Writing the Life Poetic

Discover New Poetry Markets and Get Published: October

By Shawn Sorensen

So far, I’ve recommend six different venues for your poems: two each of print journals, on-line publications and contests. Congratulations to any of you who have sent in work! As always, please let us know if anything happens, whether it’s a nicely-worded (or timely) rejection or a publication by leaving a note here int comments section. There could definitely be a celebration at hand! 

And when you are submitting work, why not start a submission tracker to kept abreast of which publications are getting which of your poems? A submission tracker can help you stay on top of what you’ve sent and make sure your submissions match each publication’s guidelines. For example:

• Often times a publication will allow simultaneous submissions -- poems you’ve sent elsewhere -- as long as you notify them if someone else publishes your work beforehand.
• If you have something already published, then a vast majority of publications will not consider it.
• Contests -- now that’s another story. As we have already seen with the contest suggestion from my last column, there are plenty of contests that will take poems that have already won or have been published. 

What’s in a submission tracker? Mine is an uncomplicated Excel spreadsheet that has the following columns:  “Poem Title”, “Publication/Contest”, “Date Sent”, “When Response Expected”, “Date Returned/Published” and “Comments”.  And just what information can you put in yours? Let’s try the following: 

Print Journal:  The MacGuffin Published three times per year, the MacGuffin journal simply wants “well-crafted poetry”. For reference, the MacGuffin has recently published poems by Dawn McDuffie, Lisa Siedlarz and Vivian Shipley, poetry that is slightly revelatory and/or humorous in tone, something that sheds new light on the greater meanings of making it through the world. Send no more than five poems, along with a cover letter, to Carol Was, Poetry Editor/ Schoolcraft College/18600 Haggerty Rd., Livonia MI/48152-2696.

Considers simultaneous submissions and would like poems to be typed and single-spaced with the poet’s name, address, and e-mail appearing on each page. Include an SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope). Pays two contributor’s copies. For a sample, send $6 to the above address.

Windfall

Windfall’s subtitle is “A Journal of Poetry of Place”. The place in question is the Pacific Northwest, of which poems submitted to Windfall must reference or be about. Having said that, though, the Pacific Northwest for this journal stretches from Alaska to San Francisco, from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. And you don’t have to be from the Pacific Northwest to get published. Submit up to five poems to Bill Siverly and Michael McDowell, Co-Editors/Windfall Press/P.O. Box 19007, Portland, OR/97230-0007. A cover letter is preferred and Windfall considers simultaneous submissions.  Deadline for spring 2010:  February 1. $5 sent to the above address will get you a sample copy.                                                      

Online Journal: Adirondack Review The Adirondack Review is open to new poets who demonstrate talent as well as established writers who have demonstrations aplenty. View their colorful, unique website for sample poems and submission guidelines. Responds in one week to four months and accepts simultaneous submissions (with notification if poems are published first elsewhere).

Contest:  Twenty-Third Annual Portland Pen Poetry Contest My idea of a good contest? One with a lot of prizes (cash or otherwise), a low entry fee and the possibility of being published if you win. This poetry contest put on by the Portland Branch of the National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW) does all three. There’s a deadline of November 7^th with an entry fee of $5 per poem. More details can be found at their website. 

Now get those poems out and show yourself off a little bit!  I wish you an appetizer of luck followed by a large entrée of enjoyment.  

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Shawn Sorensen is a published, award-winning poet whose work can be viewed at manequinenvy.com, Winter 2008 edition. His poem called “The Yard” won 1st Place in the Oregon State Poetry Association's spring 2009 contest, New Poets category. Shawn's poetry submission goal is to send something in at least every other week and get published/recognized a few times per year.  He's written dozens of complete book reviews, many of them for poetry titles, on goodreads.com and braves a perilous river crossing to be the Community Relations Manager at Barnes & Noble in the hinterlands of Vancouver, WA. He plans and hosts an every-2nd-Wednesday Poetry Group event that's always at 7 pm, always features the area's best poets and always has a great open mic.

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The Cook, The Writer, The Gardener, The Business Woman: How to Bring Poetry to Work

By Brittany Baldwin

In the morning I walk the dog through the orchard in the mist. This is my time alone before I head off to work. Between the trees I watch for poems.  

During the commute I listen to poetry, stories, news or music. I write down ideas that come from watching the farms pass. The man on his riding mower spreading chemical over his perfect lawn that is big enough to grow enough food to feed his neighbors and himself for a year. But he wants his country home to have a golf course lawn full of chemicals his kids can play in. Up the street another man has filled his land with old cars. They rest as memories, taxidermied pets from earlier in life he just can’t bury. All of them bring me poems.  

At work I study cadence and composition, listening to live recordings of Edna St Vincent between old Bruce Springsteen love songs. These poems transfix me as I press dough into pans, fill them with fruit, fold and whisper intention. Intention is the most important ingredient; it can be tasted, always.  

Sometimes I scrawl poetry in poor handwriting behind my grocery list for the day. Or late at night I’ll write character profiles from my evening of serving drunken doctors and real estate professionals. A snatch of conversation overheard while I reach to place the salad just so in front of their hungry eyes; each comparing the quality of the salad next to them and across from them to the one before them.  

Almost none of the poetry that accompanies me throughout my day gets to the page in a traditional sense but all of it solves me.  After work I send out menus for busy moms, special occasions and restricted diets for the ill. My poetic skills show themselves in cadence and adjective play. Food becomes a list of tasty words laid one on top of the other to make the reader salivate. With my weekly menus I observe how usually at least one dish a week is ordered by everyone. What words make that happen? What rhythm?

* * * * *

Brittany Baldwin runs a small catering and personal chef company that maintains its own organic garden. She has written poetry in Portland for eight years while starting her own business and self publishing her own poetry collection, Broken Knuckles Against Knives, Cutting The Food To Feed Me Through This (2005). In 2002 she received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in local poetry collections Ephemeris and Broken Word: Alberta Street Anthology Volume 1 and 2. She has appeared on KBOO's Talking Earth,  won an honorable mention in the Oregon State Poetry Associations fall 06 contest and was featured in the 2006 and 2007 Silverton Poetry Festival.

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View all "The Cook, The Writer, The Gardener, The Business Woman" columns.

View the entire Writing the Life Poetic zine archive.

By Brittany Baldwin

In the morning I walk the dog through the orchard in the mist. This is my time alone before I head off to work. Between the trees I watch for poems.  

During the commute I listen to poetry, stories, news or music. I write down ideas that come from watching the farms pass. The man on his riding mower spreading chemical over his perfect lawn that is big enough to grow enough food to feed his neighbors and himself for a year. But he wants his country home to have a golf course lawn full of chemicals his kids can play in. Up the street another man has filled his land with old cars. They rest as memories, taxidermied pets from earlier in life he just can’t bury. All of them bring me poems.  

At work I study cadence and composition, listening to live recordings of Edna St Vincent between old Bruce Springsteen love songs. These poems transfix me as I press dough into pans, fill them with fruit, fold and whisper intention. Intention is the most important ingredient; it can be tasted, always.  

Sometimes I scrawl poetry in poor handwriting behind my grocery list for the day. Or late at night I’ll write character profiles from my evening of serving drunken doctors and real estate professionals. A snatch of conversation overheard while I reach to place the salad just so in front of their hungry eyes; each comparing the quality of the salad next to them and across from them to the one before them.  

Almost none of the poetry that accompanies me throughout my day gets to the page in a traditional sense but all of it solves me.  After work I send out menus for busy moms, special occasions and restricted diets for the ill. My poetic skills show themselves in cadence and adjective play. Food becomes a list of tasty words laid one on top of the other to make the reader salivate. With my weekly menus I observe how usually at least one dish a week is ordered by everyone. What words make that happen? What rhythm?

* * * * *

Brittany Baldwin runs a small catering and personal chef company that maintains its own organic garden. She has written poetry in Portland for eight years while starting her own business and self publishing her own poetry collection, Broken Knuckles Against Knives, Cutting The Food To Feed Me Through This (2005). In 2002 she received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in local poetry collections Ephemeris and Broken Word: Alberta Street Anthology Volume 1 and 2. She has appeared on KBOO's Talking Earth,  won an honorable mention in the Oregon State Poetry Associations fall 06 contest and was featured in the 2006 and 2007 Silverton Poetry Festival.

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View all "The Cook, The Writer, The Gardener, The Business Woman" columns.

View the entire Writing the Life Poetic zine archive.

the closer you look

Between the tides, the wise table.
The shining. There have been weeks
when I thought nothing. There have
been months when I prayed.
Bottomless days.
The gloves lie fingerless
between us, I write
time out of my bones.
Sax so symptomatic. Sad and sinking.
Collage my horses and forks.
Tea drifts, shifts its shallow
flowers into a steep of temptation.
Not for you and yet for you.
As everything is both itself
and reflection
diminishing into dividends
the closer you look.

Suffering from blank page-itis?

Join Writing the Life Poetic zine columnists Steve Williams and M for a workshop that will fill your page. These gurus of the poetry prompt say, "We will focus on new work generation and provide you with a jumping off point not only for that day, but for months to follow."

Mapping Your Childhood

How well do you remember your old neighborhood? And when was the last time you thought about what happened there during your childhood? For this Mapping Your Childhood Workshop, we will be journeying back in time to those places, people, and events that played a significant role in your development. Using maps you will draw (no prior drawing experience required), and prompts you will be given (such as “think back to a time when you couldn’t stop laughing”), you will bring the place alive again and use what you find there as fertile sources to jump start your writing. If you are suffering from blank page-itis, and no matter whether you prefer fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, poetry, young adult or children’s writing, this is the workshop for you. You will be given time for free writes based on the maps you’ve drawn and the prompts you’re given, and you will be encouraged to share what you’ve written with other workshop attendees. Please join us. We think you will be amazed by what you will find hiding in that old tree house or down at the playground!

Sunday, December 13th from 1-3pm
Cost: $25

The 100th Monkey Studio
110 SE 16th Ave
Portland, OR 97214
503-232-3457

Learn more!

Creating Space for Writing: Integrating Poetry Into the Everyday

By Toni Partington

In my last two columns, you’ve defined your internal and external writing spaces. Now let’s talk about the realities of everyday life.  

Think about how you move from one role (employee, parent, student, partner) to another. How you juggle these many identities and seem to make things work on the busiest days. Now, think about yourself as the poet-writer. Where does it fit in? If you answered, “Everywhere,” there’s probably no need to read further. If you said, “There’s never enough time,” or “It’s on my list but doesn’t seem to get done,” or “I save it up for the weekend,” then read on, my friend.  

Imagine how it would feel if writing became an everyday practice of living. Look around, there’s plenty to write about: overheard tidbits that catch your ear, the interesting profile of the person in the car ahead of you, pink tree blossoms in the wind. What if you made notes throughout the day about what you saw, heard, imagined, experienced, felt? What if you looked that list over and turned it into a line or two? What if?  

Frequently, I pull to the side of the road to make notes, stop my shopping cart mid-aisle to write, ask the person on the other end of the phone to hold for a minute. I’m not being rude, I’m integrating the writer in me into all I do. Sure, I have a wide variety of roles – (grant writer, life-career coach, mom, partner, friend) but in each role I am still a poet. In fact, I am a poet first; and just saying this influences how I view my life. It doesn’t diminish the importance of my other roles. It enhances them.  

Some of us like structure while others like flow. You can do it either way. For example, if you prefer structure, you could decide to be in the observer’s role at a specific time. You may select an outing or even a mundane activity and let the poet-observer take the lead. At first it will feel more like segmenting than integration, but it will give you the opportunity to let the poet be in charge so that you can feel what that’s like.  

In a more fluid or “flow” mode, you are integrating the poet at all (or most) times. You are tuned in to let your encounters, experiences, and situations lead the writing. In other words, you are present as life unfolds and you are determined to capture what you can in writing.  

To do either, carry a small, pocket size notebook everywhere. When you have a thought, observation or idea,  take the time to write it down. Don’t wait; I promise it won’t be there later. Hard as you try, you won’t be able to capture that thought in just that way.  

Once you have a few notes it’s like having a poetry savings account. You can add to it or draw from it. It’s there and it’s yours.  

Try this!  

Evaluate your writing mindset. Does it feel selfish or self-indulgent to spend time writing? Would your life be enriched by the time you set aside to write? Take one thing at a time – start by imagining what life will be like if you integrate the parts of you that have been disconnected from each other. Imagine writing as a priority that gets your time and attention on a regular basis.   

Decide on a time of day to review what you’ve written (with morning coffee, before bed, ten minutes in the car after work – whatever feels right to you). Ponder the words, sketches, phrases, quotes – what do they bring to mind? Do you want to build on any part of it, link things together, use something as a prompt for more writing?  

Next, the major challenge: choose your designated time to write – to expand your notes into poems. Specifically, when in your day or week is your sacred writing time? We all know that it’s good to be flexible – but not so good to give away this precious time when you have deemed it important.  

Claim your writing self. To set aside the time as a regular practice is to make a statement to yourself and others that you value writing and have chosen to integrate it fully into your lifestyle. If you use a calendar, blackberry or some form of time organization, add in this designated time and activity. If you make it a priority and say it out loud, it is likely that you will follow through.

* * * * *

Toni Partington lives and works in Vancouver, WA. Her poetry has appeared in the NW Women’s Journal, the Anthology of the River Poets’ Society, VoiceCatcher 3, the Cascade Journal, and others. Toni’s other work includes career/life coaching, editing services for new and emerging writers, and grant writing. This winter she joined the editorial collective for VoiceCatcher 4. She holds a BA in Social Work and an MA focused on Literature and Literary Editing.  Before that, Toni was a high-school drop out, pregnant and then married at age 16 whose life came faster than it should have and toughened her into a self-described survivor. Today, her circle includes family, friends, dogs and poets, not in any particular order.

Blog: www.poettone.blogspot.com
Email: tpartington@earthlink.net

* * * * *

View all "Creating Space for Writing" columns.

View the entire Writing the Life Poetic zine archive.

By Toni Partington

In my last two columns, you’ve defined your internal and external writing spaces. Now let’s talk about the realities of everyday life.  

Think about how you move from one role (employee, parent, student, partner) to another. How you juggle these many identities and seem to make things work on the busiest days. Now, think about yourself as the poet-writer. Where does it fit in? If you answered, “Everywhere,” there’s probably no need to read further. If you said, “There’s never enough time,” or “It’s on my list but doesn’t seem to get done,” or “I save it up for the weekend,” then read on, my friend.  

Imagine how it would feel if writing became an everyday practice of living. Look around, there’s plenty to write about: overheard tidbits that catch your ear, the interesting profile of the person in the car ahead of you, pink tree blossoms in the wind. What if you made notes throughout the day about what you saw, heard, imagined, experienced, felt? What if you looked that list over and turned it into a line or two? What if?  

Frequently, I pull to the side of the road to make notes, stop my shopping cart mid-aisle to write, ask the person on the other end of the phone to hold for a minute. I’m not being rude, I’m integrating the writer in me into all I do. Sure, I have a wide variety of roles – (grant writer, life-career coach, mom, partner, friend) but in each role I am still a poet. In fact, I am a poet first; and just saying this influences how I view my life. It doesn’t diminish the importance of my other roles. It enhances them.  

Some of us like structure while others like flow. You can do it either way. For example, if you prefer structure, you could decide to be in the observer’s role at a specific time. You may select an outing or even a mundane activity and let the poet-observer take the lead. At first it will feel more like segmenting than integration, but it will give you the opportunity to let the poet be in charge so that you can feel what that’s like.  

In a more fluid or “flow” mode, you are integrating the poet at all (or most) times. You are tuned in to let your encounters, experiences, and situations lead the writing. In other words, you are present as life unfolds and you are determined to capture what you can in writing.  

To do either, carry a small, pocket size notebook everywhere. When you have a thought, observation or idea,  take the time to write it down. Don’t wait; I promise it won’t be there later. Hard as you try, you won’t be able to capture that thought in just that way.  

Once you have a few notes it’s like having a poetry savings account. You can add to it or draw from it. It’s there and it’s yours.  

Try this!  

Evaluate your writing mindset. Does it feel selfish or self-indulgent to spend time writing? Would your life be enriched by the time you set aside to write? Take one thing at a time – start by imagining what life will be like if you integrate the parts of you that have been disconnected from each other. Imagine writing as a priority that gets your time and attention on a regular basis.   

Decide on a time of day to review what you’ve written (with morning coffee, before bed, ten minutes in the car after work – whatever feels right to you). Ponder the words, sketches, phrases, quotes – what do they bring to mind? Do you want to build on any part of it, link things together, use something as a prompt for more writing?  

Next, the major challenge: choose your designated time to write – to expand your notes into poems. Specifically, when in your day or week is your sacred writing time? We all know that it’s good to be flexible – but not so good to give away this precious time when you have deemed it important.  

Claim your writing self. To set aside the time as a regular practice is to make a statement to yourself and others that you value writing and have chosen to integrate it fully into your lifestyle. If you use a calendar, blackberry or some form of time organization, add in this designated time and activity. If you make it a priority and say it out loud, it is likely that you will follow through.

* * * * *

Toni Partington lives and works in Vancouver, WA. Her poetry has appeared in the NW Women’s Journal, the Anthology of the River Poets’ Society, VoiceCatcher 3, the Cascade Journal, and others. Toni’s other work includes career/life coaching, editing services for new and emerging writers, and grant writing. This winter she joined the editorial collective for VoiceCatcher 4. She holds a BA in Social Work and an MA focused on Literature and Literary Editing.  Before that, Toni was a high-school drop out, pregnant and then married at age 16 whose life came faster than it should have and toughened her into a self-described survivor. Today, her circle includes family, friends, dogs and poets, not in any particular order.

Blog: www.poettone.blogspot.com
Email: tpartington@earthlink.net

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View all "Creating Space for Writing" columns.

View the entire Writing the Life Poetic zine archive.

Farther than they know how to go

The typewriter plunges its keys into an impression of idea. My arm too turbulent for this flower. There were men in my dreams stronger than my faith. The shakers, the sax, the music a kind of mattress upon which I retire my flight. Time accepts all prisoners. We each make our own cages. Time to give back the sheets; the table. To clear this plate for contemplation. I listen into the lavender. Not sad enough for sorrow. So knotted into reason that no silk ripples into the frame. How to forgive: braid memory and time. Skip punctuation like stones. And know that blessed are those who choose to remember. Who let the language lead them out farther than they know how to go.

Relational: how distance and closeness offer us poems

Poems measure our distance from the things and people we love. To study a child's face is to enter the realm of poetry. When the child tastes his beloved blankie -- takes it into his discerning, few-toothed mouth -- he is looking out from within the poem. Poetry echoes the resonance between us and that which we consider. It gives us words to bridge the distance of unknowns, to bring the taste we seek to our mouths. To hold the child a moment longer. To have his imprint in words still warm in our lap, even as he is turning toward something else.

Introducing the Northwest Poetry Calendar

Thanks to Deb Stone for creating The Northwest Poetry Event Calendar, a comprehensive resource of poetry fun for Oregon and Washington poets!

Want to add your event? Contact:

Deb Stone
poetryeventsNW@gmail.com

More Like Music

By Sage Cohen

 

We all need a line against which

to measure our wildness.

 

The park is cut back along the path.

I align my spine with the heavy bench,

 

send my legs out around your waist

as the sun heats a halo through your long black hair.

 

Today I can understand how the scientists misjudged

the universe’s color for turquoise when really it is beige.

 

The sun must have been streaming through the trees

such that the calculation of space divided by matter

 

became more like music. And when the rhythm lifted

like a woman’s skirt in summer wind, someone sang,

 

as you do now, of the sky being cleared by a good hard rain.

Then the universe compressed like two bodies dancing,

 

perfected with the pressure of exchange, until

the planetary percussion became a salsa.

 

Leaning into the beat, those men reached further

than who they were. Surrendered fact to abstraction.

 

They got loose in their laboratories, pressed to the truth

of the blue of turquoise until it was the only answer.

Catching Voices: Building an Editorial Team and Calendar

By Jenn Lalime and Sara Guest

A good editorial team is like any balanced team, holding space for different types of people to bring skills to the party, be productive and feel fulfilled. A community-writing team, in particular, ought to be of the community. From her earliest moments, VoiceCatcher wanted to be a collective large and diverse enough to represent many potential “kinds” of readers. In this way we could be receptive to and supportive of many “kinds” of writers.  

Additionally, the notion of building consensus was a concern and goal. For this reason the collective evolved naturally into a body of nine, easily split into three teams of three. Three is a consensus-builder. Splitting women into teams of three allows for diversity on each team: strengths in different genres, a range of age and experience.  

Of course no one was tapped to represent a particular kind of writing or experience, but balancing is a comfort in making sure work is read broadly and deeply by women who feel adept to judge the work and stretched toward new understandings. In this way each stack of submissions represents both comfort and challenge to each of the team members reading it. Some of the magic of what gets published slips in here.  

How did we recruit the collective? This felt easy. At first, the founder talked to her friends. Everyone who joined the inaugural collective was a friend of the founder in a writing capacity. These very women had moved the founder with their writing in workshop settings. After that, a simple paradigm emerged: if you’re published by the collective, you’re eligible to join it.  

And who should be invited to join? The women who inquire and feel called by it! These women are particularly easy to spot, actually. They get in touch. They sit in front seats at the reading, their eyes shining at you when you mount the podium. They write cover letters that say, your project matters so much to me.  

How did we develop the editorial calendar? Mostly over eggs and pancakes post-yoga. For nearly a year Jenn and I (Sara) met every Wednesday for yoga class, brunch and VoiceCatcher. It was my favorite part of the week. We pushed a bunch of energy out through our yoga clothes then filled the empty space with ideas about how to produce an anthology. We continually reminded ourselves that this was an experiment -- and taking the pressure off kept it fresh and open.

Our calendar lilted like a butterfly on a branch, gentle and easy. Spring for submissions and reading because in spring we are reborn. Summer for editorial production—stolen hours while the kids are at camp. Fall for launching what would make a great holiday gift. December for post-processing and January for integrating new collective-members into the project. Lilt lilt lilt, wing wing wing. The work meted out to each month like a new branch.

More about VoiceCatcher at www.voicecatcher.org.

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Sara Guest, a native mid-westerner, has been tripping the light wowtastic in Portland, Oregon since 2004. A longtime producer and editor, Sara works as a program coordinator for Write Around Portland and volunteers with Literary Arts and VoiceCatcher (currently as board chair). She writes poetry and fiction and is a voracious reader and lover of Powell's City of Books.

Jenn Lalime is a northwest native, a writer and editor, a mother and a wife. She's lucky to work with the following organizations to bring the words of fellow writers out into the world: Portland Women Writers, VoiceCatcher, and Tin House Books. She thanks the universe every day for President Obama whose presence in the White House gives her the peace of mind to stay focused on her first and true love: reading great fiction.