Are you a working poet who feels like they're more "working" than "poet" sometimes? Are you familiar with the feeling of eating a sandwich with one hand while you drive from one job to the next, unsure of how your writing is going to fit into your day? Do you have a gruesome, overactive imagination? If any of this rings true, then you might enjoy my new essay, "A Michael Bay Brain: Encouraging Words for the Working Poet," forthcoming in Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New and Beginner Poets. (Black Lawrence Press, May/June 2019.) Having such a fantastic home for this piece means a lot to me. I really believe that people who work can be writers, too, and writers owe it to themselves to both a) go easy on themselves (you can't help that you have to pay the electric bill and/or pick up the kids from school) and b) find a way to keep any amount of writing, no matter how seemingly insignificant, as part of their lives (teaser: I go into my own example of a poem that I started on a server's order pad). Ultimately, I hope readers find the essay validating, and I hope it inspires them to keep persisting in their craft.
I'll post again when it's on the shelves, of course, but in the meantime, my gratitude goes to Diane Goettel, Abayomi Animashaun, and everyone else at Black Lawrence Press who is making this anthology a reality!
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