by Jesse Kalvitis

Jesse’s Summer Reading List (Or, What I Did Instead of Anything Visibly Productive):

Pioneer Naturalists: The Discovery and Naming of North American Plants and Animals, by Howard Ensign Evans.

In 1886, when Aven Nelson (for whom a variety of larkspur is named) came to the University of Wyoming, he “had been hired to teach English, but by accident two professors of English had been hired and no one to teach biology. Nelson was assigned the task, and despite his initial weakness in the subject, he went on to a long and successful career as a botanist” (150). Nelson’s story is one of many points at which I mark my place, wave the book at whoever is nearest to hand, and yell “Hey! Listen to this.” This happens every few pages, and who could blame me? Pioneer Naturalists, as the title implies, is a marvelous blend of Old West (and east, and south, and sometimes north) adventure, species information on American plants and animals, and biographical sketches of the people involved. It contains discoveries and scandals and feuds (including the Sparrow War of 1874-1878), no shortage of eccentrics, and delightfully peculiar statements delivered in the matter-of-fact tone of a naturalist and historian who seems to find nothing odd about them at all. In the 1840s, for example, “Louis Agassiz, a dominant figure in American science . . . was forever borrowing specimens from the Smithsonian and forgetting to return them” (34). No big deal.

Read this book immediately. When you find yourself needing to yell “Hey! Listen to this!”, come find me. These tales are good enough for telling twice.

Everything I Have Is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men About More-or-less Gay Life, edited by Wendell Ricketts.

When I ordered this book, I whined a little to myself: “But it’s fiiiiction. And it’s by a bunch of duuuudes!” I mean, c’mon, way to reinscribe the same old tired hegemonies even within systems of resistance, right? Having read it, I’m not whining any more. I began reading with some trepidation, given the anthology’s rather narrow categorization (which sometimes results in some of the most pretentious, stilted, and generally unreadable stuff being published simply because it focuses on the purported common interests of, say, lesbian Eskimo vertically-challenged left-handed ninjas of an usually pale complexion) (unlimited nerd-points to anyone who gets THAT reference!). Each story, though, turned out to be good enough to stand on its own merits in any category. Several were hauntingly memorable; I often found myself thinking “oh, yeah, there was that gorgeous moment that’s stuck in my head from something I read . . . what was it, again?” The answers, even later in the summer when I turned to mega-doses of fiction in a last-ditch attempt at some down time, kept being the pieces from this book.

I can’t lavish praise on this book without mentioning Ricketts’s contribution not just as editor and champion of the project, but as author of its only full-length nonfiction piece, a 24 page afterword titled “Passing Notes in Class: Some Thoughts On Writing and Culture in the Ga(y)ted Community.” The book was worth it for that piece alone, and I hope to see it anthologized again in a more overtly theory-focused context.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King.

As anyone knows who has stubbornly kept reading him despite eye rolling from all quarters, Stephen King goes through rapidly fluctuating phases in the quality of his work. When he’s good, it’s blindingly clear why he’s so widely read. When he’s bad . . . well. There’s a desperate sense of audience in much of King’s newer fiction. “They want aliens! And really gross stuff. And explosions,” I can almost hear him muttering. “No goddam patience. Fine, then. I’ll reuse the characters from ‘The Body’ or from It, the plot from Tommyknockers. Lemme just sand the serial numbers off and call it Dreamcatcher.” Oh lord, if that’s what success is, let me remain obscure.

King, much to our culture’s loss, rarely writes creative nonfiction. Exceptions include the book Danse Macabre, an essay on baseball that I enjoyed despite loathing the sport itself, and the best short story collection introductions since Isaac Asimov. Like most of us, he is at his best when he writes from an honest, unpretentious place. This book, with its odd but perfect combination of memoir and craft tips, is powerful and pure. No aliens, I promise, and very few explosions.

Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism, edited by Jessica Yee.

I first read this book in fall of 2012 for a combined undergrad and graduate class in feminist theory, part of the required curriculum for the graduate certificate in women’s and gender studies. I’ve been bristling at it with a fierce ambivalence ever since. Its designation in the Kalvitis-Barrett household is Feminism for Reallllz, which we always recite in a tone of earnest self-aggrandizement, then follow with laughter. That said, I did and do deeply enjoy most of this book, especially the pieces “A Slam Poem on Feminism in Academia” (which I assigned to my students last semester) and ”’Maybe I’m Not Class-Mobile; Maybe I’m Class-Queer’: Poor kids in college, and survival under hierarchy.” However, I can recommend the text as a whole only with the following caveats. First, please consider it as supplemental to, not a replacement for, the canon of feminist theory. It’s intended to be a critique of this canon as well of higher education in general, but I often wonder whether the authors have actually read what they’re attempting to critique. One of my marginal notes reads “Gloria Anzaldua already said it better.” She did. So did Luce Irigaray, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and a host of others. Read those first, but then pick up this slim red paperback from 2011 to have your faith in the next generation alternately shaken and restored.

All the Time in the World, by E.L. Doctorow.

If you read Doctorow’s earlier collection Sweet Land Stories (and if not, why on earth haven’t you?), then three of the stories in this collection will not be new to you. Then again, if you’ve read the stories in question, you’ll know that reading them a second, or third, or twentieth time is no hardship. The new stories are marvelous as well, especially the title story. “All the Time in the World” strikes a perfectly balance between surreal interpolations and grounded emotion. E.L. Doctorow’s short stories, this collection included, fall precisely into some overlap between keenly observed reality, ugliness as art, and a sense of the driftingly peculiar that I particularly enjoy. Other authors occupy the margins of this category as well—Ray Bradbury, Haruki Murakami, Wells Tower, Joyce Carol Oates et al—but there’s something about the solidity of Doctorow’s prose that sets him apart.

What to Eat, by Marion Nestle.

I’m nearly embarrassed to include this book on my list, as the title makes it sound like either a diet guide (ha) or an earnest foodie tome about artisanal something-or-another. It is neither. It is, however, an astoundingly good read. Nutritionist and and NYU professor Nestle (no relation) walks readers through more than a century of changing food culture, production, and politics. Especially politics. What? Did you think there aren’t years of debate, thousands of pages of vaguely-written policy, and millions of dollars behind one of the breakfast cereals you eat carrying the “hearth healthy” logo and another not? That’s adorable. Hint: it has literally nothing to do with whether the product inside is or isn’t good for your heart. Nestle’s matter of fact and deeply thoughtful style is a calming antidote to some of the frantic “eat this! No, wait! Eat this! But don’t eat this other thing!” rhetoric that pervades modern media. She rarely makes specific or exclusive recommendations, but rather gives the reader an understandable overview of the factors that inform their own choices. This book, though it offers a fantastic historical perspective and is largely still relevant, was published in 2006, which makes it a bit outdated in its field. Fortunately, an updated version of one of Nestle’s previous books, titled Food Politics, came out in May. It’s on the top of my reading list for my next bit of spare time.

This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class, edited by C.L. Barney Dews and Carolyn Leste Law.

This is by far the best book I read this summer. Unfortunately, I have left its review to the end of my day, when all enthusiasm I may have been able to express has been beaten out of me by a rampaging horde of other mentally exhausting tasks. Whoops. Life lesson.

I first ordered This Fine Place So Far From Home as part of the preliminary research for a project I’m undertaking, in which I’ll examine the educational experiences of students from working class and/or poverty-level backgrounds. Though I hope to see the project shaped by its subjects themselves, and though several media outlets have been publishing excellent articles on the subject recently, this book seemed to be worth a shot. Who better, I figured, to point out some of the commonalities of working class experiences in higher education than those whose journeys spanned the unimaginable space between freshman year and tenure? I figured correctly. In addition to the shared experiences that I discovered from piece to piece, I was also treated to an extremely entertaining view of what happens when you take academics from a wide variety of fields and ask them to write a personal narrative. Their interpretations of that task were various and wonderful, from the economists to the French literature folks to the to psychologists and beyond. This book, in many delightful and unexpected ways, was a study in diversity. I cannot possibly recommend it strongly enough.

Some new MFAs (and Rebecca) talking after lunch during GTA training.

Kelly Sundberg continues her career as a PhD Candidate in Ohio University’s Creative Nonfiction program this coming Fall. She also has an essay, “Mornings, on the Ranch” forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review.

Sarah Einstein has a two newly published essays: “When I Lived in Manhattan” in Fringe, and “A Meditation on Love” in The Fiddleback. Her first fiction piece(!), “Walking and Falling,” has been published in Sixfold.

Sarah Beth Childers will be teaching creative writing to lucky students at Earlham College in Indiana as Writer-in-Residence, and her book, Shake Terribly the Earth, will be released from Ohio University Press in October.

Red Holler: Contemporary Appalachian Literature., co-edited by John Branscum and alumnus Wayne Thomas, will be released in October from Sarabande Books. Read about how this exciting anthology that won the Bruckheimer Award in 2011 came to be, here. Wayne was also awarded the Baltic Residency in Latvia for work on his current novel.

Katie Fallon’s essay, “Rebirth,” about babies and vultures, is forthcoming in the Fall 2013 issue of River Teeth.

Sara Pritchard’s third book of stories, Help Wanted: Female, was published by Etruscan Press in July 2013, and is available in paper and e-book format. An audio version, read by Sara, will be available this fall through audible and through amazon.

To read more recent alumni and current student news, visit here.

Please share your recent achievements by emailing Rebecca Dovespike (rdoversp@mix.wvu.edu).

View the 2nd and 3rd year MFAs welcome packet and Bios here:

welcome packet

by Xin Tian Koh

The seventeenth annual West Virginia Writers’ Workshop kicked off on the 18th of July, gathering notable authors Sandra Meek, Elizabeth Graver, Jim Harms, Mark Brazaitis, Jeff Monahan, Renée Nicholson and Natalie Sypolt on our downtown campus. New and experienced participants of all ages attended craft talks, readings, and workshops, and even had the chance to pitch their manuscripts to publishers from Page Spring Publishing in one-on-one sessions.

The first reading on Thursday night starred Mark Brazaitis with a few poems—a rare treat—and his story about a girl, a ferocious dog named Black Heart, and a song that must not end or risk fatal consequences. Sandra Meek, the Dana Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing at Berry College, followed with poems from her four books of poetry, the latest of which is Road Scatter. She gave a craft talk on Saturday on the elegy, telling us about the interconnected forces of praise and loss that inform poetry, and how an elegy can be about something you experience as loss, besides normally being about an experience that happened to you.

In his craft talk, “The Scene as a Unit of Composition”, Jim Harms reminded us that the scene is a shared element that poets, fiction writers, and memoirists (he recommends Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala) have to tackle, but us poets often waste the opportunity to learn from writers in those other forms and have our characters interact with their settings. Jim added, “Let the poem teach you what it needs…don’t set out to do justice to a feeling. If you’ve got it, it’s there.”

Behind the scenes, our department staff and our graduate students Dominique Bruno, Bonnie Thibodeau, and Mari Casey helped set things up and assisted our visiting authors. Learn more about the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop here, and join us in 2014—there’s plenty of food and room for you.

Hello everyone,

October is coming and with it the inaugural issue of The Cheat River Review. The CRR is a student-run online literary journal associated with WVU’s MFA program. Although we have drawn inspiration from our namesake, we have taken a more holistic approach to the direction of our journal. This is a delicate balance. We at CRR want to respect and represent the figure of the Cheat River without exclusively functioning as a regional journal. There is so much power in the symbol of the river, and the land around it, that it would be easy to stop at its banks or only go as far as the slopes of its mountains. We have tried hard to collect the best works with only two commonalities: strong voices and compelling writing. These two aspects give respect to this place surrounding the Cheat River and allow for the growth of our journal beyond this region’s borders.

It might be early for making promises of grandeur, but The Cheat River Review has a grand future ahead. While this first year might be somewhat relaxed (in quantity of events not quality of productions) the editors at CRR have great plans for the future. Contests for writing and art are on the horizon, promoting both our prestige and the quality of our magazine. The possibility of special anthologies, perhaps print, are likely to appear. Workshops and readings are almost inevitable (and delightfully so). It is easy for me to type these promises, but with a dedicated staff and generous support from WVU, these are only the edges of our reach.

If any of this sounds interesting, there are many ways you can keep up with our progress. Look forward to seeing an update to our website in the near future. We are hoping to reflect the bold and vibrant nature of the Cheat and the writing you can expect to see. Like our Facebook page and follow our Twitter to keep an eye out for upcoming events, among them our October release party and our AWP coverage. Or, if you would like to contact us more directly at: crreditors@gmail.com.

We look forward to seeing you or hearing from you in the future!

With many thanks,

Patric A. Nuttall
Editor-in-Chief
Cheat River Review

by Rebecca Doverspike

MFA Alumna Danielle Ryle and her cat

Ashley Danielle Ryle received her MFA in poetry from West Virginia University in 2011. She currently teaches composition at Somerset Community College in her home state of Kentucky. Her chapbook, Fetching my Sister is due out in September from Dancing Girl Press.

I recently had the opportunity to email Danielle some questions.

How did the poems for your chapbook, Fetching my Sister, come about? Anything you’d like readers to know regarding this collection?

Wow, that’s a big one. Fetching represents a breakthrough moment for me, but also a style that, in many ways, I claimed and then abandoned. It’s a highly structured poem in sections and parts, and while I really like it and I think it does what I wanted it to do, I can’t imagine going back to that level of (visible) structure.

It came about because it needed to, because I needed to claim my own stories. Up to this point (I wrote Fetching in my second year of the program) I was relying on persona poems as the way to get my world on the page without ever having to admit it was my world. Not that everything in Fetching is true. Like any good ghost story, imagine ‘based on a true story’ floating across the bottom of the title screen/page, but of course the true story is just urban legend that’s been passed on and on. That’s a scary place to be though, to say, yes, everyone, these poems are about me. And I couldn’t have done it on my own. Mary Ann told me to stop writing the persona poems, just to not do it anymore. That was terrifying, but the best advice I got in my first year.

I also have a lot to owe Plath here. I resisted her work for a long time. It almost seems shameful to admit that I didn’t read a word of her until I was twenty-two, and even then I wasn’t at her ‘threshold,’ as my mentors have so aptly referred to it. (I love that image: me standing at the open door to the poet’s house but unable to cross it, waiting for an invitation, like a vampire.) I came back to Plath in 2010, and it was her rhythm and sound that really struck me. That’s what I pocketed for my own.

What influences your writing? (In the poems you sent me, I see: body, the sea, animals, transfiguration, myth, dancing…)

All of that, yes. Classical myth has been my biggest code-breaker, I guess. I just put together a full manuscript that is ‘the Greek book.’ I worked those myths until they were part of my own personal history. Even though I wrote most all of the new manuscript in about sixteen months (from about December 2011 to March 2013). I have to be honest and say it’s the work of the last six years, the outcome.

What’s your writing process like?

I still write everything by hand first, which allows for an immediate revision when I type them sometime in the next week or so. I write a lot. I’m at the desk most mornings, and I refuse to let anything be precious. There is probably another third of Fetching abandoned on my computer, and when I wrote the new manuscript I didn’t stop until I had 100 new poems so that I could chuck half of them without having to blink. And I don’t mean I’m ditching bad poems. The bad poems, or non-poems, don’t make it out of the notebook. I’m not the kind of poet who revises and revises and revises. I know on the reread of the typed copy whether it’s a keeper or not. Then it’s over.

What was your favorite part about the MFA program at WVU?

The time with other writers, my peers and my mentors. There’s nothing like showing up for work every day and having everyone think, oh, there goes one of the poets. That’s irreplaceable.

Who do you like to read?

I ‘discovered’ Baudelaire this summer, which has been really important, and I’ve also been spending a lot of time with Shakespeare. As for living poets, I got Louise Gluck’s collected poems this year and read the whole thing pretty quickly. I go to Gluck for myth, to Baudelaire for gritty romance, and Shakespeare for compression. But my favorite reading is usually with prose. I get more, I guess, ‘inspiration’ from prose. I don’t know how I’d live without having known Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust or without my almost yearly re-reading of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

How does teaching affect your writing?

For the last two years and in the upcoming year I’ve been trying to balance five sections of comp each semester with doing my own work. It sounds impossible. I remember one of the past graduates saying he taught that many classes and just sitting there in terror like you’re probably doing now. And it is terrifying, but if anything my production has increased since I finished the program. It’s not as easy and it’s not as fun, but sometimes the time constraint makes me get to the work when maybe I otherwise wouldn’t. I spent a few days with another poet from my year, Charity Gingerich, this summer at the Sister of Loretto Motherhouse, or actually at the retreat cabins at the back of the property. I spent my time there thinking a lot about the foundation of those Sisters. They are dedicated in part to the suffering of Mary and are themselves teachers. I don’t like this idea that you have to go through suffering to get to something better. I think it’s a dangerous belief. But I also think it’s true. When I’m dissatisfied or tired, I have more to say, I NEED the language more. So, I have to say I have the tribulation of such a heavy class load to perhaps thank for the work I’ve done. And I don’t think distress leads to poems about distress. Being distressed can actually lead you to value and be more present in the good moments.

What has post-MFA life been like? Any advice?

I think I may have addressed a lot of this in the last question. Advice: Just keep writing. You’re going to find out when you leave whether this writing thing was just a hobby or whether it’s life-or-death. I spent some time the first year out thinking that the MFA had been some cruel joke. How could I have believed I lived in a world where poetry matters? Then you have to come to terms with the real world. And then you just keep writing anyway. My three years in the world where poetry mattered was what gave me the strength to keep it up in my outside life. As Berryman puts it in one of the “Dreamsongs,” those “inner resources,” but since he’s really talking about when you don’t feel like you have those, be prepared for those moments when you’re “heavy bored” too.

How does landscape influence your work?

I don’t know what I’d do without a window. I’ve always had my desk near a window. In WV, it looked out on the cascade of run-down rooftops leading to Decker’s Creek, and now in KY, it’s a bank of trees leading down to Pittman Creek, which is really a river. Right now I’m looking out at a nuthatch on my porch rail posturing to scare off a cardinal chick. (If you don’t get to see birds posture, Google it.) I’ve been drawn to the outdoors since I was a child, though I am not in the least ‘outdoorsy.’ Landscape is just integral.

Do you write more during particular seasons or times of year?

I used to think I was an autumnal composer, but I think this actually has to do with the combination of a summer where I did all my living and the frustration of a new school year where I only have so much time to get the writing in. I have a lot of material and not a lot of time. Wordsworth says emotion recollected in tranquility, which is sort of what I mean. And Proust, his whole thesis is that only memory matters. Living doesn’t matter; living is just what it takes to turn out memories. And the ultimate proof of your existence is to turn those memories into art. But if you go around thinking about that, you’ll end up writing bad poems. It just happens that way. It’s an after-the-fact sort of thing.

Danielle’s work has most recently appeared in Denver Quarterly, Iron Horse, and MidAmerican Review, and her chapbook, Fetching my Sister, is forthcoming this fall from Dancing Girl Press.

I’m writing to you from my office in Colson Hall on a beautiful, unusually mild Thursday in July. I have been Director of Creative Writing for about three weeks, and so far, so good. Of course I’m thinking a lot these days of Mark Brazaitis and Jim Harms, both of whom did this job before me, and the myriad details they must know by heart by now, having learned them once upon a time, as I am just now beginning to do. And I’m thinking, too, of the many students who have been part of our program, both undergrad and grad, over the years and of what a pleasure it is to be associated with so many wonderful writers. I’m lucky to take my turn coordinating the program when it’s in such a good place, with lots of reasons for continued optimism.

One such reason, always, is our reading series (the full line-up is listed elsewhere in this newsletter). If you’re in town, we invite you to attend. Another reason: the outreach opportunities that are a distinguishing feature of our MFA program. Per usual, we’ll have students working on behalf of the Appalachian Prison Book Project and offering creative writing in the residence halls as part of the Bolton Writing Workshops. We’re also in the planning stages for partnerships with West Preston Middle School and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. If you have other suggestions about how we might involve ourselves in the community, feel free to let me know (maryann.samyn@mail.wvu.edu).

One recent outreach effort, at West Preston Middle School this past March, has resulted in some beautiful works of art featuring poems by 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. Next time you’re in Colson Hall, look for those.

Finally, I want to mention and thank a few people who help make our program such a success.

First, this year’s COW (Council of Writers) officers: President Hannah McPherson, Vice-President Rebecca Doverspike, Secretary Christina Seymour, Treasurer Jessica Guzman, and Press and PR guru Nathan Holmes. COW is responsible for readings throughout the year, including the upcoming back-to-school reading on August 15 at the lovely rooftop Montmartre restaurant at the Hotel Morgan, and for compiling the welcome packets that new MFAs receive.

I also want to mention the current editors of our new journal, The Cheat Review Review: editor-in-chief Patric Nuttal; assistant editor Morgan O’Grady; fiction editor Mari Casey; nonfiction editor Sadie Shorr-Parks; and poetry editor Jessica Guzman. It’s a lot of work setting up a new journal and our editors are doing an excellent job. More about our first issue in the next cw newsletter.

Last but not definitely not least, many thanks to Rebecca Thomas and Rebecca Doverspike, the outgoing and incoming creative writing program assistants, respectively. These ladies are amazing, and I absolutely rely on their enthusiasm and expertise. This newsletter is largely the result of their hard work, so thank you, Rebeccas!

And thank you all for continuing to take an interest in and be supportive of creative writing here at WVU. Together, we’ve built a strong program and I anticipate more to come.

by Rebecca Childers

MFA Alumna Kelly Moffett and her dog

Kelly Moffett is an Assistant Professor of English at Northern Kentucky University and a graduate of the WVU MFA program. She has a new book coming out in the spring, and I recently was able to sit down and email her about it.

What was the inspiration for your title?

Kelly: It has been a productive time (and Lord knows this is rare for me!).

I’ve had a chapbook released, Ghost Act, through Dancing Girl Press.

(We talked with Kelly last August about Ghost Act. Follow the link to read all about it.)

My father passed last March. He spent all of his money killing and then stuffing animals from Africa (zebra, elephant, warthog, water buffalo, etc. and etc.), so my inheritance came in the form of a 21-year-old, white horse. She arrived in KY soon after his memorial service, and the poems came from my healing process—particularly, how I healed and dealt with father issues via the horse. I thought of the horse as my father’s ghost. Also, I’m in love with the work of Ann Hamilton and her installation titled Border Act. I borrowed that a bit and titled the collection Ghost Act.

Two full-length collections will be released the next academic year.

Kelly: When the God of Water enters your Basement, Bow will be released at AWP next year (Salmon Poetry). The poems were written during regular retreats to Trappist monasteries. Trappists monks take vows of silence, and a retreatant must honor that and not speak too. The silence not only helped me with meditation, but it also allowed me to literalize the white (silent) space of the page. I wrote the poems over a four-year period of silent retreats at Gethsemani Abbey in KY and St. Benedict’s in Colorado.

Bird Blind will be released Fall 2013 (Tebot Bach). The title reflects my other passion: hiking. On a few of the trails I found bird blinds. A person can hide in a bird blind—a small wooden building with slots cut out (kind of like those made for guns in forts) for viewing wildlife (namely, birds) without the wildlife noticing it is being watched—kind of like a camouflaged space to witness without being seen. Most of those poems were written during a month period when I stayed in a one-room cabin by a lake in Maine with only my Irish Wolfhound and the loons for company. I thought of it as my Thoreau cabin, my Merton hermitage.

You have been through the publication process before. Is there any advice that you can offer to current MFA’s on how to avoid stress during the process? Or how to deal with the stress you cannot avoid?

Kelly: For me, the first two years out of the program (the post-MFA blues?) were the hardest. I no longer had Mary Ann and Jim and a community of readers who made poetry the center of their lives as I did. Also, I was writing terribly for some reason. It all clicked into place nearly at the two-year mark of being out of school. Suddenly my subject matched my idiom and the work started to make sense. I sent that book out (and I think only ten poems came from my thesis) and the first press I sent it to accepted it: Cinnamon Press. So, I guess my advice is to hold on and keeping pushing forward and to care for yourself during those rockier times (if you don’t, who will?).

Oh, and rejections get easier. They really do. When I receive one, I think “oh, that just wasn’t the home for my work,” and I really believe it. Publication is really about finding the right home, the right audience. It takes time and lots of rejections to figure that out.

Are there any people or pets that you would like to thank?

Kelly: Of course, the amazing WVU poets, Mary Ann and Jim—where would any of us poets be without them?

Finn, my Irish Wolfhound. Manana, the old, white horse.

Most importantly—of course—Joe and Devon (my husband and son—the ones who had to let me go for long periods of time so I could write—I know that wasn’t easy).

Any other tips you would like to offer, or information you would like to share?

Tips:

Keep in contact with those in the workshop who you can trust. You’ll need those readers when you leave.

Don’t forget to take care of yourself. Exercise, eat, and meditate.

Enjoy the MFA while you are in it. Give all of yourself to the work. Humility was the greatest lesson for me (and the most important for my work and my life); and the workshops taught me it.

Information:

I’ve started a blog about contemplative creativity and poetry. One of my contracts stated that I need to create an online presence, and the blog has been more fun than I ever realized it could be. Read Kelly’s blog here. I’d suggest blogging to other poets. (Who would have thought?)

It might be raining, but today it will be sunny with words. Come join us at our MFA Formal Spring reading today, Sunday, April 28 at 2 pm, at Chillberry on High Street!

See you there!