88º (feels like 94º) ~ soggy days return to central Arkansas before the next blessed cold front washes them away again, the whole world is green from where I sit
Dear Readers, if there are any of you left, I’ve been away, away, away for too long. A big group of friends took a beach vacation together mid-month, and preparing for and then recovering from said vacation ate up most of July!
I’m officially back at the desk, as of yesterday, and here’s what’s keeping me busy, poetry-wise.
1. I’m working with my wonderful editors at Trio House Press as we get the ball rolling to publish The Alchemy of My Mortal Form. Luckily, I spent quite a bit of time making sure the poems were as pristine as I could make them before I submitted, and these poems work in a clear narrative, so there is very little revising or re-ordering to do on my end. Two editors are going over the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb and I expect their comments/suggestions to come in sometime early August, when I’ll go back to work on the poems.
I had my bio current and an author photo that was current enough so I didn’t have to scramble on those when I got the news and the press requested them. However, I did have to put in some time looking for possible cover images. I had a photographer in mind and spent several hours pouring over her photos online before making contact with her. My choices have been sent on to the production team, which will make the final decision. This decision could include using one of my choices or the team coming up with its own design. Either way is fine with me, as covers stress me out.
2. I’ve been blurbing away. Living in Little Rock, I’ve come to know Bryan Borland and Seth Pennington of Sibling Rivalry Press. Bryan got in touch about an upcoming anthology, The Queer South, edited by Douglas Ray, featuring both poetry and prose. While I was at first a bit nervous because I’ve never blurbed an anthology before and certainly not one that included prose, it turns out that the book was so wonderful that the blurb put itself together.
Today, I’ve been re-reading a chapbook by poet Martin Anthony Call and putting together my thoughts on The Fermi Sea. This collection is a fantastic example of speculative poetry of the sci-fi variety, and again, about halfway in I found the blurb writing itself.
It’s funny because I’m neither a queer writer nor a sci-fi poet, but the strength of the work in both books made my identity moot. All good literature has the capacity to bridge our differences. I love that!
3. I’ve been working with my co-editors at Heron Tree as we finished reading all submissions from the spring. Now, we turn our attention to creating the print annual before submissions open up in September again. Working on the editorial side of things continues to be fulfilling and enlightening, and I’m happy to have the opportunity continue.
4. I’ve been thinking about the upcoming semester and structuring my working life in a way that I will be better at incorporating a focus on poetry during the semester than I was last year. This is a difficult balancing act as I have a non-tenure-track job at a community college where publications don’t mean anything really, so my focus there is more heavily on teaching.
Here’s hoping I’ll be back at the blog and back to writing new poems in the days to come.
Until then…uhm…how long does it take to get all of the sand out of one’s suitcase after a beach vacation?
