When we stayed at the Art-Deco-era Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, VT for our anniversary, we listened to this album on the record player in our sitting room.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/06/28/one-liner-wednesday-day-one-is-in-the-bag/
Just about a month ago, Kelsay Books published my first chapbook, Hearts, available from Kelsay, from Amazon, from me personally (if you are local), or by asking your local bookstore to order it through Ingram.
The experience has been exciting, gratifying, emotional, and exhausting by turns. There have been new things to learn, like keeping a spreadsheet to track sales tax and profit and signing contracts to place books on consignment. I’ve been trying to get the hang of doing publicity, which is a different universe from writing poetry. Sending notices to my poet-friends and non-poet-friends was relatively straightforward, although I admit it feels strange to ask people to spend money to read my work. I’d never been paid for my writing beyond gratitude and the occasional in-print copy of a publication but I am finding it easier to say writing is a profession for me now, even though the total amount of money I earn from it will be small.
Besides the discomfort of self-promotion, which works against my introverted nature, there is the sobering personal aspect of asking people to read poems about my mother’s final years. I’m grateful to know that the poems touch people’s hearts. I’ve had people tell me that our story reminds them of their own experiences with aging loved ones, that the poems made them cry. My heart goes out to them and it is humbling to think that my words might be a help to them as they continue to deal with their loss.
It’s also gratifying to know that I fulfilled one of my goals with this book. I am seldom overt about my own feelings in my work, preferring to “show rather than tell.” I try to leave space in my poems for people to bring their own reactions and emotions to the work and I seem to have succeeded, at least among those who have communicated with me. Three people have even written Amazon reviews, although it seems a bit surreal that I have an Amazon listing at all.
One thing that has happened since the book came out that I wasn’t expecting is the technical publishing questions that I’m asked. Most of these are a version of “how do you get a book published?” which I don’t feel well-equipped to answer. Generally, the person is asking because a family member writes as a hobby and they want to know how to get a book in print, but publishing poetry is different from fiction or memoir or non-fiction, which often involve having an agent, and self-publishing bypasses all the querying and rejection but means you need to know or hire expertise and have financial resources up front. People have also asked me how many copies I’ve sold but I have no idea. I could count up how many I’ve sold, but I have no idea how many have ordered from Kelsay and Amazon. I do occasionally look at the stat for the Poetry by Women category on my Amazon page; at the moment it’s #720, but I have no idea how that translates into number of copies. I probably won’t know until early next year when I get my first annual royalties payment from Kelsay.
I’m feeling as though I’m through most of my initial promotion list but I have more to do. A friend has offered to help me line up a couple of readings or signings locally. I need to find a printer to do business cards and bookmarks to have at events. There is a list of reviewers and awards to look through, although that seems a bit rarefied for me.
And more promotion.
No doubt, more blog posts here at Top of JC’s Mind.
I’m also trying to do more submissions for my new chapbook, full-length collection, and individual poems. Hearts proved that it can take a few dozen attempts to get an acceptance.
Having a book in print does, though, make it seem more possible that another acceptance will come my way.
And, if not, there will always be Hearts…
We are travelling, so this will be short!
We arrived yesterday and saw some relatives that we don’t see often. A sight for sore eyes!
On Monday, we will relocate to a new site to celebrate our 41st wedding anniversary.
(Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “sight/site” with bonus for using both, although the bonus is psychic, not material.)
(Maybe there is an extra bonus for using both and making it short.)
All I can think of is how hard it was for my father to be left alone when my mother passed away. It was the thing she had been most worried about. What she couldn’t have known was that a pandemic would arrive which severely curtailed our ability to visit.
I’m grateful that she never had to know.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “left alone.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/06/02/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-3-2023/
I’m excited to announce that my first chapbook, Hearts, is now available from my publisher, Kelsay Books, here or from Amazon here.
For local folks, I will also be selling copies myself after my shipment arrives in 2-3 weeks.
For those who might be wondering, a chapbook is a short book, usually centered on a single topic. Hearts is a chapbook of poems that revolve around my mother, including her last years living with heart disease. Long-time readers of Top of JC’s Mind may remember reading posts about my mother, known here as Nana.
I completed the first draft of Hearts in December, 2017, in response to a chapbook contest prompt from QuillsEdge Press. The prompt was “In Transition” and my mother interpretation of that prompt to write about my mother, who was under hospice care. (We didn’t know at the time that her decline would be more prolonged than expected, as she was with us until May, 2019.) Although I didn’t win the contest, I was among the finalists and my poem, “Sixteen Hours,” was included in an anthology of the finalists’ work along with the winning chapbook, Skin Gin, by Rose Maria Woodson.
Given how busy and emotional those next two years were, I didn’t have the wherewithal to send out a new version of the chapbook until spring of 2020. I had continued to write poems during Nana’s continuing struggles and expanded the manuscript with those poems in the months after her death. I benefited from a manuscript review with some of the Grapevine Poets, local poets who meet every other week to workshop individual poems and as needed for manuscript reviews. They were able to offer guidance on ordering the poems and they identified a couple of places where new poems would be helpful to flesh out my mother’s story.
I continued to send Hearts to publishers and contests over the next two years. During that time, I did more revisions, incorporating comments from poet-friends as I went along. In August of 2022, encouraged by Grapevine Poets Jessica Dubey and Burt Myers who had had books accepted by Kelsay Books, I submitted there and received a publication offer from them on September 2nd.
Karen Kelsay and the whole team at Kelsay Books have been amazing! They made the publication process, which was a mystery to me, straightforward. They also were able to move up the publication date, which I had originally thought would be in late summer/early fall.
When I went to the first Tupelo Press/MASS MoCA workshop-in-residence in November of 2015, I had thought that I might be able to put together a chapbook of poem about the North Adams area and my family’s connections there. I set a goal of age 60 to have that book published.
Of course, life events intervened.
That original chapbook idea is now a full-length collection that is being submitted to publishers, unsuccessfully so far.
Now, at age 62, I’m grateful that Hearts is my first published book because it is about my mother, who made my life possible and loving. She was always a strong support for me, whatever the endeavor. It feels right that my first book has her as its heart.
Today is the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death.
As often happens with these dates, sometimes it seems that it couldn’t have been that long and other times it seems longer ago. This warping of time is even more prominent because of the pandemic. I remain grateful that my mother died before we were all faced with the impossible prospect of not being able to visit her in the nursing home where she spent her final months. That would have been a particularly heavy burden for my father, with whom she had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary a few weeks before she died.
This year feels especially poignant for me as I await the publication of my first chapbook of poetry, Hearts, from Kelsay Books, most likely in June or July. The poems center on my mother with a particular emphasis on her last years dealing with heart failure. She appreciated my writing and I think she would be pleased to know she is the focus of my first book.
She didn’t enjoy having her picture taken, so I will share a photo, taken four years ago in her final days, of one of her favorite flowers, lily-of-the-valley, which was also her birth flower.
Love you, Mom. Miss you. Still cry every once in a while…
Yesterday, the proof book for my chapbook, Hearts, arrived.
It’s amazing to hold my book for the first time!
My immediate job is to review it and send final edits to Kelsay. The corrections I had sent in the first round had all been addressed, so there was not much to comment on.
I sent the email today, on what would have been my mom’s 91st birthday.
She is the center of Hearts. ❤ ❤ ❤
When I read Linda’s prompt yesterday, I immediately thought of the song “I Like It Here.” I did search for the lyrics and to find the writer; I did find some similar versions to what I remember but it seems that no one knows who wrote it. I’m going to use the version from my childhood as I remember it in this post.
My sisters and I used to put on little performances in our basement for a very small audience, my parents and perhaps my grandparents or Harriet and Pres, family friends who were like an honorary aunt and uncle. We would sing and act out songs we learned in school.
One I especially remember is “I Like It Here,” a patriotic number that we used to close the show, at least once that I recall.
“I like the United States of America.
I like the way we all live without fear.”
In my childhood, living without fear was pretty much a thing I could do, in my tiny, rural New England town. Today, though, there are many fears that are with us all the time – environmental destruction and climate change, gun violence, the troubling rise of authoritarianism, public displays of hate against any number of different groups of people.
“I like to vote for my choice,
speak my mind, raise my voice.
Yes, I like it here.”
Unfortunately, there are lots of laws in some states that are trying to suppress votes and to silence free speech. It’s discouraging. I appreciate the lawyers and organizations that are challenging these laws.
“I am so lucky to be in America
and I am thankful each day of the year,
for I can do as I please
’cause I’m free as the breeze.
Yes, I like it here.”
While I am happy to be here in the place that is home, the threats to our freedoms are real. We are fighting to keep them but the recent trials of insurrectionists are a stark reminder of how much danger we were in and how much of that animus still remains, even within some in government service.
“I’d like to climb to the top of a mountain so high,
raise my head to the sky,
and say how grateful am I,
for the way that I’m living
and working and giving
and helping the land I hold dear.
Yes, I like it,
I like it,
I like it here!”
I have felt that, in my small way, I’ve added to life in the United States. For most of my life, I never thought that I would leave it to live in another, but the presidency of DT made me wonder if things would be so changed that I could no longer live here.
I feel horrible for even thinking of abandoning my country and the Biden presidency gives me hope but the bizarre spectacle the once-proud Republican party has become and the staggering level of corruption that has been uncovered are a constant source of worry.
I’m trying to do my part as a citizen to get us back toward the freedom and equality to which we are called by our Constitution and laws. Millions of others are as well, including many who have more power and ability to be effective than I do.
Will it be enough?
I don’t know.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is to think of a song from your childhood and write. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/05/05/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-6-2023/
“Yes, it is strange not to wear glasses.”
Since I had my cataract surgeries earlier this month, I’ve been asked many times if it is weird/strange not to be wearing glasses every waking moment – and it is.
I’ve worn glasses since I was six because I was near-sighted. As I got older, I also developed presbyopia, which meant I was also having trouble seeing close up. For the last couple of decades, my glasses have had progressive lenses, which means they have a zone for far, mid-range, and close vision. I also have astigmatism in one eye which was built into my prescription. As I developed cataracts in both eyes, I was also having a lot of difficulty with glare.
And, I also sometimes had trouble with dry eyes, so a lot going on.
I decided to have cataract surgery last year. It took several months to get an appointment with the doctor who had done spouse B’s cataract surgeries, and my parents and mother-in-law’s. He uses advanced laser techniques and gives options to use advanced lens that deal with multiple issues.
B had had good luck with his multifocal lens and only uses glasses for very fine print and low-lighting conditions. In the five years since his surgery, they have added astigmatism correction to multifocal lenses, so I chose those.
The timing of the surgeries was awkward, as they happened while the UK branch of our family was visiting for Easter, but I’m happy with the still-developing results. My distance visit was clear within a day of each surgery. (They were a week apart.) My mid- and near-vision are improving day by day. I’ve used supermarket/drugstore cheaters for a few tasks, although now even the weakest ones are too strong for my “new eyes.” I also have been adjusting the size of my text on screens, although I’m typing this at my prior screen settings, so improvement is definitely happening. It will probably continue for a few more weeks as my eyes heal and my brain adjusts to the new, clearer input.
As I am adjusting to life without glasses, people I know are adjusting, too. I’ve had people comment on it. A few have said I look younger without my glasses. I had thought I might look older – or, at least, more tired – because you can now see all the wrinkles around my eyes and I don’t use make-up so, if I have dark circles under my eyes, they are now easier to see. Of course, I don’t think anyone would tell me I look older without my glasses, even if that is what they thought.
At some point, I suppose I will have to replace the much-beloved headshot I use for Top of JC’s Mind, which B originally took to go with this poem for Silver Birch Press.
Someday, when I’m more used to my new look.
Yes, someday.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is yes-. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/04/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-29-2023/
In the first few seasons of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert did a recurring skit, then a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.
JC
For decades, I’ve dreaded having to answer the question “What do you do?” or to fill in the blank for “occupation” or “profession” on forms.
Usually, those questions are about earning money and the truth is that I have earned very little money over my lifetime.
What I’ve been used to be called housewife, a term I never liked because it sounds like you are married to a house, not a person. I do sometimes choose the homemaker option from lists that don’t allow me to insert a customized response, although that term also seems too centered on the inanimate. I prefer the term caregiver as more reflective of my role as a daughter, spouse, mother, and grandmother. I think it is unfortunate that the current usage of caregiver has focused on the paid or unpaid work of caring for someone with medical needs, although I’ve dealt with more than the usual share of diagnoses among the generations of family involved.
I will often add volunteer, if I’m given the option. I’ve done many things as a volunteer that others are paid to do, such as church music ministry or facilitating a spirituality book study group. I did major committee stints when my daughters were in school, including a site-based decision making team, curriculum planning committees for music and gifted education, and high school honors program planning, for which the teacher participants were paid, a fact they tried to hide from me as they felt badly that I was spending a lot of time working on these things for free. I also spent a lot of time fighting fracking and advocating for action on climate change, although the vast majority of people doing that are volunteers, with just a few people who are paid to be community organizers. (We laughed when the fracking proponents accused us of being paid by George Soros or whomever, which we certainly were not, all the while knowing that some of them were actually being paid by fossil-fuel-company-financed front groups.)
In more recent years, as writing has become an important part of my life, I’ve wondered what to do with that. Should I list myself as a writer on forms? Is it disrespectful to the people who actually make a living as writers to call myself that? To date, I have never been paid to write, although when my chapbook Hearts is published in the coming months, I will make (a tiny bit of) money. On social media, I tend to list myself as poet/blogger. Most poets and most bloggers earn little-to-no income from those activities, so maybe that is a better descriptor than writer?
Or, now that I’m 62, maybe I should just give up and list myself as retired.
But retired from what? The caregiving, volunteering, and writing still go on…
Joanne Corey 