Tag: poem

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 Most journals only accept previously unpublished work, so it is important that you notify them promptly so that they aren’t spending time reviewing a poem that they can’t include in their publication.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

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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

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…

Binghamton Poetry Project – Spring 2015

Tonight is the public reading and anthology distribution for the spring 2015 workshops of the Binghamton Poetry Project (BPP).  This is the fourth time that I have participated in this community endeavor which brings together child, teen, and adult poets for five weekly sessions learning about and writing poetry, facilitated by graduate students from Binghamton University.

The three poems below are my contribution to the anthology. (I read the first two.)

From a prompt about writing about interactions with a parent, I wrote this poem which became a gift to my dad for his 90th birthday:

Hydro Superintendent
 – by Joanne Corey

Each weekday, Dad went to his office
on the top floor of the hydroelectric station,
wearing a clip-on tie –
a precaution due to machinery –
with a Reddy Kilowatt pin.

When he was on weekend call,
my sisters and I sat on the wheel wells
in the back of the company jeep –
wearing our hard hats –
jouncing along unpaved roads
to inspect dams, pipelines, reservoirs,
unmanned Deerfield hydro stations.

His work became ours,
generating power.

*****
From a prompt about a place that we had visited, I wrote this poem about singing in Siracusa, Sicily with the Smith College Alumnae Chorus:

Divinity Listens in Siracusa
– by Joanne Corey

Clad in black,
I stand with the sopranos
behind the orchestra,
Requiem score in hand.
As Mozart echoes,
I know this sacred space –
erected as temple to Athena,
over centuries becoming
temple to Roman Minerva,
Christian church,
mosque,
returning to its current identity
as a Catholic cathedral –
is the most ancient place
in which I will ever sing.

*****
The last is my first ever attempt at prose poetry, heavily edited and expanded with advice from our instructor Cammy and my poetry critique group:

First poems
 – by Joanne Corey

I wrote my first poems in a black-and-white marble-covered composition notebook in the fifth through eighth grade room in my elementary school. I wrote about the brook which flowed through the four seasons – the autumn hillside through our upstairs classroom windows as a pirate hat spilling gold doubloons – Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito skating to the Stanley Cup for the Bruins – a song to forgotten children who lacked family and home – the death of my grandfather and playing the organ for his Month’s Mind Mass at Saint Joachim’s – my first free verse poems, after Miss Andersen taught us that poems didn’t have to rhyme like Mother Goose and “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” (which we knew by heart for Patriots’ Day recitation) – and on the very first page, in Palmer Method cursive, my hometown tribute to Monroe Bridge, with the closing lines, “There’s only one in the whole USA. That place knows me.”

I wish I still had that notebook to bridge the poemless decades that followed, to rediscover the girl who sluiced inky torrents between faint blue lines on crisp white pages, to remember when a town was a world, to again feel fully known, to recover the voice that went silent when severed from that place.
******
Reading for the Binghamton Poetry Project
Reading at the Binghamton Poetry Project

My poems that have appeared in the two prior anthologies can be found here and here. Our summer sessions are more low-key and don’t publish, so while this is my fourth set of session with BPP, it is only the third anthology.  Another fun BPP-related post is my first and so far only attempt at slam poetry.  I leave it to the readers to decide if my poetic skills are improving with time, experience, BPP, and the example and generous assistance of my fellow poets.

Friday night fun – part one

On a Friday evening in March, I read at open mic poetry night for the first time. I had attended with my husband for the first time in January and planned to read in February, but, instead, we had to travel for my aunt’s funeral that weekend. So that brought us to March. B wasn’t feeling well, so I went alone.

There were fewer people this time then in January, but over half of us were reading at open mic for the first time.  (Actually, we meet at RiverRead Books and don’t need to use a mic, but it’s called open mic anyway.) I had signed up to read second, so that I could enjoy hearing the other poets without the distraction of having to think about my own reading.

Barrett, who began the monthly open mic program at RiverRead five years ago, did a welcome and read first, including a new poem he had just completed about visiting the Holocaust Museum. (Barrett is part of the group of poets that I began meeting with last August. We meet twice a month to hear each other’s work and offer comments. Were it not for that, I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to show up and read.)

I started my reading with “Moonlight” because it is my most well-received poem and my good luck charm.  It is the poem that I submitted for National Poetry Month in 2013 to “Off the Page,” a local program on WSKG public radio; they put listeners’ poems up on their website every April. (Well, they used to. The host retired in 2013, so that year turned out to be the last hurrah.)  I was so excited when it was chosen to be read on air! The host, Bill Jaker, read it. It was the first time I had heard someone else read my work aloud.

I say that “Moonlight” is my good luck charm because one of the guests on the program was Nicole Santalucia, who began the Binghamton Poetry Project (BPP). That was how I first learned about it, which led to my attending the spring 2014 workshop. I included “Moonlight” in our anthology for that session and read it at our public reading.  After the summer session, our instructor helped me find and join the critique group where I met Barrett and eight other local poets. With their and BPP’s help, I have learned a lot about poetry, about myself as a poet, and about how to make my work stronger and better. And it all started because of:
Moonlight

In the narrow valley of youth,
the moon was distant,
as though at perpetual apogee.
Cocooned in darkness,
I slept soundly.

In the broad valley of adulthood,
the moon is close,
casting sharp shadows.
Bathed in eerie light,
I lie awake.

I also read two newer poems, “(Not) the Aunt I Remember” and “Downy,” which I can’t post here because I hope to submit them to journals. My reading went well- I didn’t drop anything or lose my place – and then I got to sit and enjoy everyone else’s work. We had eleven poets read, with the first-time readers outnumbering the veteran readers six to five.

A curious thing happened. I had to remind Barrett and the other poets from our group that it was the first time I had read at open mic. While I am painfully aware of my newness as a poet-in-public, it appears that I can project at least some level of competence, which feels good.

Or it could be my silver hair just makes it seem that I must have been around a long time…

 

One-Liner Wednesday: painting and poetry

In honor of US National Poetry Month:
Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.
– Leonardo da Vinci

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Details here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/04/08/one-liner-wednesday-life-is-too-short/

First time finalist!

I just got an email telling me that one of my poems was a finalist for the Binghamton Poetry Project’s first poetry contest! It didn’t win, but this is the first time I have ever been a finalist. The poem that made the finalist list is “Fifty-four” which is about me and my friend Angie, whom I wrote about yesterday. I’m sorry that I can’t share the poem here, but I’m hoping to submit it to journals, so I have to keep it off the internet.  So, progress…

Fastest response ever

Yesterday, I submitted a poem to the blog of an independent press that features a monthly poetry series on a given theme.  Next month’s theme is “Me, as a child.”  I submitted a poem I had recently written about playing on our school playground. By evening, I had a rejection notice in my inbox, which is far and away the fastest turnaround time I have ever seen. They wanted poems that focus on the individual, whereas my poem focused on children as a group. The positive part of this is that they invited me to send another poem, which feels much better than most of the rejections I’ve received which don’t give any feedback. I don’t know that I will actually submit again for this series; the only poem I have written that deals with my childhood on a personal level would take significant revision to use for this series and I don’t think I have enough brain power to complete it by March 31st.  This does give me confidence, though, to submit to their series in the coming months.

Postscript:  I was entering my tags for this post and was about to type in “submission” as a tag, but, in these days of 50 Shades of Grey, I thought better of it and opted for “publication submission.”  (And, no, I have not read 50 Shades of Grey or seen the movie nor do I plan to do so.)