Hello everyone! It's great to be back! We took a lil mini break for the holidays (Christmas, New Year, and Lunar New Year) to put together some things for my ESL business, do some of my MBA courses, and semi-relax, so it's great to see you all again! I wanted to share some things I noticed the extended holidays with you guys that might help you in your poetry writing and publication journey! First of all, it's a new year! Which means that the Best of the Net Anthology has been decided. Let's check it out (and try not to be too jealous that we aren't there ourselves). You can check it out here. I'm personally drawn to "Jiaozi" by Lucy Zhang in part because I literally wrote a poem with the same name in a different format earlier that year myself! It's a great chance to see how I could better my own writing with similar subject matter, not a chance that you get all the time. Hopefully you can find a work similar in the selection as well. I get the feeling that prose poems are becoming quite common these days. Or maybe they're just calling to me. Quite a few of my works have changed from syllable counting to prose recently and it seems like more and more literary magazines are looking for pieces in a more contemporary style. I'm definitely on board! As we talk about the evolution of our work over time, I think it's necessary for me to mention how my large work collection, standing at near 60 poems, has been cut back to a chunky chapbook size at 40 poems. I took about six months or so off from even thinking about the collection after not hearing back from any publication places and just recently opened it back up and noticed how some pieces just didn't seem to work in the way that I had initially thought they did. So I ruthless cut them. I CUT THEM ALLL!
But seriously, those works are now on the sidelines waiting for word donation. With that said, I now have hearty chapbook that needs a home. I've been scouring the internet for small publication presses for my work and I've found out a few interesting things: 1. Some presses want you to have published up to 30% of the pieces already. I did not know that. I literally set those pieces aside to keep them nice and pristine for first time publication with my collection (as it was). This has made me a bit anxious.
2. As we might have expected, COVID really did shut down some small presses. Many are NOT accepting submissions right now.
3. Chapbooks are usually 20-30 pages, not 40.
These discoveries do not spark joy. BUT I have one interesting resource for you that does spark joy; it sparks a lot of fucking joy. Check this out. Anna Lena Phillips Bell and Ryan Bloom created this awesome spreadsheet of chapbooks accepting presses and they seeeeem to keep it updated. So, come, message these places and submit manuscripts with me. Let's go insane together! This is really all I wanted to update you on here, but let me go ahead and tell you what some of the future blog posts are going to be about. I got my hands on some of the Pushcart Prize anthologies from 2017-now and will be looking at some of my favorite pieces with you guys. Hopefully we can learn something together! I am excited to announce that I have some pieces coming out soon: "flight of the myna" Harbor Review, 2024 (upcoming) "Jiaozi" Stanchion’s Away From Home Anthology 2024 (upcoming)
"Living like Oak" Orca A Literary J0urnal 2024 (upcoming)
Getting 2024 started off right! I think I've published pretty consistently over the years, so I'm really hopeful about at least getting a chapbook out, even though they make no money. It would look great when applying for creative writing professor positions as well. Too bad the competition is crazy fierce! We'll just have to wait and see. I'm pulling Where Nightmares Roam as I'm hoping to actually write fiction and publish it more traditionally. It was cool to see I got a bunch of readers, but the quality of work on the site isn't as high as I had hoped it would be and I want to be a little more snooty with my writing, if that makes sense. There aren't any other updates on my end. I have an ESL company (doing teacher training these days! Woo!), am getting my MBA, and writing. Best of luck to all ya'll! See you soon!
-Mea