Few zines publish it — and I’m happy to say Umbrella is one of them — so I thought I should post this call for submissions from Chimaera that I spotted at the Gazebo: For The Chimaera Issue 5, due out in the second half of January 2009, our Feature Theme will be light verse. John Whitworth (Spotlight Poet in this issue) has agreed to guest-edit the feature. The definition of light verse will be…
I have a night owl writer friend, and I have a 4-early-hours-every-day writer friend. Both claim their time zone as the most creatively stimulating. Ideas, especially poems, come to me at odd, odd times, mostly when I’m nowhere near a keyboard or pen. But 5 a.m. seems to contain a particularly vibrant quiet. Sometimes even 3 a.m. Now, the night owl and the early bird both claim 3 a.m., but if I stay up that…
A new site for the always intriguing zine Zafusy. Goodreads is really a good place to network with other readers and writers. You can create a page for listing your own works, find out what friends and authors you admire are reading, list brief book reviews and make virtual shelves of books you recommend. It’s Facebook for the literary, but intimate and friendly, because the numbers aren’t so vast. And no gadgets, things to throw,…
Tim Green (Rattle editor) blogged today about David Alpaugh’s excellent article on poetry book contests. He highlights David’s contribution to analyzing the state of American poetry and what’s wrong in it: “… he [Alpaugh] might be best known for his influential essay “The Professionalization of Poetry,” first printed as a two part series in Poets & Writers in 2003. That essay detailed the sacrifices poetry has made to become a viable profession within academia–the diluting…
I’ve decided to prune my Blogroll, list only the blogs I read regularly. Blogs that surprise, amuse, inform, uplift or involve me — or simply strike me with awe, which is what good poetry and art should do. Speak up if your blog has been deleted and you’re reading this — if you want your link back on my Blogroll! My hope is to make it easier to find good reading. I don’t mean to…
Before you lick the stamps for that envelope, and slip your newest poetry manuscript into it to head off to a book contest, read David Alpaugh’s canny investigation of the whole book contest biz. It’s part of the new issue of Rattle, as a free download. (Scroll down to see the link to a pdf.) Among Alpaugh’s many trenchant observations, this really made me think about why the readership for poetry is shrinking: It is…
Kate at Kicking Wind did an interview with poet and publicist Lytton Smith last year. He’s a poet who arranges publicity for poets. While still trying to imagine the net income for that kind of profession, I found several good ideas for promoting a poetry book, ideas you probably know already, but worth repeating: * Write a press release and pitch letter for the book * Make a list of reviewers and send it *…
Thanks to feedback from poets who keep their own non-contest poetry publishers lists, or who are simply interested in this topic and wrote to me, I have updated my web page on Non-Contest Poetry Book Publishers. Some new presses added, some presses removed. I decided not to list any press with a catalog of less than ten books, not to list any obvious self-publishing presses (with, say, two or more titles by the publisher) and…
My good friend Regi has brought to my attention that this is National Punctuation Day.Huzzah to the semi-colon (did I punctuate that right?) and the ellipsis (pretty sure I spelled it correctly). And when is National Spelling Day? In a texting world, punctuation and spelling are what we need more of. Not to mention National Grammar Day. Celebrate with the comma of your choice. Visit https://racheldacus.net for more information and writing by Rachel Dacus.
It’s that time of year: when I update my webpage that lists Non-Contest Poetry Book Publishers. Every year the list shrinks, sorry to say. New publishers replace the old, but always a few less replacements than the publishers who cave in to the contest mania. Small presses are doing the math and realizing that few buy poetry books. Contests are increasingly the only way to fund operations. Where does the contest frenzy leave those of…