Katie's Blog

My oh my is this semester flying by or what? Today is my unofficial start of spring break, and it's already been a wild and crazy semester. Somehow, though, a bit miraculously, I've been able to keep my head above that proverbial water. I'm not ridiculously behind with my grading. I feel on track with my teaching. I've traveled to Corpus Christi and to San Angelo. And I'm even ::gasp:: getting a little bit of writing done. Oh, and I'm training for a half marathon, too! I think I'm getting a hold of this whole time management thing. I've been stressed, but not a ridiculous amount of stress, more like just a healthy, "I got this" kind of stress. Good things. So, I thought with this little blogpost today, I thought I'd look back at a few of the significant events I've done so far and give some context and reflections on them. One of my goals this year is to expand my poetry circle. I love the valley, it's true, but I want t...

Life's been pretty darn nice lately. It's summer and I have all the time in the world to write. Typically, what that means is I stare at my computer and get angry with myself for not having enough ideas. This summer, though, that's not happening at all. I've been writing writing writing. I've also been participating in several different forms of online workshops, which is helping me immensely, too, to keep on track with not only developing new material, but also revising and polishing my work, which I find just as important (if not more). So the two different types of workshops I participate in are a Skype-type workshop, live with a small group of poets, and then, an online poetry forum called Eratosphere. The first type of workshop is fairly new to me. I think it was around March that one of my Facebook friends, Terry, from Houston posted something about wanting to start an online poetry group. I'm always up for something new, so I asked him if I could jo...

So, I had a pretty eventful weekend! Rossy Lima Padilla invited me to read at the first Noche De Palabras event at Hueso del Fraile in downtown Brownsville. Brownsville's about an hour and a half drive, so I'm typically pretty reluctant to make the trip out there for a short reading, but what the heck, I thought, I'm on vacation! The event was truly bilingual -- so often, there's just one or two poets who read a piece in Spanish and the rest is in English, including the M.C's intros and words between readers. But this reading was a little different, and it was really refreshing. My Spanish is actually pretty ok believe it or not -- I'm able to understand it, but I don't grasp it well enough to write in it. So of course, my poems were in English, but the other poets were about half and half. I really appreciated the change to hear some quality poetry in Spanish. The evening's featured reader was Chris Carmona, who is a good friend of mine. He also...

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Read the full article here  ... just click on the June 2015 issue. That's me! That's me! That's me! LOL. It's so surreal to see my face on a magazine, to explore my work through the lens of a reader, to read about myself in someone else's words! But my goodness. I am so grateful to Alyssa for writing this article and for doing such a marvelous job with both the photos and the story itself. I especially like that she emphasized my feminism, because I think that's particularly cornerstone to my identity and my work. Such smartness. Lately, life has been charmed, truly. I'm writing like a mad woman each day. I'm talking poetry with others. I'm reading. I'm thinking. I'm musing. I'm making crazy progress. I'm dreaming. Don't wake me.

At the poets' table! From left -- Edward Vidaurre, Emmy Perez, myself, Sergio, Nayelly Barrios, Celina Gomez, and Chris My love, B, was behind the camera, which is his usual spot. So, yesterday was pretty special. I was honored to read a poem at the wedding of my friends Rodney Gomez and Sara Herrera. Being invited to do this was just so humbling. When Rodney told me about his plans for this evening, my heart melted. I eagerly agreed. The only problem? I don't really write love poetry. I'm a feminist poet, and, well, us feminists have a pretty conflicted relationship with love poetry, because so often it comes across as objectifiying -- written by a male subject to an unmoving female object. Bleh. Or it comes across as cliched, overly sentimental, gushing and bleh. So, in short, although I love the idea of love and love poetry, it's just something I find difficult to do well. Or maybe it's just that love is such a powerful force in our lives as human beings th...

So, these past few days have really been amazing... On Thursday, I left town to head over to Minneapolis for the AWP conference. In short, I had an amazing time, though there was so much more I wanted to do. On Friday morning, I moderated a panel on Revisionist Mythmaking in the Borderlands. My other two panelists were Robin Scofield and Celina Villagarcia. The panel itself went better than I could have imagined. Though I was incredibly nervous at the beginning. I introduced our topic, explaining about Mouthfeel Press, what Revisionist Mythmaking was, and why we feel it's important as women in the borderlands to reclaim these narratives. Robin Scofield read a series of really interesting poems from her collection, Sunflower Cantos, about a woman traveling through the Borderlands region, encountering all of these stories for various different mythologies. I loved it, especially the connections to native mythologies, because I think that's something we often overlook in...

So, this news just dropped Oh. My. Goodness! ::Commence the dancing:: Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots was named a finalist for the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for the Best Book of Poetry in Texas from the Texas Institute of Letters. !!!!! How official and fancy does that sound? Very. Yes, indeed. What makes this announcement perhaps more special is that Jan Seale is also a finalist. If you follow this blog, you know she's pretty much my hero. . Carmen Tafolla is the other finalist, who is another poet I genuinely admire. I think I'm the underdog in this race, but hey, it's an honor simply to be a finalist. The winners will be announced on April 10th in Houston at the TIL annual meeting, and then on the 11th there's a celebratory banquet. Unfortunately, my AWP panel is the 10th, so I'm missing the reception on the 10th, which totally sucks. I'm flying into Houston on the 11th though, so B and I will at least attend the banquet together. I already have a...

I know I'm a little late, but I figured it was still more than worthwhile to reflect on what 2014 was for me as a writer. It was a very, well, let's just call it "eventful" year. One of my writer friends, David Bowles, shared a picture of his writing achievements on his facebook page on NYE, and I decided to copy him and do the same :-) So there, pictured above, is my 2014! Books, magazines and journals I either had something published in, edited, or wrote entirely myself.  First from the left, we have Edward Vidaurre's book, Insomnia, which I had the pleasure of writing the introduction to. It was the first time I'd ever written an introduction to, well, anything really, so it was a bit intimating. I really love the idea, though, of helping others celebrate their successes. And that's exactly what Edward's book was, a success. Here were are at this release party! Next to Edward's book, is RiverSedge, the new literary journal of UTPA that ...

The hosts and organizers of Langdon Poetry weekend! This weekend was absolutely lovely. I had the pleasure of heading up to Granbury, Texas, for the Langdon Poetry Weekend, a gathering of Texas poets. A fairly small festival, it's well-attended by publishers, laureates, and talent. Now, I've gone to my share of poetry festivals and conferences over the years, but to be completely honest, I think this was my best experience yet. This really was all about building a community of poets, of sharing ideas, of inspiration. The readings were all held in historic buildings near downtown Granbury, a small but beautiful town in north-central Texas. Everyone there seemed as though they were old friends, and though it was my first experience here, I felt like I was a part of the group. It was absolutely wonderful. I hope to return next year. So here's my story! It was early August. I had never heard of Langdon Review of the Langdon Poetry Weekend, and I kind of pride myse...

So... Here's my official announcement, dear readers! Lamar University Press will be publishing my next poetry collection, Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots . I am over-the-moon excited for this. Its tentative release date is September 1st, which is incredibly soon. To launch the book, I will be presenting at the Langdon Poetry Weekend in Granbury, Texas. The book will be available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and I will likely have an armful of books wherever I go :-) So how did this come to be? Well, let's take a journey down memory lane, shall we? It was late 2011. I was feeling this mixture of elation and depression about the acceptance of The Garden Uprooted . It's a little tough to explain, but my first book was something I had cherished and worked on for years, all my years in grad school and beyond. It was my identity as a poet. And it was out of my hands, gone. I needed something new to obsess over, something new to strive for, so I began writing. I...

I feel like it's time for me to return to the subject of, well, rejection letters. Let's talk. With the completion of my second poetry manuscript, I'm now in what I like to call "submission mode" which inevitably means I'm also receiving heaps of rejection letters once again. Part of the process, I know, and I'm totally over it already. On Wednesday night, I sent off a handful of submissions before bed. I'm using Duotrope again to research new markets, and found two that I wanted to try. I spent a little time reading their online content, figured, hey, looks like it might be a good fit. I sent off a submission of poems to each journal that I thought might fit with their aesthetic. The whole process took me about an hour to put together two packets and send them off. A typical evening. Well, the next morning, I'm going about my routine. First coffee, then email. And in my inbox, there's a message from one of the two venues. I figured it ...

A few weeks ago, I was invited by Daniel Garcia Ordaz, the publisher at El Zarape Press, to write an introduction for their latest release. How could I refuse? Not only do Daniel and I go way back, but it was a pretty exciting offer because 1. the author of the book is none other than Edward Vidaurre, who I love and 2. I'd never been invited to write an introduction to a book before, and it sounded like something every proper poet should try her hand at. So, away I went. I dove into Edward's book, and quite honestly, I was blown away by how smooth the book read, how the poems and their rich images just kept flowing, one after the other. I wanted to express that breathless feeling in my intro, but not only that, I wanted to give Edward's book context. I THINK that's what an introduction is there for, to give a collection some context and explain how it fits into the greater discourse of contemporary poetry. So that's what I tried to do. I hope I was able to giv...

Today's prompt was to write a love poem to an inanimate object. At first I wanted to write a sexy poem to my keys, but then I thought about this idea. Anyway, if you know me, you know I hate prose poetry in general, but I was just thinking about it today and thought maybe it was time I gave it a go. Here's my attempt: Love Poem to Raindrops You couldn’t write a poem to love so instead, you thought of rain and all the times you waited for its coming. One dusk, at fourteen, sitting underneath your parents’ porch, you watched a slate cloud roll in at dusk and felt the rumble, too, inside yourself, a warning that you’re not supposed to heed. Remember how the headlights of his truck illuminated mist, your face with gold against the bleakness. Remember running out into the drizzle your hand above your hair, a vain attempt to keep it dry. Remember that and realize the first drops of a storm will disappear into the thirsty earth. I want to work on this a little mor...