Category: Poets in Action (Page 13 of 15)

Post Writing Sequester Wrap-Up

August 11, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

Just got back from a great four days of workshopping with three of my writing friends. I did a post a few weeks ago about the benefits of a DIY writing gathering. We had two poets, a fiction writer and a non-fiction (primarily) writer. At left, we all wore orange one day to visit a St. Louis-style eatery in Phoenix. We had toasted ravioli, cracker-crust pizza and ooey-gooey butter cake.

A writer friend of mine posted a comment about conferences on Facebook saying the main benefit she found was the networking and deal-making. As for networking, you do meet new writing friends at big conferences sometimes (if you're both having an outgoing moment). Some you actually keep in touch with, although my CherCon friends have been more reliable over the years. As for deal-making at a conference, this never happened at my lowly level. I'm equating that kind of conference activity with one I would do for Web Content Specialists (my day job). The only differences being for those there are only a handful to choose from a year (not the massive amount available to poets), they aren't as expensive and you can often get your office to pay for it. You'd think the sheer number of writing conferences would bring the cost down, by supply and demand. But then there are so many writers, so few web content specialists.

In any case, having our own was informative. Our biggest problem was not having enough time to do all we wanted to do. Being friends, we spent a good deal of time catching up and chatting (in the pool, no less).

On the positive side, you're happier at a DIY with your friends (and a pool). On the negative side, you're too happy.

Also, half of our group didn't finish their readings ahead of time. So a majority of the time was spent reading for them. However, the workshopping was really high quality. Pre-select is good stuff in this case.

We selected some short stories from The Art of the Story by Daniel Halpern. And although we all agreed we didn't much like the four stories we selected (or the layout of the book), the more we discussed the stories, the more I came to appreciate them and something unique in them relating to our projects. We also read The Art of Description by Mark Doty from the World into Word series on Graywolf Press. I'll talk about that more later (probably after my move). Two of us read the same book and make our own marginalia…it will be interesting to see where our "likes" intersected.

We all agreed we wanted to keep doing these things yearly. Notes for future events:

Build in time for reading
Build in time for chatting
Focus less on writing time (too much chatting and reading to do)
Keep in the workshop sessions

Interview with Poet Ann Cefola

June 5, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

I've just posted a recent interview with poet Ann Cefola.

We
discuss poems about landscape: the New England landscape, the landsape of grief,
the female landscape, the landscape of the night sky, inspirations from
painting, writing found poems and translations..

Interview with Ann Cefola, author of Sugaring and St. Agnes, Pink-Slipped

Interview with Poet Jon Davis

May 20, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

I've just posted a recent interview with poet Jon Davis.

We
discuss aspects of meaning in language, the poetic seam, the allowance
of sentiment in poems, prose poems, being Santa Fe's Poet Laureate and his alter ego Chuck Calabreze.

Interview with Jon Davis, author of Preliminary Report and Scrimmage of Appetite

30 Poems in 30 Days – I Did It!

May 1, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

OMG! I finished! I did 30 poems in 30 days. It was exhausting and I was so cocky when I started. I thought I could just do some exercises in stanzas every day, nothing too high stress.

But even a little poem took about a half hour a day and the longer ones hovered around an hour a day. Turns out I had no issues with putting up unfinished work. My problem was dredging up the energy to get it done every day.

Beyond the forms I used from a book I was reading (The Ode Less Traveled), I didn't use any subject prompts and never made a decision on what to write about until that day or the night before at the earliest.

It was haaaaaard y'all!

And I was pleasantly surprised using Hello Poetry. I respect it for its Google-like simplicity. Also, I was surprised that so many people were online reading these poems. I was surprised to see which poems "trended" (like items trending on Google, become popular fast). Trending was an interesting issue because the poems I thought people would not like they sometimes did and the poems I thought they would love they sometimes didn't. And trending isn't everything. Some poems didn't trend (get read by a lot of people over a short period of time) but they did find a large amount of readers over a long stretch of time. For instance, see below.

The Poem Statistics

I have 30 poems up on Hello Poetry with a bonus opening haiku. In total, they've been read 3,369 times. Yes…three THOUSAND. Unbelievable. I received 12 likes on individual poems and 8 fellow Hello Poetry writers started "following me" which basically seems to mean they've bookmarked my homepage to check out again later. That's what I've gathered from finding others to follow myself.

These were the five poems that trended (numbers as of this morning):

- Tremor in the Bowl – 236 readers
- Ode to a Free Girl Writing Free Verse – 217
- Do the Dead Who Love Us Know – 230
- How the Devil Plays Bach – 235
- Sword of Words – 340

But over time, five other poems received as many if not more reads:

– An Artifice that Time Forgot – 283 readers
– Crossing the Mississippi – 109
– American Ghost – 104
– Things I Love About Rhoda (As Told by Mary Richards) – 376
– Things Those Tests Do Not Test – 180

So as seen above, my most popular poem did not trend. My least popular poems were my most recent one and the one dedicated to the Boston bombing:

– Sonnet to Spam – 18
– Finish Lines – 19

I still can't believe I did it. It took a lot of physical energy and I was glad when the month was over just so I could rest today! This took some sweat.

To see all the poems, visit my Hello Poetry home page.

I'm going to be MIA from blogging for about two weeks. Monsieur Bang Bang is graduating with his Masters in Archaeology and the entire clan is coming for two shindigs at our house. Then we're going to plan a move. So happy post National Poetry Month everyone and I'll see you on the other side.

My New Pinterest Page

March 31, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

A week ago I saw Dana Levin read in Eldorado, outside of Santa Fe. I liked her funny, experimental poems and she inspired me to create a new Pinterest page called Poets with Sexy Hair.

https://pinterest.com/poetmarymccray/poets-with-sexy-hair/

Can you help me think of more poets with sexy hair?

Poetry Project for National Poetry Month in April

March 24, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

NaNoWriMo,
or National Novel Writing Month (“Thirty days of literary abandon),
has received a lot of activity and press over the last few years when it occurs
every November. There are even social meetups associated with it where
people join up in large groups at pubs and crunch out fiction.

Did
you know there is now a NaPoWriMo, a National Poetry Writing Month challenge
for April? Where the Novel challenge is to write 50,000 words of
fiction without worrying about editing (just get it out there, man). the poets are challenged
to write one poem a day for 30 days. NaPoWriMo was launched by poet Maureen Thorson back in 2003.

NaPoWriMo
doesn’t get the press that NaNoWriMo gets, partly because poets are
marginalized, yes; but also (be honest) because poets suck at keeping
deadlines. I say this because poets I know suck at keeping deadlines. They love
to insist this is because they beat to a different drum. This reminds me about a story I heard from a man who was defensively insisting his way of working
with the world was correct and his therapist asked, “So how is that working out for you?” Not so good.

Well, get
your pens ready if you have the cajones. No one’s asking you to purge out
polished stones at one poem per day but that's the point. This idea is to just
“get er done.” Get your inner editor to shut the f*&k up for 30 days. Be
fearless. In May, you can edit to your little hearts content.

I’m going to try. And as I’m in the process of testing out Hello Poetry.
Every daily poem I create will be posted on Hello Poetry to be picked over by
the Hello Poetry community. Check
out my posts at this link: http://hellopoetry.com/-mary-mccray/.

More about National
Poetry Month

Each year,
publishers, booksellers, educators and literary organizations use April to
promote poetry: publishers often release and publicize their poetry titles in
April, teachers and librarians focus on poetry units during the month; and
bookstores and reading series frequently hold special readings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Poetry_Month

Need Some Writing Prompts?

More Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

A Book About Mothers, Daughters and Women’s Voices

March 24, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

I've just posted a recent interview with poet Barbara Rockman.

This
interview talks about ways to write the mother-daughter poem, the child
and marriage poem, writing grief and the benefits of silence in a poem.

Interview with Barbara Rockman, author of Sting and Nest

My Haiku in Support of Stitching for Elephants

January 27, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

My friend Christine Horace started a Crowdrise page to raise money for the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an organization that rescues and rehabilitates orphaned (mainly due to poaching) elephants.

Donations go to the US Friends of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to help support the rearing and rehabilitation of the orphans.

Visiting the orphanage was one of the highlights of her trip to Kenya where she learned that baby elephants can die from loneliness. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust provides a human and elephant family where the elephants can continue todevelop normally and one day return to the wild.

Christine also started a quilt blanket as part of "Stitching for Elephants." Blankets play an important role in the recovery and rehabilitation of orphaned elephants at David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's nursery. More information: http://www.dswtwildernessjournal.com/orphans-in-blankets/

Christine's blanket is over half finished and she asked me to create a haiku to stitch into one of the panels.

Playing elephant:
ash-leaden baby feet for
rolling whirling Earth

Check out the project:

A Poet’s New Years Resolutions

January 4, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry

Set some writing goals and write poems. I am halfway through the first draft of a new set and I'd like to finish them this year.
Buy more poetry. Try eBooks if you can't afford the paper ones. Some eBooks can be purchased for 99-cents and many are under five dollars. I'm going to try to create a folder for my new eBooks on my computer and hopefully this will inspire me to pare down my Amazon wish list.
Meet new poets socially. And not just to get some new ears and eyes hostage to your poems. Meet new poets because you are generally interested in having them in your life. Find some at local conventions or readings. Start a poetry reading group.
Read a few biographies of poets. Check out your local library. I'll be back to Highlands University next week to comb through their library. I've done the American section; time to move on to the Europeans or South Americans.
Start another writing project. Like a sorbet between courses, this might clear your head. I'm going to get back into my novel about Roy, New Mexico.
Take a class. I'll be back at the community college extension this spring. Classes there are only 90 bucks each.
Find a poetry journal you like and subscribe to it. I like American Poetry Review so that's my journal for this year.
Submit your poems to some journals. I'm going to get back into doing this…and also reaching out to journals for reviewers for Why Photographers Commit Suicide.
Tag some books of poetry on Amazon. If you truly believe in furthering the cause of poetry, then tag some books you love based on subject. This is the single greatest way non-poets can find our books. It's better than a review and with last year's scandal on Amazon over authors leaving negative reviews for competing books (and then getting all their reviews deleted), a safer use of your time.
Connect with other people on social networks. Find both writers, readers and new friends. You want to connect with the world. The world wants to connect with you.

How to Use Kickstarter to Help Poets

December 2, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry

I recently joined my first Kickstarter campaign. I found out about it on Linked In. Filmmakers were looking for micro-funding for a film about the life of New Mexican poet Jimmy Santiago Baca. I had just bought his collected poems at a book shop in Las Vegas, New Mexico. I love his descriptions of the streets of New Mexico, his experiences in prison and his political poems about ethnicity and class.

For as little as $25.00 I could help and become a part of the film A Place to Stand, "a documentary about Jimmy Santiago Baca’s transformation from nearly illiterate convict to award-winning poet."

For your donation, you usually get a free copy of the project results (in this case a DVD of the film) or more, depending upon the level of your donation.

See this project's Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aplacetostand/a-place-to-stand-finishing-production

If you want to support poetry projects on Kickstarter, visit www.kickstarter.com and search 'poetry' or 'poet' or 'poet documentary will get you into film projects. Hunt around in there. It's fun and it does some good out there.