poetry

Today I got a fan email from a young poet, thanking me for some articles about forms that I first wrote for SPECULATIONS and which have been reprinted online at www.writing-world.com.

It's always nice to have people find meaning in one's writing, but it left me feeling a bit... nostalgic, in a way. I haven't written poetry in ages and ages, despite my best intentions. And, unfortunately, I think I'm a much better poet than fiction writer.

Partly it's a lack of impetus in not having venues in which to publish. I could, of course, submit to the scads of literary journals out there, but I've always preferred anthologies over magazines, even though many periodicals have far larger circulations than anthologies. Also, as has happened with my adult short fiction, the editors who used to be interested in my work are, for the most part, no longer editing or, at least, they've stopped asking me for things.

I also don't have people who know/understand/love poetry around me, so I don't even have knowledgeable readers if I were to just write and not publish the stuff.

Although for me, poetry always presupposes an audience. That's one of the problems I have about writing love poetry versus love letters. Love letters are, for me, an intensely personal thing, intended only for the recipient. But, as a published poet, love poetry is never unaware of the voyeurs.

I belong to an English-language poetry group here in Madrid, in hopes of getting me motivated enough to write something, but the level of the group is not especially high, so it hasn't worked.

I think I'm sounding a bit maudlin--or whiney--so I'll stop now. I think when next I go back to the States, I'll buy some poetry volumes and at least try and immerse myself in reading verse again...

NYC

So, unless anything further goes wrong with the reservation, I'll be back in NYC Feb 5-17. I gave up and used Frequent Flyer miles. (My grandmother has kindly offered me the use of hers, too, which will get me to Wiscon and BEA in May/June.)

I'll be at the SCBWI NY Mid-Year Conference, even though last year I found it to be so very cutthroat, as opposed to Los Angeles, which at least in 2002 was all about community and lots of interesting panels for writers at all levels (last year I wasn't as engaged and this year I'm skipping it). The one nice thing about SCBWI NY last year was I met the woman responsible for my being on LJ. (Hi, Holly!)

Otherwise, plan to see some friends, maybe some editors, buy some books, and file my taxes (sigh).

Speaking of editors, Sara and I are a bit glum this week (not just about poetry as in my recent post) because we've just learned that 4 different kidzbook editors that we'd had relationships with have switched companies or left publishing. No wonder we hadn't heard back from them about submissions in some cases! Time to start over from scratch with their replacements and asking for appointments for the Bologna Book Fair in April... (Although I confess that we did have a schadenfreude moment when we learned about the Mexican editor who's no longer director of the best kidzbook house there, since he'd always been rude to us.)

My first meme!

OK, I'm finally going to post my first meme, as a way of practicing to see if I've learned how to use LJ-cuts properly, and also how to reference usernames.

This is the which States have you visited meme, which has been making the rounds. I first saw it on janni and misia's journals.

( State of the Union Meme )

That's a total of 27 states out of fifty, with two of them maybes.

I think I'd do much better with countries in the European Union, even including prospective and newly joined... ;-)