Stats-n-stuff

So, here they are - my end of the year ‘stats.’

I submitted a lot last year, but didn’t feel particularly productive. Positive was taking part in Found Poetry’s PoMoSco project in April, which got me writing and yielded two poems that I’ve since published.

I started an online workshop 3 weeks ago hoping again it would motivate me, but the truth is all you have to do out is turn off your distractions and concentrate and write. Even if you write crap, just go. You can throw the crap away. The workshop aspect is a plus because it’s like running with a partner. They show up, so you have to, too. 

I sent out more submissions last year compared with 2014, 85 vs 74. 

In two cases I had a poem accepted that I’d submitted more than 40 times. In one of those I rethought the poem with the criticism of an interested editor and ended up (surprise!) with a better poem. 

In two other cases, a poem was taken by the one place I sent it to.

Altogether I had 25 poems accepted, and 20 published, a good number for me, even if it sounds miserable! 

I also published four prose or hybrid pieces, so I'm part of the creative non-fiction crowd now, too. 

There were journals I finally got into after at least three tries: Rust + Moth, Radar (forthcoming)

And journals I’ve yet to get into & maybe never will: Adroit, Boaat, AGNI

One ordeal was, after a wait of nearly 3 years, I pulled a poem from a publication that had been promising to publish it. It was a good publication, newish, and I hesitated because I wanted to be in it. But it seemed they were winding up to go out with a whimper, and ignoring my polite and infrequent requests for an update. Anyway, I pulled the poem and it was accepted very quickly by Whiskey Island. And that was even better. 

I received a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net nomination for my poem "Newlyweds, Ukraine" from DMQ Review, where I have published 16 poems over the years. Thank you DMQ!

This year, DoubleBack Press will reprint my first chapbook, “In The Voice Of A Minor Saint.” And I expect my chapbook, “Heiress to a Small Ruin” to come out from Dancing Girl Press. 

On the submission front, after not submitting for about two months I sent out three batches of poems on January 1, and had a poem accepted by a publication I’ve been trying to crack within five hours. 

So take that, crappy stats.

Poems
Crab Creek: Bloodshot Cartography
DMQ: Newlyweds, Almost Pain
Whiskey Island: Airstrip Heart
Gravel: Nothing Fits Me Anymore
Bird’s Thumb: Reader’s Block
Cleaver: Medieval Photographer
RHINO: Electric Singer
One Sentence Poems: Separate Bed
Petite Hound: The New Me
Sundog Lit: Flush Sky, Whittler
Hermeneutic Chaos: The If Horse
Stoneboat: Keyhole Confessor
Citron: Nightlight Ghazal
concis: Inebriate of Air
Literary Bohemian: Outer Space, Oarsman Ghazal
Right Hand Pointing: Single Brick 
Rust+Moth: Seven Shaved Bald in One Room

Prose & prose-like
Lunch: Overlapping Landscapes
Matchbook: Buchenwald
The Offing: See Also Fire
The Offing: Changeling , a collaboration with Anu Tuominen, whose image is above.