Burning Down the House

 New poem in Radar, alongside the work of poets such as Meghan Sterling, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, Heidi Seaborn, Sarah Dickenson Snyder, Chelsea Dingman, and more! Each poem is paired with artwork, except for mine which is paired with a video clip of my actual childhood home burning to the ground. 

The Cloudy House

The Cloudy House is a website all about 'the poetics of building a project book,' curated by Cynthia Marie Hoffman and Nick Lantz. It features interviews with Julie Carr, Shane McCrae, Simone Muench, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Sarah Blake, Nicky Beer, and more, all talking about their project books. If you love project books, like I do, you've probably been following this website for some time now.

Today The Cloudy House introduces a new feature, called the Spring Round-up, discussing book projects in progress. They have showcased the work of six poets with books in progress (and for the publishers among you, that means these manuscripts are looking for presses). This includes the work of Maggie Smith, Vandana Khanna, Joni Wallace, Victoria Chang. J L Conrad, and me. You can learn more about the projects of each of these poets and their current projects, including my current project WHITEOUT, about the death of my uncle on Denali.

Thanks, Cynthia Marie & Nick!

Meta-Project

I've blogged about the book of poems vs. the project book in the past, more than once in fact. Recently I've found a site devoted to the project book, asking such questions as:

"What makes a book of poetry a project book, and what separates a successful project from an unsuccessful one? How does taking on a project affect a poet’s writing process, and what does the proliferation of project books in general signify for contemporary poetry?"

Hosted by Cynthia Marie Hoffman and Nick Lantz, The Cloudy House features interviews with poets who've explored the project book, including Caki Wilkinson, Shane McCrae, Oliver de la Paz, Julie Carr, and more.

It's a terrific resource.

Tracking the Muse

Blackbird has reinstated its "Tracking the Muse" feature, in which contributors to the journal, including Joshua Gottlieb-Miller and Corey van Landingham, comment on their creative processes. Cynthia Marie Hoffman follows a process similar to mine when working on a project (a series/cycle of poems), while other processes described contain new ideas for me.

I love reading these kinds of things. I'm not sure that they help my process in any particular way, but in general they give me a sense that there are writers out there working hard, and that I should be working hard. Not in a competitive way, but in an inspirational way. (Most of the time, that's how it works anyway.)