Some Good News About My Work

Well, there were the holidays, and then this depression crap, so I didn’t have a chance to announce that my poem, “Domesticity” was accepted for publication in the Spring 2010 issue of Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts. Of my 2 separate poetry submissions last year, I got an acceptance and what a friend calls the industry standard (read: rejection). It’s true what she says: rejections are pretty much the norm, even for well-established poets, so I’m not really concerned about the rejection.

Personally, I like collecting rejection slips because when I finally do get an acceptance, it’s a sign of how far I’ve come. Of course, poetry editors are subjective, so whether or not your poems are brilliant, an acceptance really boils down to many variables: the editor’s mood the day s/he reads your submission; his/her personal taste; whether or not your work “fits” the type of poetry the journal publishes. That last is the trickiest. It means you really have to read and research where you’re going to submit.

The second bit of news, of which I wasn’t aware until Brian found it on the Interwebs last week is that apparently, in November 2008, I was one of several featured poets in an exhibit Filipina and Filipina-American poets at the…Library of Frickin’ Congress! That’s pretty amazing. Although it’s old news, you can read about it here and here.