Tess Gallagher, in a speech to the graduates of the 2009 Whidbey Writers Workshop, reminds us that "as a writer, one may not hold oneself above or apart from one’s hoped for readership. . . . We won’t be able to imagine in a clear-hearted way those whom we seek to reach or even that part of ourselves we court in the writing."
She also comments on the practicalities of the writing life, and the need to fit writing in -- "learning to work anywhere and under adverse conditions is a boon to staying a writer."
Read the entire commencement address here: http://whidbeystudents.com/about/2009-commencement-address/
Showing posts with label work-life balance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work-life balance. Show all posts
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Lunch pail poetry
RATTLE has just released its RATTLE e.7 supplement to the summer print issue, and you can download it here in pdf format: http://rattle.com/eissues/eIssue7.pdf
The highlight is an interview with Bruce Cohen on his new book from Dream Horse Press, Disloyal Yo-Yo. I was impressed with Cohen's take on the place of writing in his life, and he touched on a theme close to my heart: how to balance work, life, poetry. For some, poetry as a career works just fine, and for others (me!) it does not. Cohen says, "I intuitively suspected that if my career were dependent upon poetry, my poetry might get stale and suffer." From someone who now has two books out after long years of work, and lots of balancing, that's encouraging stuff. He talks about his "anti-poetic career" in academic support programs for athletes, and how he was grounded in the knowledge that poetry was its own center: "I knew I would compose poems for my entire life; it would be a constant in my world. That knowledge calmed me, left me less anxious."
He talks about balancing his career, his wife's career, different work schedules, raising two boys and all the Boy Scouts and other activities that adds to the mix, and still finding room for poetry.
Here's Cohen on what it takes to be a writer: "But my approach to writing is not lazy; it’s blue collar, working man. I write something every day whether I feel like it or not and put my time in. I go to work sick. I’m rarely inspired and I have no patience for waiting for some sort of Muse. In fact, I don’t think I have a Muse, I just try to talk to people in my poems who I know and want to talk to. My father got up at five every morning, went to work and never complained. I try to do that—especially with my poetry. Lunch pail stuff."
The highlight is an interview with Bruce Cohen on his new book from Dream Horse Press, Disloyal Yo-Yo. I was impressed with Cohen's take on the place of writing in his life, and he touched on a theme close to my heart: how to balance work, life, poetry. For some, poetry as a career works just fine, and for others (me!) it does not. Cohen says, "I intuitively suspected that if my career were dependent upon poetry, my poetry might get stale and suffer." From someone who now has two books out after long years of work, and lots of balancing, that's encouraging stuff. He talks about his "anti-poetic career" in academic support programs for athletes, and how he was grounded in the knowledge that poetry was its own center: "I knew I would compose poems for my entire life; it would be a constant in my world. That knowledge calmed me, left me less anxious."
He talks about balancing his career, his wife's career, different work schedules, raising two boys and all the Boy Scouts and other activities that adds to the mix, and still finding room for poetry.
Here's Cohen on what it takes to be a writer: "But my approach to writing is not lazy; it’s blue collar, working man. I write something every day whether I feel like it or not and put my time in. I go to work sick. I’m rarely inspired and I have no patience for waiting for some sort of Muse. In fact, I don’t think I have a Muse, I just try to talk to people in my poems who I know and want to talk to. My father got up at five every morning, went to work and never complained. I try to do that—especially with my poetry. Lunch pail stuff."
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Resources for Poets
A blizzard of manuscripts have come to Cherry Pie Press in the last few months, a result (I think?) of the increasing readership for the nine chapbooks now in print, and of the unexpected and welcome publicity from a review in Prairie Schooner of Nan Sweet's chapbook Rotogravure, and finally the attentions of Poets & Writers in highlighting Cherry Pie in their recent articles on chapbook publishers.
Welcome, poets! I'm a little slow at responding to manuscripts because of the welcome flood (and also because of the demands of the non-poetry office job, taking up much of my mental powers and many of my weekends now as we wind through yet another corporate merger -- but hey I LOVE THAT JOB just in case my boss is reading). The range and quality of the poetry is wonderful to see. My process, as always, includes reading through a manuscript at least three times. If it retains spark and complexity after three readings, it's a serious candidate or, at minimum, receives a serious and detailed response, and whatever encouragement is possible through the venue of an email.
Of special note, poetry of extremely high quality has come in from exactly the type of poets Cherry Pie was meant for -- women in the midwest (or, stretching it a little, the west) who are excellent writers, with fresh viewpoints and use of language, active in their local poetry communities and in many cases giving back significantly to that community with their time and talents, and a little separated from the mainstream well-funded well-supported larger world of poetry in the city or poetry in the academy. I am encouraged, and not surprised at all, to note that some of the finest poetry I've seen in the recent flood comes from places like a feedstore owner in Nebraska, or a mother home-schooling her children when she's not out working the ranch. (Ladies, you know who you are -- please keep writing!) Poetry is essential, but there's a real life there too in the balance. Children or an office job or some other kind of ballast is frequently a very good thing.
Submissions have also come in from Chicago, Michigan, Missouri -- many of them compelling, surprising in the best way. Thank you all!
With only one or two chapbooks a year, I send out more rejections than acceptances, and wanted to highlight some resources for poets looking for encouragement and a way to keep up their daily obligations but still get some wider connection to poetry. One well-categorized and very useful resource is http://resources4poets.homestead.com/index.html, from Bernadette Geyer. It's a series of how-to guides and articles and recordings of readings that is easy to dip into or to take a long nosedive into, as time allows.
One more slot filled in the tool-belt, girls!
Welcome, poets! I'm a little slow at responding to manuscripts because of the welcome flood (and also because of the demands of the non-poetry office job, taking up much of my mental powers and many of my weekends now as we wind through yet another corporate merger -- but hey I LOVE THAT JOB just in case my boss is reading). The range and quality of the poetry is wonderful to see. My process, as always, includes reading through a manuscript at least three times. If it retains spark and complexity after three readings, it's a serious candidate or, at minimum, receives a serious and detailed response, and whatever encouragement is possible through the venue of an email.
Of special note, poetry of extremely high quality has come in from exactly the type of poets Cherry Pie was meant for -- women in the midwest (or, stretching it a little, the west) who are excellent writers, with fresh viewpoints and use of language, active in their local poetry communities and in many cases giving back significantly to that community with their time and talents, and a little separated from the mainstream well-funded well-supported larger world of poetry in the city or poetry in the academy. I am encouraged, and not surprised at all, to note that some of the finest poetry I've seen in the recent flood comes from places like a feedstore owner in Nebraska, or a mother home-schooling her children when she's not out working the ranch. (Ladies, you know who you are -- please keep writing!) Poetry is essential, but there's a real life there too in the balance. Children or an office job or some other kind of ballast is frequently a very good thing.
Submissions have also come in from Chicago, Michigan, Missouri -- many of them compelling, surprising in the best way. Thank you all!
With only one or two chapbooks a year, I send out more rejections than acceptances, and wanted to highlight some resources for poets looking for encouragement and a way to keep up their daily obligations but still get some wider connection to poetry. One well-categorized and very useful resource is http://resources4poets.homestead.com/index.html, from Bernadette Geyer. It's a series of how-to guides and articles and recordings of readings that is easy to dip into or to take a long nosedive into, as time allows.
One more slot filled in the tool-belt, girls!
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Women Poets Mentoring Each Other
Here's essential reading, with a growing list of thought-provoking comments -- Annie Finch's piece on Women Poets & Mentorship in Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Rankovic's essay on Don Finkel
Catherine Rankovic, local essayist extraordinaire, has posted an interview she did with Don Finkel years ago. It is more than worth checking out -- go here to read it: http://ucollegeblog.blogspot.com/.
The essay is a tribute to Don, now one of St. Louis's lost treasures, and also an insightful and humbling portrayal of the arc of one great poet's career as the poetry publishing industry collapsed in the 1980s and left so many poets stranded, fading into "out of print" and with no publishing outlets available. Finkel's attitude toward life, his way of keeping focus on writing and on what mattered (the relationships around him), and his eternal good humor all provide good sustenance for any writer.
Rankovic has written a number of essays based on interviews with poets. It is a true pleasure to have this one posted online. She is precise, aware of the vast local and industrial background against which her subject matter is poised, and her eye for her subject matter is more accurate, and tender, than any camera.
The essay is a tribute to Don, now one of St. Louis's lost treasures, and also an insightful and humbling portrayal of the arc of one great poet's career as the poetry publishing industry collapsed in the 1980s and left so many poets stranded, fading into "out of print" and with no publishing outlets available. Finkel's attitude toward life, his way of keeping focus on writing and on what mattered (the relationships around him), and his eternal good humor all provide good sustenance for any writer.
Rankovic has written a number of essays based on interviews with poets. It is a true pleasure to have this one posted online. She is precise, aware of the vast local and industrial background against which her subject matter is poised, and her eye for her subject matter is more accurate, and tender, than any camera.
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Domesticated Writer
David Gessner's piece in The New York Times on his decision to take a job teaching writing is food for thought. He provides a guided tour of the last hundred and fifty or so years of possible means of self-support for writers, and shows how the job of teaching writing evolved from being seen as a sinecure to finally being a real job.
This topic is always interesting to me, as I have made a number of decisions keeping me away from a career in the academic world. Sometimes I regret that choice; most times I don't. Others exist there happily, and balance their creative writing with the teaching of it, apparently without terminal conflict. I would rather make a living in a world that is separate from the world where I write. Either way, it's a divided life of sorts--just a slightly different flavor of division.
Gessner talks about the need to have some kind of a job, despite the price you pay for that divided life.
This topic is always interesting to me, as I have made a number of decisions keeping me away from a career in the academic world. Sometimes I regret that choice; most times I don't. Others exist there happily, and balance their creative writing with the teaching of it, apparently without terminal conflict. I would rather make a living in a world that is separate from the world where I write. Either way, it's a divided life of sorts--just a slightly different flavor of division.
Gessner talks about the need to have some kind of a job, despite the price you pay for that divided life.
It’s not just a question of success or even genius, but temperament and discipline. Young writers think all they need is time, but give them that time and watch them implode. After all, there’s something basically insane about sitting at a desk and talking to yourself all day, and there’s a reason that writers are second only to medical students in instances of hypochondria. In isolation, our minds turn on us pretty quickly.
Yes, sad but true. Every writer's fantasy about winning the lotto and plunging 100% into creativity without the ballast and worry of bills and obligations isn't all it's cracked up to be.
That said, now I'll go back to my world of cubicles, computers, co-workers who ride motorcycles for fun instead of read books for fun. After all, there are bills to pay....
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Day Job
Some poets have one; some don't -- the "day job." Recently, a long and interesting discussion on the WOM-PO newsgroup list centered on how writers who have a "day job" (a non-poetic, non-academic job in the business world) balance work and art. I wonder.
I do feel like an oddity when the topic comes up. I've always had a day job, and all along have made the conscious choice to not use art to feed spirit and pocketbook at the same time. I am amazed by folk who are able to make a living from their skill with words -- generally indirectly by being a teacher of literature or writing -- and can still summon up the magic of creation when it's time to write. They have my admiration and respect. They are probably less schizophrenic than I am.
Keeping spirit and pocketbook separate does present problems, even though it's the only form of balance I feel capable of. At work, poetry is nearly always there, but unvoiced. It's a ray of light glazing the edge of the windowsill in the copy room. It's a story a coworker tells, some dialect or tone in it that surfaces as a song. I pocket the moment, write it down later. It is an exercise in finding the extraordinary within the ordinary.
It frees me up to keep career-related ambition, fear of poverty, and drudgery out of the poetry sandbox. Of course, the downside is that it's more difficult to be connected to the world of writing, and to keep poetry a priority when things get hectic or when work imposes pressures and deadlines.
Of the five authors published in the Cherry Pie series so far, two work in an academic literary setting, one in an academic nonliterary setting, one is a retired elementary teacher, and one is raising a child and working part-time in a medical office. Three of them have worked (unpaid of course) as editors of either poetry or fiction publications. My own jobs have included medical copyediting and computers (programming, now quality assurance).
Poetry comes in so many guises. It has no uniform.
I do feel like an oddity when the topic comes up. I've always had a day job, and all along have made the conscious choice to not use art to feed spirit and pocketbook at the same time. I am amazed by folk who are able to make a living from their skill with words -- generally indirectly by being a teacher of literature or writing -- and can still summon up the magic of creation when it's time to write. They have my admiration and respect. They are probably less schizophrenic than I am.
Keeping spirit and pocketbook separate does present problems, even though it's the only form of balance I feel capable of. At work, poetry is nearly always there, but unvoiced. It's a ray of light glazing the edge of the windowsill in the copy room. It's a story a coworker tells, some dialect or tone in it that surfaces as a song. I pocket the moment, write it down later. It is an exercise in finding the extraordinary within the ordinary.
It frees me up to keep career-related ambition, fear of poverty, and drudgery out of the poetry sandbox. Of course, the downside is that it's more difficult to be connected to the world of writing, and to keep poetry a priority when things get hectic or when work imposes pressures and deadlines.
Of the five authors published in the Cherry Pie series so far, two work in an academic literary setting, one in an academic nonliterary setting, one is a retired elementary teacher, and one is raising a child and working part-time in a medical office. Three of them have worked (unpaid of course) as editors of either poetry or fiction publications. My own jobs have included medical copyediting and computers (programming, now quality assurance).
Poetry comes in so many guises. It has no uniform.
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