words for thinkers, parents, activists, dreamers
Many thanks to Sonia Greenfield for including me in such a worthy, necessary project. #resist
Feel free to visit the Rise Up Review website or Facebook page to read ‘Merica and others, then consider Liking their page and sharing the work that moves you. As Sonia says, “you never know who might need a poem.”
Accountability check-in! But first, what is #100rejections anyway?
I have decided to set the literary goal of accumulating 100 rejections this calendar year to facilitate sustained efforts toward publication. Submitting multiple poems to one market and having them all rejected counts as one rejection. Having any number of poems in the packet accepted means that submission counts as an acceptance. I’m aiming for 120 submissions by September 30 to accomplish this.
June, 2017 — 8 Rejections, 4 Acceptances, 5 New Submissions (oopsy)
Year to Date, 56 / 10 / 69
*The journals marked with an asterisk (*) satisfy my secondary literary goal of submitting to as many top-tier journals as possible. See my January Totals post for details.
**This one is still debatable to me – a poem I had withdrawn from this packet was originally accepted by this market, and when I called their attention to the withdrawal email I’d sent, they kindly inquired about the availability of a second poem in the packet instead. The catch is I have not heard back yet confirming they are definitely taking it. We’ll see what happens!
Noteworthy to me, I’m more than half way to my goal of 100 rejections at the 6 month mark, and June ended up being my densest acceptance month to date. Hooray for the midway successes!
This was a challenging and time-consuming month in terms of Life Activities. Summer started so childcare issues came to the fore, and with my daughter’s father away on a job contract, all childcare planning fell to me, as did the childcare rearranging as plans slipped through my fingers with alarming and exasperating regularity. Between missing her daddy and graduating from her favorite school, my little had a lot of needs and processing to work through, so that is what we did. I definitely fell off the submission wagon as a result, but that’s how it goes sometimes, and I regret nothing. In related news, my daughter is being well cared for, and I am getting an A in Literary Theory, which, can I just say, is a mind-blowing class, and completely relevant to certain cultural and social ills we are experiencing today. Just sayin’. Support the arts. They are trying to support you.
❤
Tune in next month for July tallies!
“Upwell,” “Transit, en masse,” and “Pompeii, A Documentary of Me,” plus a featured interview with yours truly are now live in the inaugural issue of Wraith Infirmity Muses. This links to the full poetry section — browse all content there or scroll down to read my poems. The issue also includes fiction, visual art and creative nonfiction.
WIM features work by and for those living with “invisible illness.” From the Word from the Editor note included with issue 1.1:
Wraith, when used in literary terms, is a wisp or faint trace of something. It can also mean ghost. Infirmity, is a physical or mental weakness. This simply meaning an illness, disease, disorder, or frailty. Lastly, muses are sources, personified, as inspiration for an artist or writer. That illness that burdens some, burdens many, in which only traces are seen in rare circumstance by others or is invisible altogether. It is a ghostly, ghastly presence in some people’s lives. It creates a need to purge, becomes a muse and life is born.
Many thanks to Pat for kindly including my work in this journal! Hope you enjoy.
❤
Samara
This journal does a “Before the Razor” feature that allows artists to share their creative process, specifically about the pieces that have been published in the issue. There is a lot of latitude given to the authors, who may interpret “essay” in a variety of ways. This is definitely worth digging into the Razor archives for! Some amazing and entertaining pieces there, and an interesting concept I haven’t seen offered anywhere else.
I was very excited to receive Razor’s acceptance of “Walking the Bone Path,” which included an invitation to participate in this series (you can read mine here). Many thanks to Baker and the editing team for including me in this great issue!
Accountability check-in! But first, what is #100rejections anyway?
I have decided to set the literary goal of accumulating 100 rejections this calendar year to facilitate sustained efforts toward publication. Submitting multiple poems to one market and having them all rejected counts as one rejection. Having any number of poems in the packet accepted means that submission counts as an acceptance. I’m aiming for 120 submissions by September 30 to accomplish this.
May, 2017 — 14 Rejections, 0 Acceptances, 16 New Submissions
Year to Date, 48 / 6 / 64
*The journals marked with an asterisk (*) satisfy my secondary literary goal of submitting to as many top-tier journals as possible. See my January Totals post for details.
**Some markets will only respond to the authors whose work they accept for publication, meaning if your work is not accepted you will simply never get a definitive answer. With the uncertainties already inherent in the submission process (like technical issues, lost email, etc), this is a deal-killer for me in terms of where I will choose to submit. While this non-response policy is usually stipulated in the market’s submission guidelines, occasionally a market will not advertise their non-response policy, or may change their policy after I’ve submitted. With Chroma, my submission had gone well past the estimated response time according to Duotrope, and when I looked at the guidelines on the website again, the journal was no longer accepting poetry. I took this to be a so-called “ghost rejection.”
Tune in next month for June tallies!
I’m grateful and happy that this protest poem found a home with Words Dance, thank you to Amanda Oaks for your confidence and support!
The Furnace Review is now defunct, but before that, they published this (no archive available):
Song to a mirror
First appeared in The Furnace Review (2011)5/2 was the day you got good at “Whatever,”
that game of leaving-first without leaving.
You’d had the scent of happiness
over that last hill this morning,
but now it’s lost,
dispersed into untraceable atoms
across the neighborhood—the same neighborhood where things have changed,
and M_____ and R____ stand in the yard screaming
for two hours in the morning.
“You promised me something!”
“I don’t deserve you!”
and you didn’t know what that meant, either,
not really.Bending without breaking
is easier than it seems,
and more dangerous.
It leads to standing in yards at 7am
and hurling decibels at your love
who volleys them back,
well-placed arcs that shred the neighborhood
with their fictions we believe.Nearly 40,
on loan to the planet,
you believed in “special” until this morning
when you lost the scent of that, too,
in the untraceable atmosphere.
It must be fluttering among the dogwood blooms
and Confederate jasmine—
40 feet up the pine, out of sight
among the unremarkable tree limbs:
you’re just like everyone else
and you’ve lost so many poems that way,
you can’t possibly be bitter—
maybe now you can get some sleep.
Accountability check-in! But first, what is #100rejections anyway?
I have decided to set the literary goal of accumulating 100 rejections this calendar year to facilitate sustained efforts toward publication. Submitting multiple poems to one market and having them all rejected counts as one rejection. Having any number of poems in the packet accepted means that submission counts as an acceptance. I’m aiming for 120 submissions by September 30 to accomplish this.
April, 2017 — 6 Rejections, 1 Acceptance, 11 New Submissions
Year to Date, 34 / 6 / 48
*The journals marked with an asterisk (*) satisfy my secondary literary goal of submitting to as many top-tier journals as possible. See my January Totals post for details.
Tune in next month for May tallies!
Just received my contributor copies of the Sweet issue of Memoryhouse print journal (coming soon to the archive in the Winter 2017 slot), containing my poems “Remember love” and “The diet starts tomorrow.”
The cover is luscious to touch, and the whole thing is beautifully done. Many thanks to Abbie and the editing team for including me!
Accountability check-in! But first, what is #100rejections anyway?
I have decided to set the literary goal of accumulating 100 rejections this calendar year to facilitate sustained efforts toward publication. Submitting multiple poems to one market and having them all rejected counts as one rejection. Having any number of poems in the packet accepted means that submission counts as an acceptance. I’m aiming for 120 submissions by September 30 to accomplish this.
March, 2017 — 8 Rejections, 1 Acceptance, 7 New Submissions
Year to Date, 28 / 5 / 37
*The journals marked with an asterisk (*) satisfy my secondary literary goal of submitting to as many top-tier journals as possible. See my January Totals post for details.
Tune in next month for April tallies!
samara powers poetry