But, will there be treats?

Monday. It isn't that far away, and it's when I start having a new poem a day posted on Tupelo Press's 30/30 Project page. I won't be alone, there are eight other poets taking this plunge with me, and I'm looking forward to seeing what we all write.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the 30/30 Project is also a fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit, independent literary press. Did you ever do a March of Dimes Readathon? I did one in elementary school, and let's just say that many neighbors severely underestimated my ability to read a great number of books in a relatively short amount of time.

This is so different!

First, I hope you'll follow along and see what I am posting each day. Maybe you'll even let me know, in the comments or on Facebook, or through email (or when I run into you at school pick up!) what you think.

Maybe you'll even make a donation in support of my efforts. And - there's no maybe about it - if you do, there will be treats!

What kind of treats? What kind of donation? I'm so glad you asked.

        $5 => set of 4 haiku-by-Merie stickers (the stickers are business card-sized) - here's one of the haiku stickers:

$10 => set of 4 haiku-by-Merie stickers PLUS a set of 4 postcards with short poems by me and drawings by Cora. Cora and I had a great time with this one. We read through a bunch of my poems and she picked out ones that she wanted to illustrate. Later on I'll post a picture of one of them.

$15 => set of 4 haiku-by-Merie stickers, set of 4 postcards with short poems by me and drawings by Cora PLUS the first 10 people to donate this amount get to supply 5 words that I must use together in one poem. 

$20 => set of 4 haiku-by-Merie stickers, set of 4 postcards with short poems by me and drawings by Cora PLUS one dozen homemade cookies (chocolate chip or gingersnap - your choice, delivered in October).

$30+ => set of 4 haiku-by-Merie stickers, set of 4 postcards with short poems by me and drawings by Cora, one dozen homemade cookies (chocolate chip or gingersnap - your choice, delivered in October), PLUS a handmade, signed chapbook of all the poems written by me for my 30/30 month (also delivered in October). 

Tupelo also offers a subscription (9 books published by them in 2014 for $99, or your choice of 9 of their titles - free postage!) for those who want to bulk up their poetry library. If you choose to order a subscription, I will also send you the rewards offered at the $30+ level.

You’re excited, now, aren’t you? You want those cookies! You want me to have to use “elephant, concatenation, pancreas, squelch, and Miami” in a poem, right? I hope so! My goal is to raise at least $350 for Tupelo Press, whether I get there through dozens of sets of haiku stickers or dozens of cookies.

There are three ways to donate - with each it is very important that you include my name as the poet you are sponsoring so that I know which treats to send your way! Here’s how you can sponsor me:

1. Subscribe to Tupelo Press (9 books for $99). Visit http://www.tupelopress.org/books_subscribe.php and fill out the form; be sure to put my name in the “comments” field!
2. Complete the Tupelo Press Donation Form at https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php and be sure to put my name in the “honor” field. (You can also print out the form and send it in with a check.)
3. Donate using PayPal at https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php - click on the orange “Quick Donation via PayPal” button - be sure to put my name in the “message” field!

If you choose option 2 or 3, be sure to provide your mailing address so that you can receive a tax receipt for your donation! 

Let me know when you donate, and I can make sure your donation has been matched up with my name - and then I can start preheating the oven for your cookies, put Cora to work assembling postcard sets, or pull out my dictionary to look up the wacky words you are sending me.

Whew. Okay. Now I'm ready for Monday!

Secret (Poetry) Weapon

I have a secret weapon that I am counting on helping me during my 30/30 Project month (only seven days away!).

When I was in the University of Minnesota's MFA program, back when that MFA program was a little bitty baby that was just finding its feet, most of my professors were adjuncts. Adjunct professors not only get a bad rap, but they also get the short end of the academic stick - I know, because now I am one myself. But, I also found that, freed from the obligations of committees and advisees and departmental politics, adjuncts often had more time and energy for students than tenured faculty. Those classes were absolute treasures.

One such teacher whose classes had a lasting impact on my writing life was Deborah Keenan. I always knew that a semester with Deborah was going to a blockbuster in terms of generation and output. Ideas for poems came fast and thick in those workshops. Usually she would bring in poems that had caught her attention that week and read them to us and then ask these seemingly off-handed questions that worked.

I remember one class she read something and then asked the class, not directing the question to anyone in particular, "Have you written your dinosaur poem yet?" The poem my friend Christine wrote in response to that question is still memorable to me, nearly 18 years later.

So, imagine my delight when some internet searching at the beginning of the summer led me to a chapbook by Deborah, published by broadcraft press: From Tiger to Prayer. It is a small collection of writing prompts of the kind I remember her lobbing out into the classroom. I picked it up on a recent trip to the Twin Cities and have been saving it for fun, for inspiration, for September.

What is found there

I've been thinking about the worth of poetry lately, given that I'm about to start the 30/30 Project, and that I will be hoping that friends and family will make a donation to Tupelo Press in support of my daily poetry efforts. What makes poetry worth supporting? Why is it important that small publishers stay alive, putting poetry in people's hands, giving poets a wider voice?

As an undergraduate at UCSB's College of Creative Studies, one of the writers we frequently discussed was William Carlos Williams, a doctor, a poet, a writer of short stories. Williams's lasting influence on me comes from the end of his long poem "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," when he writes:

My heart rouses
  thinking to bring you news
    of something
that concerns you
  and concerns many men.  Look at
    what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
  despised poems.
    It is difficult
to get the news from poems
  yet men die miserably every day
    for lack
of what is found there.
  Hear me out
    for I too am concerned
and every man
  who wants to die at peace in his bed
    besides.

Leaving aside the fact that this is not an example of inclusive language, I feel the rightness of the idea of there being something in poetry that cannot be found elsewhere and which is important and vital. Each art form has its own vocabulary of this "something" - the "news" I get from a painting is different from the "news" I get from music. And poetry is the place where I feel like I am able to get closest to being part of the news, of being, in this sense, a newsmaker. Sometimes I have felt this in art I've made, but mostly in poems. 

And it does rouse my heart to think that I am part of bringing my news to someone who might be needing it, just as so many poets have brought the news to me.

(find a longer excerpt from "Asphodel" here: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/asphodel-greeny-flower-excerpt)

Countdown to FRESH poems!

Here, now, in what is quickly becoming late August, I am in countdown mode. The university classes I teach start on the 27th of this month. My daughter starts 3rd grade on September 2nd. The Dog Runs On will be released on September 12th.

But the main date I am counting down to right now is September 1, when I post my first poem for Tupelo Press's 30/30 Project!

For the last couple years Tupelo has been running this project: every month a handful of poets pledge to post a poem a day for 30 days.

From the poet's point of view, this is awesome and daunting and the kick in the butt so many of us need to keep writing every. damn. day.

For Tupelo Press, this is a fundraiser, and we poets hope that readers will choose to donate to Tupelo, a nonprofit press, to sponsor us during our month of public poetry. Poets are encouraged to be creative with the ways we might reward our supporters, and I'll be posting more about that in the days to come.

I'll also be blogging here about what it is like to put a poem a day out into the world - these poems will be ones written for this project - FRESH POEMS. Not polished ones that have been out and about in their fancy clothes for years, but poems that are rolling hot out of the laptop.

Well, you can see where the daunting part comes in now, can't you?

What's next?

The chapbook pre-order period has about a week left - it was extended to August 18 - and then it will be about another month until I'll be able to hold one in my hands. It has been fun hearing from people who have ordered a copy, and talking with other writer friends about this process.

It has also given me a good nudge back toward more regular writing and also being a more adventurous poetry reader - looking at chapbooks from other publishers, subscribing to a few magazines to hear new voices, and discovering amazing works like Tom Philipps' The Humament! How have I not known about that before?!

Which is also how I have found myself involved in an exciting project for September - but more on that later.