Coming off of several of my own posts about the process of submitting your work (and then thankfully being accepted!) I feel like this is an awesome post to share today. You don’t know how many times I’ve heard that advice to put that one odd poem in your submission. I have to remember to keep trying that.
Archive | January 2018
Accepted!!
How I feel right now:
Now where’s my ocean and pretty sunset?
While also being the name of one of my favorite comedy films, today I can announce that after three years of submitting my work I have been accepted in a journal! I want to say a MASSIVE thank you to Chantwood Magazine for accepting my poem “To Inari” for their 12th issue, just published today. You can go here to find this issue (and past issues) on their website.
I received the acceptance offer from the magazine just before the year rolled over to 2018. That was an awesome way to tie up an otherwise rather stressful year.
It also feels really special for this to be the poem accepted out of everything I sent out last year. It’s one of the ones dearest to my heart and has a whole lot of me mixed into the batter. In fact it’s the first poem I wrote when I sat down to begin the collection I have in mind. It’s a poem in which I definitely tried to sound like no one else but myself. So it feels really, really good to see someone else believe in it too.
I first started submitting my work toward the end of college (2009-10), but it was rather sparsely done and kind of half-heartedly. I still had my mind on being a great fantasy novelist so poetry was just a side thing I did only when the urge really gripped me. I tried submitting again in 2012-13, but again only a few things here and there. I still wasn’t very focused on writing poetry just yet.
I didn’t really start submitting my work until 2015, and only got truly serious about it in 2017, when I finally gave in with my whole brain and said to myself, “Okay, you’re a poet, let’s do this.”
My only real goal for 2018 is to write more, submit more, and dedicate myself to poetry more; that includes my own, reading the work of others, and trying to be a bit more a part of the ‘community’, either online or otherwise. I’m not entirely sure where poetry is taking me, that’s what this blog is around to document, but I think I’ve committed myself to the ride.
I’m starting 2018 with a publication. I’m thrilled and ever so grateful. My hopeful goal is to see at least one more publication credit happen this year, but that is out of my hands, so instead I’m going to do my best to write, write some more, and submit, submit, submit…
*Photo by user jill111 at Pixabay, creative commons usage
All the Things I’m Not
This post has sat in my drafts for over a year while I’ve thought about whether or not to post it. It’s been rewritten and tweaked multiple times, but I think it is time.
Let’s have a discussion. (Long post ahead.)
I am not a teacher. I don’t work for education. I don’t edit a literary journal. I have no writing degree, graduate or otherwise. And yet I am a poet.
I write this because it seems like nearly all of the poet blogs, poet bios, and poet anything I see about poets mentions at least one of those things. Teaching, editing, and fancy degrees. And these are all noble things. I am thankful to teachers and editors. We need them. Degrees of higher learning can be very beneficial. But they do not define the making of a poet.
Poetry is a notoriously low (or nearly no) paying job. There is no harm or shame in keeping a day job when you are a writer of any kind. Only the lucky few get to have “making up words” as their only job. Having a day job that has nothing to do with the written word does not discredit the writer. Having a degree in something other than language or writing, or even no degree at all, does not discredit the writer. And yet, it is easy to feel like it does. Continue reading
2017 in Review
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Before charging into the next year (which better be awesome for the world in general or I might cry), I want to take a quick look back…
Books Read: 78 (goal was 87)
— for reference: I read 40 books in 2016
I read some really awesome books this year. I read poetry, picture books, fiction, and memoir mostly. I’ve especially been enjoying reading fiction novels and non-fiction comics about or set in Japan, both written by Japanese authors and authors who have visited the country. I’ve been working my way through reading fairy and folk tales from various countries as well.
I would LOVE to hear some recommendations from my readers for picture books or poetry books especially!! (My stack of to-read fiction is massive and takes longer to get through.) I am mostly restricted by what I can get through my local library for now, but please, recommend away!
Some of my favorites I read this year: Continue reading
lissaclouser.com 