Springing 🌿

Join me! I wrote a poem for you....

Dear Poets,

It has been awhile! I meant to write soon after AWP but March filled up with Many Large Things. Let us catch up now. As I’ve noted, AWP is coming to L.A. next year (March 26-29, 2025). I haven’t yet seen the call for panels, but I’m sure we will soon. Glad to post a few lingering thoughts.

One random note is I must emend my suggestion that you carry your phone charger at all times. There were a few panels where I arrived ready to recharge—on all levels—only to find every precious outlet taken. To my dismay, there was no conference Wi-Fi and my flagging iPhone kept draining quickly. What you need is a portable battery pack.

Kansas City Main Library. Great film archive and zine collection.

My AWP strategy is to pick a theme that connects with what I need most that year. This February, it was a sense of creative renewal. To my delight, I found several excellent panels themed around writing for its own sake—how to foster a sense of play or joy to counter the struggle it can also be. During one panel, the presenters offered a series of prompts and built in 20 minutes of silent writing time. It felt oddly transgressive to stop and actually do the very thing the whole conference was built around. I also noticed an uptick in interest about (and one excellent panel specifically on) accountability groups, how to keep going during a years- (if not decades-) long project, and create community that supports process-driven writing. It felt like a real shift from professional ‘end goal’ panels (‘how to get published/find an agent/get your first book’) towards an emphasis on writing for writing’s sake.

I have followed the growth of the ‘rest is resistance’ movement with mixed feelings. I appreciate critique of ‘productivity/capitalist culture’ but think it’s more nuanced than that. As someone who never has enough time to do the work I most want to do, this counter article (“Work is My Self-Care”) has always made more sense to me. Seeing so much focus on ‘rejuvenating your writing/connection to creativity’ seemed restorative versus the usual ‘how to crack into the top five literary journals’ types of panels.

Ultimately, I think AWP is about connection. I was extremely glad to see a friend I met when we both worked in Paris (and I first started writing poems in C.K. Williams’ living room workshop) as well as a colleague from my MFA days in NYC, both of whom I hadn’t seen in decades. I exchanged work with another friend I only ever see at AWP and we made time to give each other feedback. I found Kansas City very walkable, not too cold (!), and the Nelson-Atkins Museum was a delight. All of these things made AWP a wonderful convergence.

The Nelson-Atkins shuttlecock.

I was grateful for the chance to present on a panel entitled ‘Teaching Outside of the English Department’ and this brings me to… an offer for you! 🌿

Poet-friends, I have had to step away from Zoom-teaching and I have missed you. So, I’ve decided to try an experiment. While I will miss seeing everyone weekly on Zoom, I am offering a less tech-centric poetry workshop through which you can jump-start your own writing again.

I Wrote a Poem For You ✍️

Join me April 22-May 13 over email! I will send out a prompt each Monday and by the following Sunday evening you will send back a poem. You can email it to our entire group (for greater accountability), or just to me if you are more comfortable. I will send feedback by email (maybe voice memo). You are welcome to offer feedback to others, but it is not expected. The gist of this series is to get you to write a new poem weekly (or more!). During week five we will meet on Zoom for a convivial gathering in which we read poems, chat, and enjoy a sense of accomplishment!

Through the years, I’ve noticed poets are often motivated when they have the sense they are writing for others… whether that’s a gesture towards a past relative or ancestor, a lost friend, even a former self. Working with that energy, this series will focus on writing poems to or for others, almost in an epistolary sense. You can riff off this idea in any way you choose, but the prompts will direct you to start a poem that addresses someone or something.

Yes, you won’t get the frisson of seeing everyone weekly in their Brady Bunch-style boxes—but you also won’t have to spend more time online, nor have the awkwardness of putting your poem ‘up’ for group critique. I consider this a way to give feedback individually, yet harness a collective energy. Please reach out with any questions. I would love to see your writing!

I Wrote A Poem For You — April 22, 29, May 6, 13. Zoom celebration (to be scheduled) the week of May 20th. $150.00. Register by mailing me back here or at Elline.lipkin@gmail.com or text/call: (323) 236-8823. ✍️

Post-AWP shelfie. Especially excited by new prose books by Roger Reeves and Jehanne Dubrow. I have two poems in the anthology Transformations.

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Sharing with you: 🌿

I was delighted to find out I made the shortlist for this year’s Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. With thanks to last year’s winner, Lois P. Jones, for encouraging me.

Join me in Claremont at the California Botanic Garden on Saturday, April 6th for “A Garden of Verses” (11 a.m.-4 p.m.) Rain or shine (hopefully shine) poets will be staged throughout the garden, reading freely to the trees, flowers, wind, and… hopefully you. Always a very springy event. 🌷

I was actually at AWP when someone sent me this article: “But What Do the Tortured Poets Think? What do you think? I liked this quote: “‘As a tortured poet, I approve,’” said Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine from 2003 to 2013. ‘Or is she making fun of us? I guess I kind of approve of that, too.’”

As an aside, did you know the Insta account Taylor Swift as Books often pairs poetry books with images? Their Bookshop.org link is a masterclass of curation.

Much of what is going on politically in the literary world is difficult right now. I appreciate the tracking Erika Dreifus is doing, particularly with, as she phrases it, ‘L’Affaire Guernica.’ I was glad to see this article: “The Cowardice of Guernica” which recently ran in the The Atlantic.

Rest in poetry (RIP) Small Press Distribution. When I lived in Berkeley I loved perusing the aisles during their annual open warehouse holiday sale. Their decision to close up shop is one with serious consequences for small presses. I was sorry to learn this news.

I metaphorically head-nodded/fist-pumped my way through this excellent interview “The Always-Deferred Promise of Exposure” and am eager to now read this book: “(Not) Getting Paid do Do What You Love: Gender and Aspirational Labor in the Social Media Economy” by Brooke Erin Duffy. So. Much. Truth. All of which can be applied to the literary world and academe. The oft-taught phrase ‘poetry is a gift economy’ makes me want to scream. I could go on. Suffice to say, many overlapping Venn diagram circles all of which = no pay/low pay/hidden privilege/institutional preying/sanctioned exploitation/continuous deferral/‘normalized’ economic biases/a broken system that so many have literally bought into for… little (literal) return. A dissertation could be written on what hinges in those slashes /. I’ll guess that’s what this book is.

“The Always-Deferred Promise of Exposure”

“The Universe in Verse” is a wonderful (free) annual event taking place IRL in Austin and online on Sunday April 7th. Register here. “An annual charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry.”

This Library of Congress event is coming right up on April 4th at 7:00 (EST)/4:00 (PT). Lucky DC friends can register for tix here. This is “the kickoff event for the U.S. Poet Laureate’s signature project, including the publication of the new anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, and the kickoff of the Library’s annual Mary Oliver Memorial Event.” It looks like a great lineup with poets Molly McCully Brown, Jake Skeets, Analicia Sotelo and Paul Tran. You can also watch the livestream on YouTube.

Rest in poems, Lyn Hejinian. She kindly let me sit in on her graduate poetry class when I was a postdoc at UC Berkeley. For me, her work represented a kind of left-coast, Language-based canon which evaded me despite many years of graduate training. Her class and her writing opened up new poetry portals.

The deadline for this unique call for submissions (below) is, um, tomorrow, but if you have a poem that fits, still send along! Grateful to my former student and friend, Merna Dyer Skinner for sending this to me.

As always, I hope to hear from you! ✍️