Amidst the end of semester chaos (my dining room is beginning to look like the library, books everywhere and no end in sight), I was thinking about about how, overall, it's been a pretty great year in terms of writing. I managed to finish the poems for a couple projects--archer avenue and girl show--and spiffied up my second manuscript and found a home for it at Dusie. And of course, the fever almanac's release, and my impending chap from NMP (and being a finalist there). Also poems in a couple of my most coveted publications--Melic Review and Caffeine Destiny (ones I'd been dying to get into from the beginning). And others delightfully in Milk, Agni, Rhino, DIAGRAM, alice blue, CPR, Pebble Lake Review, 42 opus, Foursquare, Backwards City, and others I'm probably forgetting right now. On a local scale, being featured in after hours, a whole passel of readings, and teaching the CPL web workshop. Publishing wise, four issues of wicked alice (well, soon to be four) and the print annual and seven chapbooks for dgp.
And next year? First task is rounding out the Cornell poems and working with Lauren on the final product. I'd like to start sending out girl show after the new year, or at least a version of it. After the whole Tupelo/Dorset fiasco, I'm not so keen on contests, though I could no doubt use the cash for the press once the student loan cushion dries up next summer. Over the summer, I plan to dig in seriously on the newest manuscript, dulcet, and see where it goes (I've messed around with it for a couple years now, but hadn't been able to find the right angle to approach until just recently.) And there all those dgp chaps, and some more visual projects I have my head wrapped around. New poems coming soon in Dusie, WOMB, The Tiny, DIAGRAM and Slipstream.
And of course, finishing the program, no small feat after four years of doing it half-ass (er...I mean part-time). Though no doubt it's done me good in term of opening up my writing, making me better, even with all the grumbling and whining over papers and the occasional vivisection (or evisceration). Also, the whole sort of feeling very much in the fish-bowl sometimes. Like I want to hide my work until it's done. After it's done, even. But this is to be expected I suppose in any workshop-driven program.
