1st BOOKS: Reading and Writing with Friends

Poet Joan Gelfand is chipping in for the 1st Books National Poetry Month celebration with a wonderful post looking at the practical side of poetry, and how a poet gets her work published. Joan is the author of “The Long Blue Room,” “A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams,” “Here & Abroad,” and “Seeking Center.” California State Poet Laureate Al Young (2005-2009) says of her work, “Readers, beware. This is powerful stuff.” She’s also a member of the National Book Critics Circle, Poetry Editor for the “J” and Co-Poetry Liaison for the San Francisco Writers Conference, and Development Chair of the Women’s National Book Association. Enjoy her advice, and happy National Poetry Month! - Meg

As a young poet my biggest challenge was not craft, or inspiration, or performance. It wasn’t in making connections with other poets or consistently turning out publishable work. I happily allowed editors of magazines to publish my work when they asked. I wasn’t shy or introverted, or insecure about my work. My real challenge was becoming known in the poetry community and developing the ability to submit work. I could churn out high-level poems, but taking criticism from an editor was not in my purview.

I volunteered to be the Poetry Editor of a popular women’s newspaper and I established myself locally in the community of writers and artists that was the vibrant scene Berkeley in the seventies. The highlight of that era was when a popular band recorded one of my poems as a song on their first album. What a thrill to hear my words sung on the radio as I was driving across the Bay Bridge!

But unlike now, when a young artist would jump on social media to leverage their success, my challenge was finding the time, the motivation and the commitment to be known. I didn’t understand how important it was to send out enough work to truly establish myself. By the end of my twenties, I had a degree from San Francisco State in Creative Writing. I had studied with Stan Rice, Kathleen Fraser and Leonard Woolf. And I had a sufficient body of work – enough for a collection to be sure – but I was clueless about how to go about it. In those days, writing programs did not emphasize the importance of publication beyond submitting to the school literary journal. And there were certainly no workshops in grantwriting or becoming a professional poet.

Fast-forward ten years. I was still writing but I had full-time job, a child and owned a house. Sending out work was squeezed into an evening once a month. I had no plan, and was never consistent.

It took me another decade to realize that having published books would help me to be taken seriously. I started an epic campaign of submitting. In the first several years of my efforts, I sent out over two hundred packages of work – a year! It took about six months but soon I was being published regularly. My first book was accepted by a small press, and two years later, my second book was published. The year after that I won a contest for short fiction and a chapbook was published. This year, another poetry collection was accepted for publication. I’ve been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, a Carver Prize and have won twelve different poetry awards. Now, I receive invitations to submit to anthologies and to speak.

A popular legend in the poetry community has it that as young poets Kay Ryan and Jane Hirshfield got together regularly to submit their work. They sent out hundreds of packages. When people questioned this unorthodox approach, they responded: “We want to get the editors used to our voices.”

So, what’s the moral of the story? The moral is that after an intense period (six years!) of commitment to a program of submissions and publishing, I am now teaching poetry and coaching aspiring writers. And, I speak publicly on “A Three-pronged Approach to Getting Published.” As I tell my students, getting published is like looking for a job. You wouldn’t go in for an interview well-dressed with a shoddy resume, or you wouldn’t begin a search without finding out who in your profession could be of help. It’s the same with writing – first, you perfect your craft. But then you must build your writer’s resume with a list of published works. And last, you build your network. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it! – Joan