Ruby Street

I am currently involved in the various tasks in getting a book ready for print and release . The book, at this moment, is called Breaking the Days , and was a joint winner of the Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize last year . The other winner, Tracy Ryan, has already published her volume in late July. But back to this process. Because they are tasks, things that you do to make something. My initial task was to complete the manuscript after having the initial 150 lines (or so) being chosen last year. And thanks to Whitmore Press folks for offering this ongoing opportunity to poets, and, of course, for picking my manuscript last year. I did, in fact, have a longer manuscript idea I was working from, so I knew the field of poems I would be playing with. Mostly, though not entirely, they were a series of writings I had done during 2014, and to narrow it down, mostly during the first seven or eight months of that year. I have since included a few newer 2015 poems and reworked one or two ...

Left field musing. Reading Ron's discussion of a reading he did with Jessica Smith . Being intrigued I checked out the references he gave about Smith. I'll follow up on her work, indeed, and her blog is worth reading, especially on what Ron was discussing, which was 'the poetry reading' . But ... here's my sideways not-to-do-with-any-of-this thought. Smith is involved in a press that is, among other things, publishing an anthology of 'younger' poets (ie under 40). Fair enuff, a publisher needs to be publishing whatever. To state the obvious, it's their passion, especially in a profit-free zone such as poetry. But ... ... the implication is that only 'young/er' equals 'emerging'. There are those who emerge 'older' and, thus, never get to engage with such projects. And there's an assumption that 'older' somehow means either you've made it, or your way of writing is 'set' and that you don't continue to ...