words that fuel the editing and submission wheel
Posted by Daniela Elza on Jul 04 2007
It has been a while. Life has been busy in all sorts of ways.
May 25th—29th I attended The Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2007 in Saskatoon. For three days at the conference I steeped myself in philosophical presentation after philosophical presentation, to the point where my brain was in some state of overload for a week after the conference. Three collegues and I did a panel presentation called So Much Truth, So Much Being: Poetic Provocations to Philosophical Musings. I felt very encouraged with the feedback I received from the people who showed up for the presentation. Thank you Heesoon Bai for inviting me to partake in this experience. Thank you to all of you who gave me your encouraging comments. I am even considering now going back to SFU to finish my Education degree. Maybe I am ready for it and maybe The University is ready for me.
After the conference Paideusis invited papers and fragments to be submitted to their conference issue. So here is the fragments “paper” the panelists put together for the issue that came out last week. It was a challenging experience trying to harness such diverse voices and approaches into something written for an academic audience. Still not sure if we succeeded.
On the publishing front I can also report that the latest dANDelion issue (33:1) is out. It has four of my poems published in it, and I am happy to report three are in my favorite form. In their acceptance letter the editors said, “Your work displays the literary originality and experimental spirit that dANDelion embodies.” Thank you to Jordan Nail (Managing Editor) and Jonathan Ball (Assistant Editor) for selecting my work and for their comments. On some days these are the words that keep me going.
After seven or so rejections (for numerous reasons) in a row, yesterday I heard from The Manitoba Writers’ Guild. They ran a contest last year called Friends to celebrate their 25th anniversary. I submitted a poem to the contest and after some delay of the results I am happy to report that my poem inhabitions won first place. I would say it was worth the wait. Just when I was beginning to think it is a waste of time submitting to contests. Thank you judge George Elliott Clarke.
The encouragement will not be wasted. I am back to putting together the next submission.