Tag: submission

My Poem in Paterson Literary Review!

2025 Paterson Literary Review cover: Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Woman in Red Asian Shawl

Yesterday, I was thrilled to receive my contributor copy of the 2025 Paterson Literary Review. The link is to their site; the 2025 issue is not yet available to order but should be shortly.

For those of you who may not be familiar, the founding editor of the Paterson Literary Review is Maria Mazziotti Gillan, poet, editor, educator, artist, and Bartle Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at Binghamton University. I live in the Binghamton area and, while I never had the privilege of studying with her, many of the local poets that I have learned from through the Binghamton Poetry Project and through other local workshops were her students and often referred to her and used her books of prompts in our work together.

Having a poem in PLR is a dream come true for me. It’s an honor to be in the company of such distinguished poets. I’d start naming names but the post would go on too long and, with a 53 year history, I’d invariably leave out someone whom I should include.

My poem is “Giovanni” and is about my maternal grandfather. It’s part of my yet-to-be-published full-length collection, The Beyond Place, which centers on the North Adams, Massachusetts area, where I grew up and several generations of my family lived. The Hoosac Tunnel is part of the fabric of this poem.

Because of my health issues, I haven’t been able to do much poetry work, including submissions, for months. I submitted “Giovanni” last September and it was accepted in November, but, because the Paterson Literary Review is a huge undertaking to print – this edition has over 300 pages – it is just arriving now. It’s good for me to have a reminder that I am still acknowledged as a poet, even when I’m not able to do much work at the moment.

Thank you, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, for the honor of appearing in the Paterson Literary Review!

(almost) the end of Just Jot It January ’24

Whew! Launching into the last written post of Linda’s Just Jot It January ’24! There is one more day in January, but I’ll be posting a quote tomorrow for One-Liner Wednesday, which means no running on about things.

Thanks once again to author Linda G. Hill of Life in Progress for offering this opportunity to get the blogging year off to a good start by posting every day in January.

I’m grateful to have met this challenge again this year, although I can’t carry this posting pace into the rest of the months. I’m planning to spend a lot of time through mid-April revising my full-length poetry collection in preparation for work with a professional editor, which will probably be followed by another round of revisions before a decision point on next steps toward publication. I should probably also devote some time to doing single poem submissions. I tend to be diligent about that for a bit and then fall off the wagon and go for a few months without putting work out to journals and presses. The places that are still actively considering my work have dwindled so I guess it’s time to get back on that.

Thanks also to the other Just Jot It January bloggers and readers. I appreciate having a blogging community for support and inspiration.

Write on – in whatever way works best for you – and let’s all meet up at Linda’s for Just Jot It January ’25! Don’t forget, though, that Linda coordinates One-Liner Wednesdays and Stream of Consciousness Saturdays year-round. While I don’t manage those every week, I do them often so I hope to meet you there sometimes, too.
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You can find out more about Just Jot It January and join in here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/30/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-30th-2024/

SoCS: par for the course

One more time…

I thought I had one.

As most of you know, I am a poet. This means doing submissions – and then waiting months for an answer. (Rarely, it is only days or weeks, but it’s usually months and sometimes over six.)

This morning, I saw that I had a response from an online anthology that I thought I had a good shot to win a place.

But, no.

While one of the poems had made the shortlist, I had not won a spot in the anthology.

Sigh.

It’s a good thing that Hearts came out so that I have a huge positive plus in my life as a poet because it cushions the rejections, of which I am on a pretty long streak at the moment.

Maybe soon I’ll get some positive news on a new submission.

Maybe…
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “one/won.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/07/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-29-2023/

Two poems in RAR!

I’m pleased to announce that I have two new poems published in the Fall-Winter issue of Rat’s Ass Review! (In case you are wondering about the somewhat unusual name, read the longer version of their submission guidelines, which is one of the most informative, honest, and entertaining I’ve ever encountered.) Many thanks to current editor Roderick Bates for choosing my work for inclusion in this issue.

There are 61 contributing poets plus cover art, so there’s lots to enjoy! Contributors are arranged alphabetically, so you will find my poems listed under Joanne Corey. Clicking on any poet’s surname takes you to their bio in the last section.

The inspiration for my first poem “The Banned Bookmobile” is a project under development at WordPlace, the Southern Tier Literary Center at the Bundy Museum, Binghamton, NY. J. Barrett Wolf, director of Wordplace, is planning to assemble a collection of banned/challenged books in a bus that can travel about to present programs on the First Amendment, censorship, and other topics. (Editor Rick Bates helpfully made the title of the poem a link to the web page for the project.)

For those of you who may not be familiar, in rural/underserved communities, it was common to have a bookmobile visit several times a year, giving schoolchildren and adults the chance to borrow a wider range of books than were available in town. I remember the excitement in my rural New England town of 200 when the bookmobile visited. Although I loved our town library, it was very small and the bookmobile offered many more options.

My poem references several books/series that have been banned from various schools or libraries in the United States, including And Tango Makes Three, the Harry Potter series, The Bluest Eye, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

“Video Chat with our 95-year-old Father” was written in early 2021, shortly after Paco had moved into the assisted living unit of his senior community. Due to pandemic restrictions, my sisters and I weren’t allowed to visit his place, even though I lived nearby. The staff would set up a video session with their iPad and then leave to attend to other duties. Unfortunately, Paco had difficulty grasping the situation and the technology involved.

As always, comments are welcome!

the end

So today is the last day of Just Jot It January. I want to thank Linda Hill, the Canadian author whose blog Life in Progress hosts Just Jot It January, and her blogging community who provide prompts and support for the process.

I know Linda is having a very busy time in her life and considered not holding #JusJoJan this year. I had commented during the decision-making process that I would participate as I could if she held it but that I wasn’t going to put my pressure on myself to post every day.

So, of course, Linda did go forward with Just Jot It January and I did post every day, despite international travel and my current unsettled state of grief/overwhelm/exhaustion.

Have I ever mentioned that I have a bit of a tenacious streak?

Theoretically, I could continue posting every day but I know that won’t happen. I need to devote more time to doing poetry submissions, which will cut into blog writing time. I’m also hoping that I will be writing some more new poems soon. I’m guessing that the Binghamton Poetry Project will be having some sessions in the coming weeks and I’m getting some ideas popping into my head otherwise. I also have a few poems that need final edits before I send them out.

I wish Linda and all the other #JusJoJan bloggers a successful 2022. We’ve all made it through 1/12th of the year intact. May this January be our springboard into February and beyond!

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…