Dear Poets,
It has been awhile. I hope everyone is (still) having a good summer which has included some writing time. We were barely past the Fourth of July when I had to sprint past the towers of back to school supplies already at Target — too soon! I wanted to shout — but now, despite the broiling heat, the starting bell has rung. My kid is back in class and new vistas of time are opening up although it is disarmingly silent during the day. I’m still recalibrating after these fast and furious months with travel every few weeks since May.
Lest I bury the lede, I am offering a fall class! Join me starting September 9th for another four-week session. I consider my May/June teaching ‘experiment’ a success so am going to build on this model for September and October. Please reach out with any questions.
Poetry Generator ✍️
Join me September 9-30 over email. During this hybrid workshop I will send out a prompt each Monday and by the following Sunday you will send back a poem. You can email it to our entire group (for greater accountability), or just to me if more comfortable. I will send back editing suggestions by page and by voice memo. You are welcome to offer feedback to others, but it is not expected. At the end of week four we will meet on Zoom for a convivial gathering during which we read poems, chat, and enjoy a sense of well-earned accomplishment. 🌱
Yes, you won’t get the frisson of seeing everyone weekly in their Brady Bunch squares, but you also won’t have to spend more time online than you already are, nor have the awkwardness of volunteering your poem for critique. I consider this a way to give feedback individually, yet harness collective energy. I am still deciding on a few new ‘bonuses’ — such as Zoom office hours, when you can pop in to co-write or to ask questions or sending out prompts as voice memos as well. TBD, but if you need a ‘new school year’ kickstart, I would love to see your writing! $175.00. Register by clicking ‘reply’ to this Substack or email at Elline.lipkin@gmail.com or text/call: (323) 236-8823. ✍️
Some summer highlights. ☀️ In June, I had a fantastic time teaching at the biennial Focus on Book Arts Conference held at Western Oregon University. My class “Writing in the Blanks” left me with all kinds of ideas about visual/verbal connection, new insights into VisPo, and material that I hope to use in the future. I was also a student while there, taking “Intro to Book Arts” and a humdinger of a workshop, “Funky Foldy,” in which we tore through a range of ‘paper engineering’ projects at a brisk pace. There was a nonstop brew of creative energy — with conversations over breakfast continuing to lunch, then long into the afternoon and kept going through evening activities. A kind of electric #bookjoy saturated the air as people began to stay later and later at their workshops, not wanting to leave a makerspace that seemed like manna to those hungry for creative connection. I especially loved Sarah Maker’s keynote in which she spoke movingly about her journey into this field.
I consider myself an amateur (though enthusiastic) book artist, and would love to try her challenge #areyoubookenough. Each of the month’s themes could certainly serve as a poetry prompt.
I came back in time to throw myself into a few weeks of intense screening for next year’s Associated Writing Program (AWP) Conference to be held in Los Angeles at the convention center, from March 26-29th (mark your calendars, Angelenos💥). I know people are getting impatient for the results and I can’t say more until they are released, but I am glad to share my takeaways about what makes a ‘successful’ proposal.
Full circle. I am just back from my latest trip which included an excellent visit to Washington D.C. Continuing my theme of book arts mania, I loved seeing this exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and was so taken with the exhibit “Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900-1939” at the National Portrait Gallery. This was also a trip very much about family and honoring my late mother-in-law.
After D.C., it was on to Miami. Since the dates coincided, to my own surprise, I attended my high school reunion. As someone who can obsess over ‘sliding doors’ moments, I am still thinking about what it meant to connect with people I last saw decades ago. The evening felt like a Matroushka-like reveal, taking lids off of the selves since fitted around the kernel of who we were at 18. Everyone says reunions are about the people. I get this, but for me, it was more about measuring the distance from who I was to where I am now.
My graduating class had approximately 800 students, with its demographic roughly a third African-American, a third Latinx, and a third Caucasian. It was huge and unwieldy and it was up to us to find our own way. During my one and only visit with the administrator who doubled as our college counselor I announced my inclination to go out of state for college, to far away (mythic) New England. When I named some of the schools I was thinking about, he just shook his head. Never heard of them. I was on my own. I knew my GPA and a high SAT score were my ticket to other worlds and was simultaneously deeply ambitious while also trying to slip by unnoticed — a tricky act.
After landing at my top pick, a redbrick Connecticut campus, I realized I was proud to have graduated from a public school and stunned at how sheltered many of my classmates seemed. When they talked about their teacup-sized graduating classes and extravagant senior year trips, it was baffling. The first time someone told me they had gone to boarding school I had to stop myself from blurting out ‘didn’t your parents want you around?’ All of it was so deeply counter to my experience.
During senior year we piled into yellow buses to attend Disney World’s Grad Night (where my charismatic French teacher Pearl Chiari warned us to beware the embedded “Disney narcs”). We went to Friday night football games where a buzz would go around the bleachers about which pizza place to later crowd. The head cheerleader dated the football captain and on the first day of senior year I heard someone say she was ready find a date for prom. There were factions and tribes and drama and we all (mostly) got through. At the reunion I was astounded how many couples who had met in high school were still married. I graduated with kids I had gone to kindergarten with and never realized this was more the exception than rule.
I couldn’t help thinking about a few lines from one of my favorite childhood books, The Little Princess. Orphaned Sara Crewe, reflecting on her changed fortune (and that of her headmistress nemesis) says, “It is a story… Everything’s a story. You are a story — I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.” Trying to see where people’s stories had spun them, decades later, and what if I had stayed in my home state versus bolting its borders as soon as I could left me in a state of liminal musing I can’t seem to shake. Is it nostalgia or ‘midlife malaise’ as I sometimes call it. Or, are they the same thing? At any rate, it is the basis for poetry. ✍️
Meanwhile, it brings me so much joy to share accomplishments of former students. I kvell for Susan Auerbach whose book In the Mourning Grove will be published by Finishing Line Press. Pre-orders are welcome at this link, especially as the price goes up after September 13th. “The book is a life-affirming beacon and companion for the grief that many of us carry, an invitation to venture without fear into—and beyond—the mourning grove.”
I am so happy for Sara Ellen Fowler, whose book Two Signatures is now out in the world. Sara will be reading for the wonderful series Fourth Saturdays at the Claremont Library, (with Nancy Miller Gomez) this upcoming Saturday (on 8/24) at 2:00.
Sharing with you:
This article by poet Meghan O’Roarke went up on the Poetry Foundation website in June and speaks to some of the ideas expressed above: “On Ambivalence: To Be, But to Be How? It is the voice of both our lives and our unled lives.”
There are a few more days (9/1) left to submit to Gyroscope’s special issue: Fall Crone Power — a theme that always draws interest.
I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this website “Lessons From a Distance” but it is a treasure trove of essays, prompts, reading lists, and exercises that look extremely useful. Here is one that I’d love to try: “The House and You: Intimate Spaces, Objects and Memory: A Lesson With Hannah VanderHart.”
I regret not posting about this in time. Who knew that there is a “Poet/Artist Development Program” for LA residents? The deadline was July 15th. A link to bookmark for next year.
If you haven’t yet checked out the homepage for Our California: Poems from Los Angeles County, one of California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick’s projects, it’s great to read through. It looks like the portal is still open. Submit here.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that August is when the Sealey Challenge takes place. Growing from poet Nicole Sealey’s vow to read a book of poetry a day during the month of August, people have taken up her charge, often posting their book stack on social media with the hashtag #SealeyChallenge! The history of this challenge is here; how to participate is listed here. If you fill in the certificate (on the website) and email it in, the University of Arizona Poetry Center will send you a ‘golden sealey and a set of four #SealeyChallenge postcards to commemorate your achievement.’
Did you spend as much time as I did watching the Olympics? (And that opening night — fantastique!) I had no idea there was a “Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad.” One of its last events will be held at the downtown library on September 7th. Called “Catch the Mic” there’s a great lineup. Kudos to L.A. Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson who will be traveling with a cohort from LA to read in Paris. 🎉
Since I’m sending this just after the DNC has ended, if you are so inclined, here is a link for an upcoming reading: “Poets for Harris” on Zoom on Sunday, September 15th 4:00 PDT/7:00 EST.
My thanks to everyone who has read this far! As a reward, I will VagueStack that I have a big announcement coming soon. You will be among the first to know. ✍️