Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “something that opens.”
Something that opens is my first chapbook, Hearts. In a shameless exercise in self-promotion, I’m using this post to draw attention to a post that I just finished about the second anniversary of Hearts.
Check it out!
A little over two years ago, Hearts, my first poetry chapbook was published by Kelsay Books. The poems center around my mother, concentrating on her final years as she lived with heart failure.
I know that many people are unfamiliar with the term “chapbook.” A chapbook is a short book that is usually organized around a central theme.
As someone who didn’t pursue poetry until later in life, I am honored to have a book in print. There are several ways to buy a copy: directly from Kelsay Books, from Amazon, on special order from any bookstore that has access to Ingram, or directly from me, in person or by mail. (Please send me an email at jcorey.poet@gmail.com to make arrangements.)
People who have been following my history as a poet know that I had very little formal coursework in poetry; I have developed my skills through the generous sharing of my poetry community, including the Binghamton Poetry Project, the Grapevine Poets, and the Boiler House Poets Collective.
What has been more difficult is developing the publicity skills needed to promote a book. I am by nature an introvert and struggle with self-promotion. I’m also not great with asking people to spend money. Unfortunately, there have been other obstacles in the form of personal and family health struggles that have kept me from doing a great job at selling my book.
I am very grateful for the friends – and the people who are unknown to me – who have read my book. I especially appreciate those who have reached out to me about Hearts, often sharing stories about their own loved ones. I write in order to connect with others and am deeply honored that my work resonates with them.
One thing that I hadn’t anticipated was what it feels like to lose friends who have read Hearts and written or spoken to me about it. It adds another aspect to their loss. I also wonder what will become of the copies that they had, especially when they are inscribed. I somehow imagine someone picking up a copy in a secondhand bookstore and wondering who the prior owner was and how I was connected to them.
I still hope to publish another book some day/year but I will always be pleased that my first book was about my mom.
And every time I see bleeding hearts, I think about Hearts and about her.
Today marks the first anniversary of the release of my first poetry chapbook, Hearts (Kelsay Books, 2023). It is available from either of those links or directly from me by emailing jcorey.poet@gmail.com. Bonus: I can sign or inscribe for you, if you wish.
The poems in Hearts center on my mother, mostly in her final years when she was living with heart failure. It is a chapbook, so it is only 21 poems. (Chapbooks are generally under fifty pages and are organized around a central theme or device.) One of the blessings of having the book out in the world is that so many people have told me that my experiences with my mother reminded them of taking care of their own loved one. I appreciate that my poems touch people’s hearts and minds and give them an opportunity to reflect on their own lives.
As many of you know, I returned to my childhood love of writing poetry in my fifties and my education in the craft has come largely through my poetry community, which includes the Grapevine Poets, the Boiler House Poets Collective, and the Binghamton Poetry Project, recently re-named the Binghamton Writers Project. At times, I’ve felt the learning curve has been steep, but I’ve managed to keep learning and growing as a poet.
What I didn’t fully realize before the publication of Hearts was how daunting the whole publicity enterprise is and how little I understood what it would entail. Kelsay provided a helpful packet of information and I initially sent out some queries to get reviews in journals, but no one responded, life intervened, and I dropped it. The thought of entering contests was bewildering. I made some attempts at getting my book into local bookstores but there was a persistent problem with listing at a distributor. I’ve gotten several cold calls from a scammy publicity company, even though I’ve asked to be removed from their call list. I’m grateful to have had a handful of signing and/or reading opportunities locally but I can’t wrap my head around what it would take to organize an actual book tour.
When my first annual royalty payment arrived, I realized that a good percentage of those sales through Kelsay or Amazon were from people that I knew who had ordered from them. I had sold more copies personally than had been ordered online, which was simultaneously a pat on the back and a stark reminder of my responsibility for marketing my book.
While I have (repeatedly) posted about Hearts here at Top of JC’s Mind and cross-posted on Facebook, X/Twitter, and Instagram, I’m pleased to report that, as of today, I am a certified Goodreads author. Many thanks to poet Samantha Terrell, whose review of Hearts on Goodreads led to my claiming an author page there!
Are you on Goodreads? If so, I’d be honored if you would follow me, Joanne Corey, there and follow Samantha Terrell, too. While it’s no longer National Poetry Month, it’s always a great time to support poets and poetry!
I am honored that my poem “First Grandchild” from my chapbook Hearts (Kelsay Books, 2023) is featured today by Silver Birch Press as part of their ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER series. Many thanks to Melanie and the Silver Birch Press team for including me in this series!
The first grandchild in the title is my daughter E, shown in the photo above holding baby ABC with my mother, known here at Top of JC’s Mind as Nana, and me.
You can read a bit more about the writing of the poem in the author’s note at the link above.
Having this appear at this time is especially poignant. May 16th would have been my mother’s 92nd birthday.
Tomorrow, May 22nd, will be the fifth anniversary of her death.
It’s a good day to remember the immense love and care that she showed for all of us for so many years.
Her love lives on.
I am honored to have been selected for the fourth annual Glimmer Globe Theatre/Fenimore Art Museum Write Out Loud performance on Saturday, April 20th. There were 22 writers represented with a mix of poems, short story, essays, and even a short play, all written by people living within a 100-mile radius of Cooperstown, New York.
My daughter T and I decided to make a weekend of it. We visited the Museum in the afternoon. Our favorite new exhibition was “As They Saw It: Women Artists Then and Now.” It will be showing through September 2, 2024. We loved how it demonstrated the power of women’s artistic expression over time, both as individuals and in relation to other women across the generations. We also appreciated viewing the thoughtfully curated Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art, which has had a home at the Fenimore since 1995.
After a delicious early dinner at the Council Rock Brewery in a room filled with vintage clocks, T and I headed back to the Fenimore for the performance. We arrived early so that I could attend a walk-through. I had the opportunity to meet Christine Juliano, the actor who would read my poem, “Some Time Else” from my chapbook, Hearts. I admit that the whole evening was much more relaxing because I didn’t have to perform myself. It made the walk-through more interesting as I could observe the microphone adjustment and lighting cues without having to worry about dealing with them myself. It was also a good reminder that having a mike is not an excuse to dial back on vocal projection.
We had a good house for the performance, filling the auditorium, which was exciting for me who is more used to wondering if the readers will outnumber the audience! A brief bio from each writer was read as they or the actor reading their piece took the stage. There were also accompanying visuals projected behind the stage that complemented each reading.
The range of topics was wide and it was fun to have a mix of genres represented. While the age of the writers skewed older, we did have some younger folks participating. Quite a number of the writers had been professors or editors or directors of writing series, so I, totally lacking in academic English credentials myself, felt honored to have been chosen alongside them. Submissions for Write Out Loud are read anonymously so the individual piece is selected, not the author. I was also surprised that a large majority of writers had chosen to present themselves; one of the things that had attracted me to submit was the opportunity to hear an actor read my work. I must admit, though, that some of the writers were so evocative in their performance that I couldn’t imagine an actor would have done better.
I learned that Write Out Loud began as a virtual performance during the pandemic, which then continued as a live event when restrictions were lifted. This year saw the largest number of participants thus far.
I’m not going into too much detail about the program itself because, on Saturday, April 27 at 7 PM, the recording will be released on the Fenimore Art Museum’s YouTube channel. Update: The video of Write Out Loud 2024 is now available here. If you expand the description, you will find the program, helpfully indexed to bring you to whichever piece you select.
Thanks to the Fenimore Art Museum and the Glimmer Globe Theatre, especially Mike Tamburrino, Manager of Performing Arts Programs at the Fenimore Art Museum and the affiliated Farmers’ Museum, for including me in this special event!
My poem “Some Time Else” from my chapbook Hearts has been selected for performance at the Fenimore Art Musuem through the Glimmer Globe Theatre in Cooperstown NY on Saturday, April 20 at 7 PM as part of Write Out Loud 2024; the recording will be released the following week and I will be sure to post it here at Top of JC’s Mind.
*****
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/04/17/one-liner-wednesday-a-what-kind-of-ritual/
Yesterday, I sang with the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton as we closed out our 45th anniversary season, which had concentrated on American themes.
This final concert was called “America Speaks” and focused on American poets. In an interesting twist, the poems were read by members of S.T.A.R. (Southern Tier Actors Read) before we sang the settings based on the poems. As a poet, I’m accustomed to hearing poets read, but actors enunciate and emote much more than most poets. I especially love that this concert took place during National Poetry Month.
(As it happens, I will have the opportunity to hear “Some Time Else,” one of the poems from my chapbook Hearts, read by an actor affiliated with the Glimmer Globe Theatre at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown on Saturday as part of Write Out Loud 2024. Stay tuned for more information.)
The highlight of the concert for me was performing Frostiana, Randall Thompson’s setting of seven poems by Robert Frost, written to celebrate the bicentennial of Amherst, Massachusetts. We were accompanied by members of the Binghamton Community Orchestra, so we could appreciate Thompson’s skill as an orchestrator as well as a composer. I especially liked the flute’s imitation of thrush calls in “Come In.”
What was most special, though, was that our artistic director, Dr. Bruce Borton, was able to conduct Frostiana for the performance. He has been battling a serious illness and this was his only appearance at our concerts this season. I began singing under his direction in 1988, when he was at the local university as a professor and began conducting the Binghamton University Chorus, which I had joined in 1982. I first sang “Choose Something Like a Star,” the final piece in Frostiana, under his direction relatively early in his tenure, so it was especially poignant to sing it yesterday.
I managed not to cry.
I hope to sing for Much Ado in the Garden this summer and for our 46th season. I’ll post details as they become available.
2023 Binghamton Poetry Project anthology
This spring is the tenth anniversary of my involvement with the Binghamton Poetry Project, which offers workshops to the area community, let by graduate students at Binghamton University.
Today, I’m sharing the link to the 2023 online anthology which became available at some point over these last weeks. Usually, an anthology release coincided with our final readings at the end of the spring and fall sessions, but, last year, for various reasons, no anthologies were published at those times. The link above has three poems from the spring 2023 workshops; I had submitted three from the fall, but they appear to have evaporated into cyberspace.
My poems, “With Nana” “After Cataract Surgery” and “The Way Home”, were written from prompts from our workshop leaders. “After Cataract Surgery” is closest to “real life”; the other two are more imagined. They were written and revised quickly because I needed to make the original anthology deadline, so no judgement on the level of editing!
A transition is underway with Binghamton Poetry Project which is now being re-named the Binghamton Writers Project. The plan is to offer community workshops in other literary genres in addition to poetry. Right now, we are still waiting to see what that will look like.
I owe a lot to the Binghamton Poetry Project. I’ve learned a lot about craft from their workshops. BPP connections helped me find the Grapevine Poets, with whom I workshop on a regular basis year-round and participate in readings. I was invited to write and deliver a poem at the Broome County Heart of the Arts dinner in 2016. A number of poems in my chapbook Hearts and in my still unpublished full-length collection began as Binghamton Poetry Project prompts.
I’m hoping (selfishly) that the Binghamton Writers Project will always keep a poetry offering available.
I wonder how long it will take me to stop calling it the Binghamton Poetry Project or BPP?
Last week, I received my first ever royalties payment on the copies of my poetry chapbook Hearts, which was published by Kelsay Books in May, 2023.
The payment covered the copies sold through the Kelsay Books website and on Amazon in 2023. (If you are lucky enough to still have an independent bookstore near you, they can also order Hearts for you through Ingram.)
It turns out that I had sold more copies myself, in person and through mail order, than I had online.
Yay, me?
At any rate, I’m now working on 2024 sales, so feel free to order at either of the links above, through your favorite local independent bookstore, or directly from me. I can arrange to meet up or deliver locally or send by mail in the US. You may email me at jcorey.poet@gmail.com to make arrangements or for more information.
I’m also available to give readings at bookstores, book club meetings, libraries, or anywhere else that might want to invite me. I could discuss Hearts, which revolves around my mother in her final years, or, more likely, read a more wide-ranging selection of my work and take questions. I could even throw in some blogging discussion, if that is of interest. I’m open to travelling to your venue or appearing virtually, so feel free to make a proposal that would suit you and your group!
I’m still near the beginning of the learning curve on the whole promotion aspect of authorship, so, please, also feel free to send along any advice or tips you may have.
Thanks to everyone who has purchased or read Hearts, written a review, and/or communicated with me about their own reflections and reactions. It has been a special experience for me knowing that my poems reach people and remind them of aspects of their own lives.
I also appreciate the support of the readers at Top of JC’s Mind. I’ll continue to keep you posted about my poet-life, plus a whole lot more, here.
In gratitude,
Joanne Corey
Today’s prompt for Linda’s Just Jot It January is “family,” contributed by Kim of Twisted Trunk Travels. Check out their blogs!
Over these last ten-ish years of writing poetry and blogging here at Top of JC’s Mind, I have written way more often about my family than I thought I would. Of course, it made perfect sense to blog about visiting daughter E and son-in-law L in Hawai’i, as folks often blog about their travels, but as time and circumstances changed and I faced the challenges of caregiving for various generations of the family, posts about family became more frequent. I also used poetry as a way to process things that were going on with my family, most notably about my mother’s experiences living with and dying from heart disease, which became my first published chapbook, Hearts (Kelsay Books, 2023).
I do try to protect my family members by referring to them with initials or nicknames rather than their given names. Nearly all of them use a different surname so only people who know us in real life are likely to recognize them from posts. Currently, spouse B and daughter T are most likely to appear as we are living in the same house, although we will soon be going to visit daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG in London. which may generate some posts. My daughters’ grandparents were called on the blog by the names they used for them, Nana and Paco for my parents and Grandma for B’s mom. (Sadly, B’s dad, known as Grandpa, passed away in 2005, before I was blogging and writing poetry, although his death was the subject of one of my earliest published poems.) If you are perusing the archives of Top of JC’s Mind, you’ll come across posts dealing with their final years and the grief following their deaths.
One thing that strikes me about my family posts and poems is how often they spark comments and conversations about people’s own experiences. Knowing that I offer that space for people to reflect on themselves and their own families is a big part of why I continue to write about my family.
What about you? Do you find it helpful to write about your family, either privately in a journal or in more public ways?
*****
It’s not too late to join in with #JusJoJan24! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/29/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-29th-2024/
Joanne Corey 