Wanting to Be the Seabird
I have completed the first version of my chapbook. I’m just going to let that sit for a second…..
Ok. A weight has been lifted. But I’m still far from done. So many presses to possibly submit to, so much money for each submission, so the presses must be carefully selected (experimental poetry–out. LGBT, not my category. And so on.) And each press wants something different of this chapbook. This one wants 28-30 pages, this one 18-20, this one exactly 23. So I am creating different versions, which requires adjusting the order, as poems need to flow into and away from each other like water, or, at least, that is what I am attempting. Meanwhile, I am writing, writing, writing, trying to generate new work that will require revision and rewriting for the next round of poems to send out to journals, to get my 1 out of 5 accepted. I am working hard, pushing myself to get better and learn. I am having fun, but spring is soft outside, and I am yearning to be like the seabirds I saw once in Ireland, keeping still on a wave of wind, “…resting in the faint wind/bare as a rock, making the smallest adjustments—alula, angle of centreline/content to go nowhere.” (From Galway, to be published in Entropy next week) Yes, I am quoting my own poem. But a blog at its very heart is self-absorbed, so it should be no great surprise….