Today, I’m celebrating the release of The Northeast Coast Journal, Issue III, Summer. There are a lot of amazing things about this issue.

For me, it starts with that fact it includes my very first poetry publication! Editor Katherine E. Schneider chose my poem, Poetry Nite at the Rite Aid Parking Lot to appear in  “Chapter II” of the journal.

I am now officially a published poet! Hooray!

Introducing The Northeast Coast Journal

In reading this issue, I realized, there’s something about the experience of reading a magazine or journal front to back–to absorb each piece in relationship to the whole.

So, let’s back up for a moment to share a bit about The Northeast Coast Journal, because it’s truly something special! And, should you read the issue, you are in for a captivating experience.

The Northeast Coast, or TNC as it’s affectionately called, is “an online literary journal and small press dedicated to the poetry and spirit of the northeastern coastal United States.”

The journal is organized in a way that creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Each poem arises in the context of other poems in its chapter that share a theme. I imagine the editor pouring over submissions all winter, unearthing the themes in those that move her, finding a way to tell a braided story in poem written by 54 different poets.

What You’ll Find in the Summer Issue of The Northeast Coast Journal

As editor Katherine E. Schneider writes, “The fifty-four poems contained in this issue will take you on a journey that cannot help but surprise and captivate. We begin in the Prologue with—what else?—ocean waves, before being pulled by the undertow into Chapter I’s eccentric, surreal, and at times hilarious recognitions of the meaningful mundane. Chapter II explores the many ways we see and define ourselves: within the political climate we inhabit, in midlife, in bodies marked by unique features, and through spirits that refuse to be silenced or restrained. In Chapter III, you’ll find yourself reaching for tissues even as you laugh, smile, and sit in awe of how profoundly these poems honor people loved and remembered. All of this leads us to Chapter IV, which invites us to question, reflect, transform, and transcend—as drummers strike an irresistible rhythm in a subway station and low tide briefly reveals all our secrets. Finally, the Epilogue closes the issue with two poems that get meta about poetry in strikingly different ways that you won’t want to miss.”

Get Started Reading and Let Us Know What it Sparks!

You can start with the welcome to Issue III Summer here.

For those in a hurry, my poem Poetry Nite at the Rite Aid Parking Lot appears at the end of Chapter II and you can read it here.

Or, you can listen to me reading it!

I hope you experience as much joy and exaltation reading (or hearing) it as I did writing it.

I’d love to know what the poem sparks in you. Please share!

About the Journey of Publishing Poetry in a Lit Mag

When I started on my path to poetry publication, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to submit my poems to literary magazines and contests. I’d heard how difficult it is to get poetry published. I am so glad I decided to submit!

In this post, I share more about my journey, such as about working with various editors I hired, and some lessons along the way.

Surviving Editors and Critics…Until I Found My Fit

The whole process reminded me of taking a poetry workshop at a university writers conference with a poetry critic. For something like an additional $75 fee, one could sign up to get his feedback on your poems. “You need to be part of the conversation in the poetry community,” he told me. I’d summoned a great deal of courage to submit the poems. He didn’t so much share how to revise the poems as share why they were no good. He was a critic, after all.

That was over fifteen years ago. About a decade later, as I started to envision publishing my poems in a book, I imagined self-publishing. I just needed an editor. So, I tried three different editors over the course of four or five years, hiring the first to advise me on steps and to edit a handful of poems to get a sense of fit. As much as I enjoyed her poetry and her as a person, her edits didn’t inspire me.

Next, I hired a colleague, someone who had edited poetry at a well-known publishing house. His edits involved mostly proofreading, and he gave some reason for not doing more. My guess is that he didn’t resonate with the poems that much; fair enough. Not everyone will! He did help me identify which poems to share at a reading at my local library, which was helpful, but I knew I hadn’t found my poetry editor.

A fortuitous meeting at Omega Institute, during my first Qigong Healer Training workshop with Qigong Master Robert Peng, led me to an evening poetry reading and workshop with poet Nadia Colburn. Her poems touched me deeply. And the prompts she shared to help us write our own were inviting and stimulating, resulting in some inspired work of our own. I knew I wanted to work with her but she was not yet available.

Wow, in every session we had, I felt awe watching her clip whole stanzas or suggest a particular word change, or even change the line breaks and witnessing the way the poems became so much better with her magic pen! And then I realized I was absorbing how to work some of that magic for myself.

The Many Gifts of My Poetry Mentorship

I share the details of my poetry mentorship with Nadia and my experience (and tips) for submitting to literary journals in this post, “Tips for Submitting to Journals, Lit Mags and Contests.”

The mentorship has been extraordinary. In addition to support for revising my poems so that they sing (or else they don’t make it into the book!) and turning a bunch of poems into a coherent collection of poems that work together, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, here are the surprises I got from it:

• Community: I will admit, somewhat abashed, that I wasn’t looking for community per se. I just wanted to produce something of beauty. I felt I had community in other ways, which is true, but through the mentorship I realized the value of this particular community. Five of us (just recently growing to six) plus our teacher became a community. We spent two and a half days earlier this month at my family’s shared beach house where we got to know each other more deeply in person. Those who couldn’t make it in person participated in whatever way they could (Zoom, group chat, video). Our confidence in our work grew, and we grew collectively.
• A Published Poem and More Publications in the Hopper: I thought I might submit my poems to literary magazines and journals, but my interest in that wavered. Was it just a waste of time, unlikely to bear fruit? The mentorship gave me specific steps to take, hand-holding to take those first steps on Zoom with my mentor, and a replicable process. And three more poems will be published in August. I hope to have more to report as I continue to submit!

• 

  A More Consistent and Prolific Writing Practice: I’m writing more — in my Get Your Writing Done program, in the morning before qigong practice, on special writing days when I go to the family house to write by the sea with a friend or on my own. And I’m developing ways to capture ideas from life that I might have missed earlier — I even used voice-to-text to capture a few ideas for poems that came to me while driving!

• Inspiration for New Poems: I wasn’t sure I wanted to write more poems. With so many poems to sort through and shelve, type in and/or revise, did I really want to add to my “burden”? It turns out, “Yes,” and maybe it’s not such a burden. Once you have support it can be a great joy!
• A Greater Ability to Revise Poems on My Own: I don’t want to give up editorial support—I need it. But I love that I now have some ways to experiment with my poems on the page before submitting them for feedback. I’m starting to understand how to revise, the different processes to use, and the strategies to try.
• An Understanding of How to Put a Poetry Book Together: I resisted Nadia’s initial attempts to get me to create a structure for the collection as a book. I’m so grateful she persisted. Now I understand how to create coherence in a collection of poems.

When Inspiration Strikes, Capture it Immediately!

As you can tell from the poem itself, inspiration came as I drove home from a reading at the University of Rhode Island’s Ocean State Summer Writing Conference years ago. Ideas began to flow and I pulled over to get them down on paper.

When inspiration strikes, STOP! Capture it. You think you’ll remember when you get home, or after your shower, or when you go to writing class, but it’s so easy to lose both the idea and that exalted state of flow. Have a great way to capture your ideas. I like to keep at least one journal in my car at all times. And several by the side of my bed (since they tend to migrate to my office when I type up my ideas, I need a few extra to always have one on hand). Yes, you can type your ideas into your phone, but research shows that handwriting enhances creativity better than typing does!

In case you missed it, here’s a reading and writing exercise I shared last month that had a profound effect on me.

And if you haven’t read the poem yet, please read it here and let me know what your experience! And share, please. I hope it will inspire many writers — poets and otherwise!