Alright you tenaciously creative monsters: I have made some very important decisions and commitments about my writing lately, and it is damn well time that I build them a sail for exploring the quivering wave-tips of the internet.
The most exciting development is that I have decided I want to work on compiling a book. I have enough poems that I feel proud enough of, or feel I could wrangle into something I am very proud of, that I have realized it's time to build my boat for bigger leagues. I still plan on putting together another chapbook by the end of next month.
I see this as something that will be helpful in my word-winnowing process. It will be like a pre-publishing and I will ask folks for feedback about what I have put out already.
My throat gets lovely jitters when I think about this project. I have a few presses already in mind and don't want to think to horribly seriously about where to send this book which I have yet to form. But if you or somebody you know has a potential lead on a publisher which would be amenable to my work, style, and personality, please send me some info!
Development number 2 is mainly on the jobfront. I have decided (with some help from an incredible new acquaintance!) to apply for jobs in the tech writing field. I have previously let myself feel incompetent and intimidated about these kinds of jobs but well, screw that. I have a bitchin' handle on the written word and would like to be on the market for those skills specifically. Move over Grammar Nazis, I'm aiming to be Mother Teresa with my red pen (instead of a rosary).
Development #3 is more of an update. I am once again redoubling my efforts toward getting writers together. Last weekend I treated myself to a delicious writing group with a group of writers in Olympia (I moved away 5 months ago) and I was so deeply inspired that I NEED to make more space in my current town (Seattle) for writers to breathe out loud!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
My so-far review of Skin by Dorothy Allison
I just started reading Skin by Dorothy Allison. I so vocally loved and was so deeply touched by reading Bastard Out of Carolina this summer that a friend put Skin in my hands and really I am loving it already. I'm only one essay in but the bravery with which she calls out the complexity of the relationships people have with their cultural, sexual, and soci-economic places in society is thus far brilliant, astounding, and miraculously approachable.
I know it is intrinsically hopeless to compare feelings and situations of oppression however it is important for me to state that while I identify the with the feelings of non-entitlement and the feeling of "what if they found out I'm not really supposed to be here?" in academic and activist circles I recognize that my experiences growing up were nowhere near as violent and/or pronouncedly financially underprivileged. The feelings of pride in and love for family and the discontinuity with any cultural story/myth provided have thus far been beautifully expressed in Allison's words. I am very grateful for the bifurcation about the cultural stories surrounding the poor that she so articulately unmasks. If you are poor those in higher position only have two lenses to access your life: 1) you are squalid and deserving of both your hardships and the contempt in their eyes 2) You are honorable, hardworking and intrinsically good (in some cases willingly bearing the oppression seen as necessary to our cultural/financial infrastructure). You are either a silent, noble martyr or essentially a criminal.
When I look back at my past I definitely see myself operating under this paradigm. In the past I have felt like an imposter when I said I was a poet/writer. I wasn't published and certainly didn't feel initially included into or invited into writing communities (I remember a poster they had up at one point making a joke about homelessness). My legitimacy as a writer was dependent on the views of others (like the morality of the noble poor). I came to the social space of writing waiting for contempt and ready to be ashamed. I let the fact that I made mistakes and didn't always do the "right" thing make me feel undeserving of scholarships and grants which I shied away from applying for. I felt like I didn't have a language to talk about my family in academia, except in that characitured way.
After a few years of complaining to friends in conversations or classes about social justice that there was or seemed to be nothing written and really no vocabulary to even talk about classism (which funnily enough google crome refuses to recognize as a real word...) the way we talk about or write about other forms of oppression I feel deeply refreshed and affirmed by Allison's writing an perspective.
I am excited to read more and would highly recommend this book to anybody who has felt illegitimate in a community they chose and didn't know or maybe suspected why.
I know it is intrinsically hopeless to compare feelings and situations of oppression however it is important for me to state that while I identify the with the feelings of non-entitlement and the feeling of "what if they found out I'm not really supposed to be here?" in academic and activist circles I recognize that my experiences growing up were nowhere near as violent and/or pronouncedly financially underprivileged. The feelings of pride in and love for family and the discontinuity with any cultural story/myth provided have thus far been beautifully expressed in Allison's words. I am very grateful for the bifurcation about the cultural stories surrounding the poor that she so articulately unmasks. If you are poor those in higher position only have two lenses to access your life: 1) you are squalid and deserving of both your hardships and the contempt in their eyes 2) You are honorable, hardworking and intrinsically good (in some cases willingly bearing the oppression seen as necessary to our cultural/financial infrastructure). You are either a silent, noble martyr or essentially a criminal.
When I look back at my past I definitely see myself operating under this paradigm. In the past I have felt like an imposter when I said I was a poet/writer. I wasn't published and certainly didn't feel initially included into or invited into writing communities (I remember a poster they had up at one point making a joke about homelessness). My legitimacy as a writer was dependent on the views of others (like the morality of the noble poor). I came to the social space of writing waiting for contempt and ready to be ashamed. I let the fact that I made mistakes and didn't always do the "right" thing make me feel undeserving of scholarships and grants which I shied away from applying for. I felt like I didn't have a language to talk about my family in academia, except in that characitured way.
After a few years of complaining to friends in conversations or classes about social justice that there was or seemed to be nothing written and really no vocabulary to even talk about classism (which funnily enough google crome refuses to recognize as a real word...) the way we talk about or write about other forms of oppression I feel deeply refreshed and affirmed by Allison's writing an perspective.
I am excited to read more and would highly recommend this book to anybody who has felt illegitimate in a community they chose and didn't know or maybe suspected why.
Friday, January 14, 2011
It's been a while:
And since then I have really only developed a batch of fantasies about getting paid for poems. They include but are not limited too:
Busking with my typewriter ($5 for min. 10 lines on one subject/person)
Getting commissions to write poems (same rules as above excepting that more each subject beyond the 1rst is an extra $)
And
Having folks who subscribe to a Poem of the Month, in which, at the end of every month I would select the best poem of the 28-31 written, type it up on marbled paper with my typewriter, sign it date it and send it off via ye olde post. ($5 per month)
Oh how I wish this could be a reality.
Busking with my typewriter ($5 for min. 10 lines on one subject/person)
Getting commissions to write poems (same rules as above excepting that more each subject beyond the 1rst is an extra $)
And
Having folks who subscribe to a Poem of the Month, in which, at the end of every month I would select the best poem of the 28-31 written, type it up on marbled paper with my typewriter, sign it date it and send it off via ye olde post. ($5 per month)
Oh how I wish this could be a reality.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Conscious interactions or why writing is important
A Ritual to Read Each Other
William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
This is one of my favorite poems. I find it's concepts beautiful, fascinating, and potent. It is incredibly smart and telling about how and why humans communicate with each others. It captures so well the feeling of soft urgency and real social importance of using language with others; exposing the shared nature of the human experience.
Near the end my mind draws a correlation between the act of making language and scientific inquiry. The darkness is deep and the dark will always be bigger than our tools and theories but our conscious involvement in them are vital as our existence.
I also think this poem harbors something important in particular for Americans who so often shy away from forging new or deeper contacts with other people. This has I'm sure a lot to do with the general xenophobia that is ingrained in our culture. When he talks about "the pattern of others that may prevail" I hear that stories of hate and ostracism and unknowing risk being our own stories if we don't talk to each other. If we don't acknowledge the wrongnesses of our past interactions we lose each other in the dark.
In this poem I find a deep deep reasoning for why I write and why I feel so compelled to encourage others to write or at least to work consciously on how they share and express themselves with others.
William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
This is one of my favorite poems. I find it's concepts beautiful, fascinating, and potent. It is incredibly smart and telling about how and why humans communicate with each others. It captures so well the feeling of soft urgency and real social importance of using language with others; exposing the shared nature of the human experience.
Near the end my mind draws a correlation between the act of making language and scientific inquiry. The darkness is deep and the dark will always be bigger than our tools and theories but our conscious involvement in them are vital as our existence.
I also think this poem harbors something important in particular for Americans who so often shy away from forging new or deeper contacts with other people. This has I'm sure a lot to do with the general xenophobia that is ingrained in our culture. When he talks about "the pattern of others that may prevail" I hear that stories of hate and ostracism and unknowing risk being our own stories if we don't talk to each other. If we don't acknowledge the wrongnesses of our past interactions we lose each other in the dark.
In this poem I find a deep deep reasoning for why I write and why I feel so compelled to encourage others to write or at least to work consciously on how they share and express themselves with others.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Grrrrrrr
I have been all up and down based on weird sickness lately. Also poor. The poems built up in my chest like left-over breaths. I think I have decided to take it easy until the new year come shining in.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Letters for bread, also I've got to run
Writing group commitment has stalled. Which is gross. I will soon redouble my efforts in that venture.
Also I think I am pretty close to getting a job in which I would write letters to servicemen and incarcerated folks for pay. The business is just getting off the ground but if it succeeds I am looking at a paid writing gig. Which would be badass.
Would like to say more, but I don't want this post to be an excuse for not going running before work!
Also I think I am pretty close to getting a job in which I would write letters to servicemen and incarcerated folks for pay. The business is just getting off the ground but if it succeeds I am looking at a paid writing gig. Which would be badass.
Would like to say more, but I don't want this post to be an excuse for not going running before work!
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