points of connection

It happens most often when I am out. I am in a crowd at a ballet, a play, or last night, a concert of some bands that J is into.  At some point in the night, every time, I look around and feel both inspired and hopeless by the sheer number of people who seem to be interested in this thing--whatever it is---and how books in general, poetry in particular, will never garner this much enthusiasm and adoration from even a fraction of the number of audience members I am looking at in that moment. I suppose in some ways its positive because this many people are gathering around the arts. On the other hand, it kind of makes me feel like casting my lot to poetry may have been the worse thing to do if you are actually looking for an audience.

It is much less about adoration and famousness for me --which would surely be more realistic, if not entirely possible, were I a rockstar or a Broadway musical performer, or any number of people in the performing arts in particular that cull adoration and some sort of following. There are plenty of ways to become famous, these days, but I doubt most of us would want them. Maybe it's entirely more about connecting with an audience of any size and how it feels especially difficult as a creative in general and a poet specifically. 

I've always envied the artists and writers who say they do not care much about how the work is received and derive their enjoyment from the pursuit of creativity and self-expression. That those things are enough to sustain you through all of the work and angstiness. But I am not one of those writers. More that while I don't really desire Taylor Swiftian levels of fame, I want audiences and readers to connect to my work on a smaller scale. 

With all the internet buzzing lately on the sad state of traditionally published titles that barely earn their advances (as a poet who mostly self-publishes and has never had an advance even from trad published releases), I watched last night as every single person who passed by seemed to have not just a piece, but a load of band merch--t-shirt, giant posters--not to mention forking over hefty ticket prices. It seemed a crazy juxtaposition with books that most writers have to promote within an inch of their lives and sometimes even that makes nary a dent in book sales. Or even visual artists who are struggling to be seen and supported amidst ever-changing google and social media algorithms.

Occasionally people will say to concentrate on your art or craft and making something amazing and the audience will come, but I feel like that is mostly not even true in the least. It's more a mix of factors like community and chance that I see working far more efficiently than anything about the work itself.

more from the haunted dollhouse

 

This series of bot collabs continues to grow....

notes & things | 4/28/2024

I have returned from  Rockford, where I had an excellent birthday weekend that included pizza and cake, a jaunt out to the drive-in for some 80's horror fun in the form of Poltergeist and Creepshow, and a round of D&D yesterday. An excellent start to a new decade in which I am somehow older than I feel or imagine. 

Before I left town, I saw to a few creative things, including ordering a batch of new journals for the shop and making some fun pieces that may be accompanying a new series of poems that is underway for this latter half of NaPoWriMo. I also mocked up a cover for my next longer book (see below) even though it is pretty far out on the horizon, though I suppose it's good to get a jump on it since next thing you know, the spring and summer we wait so long for will be ending. Not sure on the font just yet, but the image is locked in. I'm also considering which project will make up the May zine, which I will start pulling together next week. It may well be the governess poems that have been just sitting there for months. I've been culling inspo from things like Haunting of Bly Manor, Jane Eyre, and Rebecca for my haunted dollhouse visual project, so these poems and collages are definitely in a similar vibe. 

As for spring, it seems to have finally dug in its roots, so today is a mild 70 and I've been able to open the windows at least for now. The more enthusiastic trees are blossoming and blooming everywhere you look as it usually is by the time the end of this month rolls around. Still, it also seems impossible that we have made it to May when it feels like the year has just begun.

I have been making the last of the decisions on the batch of books coming the second half of this year as soon as I've finished the remaining books in the queue. Though May of course means that a new cycle of submissions begins for next year's books. If you have not heard from me yet and still have a submission out, it's likely because I am still re-reading the second-round qualifiers and you're among them. I'm hoping to have those all ironed out in the next couple of weeks. 

 

bots and book covers

 

Yesterday morning I was waiting for the plumbers to come fix my kitchen sink and working through some cover designs for the press and started thinking about my own next book, RUINPORN, which likely is not due til early 2025 since it needs a firm editing hand, proofing, and interior design that isn't yet a priority. But I am loving this impromptu mock-up using some of the images I have been futzing around with with the bots. I initially planned to use one of the home improvement collages, but this spooky little bit won my heart over and feels madly appropriate for a book about deaths and endings ( as a human, as a daughter, as a poet, as a lover, as a society coming out of lockdowns amid a strange, strange world.)

Sometimes mining the bots for usable images and entering complex prompts is like fishing and hoping you will actually get something good (tilt shift photos are particularly prone to oddities when you start mixing people in. ) I usually find only bits and pieces, but this bit of loveliness came out of set of prompts that wasn't looking for this much weirdness (though the bots occasionally surprise me.) Somehow it's just right. 

haunted dollhouse

 

I've been working on a set of haunted dollhouse AI experiments that are turning out to be great fun and getting some weirdly creepy and atmospheric results. Take a look HERE for the ones finished so far...

poetry and po(v)erty

 

When I was in grad school working on my lit degree in the late 90s, my final semester I took a class called "Writing as a Woman's Profession," which looked at the careers and work of female writers through a lens of economics and discussions of making a living with them (or patronage or spousal support or generational wealth.) I was reminded of this course a couple weeks back I clicked on an article about the lit world (at least the fiction lit world) and how economics and money plays very little role in the writing of many of today's in-demand writers. Mostly because they typically come from (or at least have) the kind of money that gives (or at least once gave) them the freedom to spend their lives devoted to words vs being the sort of writer who struggles to balance financial concerns against artistic ones. Money is not an issue in their work, mostly because its not an issue period.

I always knew, having grown up with parents in the lower third of middle class (or the upper third of lower/working class depending on the year) being a writer would not be easy. That even saying you wanted to be a writer made you sound like you were saying you wanted to be a mermaid or a ballerina. Completely unrealistic and unlikely. Despite having a fairly bookish childhood where reading was prioritized and creativity encouraged (my dad a huge reader of many things and my mom was a hobby painter of figurines and decor items when I was younger.)  While my mom stayed home and babysat neighborhood kids in my early years, she later went back to work as a mail clerk/ phone operator for a manufacturer. My dad, who was laid off from a payroll job as computers hit the scene in the mid-80s, later worked as an airport janitor and postal worker.  Between the two of them, they somehow managed to produce two very artsy children (my sister, who works for a non-rpofit,  is a visual artist and into random craftiness.) So while there was a certain bit of whimsy or fancy allowed, I was still expected to turn my interests into something like a solid career. My first plan was, of course, to teach, either high school or college. When I discovered I was very unsuited to that, it was libraries. Writing was intended to be something done on the side for enrichment and enjoyment, but certainly no one was making any money from stories or words.

And perhaps I should clarify that no one still makes money from writing POETRY. However, to my own amazement sometimes, I've been lucky enough to hobble out a living the past couple years writing other kinds of things--design articles, DIY tutorials, neighborhood and city guides. The world of journalism that once supported writers like Hemingway or Dorothy Parker is probably long gone, but there is still writing work to be had with some experience, hunting, and SEO savvy. It is a vastly different world than the one of printed magazines and newspapers. I can eek out something of a living by writing, but its certainly not like "middle-class comfortable" by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet this morning, I woke with the knowledge of how lucky I am that I get to spend my day among words, if not my own poems til later today, still pieces that are engaging and interesting to me. Or even that, when I was working a 40-hour-a-week job, I was able to do the sort of things poets do--publish work, write books, get my MFA in creative writing, do occasional readings, engage in community--all on the side. They are two very different ways of existing, and believe me, I like this one far more. I am a little more in control of income and my head is clearer and less stressed. I still put in long hours when you combine poems with editing and freelancing, but it feels more realistic and tenable. 

But the article did bring up the ever-present question of how economic class plays into who has time to devote to things like residencies and fellowships, and just the ability to take time away from work or family to devote to creativity. And who gets shut out of those places and conversations because they are too busy trying to survive. An example being that even if I approved of AWP charging such exorbitant fees for booksellers and attendees, I could not take off the days of the conference from writing and still make my rent or buy groceries as a freelancer with no paid vacation. The numbers just don't quite reach to miss several days of income in addition to registration and travel costs. While I have encountered far many more poets struggling their way though caregiving obligations and day jobs, I am still somehow not all that surprised when I learn a new favorite writer is like the child of Hollywood parents or the New York publishing industry, or even just the children of doctors and lawyers. It makes it easier to drop everything to attend a grad program or do a free internship that leads to the sort of networking it takes to really push hard on your writing career. 

tortured poets

This weekend you will no doubt find me, headphones on, listening my way though TS's mammoth release, which I usually partake in bits rather than all at once to full process.  The news on the web, however, is that it is much more about a short and heated relationship more than her big break up of a long relationship we all thought it might be (I would argue we already got that with Midnights.) I am not one to follow all the tabloid particulars and am more interested in the songwriting itself, but as I was scrolling social media and thinking about using writing/songwriting as a catharisis and a purging, I get it completely. The good relationships, or even the ones that just run their course, are not the ones that haunt you. 

While there is art to be found in good and healthy relationships, there is just much less. Or maybe that happiness makes you need to purge less on the page. In almost 10 years, I have one short series and a handful of poems about my current relationship, the latter which are just mentioned in poems entirely about other things. Even the series that started as a Valentine became something else entirely. Compare that to another bad relationship that spun me for quite a while that cropped up in MAJOR CHARACTERS IN MINOR FILMS and then again in SEX & VIOLENCE, at least in terms of specifics. While many of the men in my poems are amalgamations, that specific one gets mentioned more than others. Another relationship/situationship appears in SALVAGE, but not really anywhere else. An ex from the early aughts who recently kindly bought a copy of my recent book shows up in maybe two passing mentions in my entire body of work, though we knew each other and remained amicable afterward. Other men, including one, a work friendship one summer, I could have loved intensely had things been different, pop in and out amid the waves. Most men I dated, around a dozen over two decades, get a detail pilfered and Frankensteined onto other poetry storylines.

Last year, I wrote a series called "hotter" that was subtitled "a little book of ex-orcisms" because it felt like a purge, a release, and it sounds much like that's what TS was hoping TTPD would be.  I don't know if it worked, because sometimes, when I am writing poems more tied to personal experience (rather than Persephone or Alice in Wonderland) picking at those scabs and fingering the scars is the easiest habit to fall into. And I can say pretty much I doubt any of my exes, even the one who remains a friend, reads things in this space. Besides that one who has always supported my writing, I don't think the other ones read my work at all, which is probably for the best. 

Sometimes it makes me feel very foolish to think how little they probably think of me at all, and yet here I am, rearranging the ghosts dutifully whenever I write, even from a happy and content place in real life. The creative landscape is still a rocky and dark place even if the real life one is very different, even now when I am definitely writing more horror-focused work.

milestones and memory

  I was musing today about turning a half-century old in a little over a week and how these milestone birthdays continually feel like I should be having some sort of massive birthday crisis with each turn of the decade. But mostly I do not. 30 feels like I was still sort of a child, and 40 was actually a happy time.  Of course, the crises have come at various points along the way, but most were much less crisis and maybe just points of growth or change. I go back to a few years ago, pre-covid, when I was having sobbing breakdowns with a friend over how things were good, but that they only could get worse. Like I was settled in my life on so many counts and this felt fraught with danger and uncertainly, not familiar and comfortable like it should. Only that there would be more loss than gain. And of course, there has been a lot of loss certainly--the kind that everyone begins to feel this far enough along in life. But I was kind of wrong about gains and change, because that has come too. 

I usually say that I quit the library as part of The Great Resignation, or at least the tail end of it, but really those seeds were being sewn as early as 2019 I suppose. It just took covid and lockdowns to speed it along. It was the scariest and possibly the best decision I've made in a very long time and has bought a wealth of things my way, including more money and freedom and ways to stretch my skills. Even creatively, having cast off or changed the ways I think about publishing and audience have made a huge difference in my relationship to writing and art. With the freedom that freelancing brings in terms of time and flexibility, I've had more time to devote to creative things, as well as have something like a life outside these things, which I never suspected I would. And the creative work, it feels like it's in such a good place, even if that place feels a little lonely sometimes. 

I also didn't foresee the good things that would come even amidst the bad things. In the past decade, I managed to lose both parents, a couple of cats, saw the firey end of a couple bad relationships, but also the start of a new one that has stuck. I still get itchy thinking about the precariousness of happiness and luck, but try to enjoy the good and keep anxiety brain at bay. The brain that says it will all come tumbling down at some point even though you have no reason to believe it will. I've also learned to look for what feel like losses but actually are gains in disguise (moving out of the studio in the Fine Arts was a big one of these.)

I barely remember turning 20, though it must have happened. Somewhere, my handwritten journals are no doubt more specific, but I remember reading a lot and doing a lot of campus activities like leadership seminars (they obviously did not take.) I remember having a class on lit and psychology where we read Turn of the Screw and Heart of Darkness. I remember my first creative writing class devoted to short fiction, during which the teacher, a visiting writer, suggested my long sentences were far more suited to poetry. Otherwise, that spring is a blur of late-night Denny's coffee, sleeping on the floor of various dorm rooms on occasion, and rehearsing directing class scenes. 

When I turned 30, in many ways I felt on the cusp of something. I'd been back in the city almost four years at that point. I was still bright and shiny in the library and just thankful I had a job at all. I was still in my first year of my MFA program and working on my first book manuscript and looking in vain for a publisher. It would take another year, but I was doing a lot of cool creative things like local open-mic readings, placing poems in journals, and winning contests with tidy cash prizes and getting a fair bit of attention (well at least as much as poets ever get.)  I would also be releasing my very first dgp book later that fall and making my own chapbooks. I was just starting to make art and installations, all new for a girl devoted primarily to words. It all felt very much like a beginning to something like the career I hoped to make happen. The things I wanted to create. 

A decade later, at 40, I was certainly more comfortable in that skin, having published a couple more books and established the press. Having done many of the things poets do in the intervening decade in terms of publishing and sharing work. Of exploring new art mediums and crafty things like jewelry and soap making for a while when I had the etsy shop. Much happened in that decade on the personal front, mostly bad disguised as good, but that was all still shaking out in that next year or so.

As for 50, who knows? Even just this last year alone has brought some great things. New writing and art projects, new adventures in other genres. The freeing up of J's schedule that allows us to do so much more in the world besides work and sleep, as well as actually get to spend more time together since moving into the apartment.  My first tattoos (5 total and more on the way as I work on the patchwork sleeve.)  Other things that are coming down the pipeline that aren't yet nailed down in specifics to speak about.

My impending birthday plans include a visit to my sister and a trip out the drive-in again (especially exciting given that the last trip was snowed out.) In my head, I still feel like I'm 26 and just bobbing along, despite my more obvious signs of middle age (squinting when looking at receipt numbers, the body cracking like a glow stick when I stand up after sitting too long, not really wrinkles, but more noticeable shadows on my face in certain light. Surely more grey hairs under the dye I've been applying monthly for the past three decades,. (Though I swear to god even those have abated a little after leaving the library, along with my feelings of constant overwhelm and dread.)