Ladies Represent: K.M.A Sullivan.
A fair while ago now, Robin and I talked about the VIDA Count. I guess pretty much everyone did. We wanted to ask a bunch of great writers who also happen to be ladies about their publishing experience and basically just open up a space to talk about gender and publishing, or call bullshit on it, or spout conspiracy theories.
This will be ongoing. This has to be ongoing.
Next up is the mighty, indomitable K.M.A Sullivan.
Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Pearl, Potomac Review, Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Forklift, diode, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in creative non-fiction and from Vermont Studio Center in poetry. She is the editor of Vinyl Poetry and the owner/publisher of YesYes Books.
K.M.A Sullivan:
I’ve been in and into poetry a fairly short time. But for a handful of poems I wrote in my freshman calculus class… thirty years ago… I didn’t write poetry until the second semester of my MFA program at Virginia Tech. That was four years ago. I had just begun to emerge from the dustbin (on the tail end of raising five children) and was ready to run. I’ve been running ever since and in the last three years have gathered publications I’m proud of, a couple of poetry prizes, two writing fellowships, an online lit mag, and a poetry-focused publishing company. So, has gender-bias in publishing slowed me down? I don’t know. Right now, I am my own biggest impediment. I am spending so much time on the publishing end that it leaves very little time for my own work. That needs to change. I am the one and only arbiter and executor of that change.
But here are some other things I think on this issue.
I think about the rejection I received from an online mag I admire: “we very much enjoyed your way with evocative language. Unfortunately, the often domestic environment of the poems didn’t grab us quite so much…” My response – the one in my head anyway: fuck you. I submitted three more times over the next 10 months at which point they took three of my poems.
I also think about how easy it has been to get stunning female voices for Vinyl Poetry. We’ve published work from folks like Metta Sama, Andrea Cohen, Julianna Baggott, Keetje Kuipers, Angela Veronica Wong, Jonterri Gadson, Wendy Xu, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Lillian Yvonne Bertram, Jehanne Dubrow… (okay I have to force myself to stop this list). Seriously. Holy crap good. Phillip B. Williams (Vinyl‘s poetry editor) and I go after the writers whose work excites us. Period. It turns out (according to a count I did inspired by VIDA’s efforts) that what excites us is written by women more than 50% of the time. This work has come to us through both solicitation and open submissions.
The story at YesYes Books has been both similar and different. We have published nine books in the last year, four of them by women. But all three of the full-length collections have been by men. Is that a problem? Honestly, I don’t know. I publish what I love and, frankly, I don’t give a shit who doesn’t like it. On the other hand, my editors and I have been actively seeking full-length manuscripts from women. There are, as evidenced by who we publish in Vinyl, so many female poets whose work I LOVE. It turns out that many of the female writers we have solicited are, by their own account, not ready to send a full-length manuscript. Alright. I’ll wait. And I’ll keep looking. Bottom line though, whatever YesYes publishes it will have to make me sweat in one way or another. And I don’t really care who the writer is.
Doing the count for Vinyl raised some questions in my mind. What about the poets who write under alternate-gender pseudonyms? Where should they be placed in the count? What about artists under the trans umbrella who do not gender identify? Vinyl has writers from both groups in our archives. In particular, I am concerned about our comrades in the trans community. The question of tracking publication according to gender risks yet another form of exile for them.
And if we are going to call this question then I think it needs to be opened up all the way. Because the issue of gender bias in publishing also makes me think of the gifted artists I know who happen to be straight white men. Reality for them is that unless they win a major book prize it is unlikely they will get hired for a university-level tenure track position. Is that unfair? Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question either. That’s the beginning of a whole different discussion I suppose.
Here’s what I do know. As writers we need to write from the storm that is in us and then we need to have faith enough in our work to push it out to an audience. Fuck rejections. As members of the arts community we need to encourage those around us to believe in themselves. As editors we need to read as broadly as possible and search for brilliance wherever it can be found – which is everywhere.
Have some thoughts? Comment and let us know.
Also check out what these ladies had to say:
The “Online Terrorist Keywords” Poetry Contest.
Meg McClain would make George Carlin proud. She’s come up with a poetry contest.
After reading Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you, I had a great idea of how to illustrate the ridiculousness of our government in using simple “words” as justification for spying on the American people (and us sovereigns too). So I’m officially launching the “Online Terrorist Keywords” Poetry Contest!
Deadline: June 12, 2012 at 9pm (EDT I presume)
I found out about this through Facebook. Funny how one of the phrases on the list is “social media.”
This makes me want to write poems.
Like this:
Wendy Xu drives a car and this happens.
Like this:
Burt Reynolds meets poet laureate.
I’m reading James Dickey’s Deliverence and enjoying it quite a bit.
I’ve never seen the movie and, like a lot of people, have only ever heard about the anal-rapey stuff.
But, hey, Georgia sure looks pretty!
Ladies Represent: Carrie Murphy.
A fair while ago now, Robin and I talked about the VIDA Count. I guess pretty much everyone did. We wanted to ask a bunch of great writers who also happen to be ladies about their publishing experience and basically just open up a space to talk about gender and publishing, or call bullshit on it, or spout conspiracy theories.
This will be ongoing. This has to be ongoing.
Next up is Carrie Murphy.
She is the author of a full-length collection of poems, Pretty Tilt (Keyhole Press, 2012) and a chapbook, Meet the Lavenders (Birds of Lace, 2011). Visit her online at carrie-murphy.com
Carrie:
Have some thoughts? Comment and let us know.
Also check out what these ladies had to say:
Like this:
A few things about the possibilities of artistic collaboration in marriage.
That also give me a little warm and fuzzy feeling in my rib cage.
- The acknowledgments page from Glen David Gold at the very end of Sunnyside, for wife and fellow author Alice Sebold:
Co-star, provacateur, hot-splice editor, script girl femme fatale, scream queen, gamine, America’s sweetheart, America’s pariah, belladonna, suds maven, oat princess, love interest, second-act complication, barn-burner, aviatrix, Hello Girl, lighthouse keeper, orphan, angel, allied expeditionary force, terrifying saint, daughter of the revolution, peasant, domovoi, redma, princess, one hundred bullets, twelve immortals, seven seas, four winds, three shots of espresso, two cats, one Alice.
- The story (mythologized as it has become) of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s marriage with Mercedes Barcha before he became famous:
In 1958, García Márquez married Mercedes Barcha, a girl he had picked as his future wife 20 years before (she was nine, or possibly 11, at the time) but still hardly knew. He told her his plans for what would become his two greatest novels on their honeymoon (when the couple went to bed with three packs of cigarettes and an ashtray each).
Elegant, enigmatic, formidably discreet, Mercedes promptly became personally and professionally indispensable in a relationship that apparently baffles her husband’s biographer as much as anybody else.
All that can be said for sure is that, under her management, the schedule outlined within weeks of their wedding was punctually fulfilled in all particulars, including its ultimate goal, which was to produce a masterpiece at the age of 40. (From The Telegraph’s review of Gerald Martin’s biography of Marquez.)
(and)
Garcia Marquez and his enigmatic wife, Mercedes Barcha, who had pawned almost all their possessions (refrigerator, jewelry, hair dryer) as he worked on the book, traveled to Buenos Aires to celebrate its publication there. One night, as they attended a theater performance, a spotlight flicked on and followed them to their seats. “Bravo!” someone yelled. “For your novel!” another woman chimed in. A moment later, the entire theater was on its feet and gave the 40-year-old a spontaneous ovation. (From LA Times review of Martin’s biography).
- Last Fall’s Fresh Air interview with Tom Waits. He says of his wife of over 30 years and co-songwriter, Kathleen Brennan:
“I’m the other half of what I consider to be a really great songwriting team, which means that we argue a lot about what a song can be, should be, and what it’ll be if you do this to it. So we discuss all these facets. She’s Amelia Earhart and Jane Goodall and Joan Jett all rolled into one. She’s really great to work with and amazing. She doesn’t like the light of the business we call ‘show.’ She stays hidden, and that’s where she likes it. But she’s an amazing collaborator, and I feel like sometimes I have a map in my pocket that folds up and I pull it out and it’s bigger than the table, and there’s 1,000 places to go with her.”
