Tag: poem

the start of Sappho’s Circle

Today was the first meeting of Sappho’s Circle, a women’s poetry workshop group convened by Heather Dorn, whom I first met through the Binghamton Poetry Project of which she is currently director.

We will study women poets, write from prompts, have sessions where we workshop poems by group members to help them revise, and have publication parties where we choose publications to which to submit our poems and send them off – before we get distracted, chicken out, etc.

I am so excited to have another group, along with my regular workshop group and the Binghamton Poetry Project,  to help me become a stronger poet.  I’m also looking forward to being in another circle of women. I have been privileged to belong to other women’s circles over the decades and always find great support, generosity, and understanding within them.

My heartfelt thanks to Heather who has been such a great help to me as a poet. I’m so looking forward to being a part of Sappho’s Circle through the coming year!

poet-tree

my poem on the poet-tree

When I was visiting Beth in Honolulu this summer, we would walk up the hill in Kaimuki to go to the big Saturday morning farmers’ market at Kapi’olani Community College. There is always a huge array of fruits, vegetables, baked goods, jams, pickles, etc., as well as lots of prepared foods and beverages to enjoy there.  (Also, lots and lots of people, as it is listed in the tour guides and some of the bus tours bring people there.)

We would walk home through campus and pass by their poet-tree, which is a world community poetry project. Visitors are invited to write a poem and leave it in a jar. Then, the poems are sorted into geographic regions, sealed in plastic, and affixed to the poet-tree, which has pegs for different countries or regions.

On the last weekend of my visit, I brought a poem to contribute to the project. E sent me this photo over the weekend, showing it on display! The poem itself is one I wrote several years ago. and, as often happens, there is a bit of poetic license. I realize it is a hard to read in the photo, so here it is:

Two Trees

A pair of gum trees
Reaching tall in the courtyard
Bark flashing streaks:
       grey, red-brown, green, vibrant orange
A paint-by-number from childhood come to life.
Transplanted into Hawaiian soil
You grow at a prodigious rate
As do my own daughters
Also transplanted there.

(Note:  The trees are rainbow eucalyptus.)

Poem: “Sturbridge, Massachusetts”

I am pleased to announce that Silver Birch Press has published my poem “Sturbridge, Massachusetts” as part of their “My Perfect Vacation” series. Just follow this link:  https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/sturbridge-massachusetts-poem-by-joanne-corey-my-perfect-vacation-series/

As a bonus, there is a photo of B and me cutting our wedding cake, which I scanned from a photo in our wedding album to accompany this poem. It was a spice cake with butter cream frosting, which was an exotic choice back in 1982. It was delicious.

Feel free to comment here or on the Silver Birch Press page – or both!

SBP times two

I am pleased to announce that Silver Birch Press has accepted another poem of mine!

Last month, my poem “Becoming Joanne” appeared on the Silver Birch Press blog as part of their “All About My Name” poetry series.

Sometime between now and August 31st, my poem “Sturbridge, Massachusetts” will appear as part of their “My Perfect/Less-than-perfect Vacation” series.

Readers of my blog know that I am not so good with dealing with images. True to form, I have to re-scan and re-submit the photo that will run with the poem. With luck, I’ll get the size and resolution right this time.

When the poem is published, you can be sure I’ll post the link here at Top of JC’s Mind!

an encouraging rejection

When I was in Hawai’i, I spent a considerable amount of time searching for literary journals that might publish my work and choosing, formatting, and submitting poems to them.

Some of you may have seen my recent excited, squealing post over an acceptance that came from those submissions and my crazed rush to withdraw the three accepted poems from other journals to which they had been submitted.

I am nearly always submitting to journals that allow simultaneous submissions to avoid having to wait months to find out an editor has rejected a poem before being free to send it elsewhere, but the protocol is to promptly withdraw a poem from other journals if it is accepted.

Most of the time, I submit to journals that don’t charge reading fees, but I did submit a set of four poems to a journal that does charge a reading fee and offers personal, expedited feedback for a slightly higher fee, which I decided to do, as I haven’t had much experience in hearing criticism from an editor’s point of view. On the bright side, this journal also pays cash for poems they accept, which is somewhat unusual. It’s more common not to be paid or to be given a copy or copies of the journal, if it is print rather than electronic.

I sent en email over the weekend withdrawing the accepted poems and today (Tuesday) got feedback from that journal’s editor, who obviously had not seen my withdrawal notice. Under the circumstances, I’m grateful that she didn’t accept any of the poems! She did give very specific and helpful criticism and was very encouraging about my submitting to their journal in the future.

Her criticism of the poem in which she was most interested  – and which she invited me to revise and re-submit directly to her for consideration, which I can’t do because it is one of the ones that will be published by Wilderness House Literary Review this fall – was actually addressed in an earlier draft. I need to talk to some of my poet friends and see if it would be too forward of me to send the earlier draft to her to see if it addresses her criticism adequately. It’s dicey because I can’t offer it to her for consideration anymore.

Another way in which this journal is different is that they read blind, meaning that the poems are submitted without any reference to the author. For a new poet like me, it saves me from an editor seeing my file and saying “Who the heck is this?” So to receive encouragement to send more of my work was very validating, knowing that the editor didn’t know whether or not I was someone who published regularly or had a writing degree. She didn’t think I was a rank amateur.

When you get a typical “thank you but your work does not fit our needs at the present time,” you wonder if maybe the editor is rolling his eyes and thinking you are totally out of your depth.

But, at least today, an encouraging rejection is a confidence booster.

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…

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

View original post

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

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!

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…