mimsy and outgrabe

You know what's awesome? I'm now eligible for old-lady poetry awards. That's right. Not that there are a ton of over-40 awards, but when they come around, I could totally throw my purple hat in the ring. * A quick internet search has corrected me. I would throw my RED hat in the ring. Also, I don't recommend doing that internet search. The results are so saccharine you'll have to bleach your eyes. I took one for the team, ya'll. * Anyway, I'm still working on submitting my full-length to lots of places (i.e. just throwing my hard-earned money at the universe, essentially) AND today is the last day of classes/office hours before Spring Break, so I'm looking forward to my micro-sabbatical next week. * If it happens. My dad's health is a little precarious at the moment, and we might have to take a quick trip south to help out. * I plan on working on "Accountability Partners" -- my play that is not my verse play ...

Yesterday I received the coolest email from a couple in New Jersey, fellow participants in that Poetry Postcard Project Little Miss Talkalot and I participated in back in August 2013. They were on the receiving end of one of her postcards (you can see it and read the poem here ) and they wanted permission to reprint the poem along with a photo of a windmill from their backyard on their Christmas card this year. Also, they needed to know Little Miss Talkalot's actual name, because I don't believe she wrote a byline on this particular postcard. I was only able to talk about it with her last night right before she went to bed, after an entire evening of shuttling back and forth between our house and the middle of town -- first, violin lesson drop off and pick up, and then a late-night (7:30!) trip to the school offices where she gave a report from her Student Council to the PTA members. The little girl is turning into her mama -- meetings up the wazoo, involvement in absolute...

Two things, my lovelies, and then I have to take Vampire Toddler to the doctor for a Mystery Rash. AND find someone to cover for me at work today. My life is nothing if not exciting. ANYWAY: The fall 2015 issue of the online publication Menacing Hedge was released on Sunday, October 11. It includes five chapters of my fairy tale poem as well as three of the "conversation" poems that interrupt the narrative between chapters. Kelly Boyker is an amazingly generous editor and I'm thrilled that the staff gave my poem so much space in their magazine. It's really gratifying to see this work out in the world, too. I'm still making my way through the rest of the work in the issue, but I'm quite in love with the conversation between Sarah B. Boyle and Sonya Vatomsky right now. It reminds me of the "interviews" in BOMB magazine, which I've loved since my undergrad days: two artists speaking with one another, people who are more or less sympatico. (N...

I went to sleep at two in the morning on Sunday night after grading until I was cross-eyed and when I got ready for bed I checked my email and I had a message from a student who said I have emailed you twice in the last month and have not received a response- please get back to me about my questions and so I stayed up another half hour because I felt the need to write her back and prove with a screen shot that yes, I'd forgotten to send her a reply to an email she sent that past Tuesday but I'd only received one email from her since early April, and I DID reply to the one from April, and I could tell that when I woke up two hours later with the alarm and the beginning of a migraine and the non-sleeping Vampire Toddler it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day. At breakfast Little Miss Talkalot decided she was too tired to eat breakfast and then The Boy decided that he was too tired to eat breakfast and then Vampire Toddler decided she wanted to eat Pir...

I held the drawing for the blog's Big Poetry Giveaway on Saturday, but because of life and children and grading and sunshine I wasn't able to get to the computer to post the results (and recap the excitement of the drawing!) until now. First, in preparation for the drawing, I attempted to gather all of the books I'll be mailing out tomorrow (or Tuesday or Wednesday, because let's be honest, the end of the semester never goes smoothly or as anticipated): As you might be able to tell, I wasn't successful with my gathering. Ooh, quick, let's play, "Which part of the Big Poetry Giveaway 2015 is missing?"  I'll wait.  . . . Yes, that's it! It's The Black Sea by Stephanos Papadopoulos. I left the copy I was giving away at the office (I've since picked it up), but for the sake of the photo I substituted with Papadopoulos' first book, "Lost Days," the cover of which -- fun fact -- features a fine painting by his ...

This week a virus in our household kind of blew up everyone's schedules. So: no poems worked on, a little tiny bit of reading done, some really annoying online "course" requirements tackled because they were the only thing I could do with a houseful of sick kids (i.e. I didn't really have to pay attention very closely nor do anything that would result in an actual product). AND we had a weird near-miss with Vampire Toddler last night, who is allergic to peanuts and ate some store-bought hummus with peanut-contaminated cumin in it. She had a minor reaction, just hives, but -- it was a reaction! Scary, and a reminder that we really have to go less-processed-food in consideration of Vampire Toddler's very real, very dangerous food allergy. This is going to be difficult for me, as I'm not super into organic-everything and also, sometimes, prepackaged food is a working mother's best friend. Anyway. We'll work it out. I'm going to put a call in...

One week of school completed, and I'm all sorts of in-the-weeds again. Not panicking especially yet, but that's because I'm deluding myself into thinking I have control by paying attention to my little list-making phone app (Wunderlist) and occasionally running (three times last week!) and then also kind-of sort-of staying on top of the laundry situation in my household. Yesterday I turned 38. I don't think this is especially significant except that it means I'm still eligible to have my manuscript rejected for the Yale Younger Poets Prize, because under 40 is still considered "younger," and I haven't had a book published yet. Also, they haven't published anything that looks or sounds remotely like my own work in  . . . maybe forever? . . . and yet I'll probably continue to send my MS in each year until I get the book published by someone else or I turn 40.  I really, really hope it's not the latter, but  . . . you know. OHMYG...

So, one thing I'm discovering in The Year+ Orientation to Having Three Children is that, surprise, you have to super-duper plan and prioritize. Priorities go something like this: Are the children dressed? Am I dressed? Does anyone smell or show visible signs of yesterday's sandwiches/spaghetti dinner/backyard dirt pile debacle? Will any of the speaking children complain audibly about not being fed? If the answer is yes to the first two questions and no to the last two, we can leave the house for school/camp/store/violin lesson/sports practice/babysitter etc. The bar is lower than it's ever been before, people. This is probably not a surprise to anyone with half a brain, but you should remember that through the course of giving birth to the aforementioned three children, I've lost an incredible amount of brain power. I believe it was A.P. who pointed out that -- three years after having The Boy -- I was just beginning to regain myself, to become more clear...

Yup, still here. I know you were worried. The Creative Writing Festival went well. There were some problems: the usual SCCC facilities/bureaucracy nonsense but nothing insurmountable. Allison Seay's reading was so lovely. I really love To See the Queen , and her preface to the poems and her subsequent delivery of them was intimate and clear and kind of raw, in the best way. Kelly Daniels is awesome -- A. and I had him over for dinner the night before the festival and they traded stories about breweries and craft beer and he was assaulted by my dogs and my children and not only survived, but seemed to enjoy himself. Colum McCann, too, rock star author that he is, was charming -- extremely down to earth, endearing everyone with his sense of humor and his self-deprecation. It was a good day after all. I've been doing some writing, but none of it here (obviously) and little of it on my creative work, like poetry, like the verse play. One of my duties at the college is to wri...