Lady Word of Mouth, culture-weaver--

Yesterday I thought quite a bit about the work of Lady Word of Mouth. I was forced to ponder how it does little good to be told that one's book was a "close runner-up" for a prize, as it proved yesterday, and to consider what else I can do for three recent books that flew into the world in close succession. Later I spent some hours talking with the newly-made Episcopal deacon, singer-songwriter, and founder of Mons Nubifer Sanctus (aka a dream, the Holy Cloud-Bearing Mountain, a center for contemplative prayer in the Catskills) about how to point arrows toward a new enterprise and raise funds. It's a similar puzzle to what one faces with books--how do you get the word out, how do you support a made thing, how do you make sure the gift you were called to give finds its recipient? An award is a little arrow pointing at the gift made, just as many other things are--an ad, say, or a review or a launch party or re-tweets and shares on a twitter or facebook account where one chats to readers and critics and other writers.

The world is filled with interesting gifts from the people who, curiously enough, are not always all that comfortable with making their own arrows to point to those gifts. Exploring the world of alternatives to the books, music, art, and culture heavily advertised and pushed by major companies and publishers is part of what we do to create the world we would like to see and live in.

All this to say we are back in business with Lady Word of Mouth today. Fly here to see Marjorie Hudson's new edition of Searching for Virginia Dare (Press 53, 2013.) You want to support small publishers and help Marjorie and other writers publishing outside the monoliths of the Big 5 this Advent season? Buy books as presents. Buy yourself a present. Every copy sold tells a publisher that they made the right decision to publish the work. Read, pass judgment, be a passing-the-word minion of Lady Word of Mouth!

Advice to would-be writers (for R. T.)

Another 2013 book tour picture--
in Cullowhee, NC with Paul and Lynn Digby--
Lynn behind the camera on this one...

 I've been trying to visit and support A Commonplace from Eastrod, the infant blog of R. T., but what a lot of events there are in Advent and before the school Christmas break! Tonight was the high school concert, where I immediately noticed that my youngest wasn't wearing his jeans under the school choir robes and that he had on some spectacular tie-dyed socks. Whee! It's hot under the lights and those big old choir robes...

R. T. aka Tim asks about advice for writers in his latest post, and that is a thing that changes each time one answers, so I thought that maybe it is time I answer that question once again; it's a question one often receives. So I'm going to muse on the e-page and find out what I think at the moment. I hope not to sound like a book-mad Mrs. Polonius. (Feel free to argue, add your own advice in the comments, etc.)

And here I am with painter Lynn Digby,
Paul behind the camera

Come back next year and I'll probably think something different. 

• Be a crazy, obsessed, wild reader at some time in your life, whether childhood or adulthood.
• If you have a tragedy in childhood or a difficult family, you don't have to be happy about it, but you have grit that may become a pearl. The world may not be your oyster, but you might be your own oyster, sooner or later.
• Don't worry about it if you are a woman and have children and can't meet the omnipresent "write every day" demand. 
• Your challenge is to make a thing that holds life in a net of words. This is almost impossible. There is no dishonor in failing, and even a failure may be transformative.
• Just be quiet and do the work. 
• Better yet, don't be a writer! (If you must, you'll do it anyway. And if you don't have to be one, this advice might save the world a lot of pedestrian books and some pernicious bestsellers.)
• And remember that worldly success is not the same thing as making something full of grace and truth. 
• If you believe in your innocence that worldly success must come, you may be destroyed by this belief. I have seen it happen to people, and such bitter change is tragic.
• Do not abuse the dead (particularly historical figures) in the creation of characters.
• The world owes you nothing. Do not expect something. But if it comes, say thank you.
• Listen to your teachers but later on show them that you can do the thing with flair that they said not (no, never!) to do.
• If what you want is worldly success and money, do something else entirely. It's a lot quicker and more sure.
• Read your novel/poem/story/thing-you-made aloud when you think you're done, particularly if you have what is known as a tin ear. Of course, nobody will tell you if you have a tin ear, so do it anyway.
• Grow bigger on the inside as you go along.
• And make your poems/narratives bigger on the inside as you go along.
• Don't apologize for your work.
• Forget about "finding yourself" or finding any other hard-to-pin-down quality. Just make the thing. You'll be making yourself, too.
• If you are a woman and a writer, do not think that you simply must be a superwoman. With hard work, it will be possible for you to do two large things well. (For me, that was first teaching and writing and later on raising three children and writing with a few events now and then on the side.) Be sure you choose the right things. This choice may be costly in a worldly way. Be clear on what you are about when you choose because regret in such situations can be strong.
• If you are a woman and choose to do more than two large things well, know that at least one of your pursuits will suffer. Make sure it is not your children, or you may be raising another generation of poets and writers. (That may happen anyway, but why tempt fate?)
• Do things you suspect you might not be able to do. 
• Push off the edge of the known world.

Poems in the scales, 2013: two contests

www.kelsaybooks.com

While my 2013 bouts of judging were not so arduous as the prior year's National Book Award stint (316 books plus rereads), they were illuminating. This time it was poetry in the scales.  For the Alrich Award I read a winnowed group and chose a winner and two finalists. I found all five to be interesting reads, and that's an encouraging thing for poetry!

Winner 2013 Aldrich Press Poetry Award 

Overtipping the Ferryman, R. G. Evans 

Judge’s statement 

While reading for the Aldrich Poetry Award, I tripped and fell into the world of a skeptic obsessed with what he doubts—who takes the symbols and stories of creation and wrests them to his own uses, though God and the skeletons under our skin are never far away, and lend power and support to his poems. The collection by R. G. Evans has the virtues of energy, largeness of subject, strong narrative, and humor that begins with the double meaning of the title, Overtipping the Ferryman. He surprises us in story and in metaphor, giving us the child who leaps from her crib like a toad, the man plunging beneath the sea like a bone anchor, the forked lightning of a woman’s body, the fusing of plucked music and apple. Wandering in his harsh, lively world, we may desire more hours, more life. But in that realm, spiky thistles and flowers of gall blossom along his path, that “seam between belief and what I know is true.”

 Finalists
 Marion Considers the Cello, Annabelle Moseley
 The View From Here, Sally Cook

Honorable Mention
A Lack of Sound, Cynthia Neely
The Ways I Lost You,  Rosalie Sanara Petrouske
Small Chimes, Julie Brooks Barbour
Before There Were Barbies, Lianne Spidel
Poetry With a Vengeance, Russell Bittner

All finalists and honorable mentions were offered a standard contract for publication by Aldrich Press. The winner receives a monetary award and 50 copies.

I did know one of the finalists, having been on a panel with her and owning one of her books, but I recognized none of the writers that I read, and the names had been removed from the manuscripts.

Dads of Disability

Alexander Dietz

The other contest I judged his year was for a forthcoming anthology (mostly essays) that will also include some fictions and poetry. Gary Dietz's 2014 anthology, Dads of Disability:  Stories For, By, and About Fathers of Children That Experience Disability (and the Women Who Love Them), offered $75. and publication to four poets, parents of disabled children. With this one, parents who were long-practicing poets had an advantage, and it is surprising how many of us know what it is to raise a child who is very different from other children. 

I found this one hard to judge in one way; many of the poems were heartrending, and I wanted to give all the parents who submitted poems about their disabled children a prize. All the poems were spilling over with news of ordinary grace and painful truth. There is no proper response to such heartfelt work except gratitude for the parent who sees his disabled child through the eyes of mercy and witnesses his or her love to the world. Thank you to all the parents who submitted poems.

In ABC order:

Patricia Wallace Jones, "Adapted Views and Inveterate" 

John C. Mannone, "The iPod" 

Robbi Nester, "Letter To My Son"

Sam Smith, "The Prosthetic Fitting Suite"

Through this book, long-time single dad Gary combines his love of Alexander (a child with an interstitial deletion of the lower arm of chromosome 13) with his experience in marketing and interest in writing. I hope you will support the book and give or suggest it to people you know who care about the subject--or who might do so, given such a book! 

Waterborne

Here's a bit of youtube snow and Frost from Eric Whitacre

for friends with unexpected snow and ice...

Thanks to critic and reviewer Micah Mattix for including a link to my sonnet "Waterborne" in his Prufrock newsletter (sign up!) yesterday. Here's the poem in Alexander Pepple's Able Muse. The poem is also forthcoming in an anthology edited by poet Mary Meriam.

Please note that today there are two posts--slip on down to the next post to see links to facebook friends with Etsy shops and new books. (And one more to Melanie at Antiphon, and then on and on!)