My friend Jeremy has alerted me to Knockout's first
poetry contest:
KNOCKOUT LITERARY MAGAZINE POETRY CONTEST
Knockout, a print literary magazine that publishes a 50-50 mix of work by LGBTQ
and straight authors, announces its first poetry contest. Judge: James
Bertolino. Winner receives $100 gift certificate to Powell's Books (redeemable
online) and publication of their winning poem. All poems submitted considered
for publication in Knockout. Submissions of up to three poems of any length must
be received by August 31, 2008. $5 entry fee per submission. Multiple
submissions allowed. Simultaneous submissions allowed (with prompt notification
if accepted elsewhere). For complete guidelines and for more information about
Knockout, visit www.knockoutlit.org/contest.htm
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Knockout Poetry Contest
Friday, August 1, 2008
Corporate Folly Claims Another Beloved Venue
Bellingham's beloved Newstand is being forced to close after 18
years of local ownership. Not only is The Newstand a great
place to buy all manner of publications, it's
also famous (at least locally) for fighting, and winning,
a court case involving censorship.
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/479887.html
Over the past decade I've sent so many students into the shop
to look at creative writing journals, as well as GLBT
and news magazines. This impacts me as a teacher;
I'm also sad to think my morning coffee run won't involve
stopping by The Newstand to chat with Ira and
look at newspapers from around the globe.
We're lucky to have a number of really solid,
high-quality, locally-owned shops in and around
downtown Bellingham -- but for how long?
years of local ownership. Not only is The Newstand a great
place to buy all manner of publications, it's
also famous (at least locally) for fighting, and winning,
a court case involving censorship.
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/479887.html
Over the past decade I've sent so many students into the shop
to look at creative writing journals, as well as GLBT
and news magazines. This impacts me as a teacher;
I'm also sad to think my morning coffee run won't involve
stopping by The Newstand to chat with Ira and
look at newspapers from around the globe.
We're lucky to have a number of really solid,
high-quality, locally-owned shops in and around
downtown Bellingham -- but for how long?
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
New work and book tour ahead
The latest issue of Mid-American Review (Volume XXVIII, No. 2)
includes my short piece "Nebraska."
I was moved by Andrew Grace's prose poems in the same issue.
Lovely work.
Love Is A Map I Must Not Set On Fire (VRZHU Press)
is almost ready to go; should be in print within weeks.
Tinderbox Lawn (Rose Metal Press) will be out in November.
Details to come. Thanks to all involved in the production process.
I'll be doing a book tour in November, December, and January;
dates in Vancouver BC, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, and
elsewhere. I'll post dates here as they're confirmed.
If you know of a bookstore/college/coffee shop within driving
distance of Seattle that would be interested in having me read,
send me an email and I'll try to arrange it: carolguess@aol.com
If you are interested in looking at either text for a class,
I'm happy to chat with you via email about ways of opening
up an electronic discussion with your students. Again, email me...
Happy summer, folks.
includes my short piece "Nebraska."
I was moved by Andrew Grace's prose poems in the same issue.
Lovely work.
Love Is A Map I Must Not Set On Fire (VRZHU Press)
is almost ready to go; should be in print within weeks.
Tinderbox Lawn (Rose Metal Press) will be out in November.
Details to come. Thanks to all involved in the production process.
I'll be doing a book tour in November, December, and January;
dates in Vancouver BC, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, and
elsewhere. I'll post dates here as they're confirmed.
If you know of a bookstore/college/coffee shop within driving
distance of Seattle that would be interested in having me read,
send me an email and I'll try to arrange it: carolguess@aol.com
If you are interested in looking at either text for a class,
I'm happy to chat with you via email about ways of opening
up an electronic discussion with your students. Again, email me...
Happy summer, folks.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney interview
Find it here, on the VRZHU Press blog:
http://vrzhu.typepad.com/vrzhu/2008/05/interview-with.html
Gabbert and Rooney's new book, That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, is out from Otoliths.
Speaking of tiny insane, my grades are turned in, and I can finally
get back to your emails (sorry, folks) and my new manuscript-
in-progress (prose poetry, with airplanes and dogs). I'm listening to
The National right now, and feeling grateful to Shannon Minter
and the brave state of California. How are YOU?
http://vrzhu.typepad.com/vrzhu/2008/05/interview-with.html
Gabbert and Rooney's new book, That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, is out from Otoliths.
Speaking of tiny insane, my grades are turned in, and I can finally
get back to your emails (sorry, folks) and my new manuscript-
in-progress (prose poetry, with airplanes and dogs). I'm listening to
The National right now, and feeling grateful to Shannon Minter
and the brave state of California. How are YOU?
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Kary Wayson reads in Bellingham at Western Washington University
POETRY READING
KARY WAYSON
TUESDAY MAY 27th
6:30pm COMMUNICATIONS 105
Western Washington University
Bellingham, WA
This event is free and open to the public.
Kary Wayson's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Nation, FIELD, and The Best American Poetry 2007. Her chapbook, Dog & Me, was published in 2004 by LitRag Press. Kary teaches poetry writing classes at The Richard Hugo House in Seattle.
Find examples of her work on the web here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/feature.html?id=179981
(a critical essay on Sylvia Plath)
http://www.rivetmagazine.org/2007/02/26/frederico-garcia/
(a poem in Rivet magazine)
KARY WAYSON
TUESDAY MAY 27th
6:30pm COMMUNICATIONS 105
Western Washington University
Bellingham, WA
This event is free and open to the public.
Kary Wayson's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Nation, FIELD, and The Best American Poetry 2007. Her chapbook, Dog & Me, was published in 2004 by LitRag Press. Kary teaches poetry writing classes at The Richard Hugo House in Seattle.
Find examples of her work on the web here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/feature.html?id=179981
(a critical essay on Sylvia Plath)
http://www.rivetmagazine.org/2007/02/26/frederico-garcia/
(a poem in Rivet magazine)
Friday, April 18, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Obsession Exercise
I've got a great class this quarter, a smart group of graduate students willing to take real risks in their writing.
Here's a nifty exercise I concocted just for them, based on two fantastic (and very different) texts: Linda Smukler's Home In Three Days. Don't Wash. and Zachary Schomburg's The Man Suit:
English 502
Home In Three Days. Don't Wash. exercise: This is a book about obsession, and about the difficulty of translating a passionate lived experience into art. I want you to ask yourself (now and over time) where you draw the line between recording emotional intensity (as in a journal, as in a conversation with a friend, as with a therapist, as in your mind) and creating art out of emotional intensity (which involves editing, revision, alterations, a certain degree of detachment, and ultimately the desire to share deep emotion with a wide audience).
I also want you to think about the difference between a text like The Man Suit, which is driven by wordplay, humor, whimsy, history, visual images; and a text like Home In Three Days which is driven by emotion, kinesthetic impulse, hunger, characterization. What does each text do well? What does each text do less well or not at all? What can you learn from each text?
Your exercise for Home In Three Days is to mimic the kind of obsessive drive that lies behind works written in and out of passion. Other examples I happen to like – you can make your own list to share with the class -- include Sylvia Plath's Ariel, Carole Maso's Aureole, Jeanette Winterson's Written On The Body, Heather Lewis' Notice, Rebecca Brown's Excerpts From A Family Medical Dictionary, and Richard Siken's Crush.
Rather than allow you to search your own life for a living (or haunting) muse, I want you to fixate on something invented, something imaginary, and concoct a fictitious obsession.
Your assignment is to find an intriguing inanimate object located in some public place in Bellingham. (Your house and campus are verboten; you must go off-campus for this exercise.) Examples might include: that fantastic spray-painted dinosaur in an alley downtown; a junked car on someone's lawn; the phone booth used by dealers on Railroad Avenue; a painting in the museum; one of the wooden tables at The Temple Bar.
Find an object and become obsessed with the object. Get weird about it. Worry your friends. Do not take the object out of its location (don't take the phone booth home). Worship from afar, or up close but in public. It's fine if this veers into nonfiction (if, say, the phone booth reminds you of your ex-girlfriend, and you end up writing about her indirectly). It's fine if this veers into the fictionally fantastic, or becomes absurd. But there must be an obsessive drive to the writing, a force, a power, the sense that everything is about to get out of control really fast. You want to move your reader with this piece, break some rules, and create discomfort. Think about the contrast between chaos and control; defy the notion that good writing somehow soothes your reader. At the same time, be sure to allow space for revision later – when you revise, try to cut out melodramatic language, clichés, and sentimental dross. Take note, then, of what you cut and what you revise. When is too much just right? When is too much too much? You might want to save your deleted passages on a separate sheet of paper (like the bloopers reel on a DVD), and bring them along to discuss with the class.
Here's a nifty exercise I concocted just for them, based on two fantastic (and very different) texts: Linda Smukler's Home In Three Days. Don't Wash. and Zachary Schomburg's The Man Suit:
English 502
Home In Three Days. Don't Wash. exercise: This is a book about obsession, and about the difficulty of translating a passionate lived experience into art. I want you to ask yourself (now and over time) where you draw the line between recording emotional intensity (as in a journal, as in a conversation with a friend, as with a therapist, as in your mind) and creating art out of emotional intensity (which involves editing, revision, alterations, a certain degree of detachment, and ultimately the desire to share deep emotion with a wide audience).
I also want you to think about the difference between a text like The Man Suit, which is driven by wordplay, humor, whimsy, history, visual images; and a text like Home In Three Days which is driven by emotion, kinesthetic impulse, hunger, characterization. What does each text do well? What does each text do less well or not at all? What can you learn from each text?
Your exercise for Home In Three Days is to mimic the kind of obsessive drive that lies behind works written in and out of passion. Other examples I happen to like – you can make your own list to share with the class -- include Sylvia Plath's Ariel, Carole Maso's Aureole, Jeanette Winterson's Written On The Body, Heather Lewis' Notice, Rebecca Brown's Excerpts From A Family Medical Dictionary, and Richard Siken's Crush.
Rather than allow you to search your own life for a living (or haunting) muse, I want you to fixate on something invented, something imaginary, and concoct a fictitious obsession.
Your assignment is to find an intriguing inanimate object located in some public place in Bellingham. (Your house and campus are verboten; you must go off-campus for this exercise.) Examples might include: that fantastic spray-painted dinosaur in an alley downtown; a junked car on someone's lawn; the phone booth used by dealers on Railroad Avenue; a painting in the museum; one of the wooden tables at The Temple Bar.
Find an object and become obsessed with the object. Get weird about it. Worry your friends. Do not take the object out of its location (don't take the phone booth home). Worship from afar, or up close but in public. It's fine if this veers into nonfiction (if, say, the phone booth reminds you of your ex-girlfriend, and you end up writing about her indirectly). It's fine if this veers into the fictionally fantastic, or becomes absurd. But there must be an obsessive drive to the writing, a force, a power, the sense that everything is about to get out of control really fast. You want to move your reader with this piece, break some rules, and create discomfort. Think about the contrast between chaos and control; defy the notion that good writing somehow soothes your reader. At the same time, be sure to allow space for revision later – when you revise, try to cut out melodramatic language, clichés, and sentimental dross. Take note, then, of what you cut and what you revise. When is too much just right? When is too much too much? You might want to save your deleted passages on a separate sheet of paper (like the bloopers reel on a DVD), and bring them along to discuss with the class.
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