their noses

quietly suffering our pats of bully love.

The “love” experienced throughout the poems is just as often suffered as it is enjoyed—and most of the time, it is experienced both ways simultaneously. The theme that ties the collection into a unified work, I believe, comes in “Morenci Arizona” with the line: “My only power is this ability to name.” As an observer, specificity allows a poet to assert power over the subject through the act of choosing the appropriate name. A poet may not be able to change the illness of a father any more than she can alter the face of a mountain. However, a power rests in choosing how to describe and “name” a subject.

Murphy answered a few questions for WD about how to improve poetry writing and what journal editors look for in submissions.

Describe your writing process. How do you go about shaping a poem? How do you know when you’re finished?

I have a very regimented practice. When I’m in a writing cycle, I first journal, then read a collection of poems, then I set a timer and write for 40 minutes. Then I journal again about the composing. I find that setting that timer takes some pressure off those first few moments of diving into the page. It really helps me to get situated and creative. I start with an image, always, and let that image take me to more images. It is hard to feel that a poem is completely finished. But I send it out when I read it out loud and no longer feel like tweaking it.

What advice do you have for poets looking to improve their writing?

Read contemporary poetry, and a lot of it, and often, and from lots of different poets. I really recommend reading literary magazines so you can see a wide variety of what is being published now by editors. What is happening right this second in the world of poetry? I have students who have only read Shakespeare, and they want to publish their own work. They are missing an understanding of trends and audience.

As the founder of Superstition Review, what are some of the challenges you have come across running a literary journal and finding quality work to feature?

As editors we talk a lot about the continuum of established to emerging authors. We are often a touch more lenient with submissions from new writers, but we really need to make sure they are serious about craft and not simply hobbyists. I am very particular about cover letters. It is a great place to show respect and understanding. I am very often what I call “No to the bio,” when a cover letter is flippant or incomplete. I don’t need a lot of information, but it helps establish authority and legitimacy. We get plenty of submissions from folks who make it clear right from the cover letter that they have never read our magazine. That is a waste of our time, as well as the poet’s time. Even a 10-minute study of our most recent issue will help you curate your submission for our readership.

Have you always wanted to be a writer? Don’t let doubt or fear get the best of you—take a chance and learn how to start writing a book, novel, short story, memoir, or essay. WD University’s Getting Started in Writing will help you discover your voice, learn the basics of grammar, and examine the different types of writing. Register today!

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