Rhinelander or bust!

I've been crazy-busy preparing to teach at Rhinelander School of the Arts! In addition to making handouts and finding great online things to share, I decided a week ago to make chapbooks and order a bunch of copies of my poem, "The Spider,"which was printed on lovely postcards by the kind folks at ripple(s).  Quite frankly, they are wonderful people. If you haven't submitted there, you should. If you don't subscribe: wouldn't you like to receive poems in the mail? Sure you would. You should subscribe!

As for the chapbook, I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am. I have always been hesitant about "self-published" books. I thought, "What, nobody will publish your book so you're just going to publish it yourself? That's cool." Yes. That's the kind of girl I was. How did this change?

Well, I considered making a chapbook for my table at SOA. I also mentioned to a recently-made-friend, Daniel Goscha at Red Kite Press (in Rhinelander) that I'd be in the area and would be happy to display some of his stuff on my table. (He'd been working on a Lorine Niedecker project, which I'm excited to learn more about when I visit the studio on Tuesday!) Anyway, long story short, he pressed some AMAZINGLY perfect covers for my chapbook, which raised the bar on my chapbook making. And he made them in like 2 minutes.  I overnighted some teal waxed linen thread for the binding and am on my way to buy paper to print the poems and an awl and a needle... so. I suddenly realized I was self-publishing a book. It turns out self-publishing is just an art project. I love art projects. I'm happy to self-publish if it means I get to cut up a Wisconsin Road Atlas and sew things together!

In addition to all of this, as of this week, my son is officially a teenager. We are still eating leftover ice cream cake. I'm so tired! But I can't wait to get into the classroom next week and share poems with people!