Walking alone

I had my last mentorship meeting with Meira Cook this week. For the past 4 months, I’ve been sending her 10-20 new or revised poems every 2 weeks, then meeting for coffee to read and hear her comments.

I’ve accomplished so much:

- Together, we worked on 129 different poems!
- Some 45 of them were written during the mentorship; the rest were started or completed (in rough form) in the year prior.
- About 20 of the ones we worked on went through significant revisions or additions and were submitted to Meira twice. Many times she told me “This needs to go on!” and as often as I could, I added a stanza or two. She was right: they were always better poems in the end.
- “Stigma” (inspired by a conversation with the director of the Schizophrenia Society) crossed her desk numerous times, growing like a weed – we laughed that it would become my “opus.”
- At least 90 of the poems we worked on feel ready to be seen (but ask me again in a year: I’m sure most of them will look totally different).
- I submitted to 5 literary journals over the past 4 months.
- 5 of the poems we workshopped were selected for publication in 2 journals (Rhubarb chose 4 of my favourites, and Geez liked “Stigma”)!
- I chose a manuscript focus and submitted my first grant proposal.
- I was asked to read at a chapbook launch. My biggest letdown is that I will be unable to attend the mentorship wind-up performance this week, but reading at St. Margaret’s with Joanne Epp, Sarah Klassen, and Sally Ito was a nice surprise that mitigated my disappointment.
- I no longer fear the blank page! (Or worry that by adding to a poem I will dilute the good stuff.)

Growth

Obviously, I’ve generated a lot of material and developed confidence, but the biggest thing I’ve gained is skills. When I look back on where I was 4 months ago, and the work I was performing/submitting then, I’m embarrassed for my younger self and proud of where I’ve come.

- I’ve added the “so what” metaphysical aspect and/or the “hard edge for the softness to rub up against” to many poems that began as simply “nice” memories.
- I’m aware of “register.”
- I’ve learned there is such a thing as too much alliteration. (and too many adjectives, and too many metaphors…)
- My “You’re not Nisselling” collection has developed its own affectionate-exasperated tone, generating a couple series around the loveable real-life characters of “The imaginative child” and “the diminutive professor.”
- I still find found poems and list poems challenging, but now I have a better idea of what they require (more irony on both levels and a more surprising ending, respectively).
- My images are more surprising, and (I love it when Meira says this:) more “devastating.”

Some of the issues we’ve discussed:

How does one write about another people group’s suffering without objectifying or sounding voyeuristic? It’s very difficult, but I do know of some poets who’ve done it well (eg. Di Brandt). And how should a poet approach a manuscript? At times, Meira praised my drive to grow and generate and publish as my greatest strength; other times she cautioned me to “follow my aesthetic” and not look ahead to the final product, the reader, the publisher, the book. I wonder if she interpreted my motivation as impatience for success and recognition, rather than as an outflow of my forward-thinking personality? She both challenged me to think in terms of how the pieces work together in the collection and to not get distracted from the art in front of me by considering the manuscript as a whole – on this issue, I’m still unclear.

Moving forward:

I hope to do a 2 or 3 week intensive program at the Banff or Sage Hill (Saskatoon) writing school next spring. I’m looking into taking a University composition course, and I plan to register for every workshop the Guild offers! Whether or not I receive the grant, I will continue to build my “You’re not Nisselling” autism collection. I’ll keep meeting with my monthly poetry group, reading at Speaking Crow, submitting to journals (reaching my goal of “10 rejections by Christmas” will be tricky if my streak of beginner’s luck continues!), and returning to Meira’s notes as I revise, revise, revise!

It’s going to be a challenging adjustment, not having Meira to run all my poems and ideas by (or her lovely presence to look forward to sharing)! I’m still a lot way from finding my own voice and trusting my gut. Meira’s suggestions have been so encouraging and eye-opening. Almost invariably, the poems I was unsure of were the ones in which she found some delightful juxtaposition of devastation and humour, observed and magic realism, or half rhymes and musical sounds. The drafts that gave me initial pride often required the most revision (too glib, too unclear, too wordy).

Her parting blessing: “To succeed as a poet, you need 3 things: talent, tenacity, and luck. You have loads of talent and tenacity, and you’ll make your own luck! You might not believe this: it will take time, but time is on your side. Someday, you will have a published collection of poetry.” This is what I will hang onto in the years ahead.

I’d encourage anyone with the itch to write to join the Manitoba Writers’ Guild (only $60 annually) and apply for a mentorship. It’s priceless!

Mouse 13: Jump poems

In my post about poetic difficulty statements (March 22), I mentioned jump tercets (tercet=a three-line stanza). At the workshop, Erin Moure asked us to pick up a poetry book and read three random lines from three pages. Here’s an example using random lines from Sarah Klassen’s new book, Monstrance (which I happen to love):

Teenagers from the Bible Camp near Estes Park,

dozing or in a coma, breathing in and out.

Be afraid of the alien.

Here’s another:

mother raccoon and three masked offspring

of your high-powered speed boat

where he struggled in his narrow bed to breathe

The results can be entertaining. Then Erin had us read random lines from one of our poems, to try to see connections or ways of revising we hadn’t seen before. Most of my poems are less than 12 lines long, so there aren’t a lot of unexpected connections to be found. However, I’ve taken her idea and applied it to whole poems.

I have so many short poems that I tried to expand (as Meira says “Go on!”), but they weren’t going anywhere…until I tried combined them, jumping and matchmaking one poem with another. A poem about bedtime exasperation here and a poem about the sympathetic pharmacist there and boom: we have a two-stanza poem about Ritalin waning. A stanza that didn’t fit into a poem about suicide made a great ending to a crazy dream about a mother running away from home.

Boing. Boing. Boing. Happy hopping.

 

Happy plaid mice month!

April is plaid mice month, or as most people call it: Autism Awareness month or Poetry month, depending on which community you’re part of. I happen to belong to both. What better time than April to talk about writing a collection of autism poetry! So I’m bringing my mommy and professional selves together (hopefully they play nice) and posting this on both Plaiditudes and 37 Mice.

Today is the birthday of my writing group co-founder (Happy birthday, Joanne Epp) – it’s hard to believe that we only started meeting this past winter after a mutual friend invited us on an outing to the museum and we discovered we both write poetry. For the past four months, I’ve been meeting biweekly with Meira Cook (who’s been called the greatest living Canadian poet) to hone my skills through the Manitoba Writers’ Guild mentorship program. A year ago, I didn’t belong even belong to the writers’ guild yet!

A year ago, I also hadn’t visited the Manitoba Adolescent Treatment Centre parent group, or attended any Asperger Manitoba events, joined the Autism Winnipeg Facebook page, or met any of the PACE (parents of autistic children everyone) entrepreneurs like Mike, Ljubica, and Ruby Lou, who’ve become good friends.

It’s amazing what can happen in a year. Now I’m writing a collection of poems about the devastating and celebratory moments I’ve shared on Plaiditudes: the drug trials and side effects, assessments and diagnoses, close calls in traffic, judgmental stares and kick-ass Christmas performances.

A friend and fellow artist asked why I didn’t write my life as a book of stories in addition my poetry. Perhaps someday I will, but for now, I’m so in love with the art of poetry, the intensity of emotion that just a few devastating or playful words can evoke, that I don’t have eyes for any other genre. Through my blog, I gain perspective and find meaning in the affectionately exasperated “better laugh than cry” experiences of parenting autism, but through poetry, I don’t only find beauty: I create it.

And on Thursday May 3, 7:30, at St. Margaret’s Anglican Church, Winnipeg, I’ll be reading from my collection at Joanne Epp’s chapbook launch, along with two of my favourite poets Sarah Klassen and Sally Ito. The event is free and open to the public.

I’ll be wearing turquoise, but the busy mice in my head will be decked out in plaid.

Good news!

As anyone who’s friended me on Facebook or shared my grocery line in the past week knows, I’ve got good news: I’m getting published! See the note below (the original is away at the framers):

Dear Angeline Schellenberg,

Hope this finds you enjoying early spring.

As poetry editor of the upcoming issue 30 of Rhubarb devoted to Manitoba Mennonite writing, I’m happy to let you know that I’ve chosen 4 of the impressive poems you sent us to run in the issue. I’m hoping that there won’t be any problems with space related to my choices, but that’s in the hands of the design people.

Maurice Mierau

I almost called my sister-in-law/poet in arms to tell her, but it was 10:30 pm when I read the email, so I let her sleep. But I found out the next day that she’s to be published in the same issue! Just a few weeks ago, we made a deal that if either of us had a poem accepted this year, we’d take each other out for supper. Since then, she’s been accepted by two literary journals, and I by one. Bring on the calamari!

I submitted 9 poems (a bigger package than most editors would prefer), and the 4 Mierau chose were about trees, my Oma’s death, a childhood memory of my dad, and a favourite story my grandma told about her sisters in Russia.

I’m very excited to be in Rhubarb, a locally published literary journal of Mennonite writing, but I’m particularly excited about being published there now. I’m in the process of applying for a Manitoba Arts Council grant for a collection of poems about autism, and despite more than a hundred news articles, features, reviews, and award-winning columns, in terms of qualifying to apply as a published “literary” writer, I was right on the line. I heard from the granting official this week that my one (bad) published poem and a chapter in an anthology squeaked me in. With 4 more (good!) poems in a recognized literary journal, I’m set. To apply that is. Convincing the granting committee to award me the cash is another story. I have a meeting lined up with the granting officer to go over my project proposal in the few weeks to make sure it’s the best it can be. And then we wait.

A few weeks ago, I set the goal of either one publication or 10 rejections by Christmas. I didn’t expect to get accepted this early! But I’m not giving up on my 10 rejections. I don’t want to lose momentum. I have one set of poems already sitting on an editor’s desk, and another 4 packages almost ready to go to other magazines across Canada. Maybe I’ll have a second acceptance before the end of the year – who knows! – but I can make darn well sure that another 9 journals have the chance to decide.

But first, to celebrate! My daughter thinks mom’s now so famous that we need to buy a family limo, so I could take her out on the town to prolong the illusion of fame and fortune. But I’d prefer something simpler, some tradition we can return to as a family every time one of my poems earns a paycheque (what can 4 people do for $10 to $50?). One writer I know orders sushi. I’m the only Schellenberg who eats seaweed, so that’s out.

I guess Rhubarb pie would be appropriate, but then what will we eat the day I’m in Prairie Fire?

Mouse #13 Poetic difficulty statement

Problems are good. If you don’t have a problem, you’re asleep at the switch. ~ Erin Moure

Another exercise Erin had us do was writing poetic difficulty statements. Here’s mine (which won’t surprise any of you mouse-trackers reading along at home):

I am grappling with freeing myself creatively. How to silence the editor/reviser long enough to generate enough raw material of which to make something? I get and idea and write a few lines – I have at least a hundred three- or four-line poems – and I can’t go on. I’m so afraid of being cliche! I have another hundred ten-line poems that lack tension and significance.

Then she asked us to list things we can do in the next day, week, and month to alter the situation:
1. jump tercets – next day (more on this later)
2. write friend/evil twin poem – next week (explanation to come)
3. create a running list of concrete images as they come to mind – next month
4. don’t work late at night. ever. this is wheel-spinning futility
5. when I’m spinning my wheels, stop and read instead
6. ask a friend which of my little sheep poems to send to pasture and hope they find a train track
7. work at a coffee shop more often
8. post a reminder about the mice (the nasty squeaky ones, not the bond-gnawers) in a jar (more on this later)
9. set realistic goals for how many new poems and revisions to complete in a week (Ask Meira for help)
10. submit to CV2 and Grain – this month
11. write another difficulty statement next month
12. then read this one and see how far I’ve come!

Mouse #12: find the heat!

I participated in a Writers’ Guild Masterclass this past Sunday with Montreal poet Erin Moure. What a stretching experience! After trying to read her books and throwing them across the room, repeatedly, and discovering an interview that revealed her opposite-to-Angeline philosophies of reading and writing, I was cryin’-in-my-sleep nervous.

I found her delightful. She was dogmatic, but in a “you can go back to doing it your way tomorrow” kind of way. She explained that people express; language produces. Therefore, the important question about literature for her is not “What does it mean?” or “What did the poet intend?” but “How is this little machine working? Where is the vent in this poem that’s heating up the room?” (For those of you who’ve studied literary criticism, this would be a more reader-centred, rather than author-centred approach. I was glad for my biblical criticism training that gave me a bit of a mental framework.)

So, rather than finding and critiquing the parts of our own and each other’s poems that needed work, we read our pieces aloud, then passed around our pages and circled each others’ “heating vents” – the words, phrases, or stanzas that jumped out as we heard or read them. Then we read the group only those passages will the most circles. Every time, the room was filled with nods and “ah” at the resonant images set free. Amazing!

Then we rewrote our “heating vents” on a new sheet of paper and worked to fill in the gaps with more strong images. What a positive, eye-opening way to revise. Anyone can circle the words that emote, surprise, or leap (say, non-poetic spouses who only read photography forums). I think my writers’ group will try this method of feedback too.

It’s easy to get bogged down in what isn’t working or what I’m intending and failing to say, but poems rise or fall on the wings and gravity of their images. So from now on, I’m going to focus on feeling the heat!

Mouse #11: the Walker ahead of me In The City

I get lost easily. I try to drag my husband everywhere as navigator, but when he’s not around, I take my GPS. At ever wrong turn, she calmly says “Recalculating…” The cul de sacs and one-ways of “poetry” have bigger pits of sludge to bridge or wind around than Winnipeg’s Red or Assiniboine, so newcomers like me need a guide. That’s what the Writers’ Guild has given me.

It’s hard to believe now, that when I joined the guild last summer, I said I didn’t know what good it would do me. This winter I was selected to participate in the guild’s Sheldon Oberman Mentorship Program, under the direction of Meira (may-ear-ah) Cook, CBC literary award winning author of two novels (one forthcoming) and four poetry collections including “A Walker in the City.” When I got the call, I screamed and leaped about like a Price is Right winner, and I still haven’t come-on-down from the high.

Every two weeks until June, she and I meet for two hours in a coffee shop to go over the 10-20 new poems/revisions I’ve emailed her. Besides being enchanted by her gentle nature and South African accent, here’s what I’ve gained/learned:

1. An understanding of line breaks. I used to begin lines with a bomb-dropping words and leave my frayed pronouns and prepositions dangling at the ends. Meira taught me that the end is more important than the beginning. I know I’ve internalized good breaks because last week I gave her a poem with naughty breaks that worked well, and she said I’d broken the rule effectively. You can’t break until you’ve got it.

2. Metaphors need to carry forward; for example, if children are circling me like hot popcorn, they can’t immediately chant. Burst or snap, perhaps, but not chant. If I’m inside a womb, the images need to be round; no frames or borders here, only rainbows.

3. The psychological transparency of pronouns. Pronouns reveal a poet’s anxieties (Are they my ancestors or ours? Is it my childhood home or theirs?) but they (or I) doesn’t need therapy before we can fix the poem.

4. Capitals at the beginning of each line is outdated. Get with the 21st century program.

5. A grasp of immediate, concrete images, and a knack for skating off the cliche (eg. “What to get for the person who gives everything?”), together with an aversion to idioms and cop-out “glitter-glue” words like “beautifully” and “twinkle.” When I use a “Hallmark” image like angels or dream or love, I need to twist it, so the angels are drunk or rheumy. (And always put the most shocking item in the list last.) The power of the poem is in the tensions, the surprises.

6. An awareness of more poetic forms. I was already using metaphysical conceit, dramatic monologue, narrative, nature, and shadow poems, I just never knew it. Now I can read other poems who use these styles and learn from them.

7. On the subject of reading other poet, Meira has introduced me to Tim Lilburn (a stretch for the imagination), Anne Szumigalski (I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t heard of her before), Dionne Brand, John Donne (I lived too long before I read “Batter my heart, three-personed God”), and Don MacKay (speaking of surprising metaphor!).

8. The need for more than one layer of meaning. If I could count the number of time Meira has written “Go on!” on my drafts, or the number of times she’s asked “Nice start. So what are you planning to do with this?” on my “completed” submissions…well, I can’t. We’ve discovered I have a talent for writing in an playful child voice, but I can’t leave my poems in petting kitty land. There must be a “shadow” falling across the barn door. I don’t need to hit people over the head with answers about the nature of femininity and the meaning of childhood or a new definition of family, but I do need to hint at something profound. I still really struggle with this one, but I have another three months to move my work closer to, if not a hint, at least a wink or glance of profundity.

9. As per Meira’s advice, I’m swearing off contests. My poetry submissions and mice-inspired ficitonal work sent to Prairie Fire and The Fiddlehead’s contests were all rejected by the guest editors in favour of one of the other bazillion contest entries. From now on, the goal is to get published sooner rather than richer, so I’m submitting to the journals’ regular editors – who love promoting new artists – rather than throwing my lottery ticket in a barrel of legends and hopefuls.

10. I qualify (or so we hope) to apply for a Manitoba Arts Council grant for the first draft of a poetry manuscript. Imagine: the government might pay me $2000 to start my book! (At 15 hours/week for a year, that’s $2.56 an hour more than I’m making as a poet right now. As the CFO at my office likes to say, I know how to pick the lucrative careers.)

11. Hallelujah, I have a focus: my manuscript will be about the experience of parenting a child with autism – from pregnant fears, to the first suspicions, medication “trials,” close-calls in traffic, and echolalic rhythms. From not picking a genre to having a manuscript idea, I’ve walked a long way this year.

And I’m so glad to have a peripatetic master walking with me. “Arriving at joy-of-creating, on right.”