In a few hours, I’ll be leaving for North Adams, Massachusetts, to attend a week-long poetry residency/workshop offered by Tupelo Press at Mass MoCA as part of the Studios at Mass MoCA, a newly established program of Assets for Artists.
I am very excited to arrive and meet everyone! We are going to be very busy, but I hope to get some posts out to chronicle the experience, both to keep you all updated and for my own processing.
Stay tuned!
I am thrilled to announce that Silver Birch Press has just published my poem “Lessons from Mahler” as part of their When I Hear That Song series. I am particularly pleased that they found a copy of the album cover and included a link to a youtube copy of the recording. The song about which I wrote the poem begins at about 12:40, although the whole recording is phenomenal! https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/lessons-from-mahler-haibun-by-joanne-corey-when-i-hear-that-song-series/
Thank you to Silver Birch Press, to Heather Dorn of the Binghamton Poetry Project for teaching me about haibun during our summer session and for giving feedback on this poem, and to the Bunn Hill Poets who workshopped this with me and helped me to make it stronger.
Also, thanks to my friend and Smith roommate Mary who took the accompanying photo for our class of ’82 yearbook. A few people remember me from way back then!
I have mentioned before that I have a Fitbit to track my steps. My daily goal is only 5,000 steps. I usually make it, and often exceed it, but I have a cold and the last few days have been a lost cause. On Saturday, I didn’t even make 1,000 steps.
The more unfortunate thing is that my brain is not operating at full capacity, either. Today, we have a publication party at Sappho’s Circle. This afternoon, we are going to eat munchies and work on online submissions of our poems. I need attention to detail and a certain level of discernment to do this properly, but I’m not sure I have it. It will be a help to have Heather and the rest of the circle there to help me match poems to journals.
Wish me luck…
Some readers may recall my major angst about whether or not to attend my first poetry residence/workshop. I posted about it here…and here…and here.
And then, I had to wait….
I continued to feel a mix of excitement and apprehension, but I’ve had to concentrate on more immediate obligations, such as rehearsing with University Chorus and working on poetry with Binghamton Poetry Project, Sappho’s Circle, and Bunn Hill Poets simultaneously.
But now, with less than two weeks to go before traveling to North Adams and Mass MoCA, the conference is drawing more and more of my attention and emotions. Part of this is increased communications from the organizers at Tupelo Press, including photos of our residency apartments just across the street from the museum. I know that we are a group of seven at the moment; the maximum number was eight, so there is still a chance of another poet joining us.
The main preoccupation for me at the moment is the request to bring ten poems to the conference for workshopping, which means critique. It’s not that I don’t have (many more than) ten poems that could use workshopping; it’s figuring out what to bring.
On the one hand, I want to bring work that is strong and current, but most of that has been workshopped with one of my local groups, has been published, or is ready for submission. These poems have the best chance of putting me in a good light with the other poets and the poet/editor who will be leading the conference, but it is awkward to ask for revision for something that has already been published, although it could be helpful to fine-tune a poem that may one day make it into the chapbook or collection I aspire to assemble (at least on my more confident days).
On the other hand, some of my early poems – well, not really early in terms of my lifetime, but things that I wrote from 3-5 years ago before I connected to Binghamton Poetry Project, which led to my other groups – could use the help. I find it especially difficult to revise things that I wrote before I started to read and study more poetry; somehow it is easier to use my new skills in writing poetry than it is to apply my new editing skills to older work. However, these poems could make me look less competent as a poet and are often deeply personal, which makes critique seem especially (potentially) brutal.
The decision is not helped by the fact that I don’t really know the range of experience of the poets who will be attending. In my imagination, I will be the least experienced in the group, although that may not be the case at all, as the conference is open to any serious poet, published or not. I am toying with the idea of bringing along more than the requested ten poems, mixing some older work with some of my newer poems, and hoping that we don’t have to hand ten over at the beginning of the conference, so that I can tailor the poems I workshop to the group of poets in attendance.
Given that we have to bring twelve copies of each poem, the only risks would be wasting paper and ink and possibly arm strain from lugging so much paper around.
So, am I overthinking this? What would you choose? I’d love to hear your advice in comments here, on Facebook, or in person.
With thanks,
Joanne
I am still away on a long weekend trip with B to celebrate our Third of a Century wedding anniversary. We had to be apart on the anniversary date in June, so we – okay, I – came up with this commemoration plan instead.
We had a lovely breakfast at the B&B this morning, featuring fantastic apple cider pancakes and a maple apple crisp that was one of the most delicious things ever. The innkeeper joked that because they didn’t serve it with ice cream, it was a breakfast food rather than a dessert. Of course, we agreed. As native New Englanders, we know things like fruit pies are perfectly acceptable breakfast foods!
Not sure what else we will be doing today. I still wanted to participate with SoCS, but didn’t want to devote much time to a long post.
Can you blame me? 😉
*****
This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. The prompt this week is “still.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/10/16/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-1715/
Warning: I haven’t been sleeping well, so rambling is upcoming.
I’ve done some posts about this being the tenth anniversary of some huge losses in my life, but today I am reflecting on a year ago.
Last September, I sang with the Smith College Alumnae Chorus for a choral homecoming weekend with Alice Parker. One of the posts I made afterward was about visiting the memorial tree for our friend Beth who died during our senior year and the chapel where I had spent so many hours. I had always intended to write another post about friendship and Smith women, but didn’t for reasons that will probably become clear later on in the post. I’m hoping to give a taste of that topic now…
I love to spend time with Smith women, especially back in Northampton. It is always special to me to see my roommate Mary with whom I share such a deep connection that we pick up conversation as though we weren’t a couple thousand miles apart the vast majority of the time.
I was blessed to renew ties with two women, each named Cathy, whom I had known during my Smith years, although they were in different class years so I didn’t know them as well. It may not come as a surprise that our best times for sharing revolved around food. Cathy R. invited us to a lovely farm-fresh al fresco lunch with her family who had travelled with her and we talked about farming and New England and family and medicine and art and photography and how some of us would have been at the Climate March in NYC that day if we hadn’t already committed to being at Smith for the weekend.
Cathy K. lives in the next town over from Northampton and invited us to her home after the concert for appetizers before going out to dinner. Her family owns a couple of local stores that sell specialty foods, wine, prepared foods, and more. Everything was so plentiful and delicious that we never did go on to dinner but spent hours eating, talking, laughing, and sharing. Family, education, politics, losses, music, career changes, hopes, the future, new directions. It is so seldom that one has an opportunity to discuss with such depth and breadth. I am profoundly grateful that being with Smith women so often leads to these heart-mind-and-soul-enriching conversations.
I was also grateful to have re-connected with Anne, who is a wonderful poet and who graciously accepted a copy of the chapbook I had assembled the prior year for a local contest, even though neither the individual poems nor my editing abilities were advanced enough to warrant doing so. She sent me valuable feedback and advice and has since looked over other poems for me. She is one of my poetry godmothers!
Now, a year later, the Alumnae Chorus is coming up on a deadline to sign up to tour in Cuba next July. And I can’t do it. Within this next year, both E and T plan to finish their master’s degrees and our travel time and resources need to go to supporting them. I also must admit that the thought of touring Cuba doesn’t really appeal to me, especially in the heat of late July. I am such a delicate flower that I would probably wilt!
And yesterday was Grandma’s (my mother-in-law) birthday. She has a problem with admitting her age so I won’t reveal it here, but this year was especially difficult for her because last year at this time we were in the throes of trying to determine what was wrong with her back. It turned out that an osteoporotic compression fracture in a vertebra led to its collapse and a long year of pain and complications and medications and therapy and ups and downs. Well, a lot more downs than ups.
Her elder son and his daughter came to visit for the weekend, which was nice, but it also was a reminder of how much she can’t do anymore. Grandma was trying to wish away the last year, which is painful to watch.
It’s also a reminder of how stressful the last year has been. Exhibit A: my outbreak of shingles last December. Lucky for you, I’m not going on to the rest of the exhibits. I am doing better with giving myself a bit more distance, but it is still sad and concerning and draining.
Especially in September.
I’m working on getting myself back into a better place. I actually managed to sleep a five hour stretch last night.
I’ll take all the progress I can get.
Last May, our community lost a wonderful friend and musician, Peter Browne. I wrote about here and here.
Now that September is here, we are missing him again. At Binghamton University, Harpur Chorale, which Peter had directed for many years, has begun the semester under the direction of a talented local music teacher who earned her master’s in choral conducting at Binghamton U. a few years ago.
Yesterday, I wound up having an extended conversation about bladder cancer, which what took Peter’s life so unexpectedly.
Today, I put on the car radio in time to hear the last movement of the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony. I immediately thought of Peter playing this piece with the Binghamton Philharmonic at the Broome County Forum.
All reminders of Peter and how much he is missed.
Jay Dee is still on the hunt for visitors from more countries around the world. This new post links back to his original post where he is keeping track. ( I have already re-blogged and shared that post a couple of times, so I decided to re-blog this new one today.) Please visit and share!
– JC
I just checked out which countries my blog’s visitors have come from since country stats started to be recorded. Here’s the map.
There are some interesting places that aren’t included. No Paraguay. A lot of Africa is absent. A bit of central Asia.
So, time to reach out to the world again! Please go to this post and follow the instructions. I want to know where you’re from. Let me know in the comments on that post, and I’ll add your country to the list. And please share that post so we can get word out to more people! Thank you.
I’ve spent an inordinate amount to time over the last couple of days revising one of my poems about Indian pudding for submission to Silver Birch Press’s upcoming “My Sweet Word” series and compiling and formatting the rest of the materials needed – bio, author’s note, photo with caption.
As many of you know, I often wrestle with technical issues, especially when I have to format for MS Word from my non-Windows system and when I have to deal with images of any sort.
It literally took me hours to get everything assembled properly, but I was finally able to hit “send” this morning.
And – drum roll, please! – I am happy to report that I have already received an acceptance! I think my submission must have landed on the top of the inbox on the West Coast for the beginning of their work day.
So, at some point this month or next, I’ll be able to share the link with you, featuring an ever-so-artistic photo of my hands cradling a bowl of Indian pudding with melting vanilla ice cream. I made a batch in the heat of August, just so we could do the photo shoot.
Well, truth be told, not just for the photo shoot….
While we generally don’t make something that has to bake for two hours during the dog days of summer, Indian pudding is still a delicious treat and brings back memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with family and of B’s great-aunt Gert, whose recipe we use, although I must confess that I have been experimenting with proportions a bit.
It’s always a good time for Indian pudding!
I am tempted to stay up late so I can watch The Late Show with Stephen Colbert when it actually airs, as opposed to recording it with a DVR and watching it the next evening. Even though this is the first week, there are clips of it on the morning news every morning.
I am so glad that the show is off to a great start. I loved Stephen on The Daily Show and watched the entire run of The Colbert Report (the T is silent!) with B, always on delay by DVR.
Despite the temptation to stay up late, 11:35 is way past my 10 PM bedtime, so Stephen will just have to wait inside our little black DVR box until the next evening when we get to see what everyone else was laughing about the night before.
It’s not all laughing, of course. While Stephen is a comedian, he is also a very philosophical and intellectual person. That can come out much more readily in his new show, where he gets to be (somewhat) more himself, as opposed to his former idiot-pundit persona on The Colbert Report. It must be a relief, especially when dealing with such sensitive topics as losing a son, as in the case of the interview with Joe Biden. Stephen lost his father and two brothers to a plane crash when he was ten, so he knows a lot about loss. It’s good that he can let that human side show, now that he doesn’t have to be in character all the time.
How about you all? Are you watching Stephen late at night, on delay, or not at all? Of course, this applies to US folks more than those in other countries, unless you can view it on the web.
For anyone who wishes to watch the Biden interview, CBS has it posted in two segments: http://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/video/Pc4LDUqN8wMyGkYP2ngp3WWQpNLfXpRz/vice-president-joe-biden-interview-part-1/
http://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/video/E73677BA-3D99-0881-3FC2-BA98560FCC49/vice-president-joe-biden-interview-part-2/
*****
Linda’s prompt for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “temp.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/09/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-1215/
