I have written three entries to this blog in the last couple of months, none of which I have posted. The editors in my head have been working over time lately. When my husband first met me, he thought I was aloof and overly formal. Perhaps that’s how I still am, but not to him, just to new people and the internet. So I am forcing myself to include personal information in this post as well as poet centric thoughts.

I was nominated for a Pushcart for the first time. I don’t know anyone who works at the press that nominated me, which made it extra exciting. I had written a poem as part of a 24 hour marathon of poems, and the editors of A Narrow Fellow had chosen to nominate it.

Within five minutes of being nominated, I received news that overshadowed it. Now the Pushcart news and the bad news I received afterwards are linked in my head in a very permanent ways.

I have been writing a great deal this fall. Instead of going to the gym at 11 every day  (I am that person), I have been climbing up the hill several times. The hill I am referring to is a clear cut. The house we are living in right now is 1/3rd of the way up the clearcut and I can climb for about a mile above the house.

It is a nice steep road carved up the hill, there are views the whole way up, and a wonderful view from the top of the property. I have found that hiking this path a couple times a day has aided my poetry more than zoning out on an elliptical.

I have had a number of recent publications, including the Crimean Tartar anthology Metric Conversions, and the literary journal Bellow.

Kathleen Flenniken the Washington State Poet Laureate re-published Fond Farewell on her Washington State poetry blog Far Field. Two poems Preoccuption, San Andreas were published by Compose in October and an essay about Preocculation is forthcoming. Our Sincerest Condolences was published by Alliterati in September.

I am still teaching at Seattle Pacific University. I am teaching composition this quarter and next. However it has been fun to teach because the theme I have chosen for the class this time was The New Yorker. This spring I will be teaching an introductory creative writing course which will be a nice change of pace.

A lot of the essays I used to write for this site, about submitting and such, I am now being paid to write elsewhere. So it has been strange for me to get into the swing about writing other things on this blog again.