Katie's Blog

My kitty is sick. He has a severe upper respiratory infection plus very bad gingivitis. Today I took him to the vet at Petsmart because my usual vet was closed for Memorial Day. I was grumpy about this, I don't really like the petsmart vets because you only talk to the doctor for like five minutes before he scoots out the door to ring up your enormous bill. Aye. So I'm in the waiting area, and a somewhat familiar looking lady walks by. She makes eye contact, smiles big and friendly, and walks over to introduce herself. "Remember me?" she asks, but doesn't wait for a response. "You're Katherine, right? The one who reads the poetry?" Ah hah! Yes, now it's starting to come to me... I nod my head, "Yes, yes, that's me!" I tell her. We shake hands. "I remember you reading at Barnes and Noble the other week. We are still enjoying your poetry" Apparently the bought a copy of the book ;-) I was pretty impressed with myself! LOL, I

Gasp. I'm not at work and yet I'm still on my blog? Yes. I am thank you very much. Ok so what's new? I sent out that packet to Cold Mountain Review (yay!) and I'm hoping that good news will follow. The Gloria Anzaldua conference proposal went out on Friday as well for another san antonio conference, and... let's see what else... mmm... I guess that's about it. My next goal is to get a packet ready for the texas book festival. That's my weekend goal. Can I do it? Of course. I figure that if I write a poem a week for the entire summer, that I'll be in smooth sailing for the thesis. So far I'm making good progress. I've got two poems finished since the spring semester finished, and it's only been like two weeks. They are by no means polished poems, but I can work on 'finishing' them up later. Anyway that's what's new for me.

But only with my blog I promise! Recently, what on earth have I been up to!? Haha... actually I've been wasting HUGE amounts of time planning a summer vacation in New Orleans. I am literally addicted to TripAdvisor and Frommers. I think I'm slightly... OCD! I get obsessed super easily, and this is just a strange recent obsession. Ok I've promised myself I'm going to stop. Poetic happenings in my life... I've begun the highly anticipated and even more dreaded thesis. YIKES! On Tuesday I met with my wonderful professor, and he gave me the ever daunting task of selecting 52 poems for inclusion over the summer. Wonderful! I'm going to be very busy. So I was working on that today and guess what! I only have 35 that are even remotely thesis worthy :-O!!! And I'm hesitating at even including many of those, because I'm poetically schitzo too you see... I have two distinct poetic obsessions... and I'm not sure the two belong in the same manuscript. Wonderful

TADAAH! Yay, another successful reading under my nonexistant belt. As if I need a belt, my belly rolls over my jeans. Ok so there's a picture I found from some generous audience member. I look so no nonsense right? Yeah ok... I had a good time the ambiance was GREAT. The open mic throughouly offended Bruno's poor mom... I knew the open mic would be a little raunchy but I didn't know there would be so much cussing, illspeak of God, and poems about homosexuals. I mean... not that there's anything inherently wrong with poetry like that... but umm... Bruno's mom's a pretty religious person and yeah. I guess I invited her to the wrong reading. But my poems went over well :D I sold some chapbooks so it was definately worthwhile. Made some friends too, and and and... oh enjoyed some very tastey coffee. Ok so I was pretty impressed. I read twice, once toward the middle and then at the end to sum up the evening. As I was about to read "Original Sin" as like

Woohoo! Tonight I'm the featured poet at Savory Perks - Poetry Under the Stars! I'm pretty excited :) I'll hit the stage at 7pm! I will of course bring my chapbooks and a pen to sign them~ Let's see... what else is new? Well... I did a rushed submission to 2River View. It seemed pretty reputable enough, and if I get accepted yay and if not... I'm completely ok with that because maybe I can find a better place to publish my work. I'm not all high hopes about it (like Blackbird! Please please please please!). Anyway just a little update. I've been doing LOTS of writing lately with my new found free time. So I'm cranking out poems like nobody's biz! I just need to edit and polish and such... which I may wait to do until the fall semester when I'm back in workshop mode. Right now I'm in create mode, which of course is the best mode there is :)

Ok so I just wrote an amazing post and guess what? It didn't post! And you know what else? That autosave function sucks serious balls. It didn't autosave anything. How completely worthless. Ugh! So I had just typed up my notes, luckily I keep a hard copy of most things. I'm just too lazy to retype everything up, so instead I'll leave you with a quote "They make themselves valuable by making themsleves rare" Who said it? Don't know, Wordsworth is what I want to say but whatever. I'll work on making myself rarer :-P Gwahhh!

Hmm... I think my blog needs a bit of an update. Well this weekend was poetically unproductive. But I do have a life outside of poetry, you know. My kitchen got cleaned, I spent time with parents, exercised, and scooped some kitty litter. Yayy! This past week, I don't know if I mentioned it, but I submitted to Minnetonka Review. I'm completely NOT counting on getting accepted, because once I sent of the packet I realized that I misspelled the journal's name :-X. Ooopsie. So.. um... waste of time? Totally! And of course that AWP proposal went out. I'm not supposed to be thinking about it but of course I am. Oh, and 'the girls' are preparing submission packets for the Texas Book Festival AND another Gloria Anzaldua conference at UTSA. COOL! It sure is good to have smart and ambitious people on your side. I'm so glad that I decided to initiate this whole press panel deal. It's working out wonderfully :-) Ummm... oh! I did a few writing exercises today. Prac

Well my goal for today was to write a poem, a good poem, to freewrite, to plant a little seed. It's 9:34am and I'm giving up. :-P I had some free time at work this morning, so I closed my office door and started musing. I read a little bit of my poetry handbook, looking for direction. Nah, nothing. So I picked up my contemporary poetry anthology... hmmm... I was reading through completely uninspiring poetry written by incredibly talented poets who've made it big... and I just wasn't feeling it. Nope... nope... nope... Came across Marilyn Nelson's name. Ah, one even me, uneducated bumpkin, is familiar with. Not exactly my kind of thing, but I decided to give her work another read through, maybe I'll pick up a good image or something. I was reading a poem, Minor Miracle, and for some reason I was drawn into it. But why did I keep reading? Because the images, the writing, it was just flowing by - her words were pleasure. And at the end, wait... what is

My proposal is currently wondering around cyber space, making it's way to the abyss also called the AWP conference database. I had no idea it would take SOOO LONG and SOOO much effort just to write up a proposal that aheres to their strict picky poo guidelines. Wow. Wow wow wow. and ow. at this point my eyes hurt, my head's numb and I'm in lalala land. Luckily one of the other panelists was VERY helpful. She made a lot of great revisions and I'm starting to think we might have a shot at this! Oooohhh I hope we get in. But I'm not going to think about it until August. AWP? What's that?? LoL. Ah I'm all mushy brained right now.

Finished my final portfolio for form and theory of poetry. Yay professor gave us an extra day to work on it. Yay I got to procrastinate a little bit more. No but seriously - it was turninable yesterday but today allowed me to do a little polishing up. Ok so what's new with me? Hmmm... still working on that proposal of course. I'm getting some help from one of the panelists. It's helpful to know smart people right? Oh! And some news~ I'm going to be a featured reader at Savory Perks in Weslaco! Hurray! Again, it helps to know NICE people ;-) One of my buddies from class invited me, and of course I have to accept. It's an opportunity to promote my book, and I'll have a great time too at the reading. So I'm excited. The reading will be at 7pm next Thursday, May 20th. Of course, at Savory Perks in Weslaco. My chapbooks will be for sale at the reading for $7! And I guess that's it for news. Right now, I have to get back to work on the proposal. Which - by the

WAHHHHHHHHHHH! :-P Such a depressing day. Form rejection letter from Bordersenses. And to top it all off, another poeta is bragging (and rightfully so she should brag!) about getting accepted into the same magazine. Jealousy... it's my ugliest trait. Done done and on the to next one~ I'm prepping my proposal for AWP. Busy busy busy. The ladies over at Mouthfeel Press seem very excited about the whole prospect, so I picked the project up again and I'm excited and nervous about it too. I'm a graduate student, right. I'm really young, yet here I am trying to put organize and moderate an event for the conference to end all conferences. I want to shoot with the big guns, fly with the big birds, and poeticisze with the best of them. Yep... I'm ambitious. I just hope this won't cause another nasty case of these rejection blues. Done, done, on to the next one. LoL, stupid song is in my head right now. Another thing that's troubling me... If we do get accepted, h

The end of the semester is loooooooooooming. I just finished putting together my final porfolio for my form and theory of poetry class, and last week we had our celebratory dinner at Ristretto's as a grand finale for my poetry workshop class. See... there we are! Don't I look absolutely lovely reading my sexy naughty poems? Aww... see I'm sitting next to my prof~ everyone looks marvlous I tell ya... And you know what else? Prof there wants to direct my thesis! Yay! It's always nice when someone volunteers to help ;-) So we're going to meet and discuss next week. I'm excited to get this whole thesis thing going. I'm going to spend the summer writing writing writing I swear! So that way when I actually am enrolled in thesis hours I'll just have to focus on my critical intro, and the ordering of the poems that I've already written. Another reason I'm excited to start my thesis is that I found a wonderful PhD program! I know I know... I'

Reading at Barnes and Noble! 10th and Nolana in McAllen at 7pm! Copies of my chapbook are available for sale $7. I'll also be signing books of course! Joining me are other valley poets, La Erika and Virginia Torres. I'm reading in conjunction with the McAllen Memorial Library, which means that a portion of the procedes will be donated to them. How exciting! :D Let's see... I other news? None really. I'm having second thoughts about preparing a proposal for AWP. BruBru won't be able to join me in DC, and I'm terrified to go alone (he, by the way, got a new job! almost double pay! I'm super proud! but he doesn't have the time off like before). The other valley poetas don't sound all that excited about going, either. So... looks like I'm going to have to pass. BooOOoOoO.... But I am still determined to meet the May 15th Denver Quarterly deadline. Oh! And I'm going to start on my MFA thesis this fall :) I'm meeting with my awesome prof next w

LoL I think that's the story of my life. I have this huge enormous pile of tasks, projects, THINGS I need to be working on. Instead it's 6:30 and I'm still in my robe. I'm still recouping I guess from the San Antonio trip this weekend. Which was awesome! It was so nice to get out of the valley, and the Wild Tongues Graduate symposium was a great excuse to do so. BruBru and I stayed at the Gardenia Inn in the Historic King Williams District. It was a lovely mansion built in like the 1800's and everything is all original. The only down side to staying there was that we were the only people that didn't qualify for AARP in the entire house :-P The graduate symposium itself was ok. I didn't have much of a crowd because my panel was like the last of the day, and the other presenters on my panel had really nothing to do with poetry. So if nothing else, it's a line on the good old CV and an opportunity to get out of the valley for a bit. Boy did I love San Anton