We are well into August now, and the end of summer is just visible up over the horizon. As always, so much that I was intending to get accomplished over the season that probably will not happen entirely by Labor Day, but much did (and still is.) In the library, I have a good start on fall planning, including the Little Indie Press Fest, which I am working on now, plus other workshops and panel discussions set for September. I intended to just focus on programming and some library-related writing projects, but the staffing changes had me investing portions of my day in doing ILL I hadn't intended, so the writing projects have been tabled temporarily until we hire for that position this fall. I'm also excited about BEAUTIFUL MONSTROSITIES and have been getting some great submissions so far and beginning to think about the film panel we'll be hosting in late October.
Creatively, it's been a sound summer, continuing on from spring's relative productiveness. I've been able to finish a slew of smaller series during this time, including exquisite damage (the horror inspired fragments) and now the Slender Man pieces, which my sister is at work on the visual elements now. There are also bits of other things, including pieces for the serial project mentioned below and some other pieces that will be part of automagic manuscript, more poet's zodiac poems. Some days I am successful at daily writing routines and other times, other stuff still manages to get in the way, but then I try to play catch up on the weekends if I can. Hopefully by next summer I'll have some longer manuscripts ready to send out into the world, but meanwhile there will be lots of little artists book and zine projects coming down the pipeline--both written and visual. You can still get in on subscription action here.
Also, the Tiny Letter that brings you fragments of exquisite damage is growing a little bit every week. I am really interested in the way the serialized format connects with readers. Or maybe more the way all formats connect with readers. There seems to be so many ways to function as a writer in the word that goes beyond the usual paths (I guess I'm thinking of the traditional route of sending submissions to journals, chaps and full-lengths to presses and contests and the limitations as such.) Maybe it's more about diversifying your creative agenda--reaching out in all directions--sending to journals and presses you love, but also embracing other dissemination methods, be they issuing chaps or zines, doing readings or performances, video poems (I really want to make this happen soon), using instagram or other social media, blogging or serializing work, installations or public art poetry. It's all very exciting--I feel like it approaches poetry in the same way I would visual art endeavors (or any art endeavors besides writing) and frees up some of the frustrations I've always felt about the lit world--that insularity of audience confined to traditional venues of publication.
I am just beginning to dip a foot into the dgp manuscripts that I have been lucky enough to be entrusted with and already am very pleased with the caliber of what every year seems to come our way. Or maybe that it's that I feel like people get the sort of stuff I like to publish in a way that other editorial things I've done (wicked alice, or helping to judge contests and such) where there is such a mixed bag. I read through 20 books this week and there are at least 10 that are sound and completely publishable. I will have to narrow it down to 2-3 I really love, but will hold off making decisions until I wade further in and see what else is there in the pool. I've also been doing some cover designs this summer that I am very proud of, so I made a little collage of the ones I had a hand in (and this doesn't even include the great covers that were done by outside artists or the author themselves. I find I go through stages, like a blue stage , or a green stage, or a pattern or diagrammatic stage with design elements. One month, I was apparently very into orange,
Next weekend, I'll be reading at the Danny's Reading Series with some other dgp readers they've pulled together. Not sure what I want to read--maybe some of the love poems I realized the other day that since I was sick the day of my WomanMade reading in the spring and couldn't go, and then we had to cancel the Apocalypse reading at the library, that I haven't actually been able to read since last fall at Wit Rabbit, which may have been another century ago given the past year and everything being of the "before" or "after" bad things happening. I am looking for the day when time and memory isn't marked quite so much by this. When time goes back to being more of a continuity and less marked by tragedies, but I'm not sure it will.
