I made a few efforts to send my manuscript Garbage Woman, to contests and I didn’t win any of them but I’m okay with that. I am going to tinker ever so slightly with the manuscript since it is not under submission and because I have revised a couple of the poems in it. But the bright idea that popped in my head last night was to begin compiling poems for a second manuscript (maybe chapbook-length) titled Orphans of Dark and Rain –the title of my blog on WordPress.  That title seems the perfect fit for the work I am producing right now and for a few fitting older poems.  

So these are my next steps toward having a “book” in hand which will make my mother proud and aid in her comprehension of what having my poems published means, because most have been published online although several are in print.  My mother doesn’t do the Internet.  Of course I want a book too and I want my words in the world.  I’m merely mentioning that I know it would really hit home if my mother could hold my book in her hands.  It would make the fact that I am a poet really-really real to her, which must be important to me—which it is. My mother will turn 80 in July.

But at this moment I do not have a book— but that is my aim. 

And to restate my action steps:

1) Tinker with Garbage Woman; seek out small press publishers.

2) Begin shaping and writing new material for Orphans of Dark and Rain.