Category: poetry

Acceptance drama!

Alternate title: What happens when you check Submittable late at night when you can’t sleep.

Since coming back from Hawai’i, I’ve been having lots of trouble with sleep, so I got up and decided to check Submittable, which is a tool that many literary journals use to host submissions. I wasn’t expecting much news, because journals also send emails, so I was shocked to see an acceptance! I was excited! Also, slightly terrified, because it seemed that I had inadvertently broken a cardinal rule of simultaneous submissions, which is to immediately withdraw an accepted poem from any other journal which has it under consideration. Most journals only accept previously unpublished work, so it is important that you notify them promptly so that they aren’t spending time reviewing a poem that they can’t include in their publication.

I powered up my desktop, which has my main inbox – which, granted, is overflowing with the mail backlog from traveling. I thought that I had reviewed everything I received in Hawai’i, but, somehow I missed the acceptance email from Wilderness House Literary Review  – which they had sent on July 3rd. I was shocked to read that they accepted all three of the poems I submitted for their next issue!

I quickly wrote a reply, about how excited I was to appear in their journal and apologized for the delay in replying. Then, I brought up my personal submissions database and found that I needed to send notices to only two other journals, because a couple of others had already rejected these poems. Fortunately, each of these journals still has one or two of my poems to consider.

By this point, my pulse had been racing for a while, and going back to bed was out of the question, so I took advantage of the six hour time difference to message E in Hawai’i. I rattled on about this whole wonderful-but-slightly-nerve-wracking drama until I calmed down a bit.

But I knew I still wouldn’t sleep so I wrote this post, scheduling it to come out at a more reasonable hour for most of my readers who share my time zone.

At whatever time anyone does happen to read this though, I am pleased to announce that my poems “(Not) the aunt I remember”, “Fifty-four” and “Downy” will be published in the fall online edition of Wilderness House Literary Review in early October.

You can be sure I will publish the link here at Top of JC’s Mind when it becomes available.

And maybe, in an hour or so, I’ll be able to fall asleep…

Free Kindle version of Summer Anthology from 7/5-7/7/15

What could be better? A free kindle copy from Silver Birch Press of their Summer Anthology of poetry and prose. But hurry! It is only free through Tuesday, July 7.

poem-men-oh-pausssse

Sharing this poem by Shawn Bird, because a) a lot of the Northern Hemisphere is broiling hot right now and b) I know what hot flashes feel like.

Shawn L. Bird's avatarShawn L. Bird

In the heat

her fingers sizzle from inside out

raising an ocean on her forehead

rivers racing down her back,

internal pressure steam driven engine

hissing irritably

summer outside

summer inside

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Becoming Joanne

As promised, I’m sharing the link to my newest poem publication:  https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/becoming-joanne-by-joanne-corey-all-about-my-name-poetry-series/. It is part of their “All About My Name” poetry series. Please visit – comment and like, if you are so inclined – and consider following the Silver Birch Press blog. They run several new poems a day related to a particular theme, which changes every two months or so. Enjoy!

JC

Poetry on the front page

Our hotel gives us the Honolulu Star*Advertiser each morning. I was pleased to see a front page story this morning about poetry, “Poems give voice to students’ creativity,” by Michael Tsai.  (I had hoped to share the link, but the paper has very strict access requirements.)

The article talked about the month-long residency of Hawai’i-born poet Laurel Nakanishi at Palolo Elementary sponsored by the nonprofit Pacific Writers’ Connection. The fourth grade class which is the focus of the article has 18 of 23 students who are English language learners, meaning that English is not their first language. The usually reticent students come alive when they write and share poetry.

I was especially struck by this paragraph:

Such indulgences in creative arts and the humanities were supposed to have become extinct from school curricula in the age of rigid standardized testing. But as a growing number of elementary school teachers can attest, every hour spent practicing the fundamentals of free verse returns dividends of creativity, expressiveness in figurative language and overall language sensitivity that measure well on current Common Core State Standards and other assessments.

I was thinking about the young poets who participate in the Binghamton Poetry Project both in the classroom and in extra-curricular sessions.  Their obvious joy in poetry and using language in new ways mirrors that of the students who worked with Nakanishi in Honolulu.

The power of poetry!

Batting .500

A few days ago, I wrote about how I was copying poems into the cloud and setting up my submissions database before leaving for Hawai’i.

I had even done two submissions and amazingly, I have already heard back from both of them.

The first, to an anthology about fracking, was a rejection.

The second, to the Silver Birch Press blog, was an acceptance!  I had written a new poem for their June/July poetry series “All About My Name.” My title is “Becoming Joanne” and you can be sure that when it is published, I will send out a blog post here with the link!

I am planning to send out a big batch of submissions later this month, most of which will come back as rejections, but, for the moment, I’m batting .500, which is pretty sweet!

Progress!

I spent a good chunk of time today copying poetry files from my desktop into google docs, arranging them in a folder, and giving sharing access to my alternate email address.

With my husband’s help, I set up a submission database in google sheets. Better yet, I sent two poetry submissions today, so I was able to put entries into the new database!

Although I still have a lot of packing and such to do in the next two days, I feel better knowing that I will have access to my poetry resources so that I can send submissions while I am away from home.

Poetry over packing!  Priorities!

One-Liner Wednesday: truth

“If it is true, then science, psychology, poetry, and philosophy will also be seeing the same thing, but from different angles, at different levels, and with different vocabularies.”
– Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, p. 132

Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/05/20/one-liner-wednesday-love-is/

when things come in threes

Three has been an important number for me.

I was one of three sisters.

Trinity has been one of the themes in my life, from church to a high school friend to the name of my younger daughter.

There are lots of sayings about events – good or bad – happening in threes.

“The third time’s the charm.”

This afternoon, on the third day since the events of the stream of consciousness post I wrote this morning, I read this call for submissions from Silver Birch Press, making it the third instance of dealing with the meaning of names in as many days.

I have to write a poem for this. It was meant to be.

I’ve already been through several drafts in my head and two written ones. I think I will be bringing it to my poetry group this week rather than what I had planned to bring so that I can have it in shape to submit.

Here’s hoping that this poem will be a good-thing-that-comes-in-threes…