The Scrapper Poet

October has started out on a high note — On Friday, October 4, I presented a brief poetry workshop to area high school teachers.  When I say brief, I mean brief – the workshop was only about an hour and a half long.  During the workshop, I talked about different forms of poetry including the pantoum, the ghazal, the sestina, and the villanelle.  (I mentioned the sonnet — but since most people know of the sonnet, I didn’t want to dwell on Bill Shakespeare’s favorite form!).

Then, I explained why I teach form in both my Writing About Literature and Creative Writing classes. I know that while many writers find writing within a specific form a bit stifling — students (such as many business, computer and engineering majors) are often relieved to find rules in place for poetry.  They are happy that they don’t have  to analyze all this “free verse jazz” as one of my students once called the open forms that many of us use in writing.

This workshop also reminded me of some favorite contemporary poets who experiment with form including Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Shaindel Beers and Sandra Beasley. I really need to revisit their work more often.

In other poetry news, I received two acceptances in the inbox this week, one for a poem and one for a poetry book review.  Since both are online publications, I will post links when I know more.  It’s just a bit nice to have a break in the rejection spell.

In general, we are experiencing gorgeous Autumn weather — the kind that makes me happy that I’m living in western Pennsylvania.  Thus, I am declaring a school free weekend.  I will return to reading student papers on Monday.

Warm temperatures and rain are melting the ice and snow away.  Although I’m sure we will be back to winter weather soon, I’m enjoying the thaw, watching the dirty mounds of snow melt, leaving behind road salt and patches of mushy, brown earth.

Since December 1, I’ve had a streak of publications, including works in Caesura, Spillway, Escape Into Life, Strange Horizons, The Country Dog Review, and most recently, Cold Mountain Review.  I will have to be satisfied with these for a while, because I haven’t been sending out a lot of work, and more importantly I have not written a new poem in 2013.  I have, however, been reading a lot!  And I’m really looking forward to the new poetry books and short story collections that will be out in the new few months.

I’ve also been working on a batch of short stories.  I have discovered that my writing process for attacking the short story is actually much like the way I work with poems.  I write a draft, go back, edit paragraphs and sometimes pages, rearrange, and then take a break, letting the work breathe for a few days before I read through the draft again.  Right now, I have four short stories in progress.  I would love to have at least one “finished” enough to send out in the next month or so.

Still, I’m not forgetting poetry!  Based on Diane’s recommendation, I recently purchased Wingbeats: Exercises & Practices in Poetry edited by Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen (It’s less than $10 on Kindle!).  I have already started reading some of the prompts and tips, and am sure they will help kickstart some new work soon!