Submission: Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition

YAY! Shit. Sorry. This is a curse-worthy moment. Got it done. Before the deadline. 15 pages of poems, a table of contents, an acknowledgements page, two title pages, and an entry fee. In the mail. The things you can do every night after a child's bedtime....

The whole reason I even entered this chapbook competition was because I saw that Terrance Hayes is judging it this year and reading his stuff played such a pivotal role in my development as poet. I just want him to read my stuff! I hope it makes the cut that gets forwarded to him for review.

So I'm excited about this because I feel like I really made something of my first semester. I still ended up with some stuff to submit and I wasn't expecting myself to. I don't really have a submission schedule other than once I have 3-5 new poems I'm feeling confident about I start submitting them like crazy lol. Having been in workshops consistently over the past 3 years keeps me stocked with poems. My next submission storm is gonna happen in January. Also, I get Allison Joseph's emails with daily calls for submissions and weekly emails from UVA's Creative Writing dept. with places to submit so it's always on my mind. Hopefully, I can start getting myself into some more established publications this next go around. We shall see.

Vizionheiry also brought up some good points in previous comments about ordering the poems and themes. I just so happened to have developed an obsession with thematically similar things for the last 6 months so I used the best of that stuff for this chapbook. It's kind of an examination of relationships with a mother, as a parent, and with a father. I ended up calling it "The Temperature of Blood." I hope it works well together.

Beer time. I'm talking to Tony Hoagland about my poems tomorrow and then taking him to lunch. I'm more nervous about going to lunch than I am about him talking about my poetry. I'm never worried about the right thing. lol

What I'm Working On

So just a quick update on what I'm working on. In my brain, I'm preparing to send a chapbook to at least one contest with a deadline of December 1. I'm shooting for entering the Center for Book Arts contest. I have enough poems for this, so I just need to get the idea out of my head and into manuscript form and sent off. I'll do that this week. My words are now marked.

Good luck on everything you've all got floating around in the slush piles! Or in your head lol.

Rejection: Rougarou

Sometimes I forget that I even submitted and then I get a rejection as a reminder lol. I don't have anymore submissions out there right now. Hopefully, I'll get to submitting again in January after the semester is over.

Carrying on....