My first guest author this year is award-winning poet Joan Gelfand, whose work has been published in over forty national magazines and literary journals, including Poets & Writers, Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. California State Poet Laureate Al Young says of her collection, A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams (San Francisco Bay Press), “Joan Gelfand’s poems vibrate, shudder or take flight, roaring and purring to safe and not so safe landings in the heart, in the gut. Readers, beware. This is powerful stuff.” – Meg

I began writing poetry when I was fifteen as a personal expression. It wasn’t until I moved to Berkeley and met a poet who implored me to take my work seriously that I began to think of myself as a ‘writer.’ A few years later I was studying at San Francisco State University in the creative writing department with some very fine poets including Stan Rice and Kathleen Fraser. I was encouraged to submit work, but I quickly learned that I didn’t have the stamina for the process of submission and rejection. My sense was that not only was submitting terribly time consuming, I often felt misunderstood and took the rejections too much to heart. One editor, of the now iconic “Amazon Poetry” sent me an editorial change that I disagreed with and I opted out of the anthology. Now, in my maturity, the minutia of editors’ styles effect me less personally.

Everything I had published in my twenties and thirties was through friends – one of whom was in a band and set one of my poems to music. At 21, I had a song on national radio, but I remained daunted by the submission process. Many years later, after writing a novel that was rejected by about a dozen agents, I turned back to poetry. And this time I had great success. My poetry had improved through writing prose, and I had the maturity now for the submission process. Through a period of focus and diligence (and my fair share of rejection, too), I had dozens of poems, articles and a story published.

A few years back, my fiftieth birthday was coming and I wanted to have a book to give to people and sell at readings. Because time was short, I decided to self publish. That first book got the attention of a small publisher, Two Bridges Press. Two colleagues from the Women’s National Book Association had started the press, and when they heard me read from the book at a group reading, they asked to be the publisher. When I was ready with my second manuscript, I again decided to go outside the box. I sent an e-mail to everyone who had published my work (in literary journals, anthologies, etc.) and asked if they could recommend a publisher. One response I got from that email put me in touch with the publisher of San Francisco Bay Press. Within a month, I had a contract for my second poetry book. The publisher, Robert Arthur, wrote a stunning introduction for the book and nominated two poems for a Pushcart Prize.

I’ve learned so much about sticking with the process, about confidence and perseverance, and patience. My new book, A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams, is just out, and I feel I am getting the traction I need as a writer to continue in a serious way. – Joan Gelfand