My writing process is a bit like me: irrational.

Sometimes images seem to haunt me until I am compelled to write a poem around them; other times I do everything I can to “break my eye open” (this concept comes from my favorite TV series, “Six Feet Under.”) To break your eye open is exactly what it sounds like— to see the world in a new way, to make unusual associations. I do this is by delving into my subconscious—a fecund and frightening place. I love writing exercises for that reason. They help me find startling images and fresh language after I feel I’ve exhausted all of my own. One of my favorites is

a dada exercise that I learned from my wonderful poetry instructor in Spain– Jesús Urceloy. What a brilliant man. He had everyone follow the most specific and absurd instructions and the end result was amazing. For example, he made us write the word “lamp” on a sheet of paper and leave it near our bed. Upon waking we were to immediately write every word that came to mind when we thought of “lamp.” Then in class he made us write all of the words we associated with “fish” along with a series of other similar instructions. Towards the end we were to give one of the lines we had written to a partner as a gift. He then instructed us to recite our lines in a specific order, then at random until they began sounding like an incantation. Everyone wrote incredible poems and that class remains as one of my most beloved memories. I miss those people profoundly…

CONTINUE READING ONLINE–>

posted by Jennifer Simpson

I’m really good at tooting other people’s horns.  I also good at telling other people to toot their own horns.  But when it comes to my own successes, for some reason I get shy all the sudden.

So, I’m taking a deep breath.  Here goes.

I have been selected to receive the 2009 IMAGE OF WELDING AWARD from the American Welding Society.

Welding? you may ask.  Why I didn’t know you were a welder!

And I will have answer that no. I am not a welder. I just play one online.  And write about welding.

The award is for my “exemplary dedication to promoting the image of welding in my community”–  which happens to be the world wide web.

I was nominated by my boss, who wrote in the application:

Jennifer took the lead on developing two industry leading blogs for Arc-Zone.com: JoeWelder.com and CarmenElectrode.com.

As Jennifer learned more about the welding industry, she became fascinated with the stories behind the people in the industry, and particularly the women in the industry, of which there are few. As of 2006 only 6% of welders were women according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, in spite of a projected shortage of welders, and the fact that there are good paying jobs out there.

With a hat tip to Rosie the Riveter, the iconic World War II factory worker, Jennifer developed a regular feature on the CarmenElectrode.com blog called “The New Rosies.”  Through this column she has profiled women who weld in a variety of industries, chipping away at some of the lingering stereotypes about women who weld and some of the misconceptions about what kind of work welding is. With the JoeWelder.com blog, Jennifer initiated a feature called “Show Me The Metal” to profile all kinds of interesting welders and a variety of welding applications.

]]> http://unmcreativewriting.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/my-own-horn/feed/ 4 sandiegowriters Learning to TIG Weld, I learned I better stick to writing. http://unmcreativewriting.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/one-of-our-own-featured-on-duke-city-fix/ http://unmcreativewriting.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/one-of-our-own-featured-on-duke-city-fix/#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:02:45 +0000 Creative Writers at UNM http://unmcreativewriting.wordpress.com/?p=846 ]]>

Poet Tanaya Winder is the featured poet on Duke City Fix this Sunday morning:

“I come from the Duckwater Shoshone and Southern Ute nations. I was raised on the Southern Ute Indian reservation in southern Colorado; I consider that place along with the Pyramid Lake Paiute reservation in Nixon, NV my two homes, my origins. Because of the strong connection I feel towards place, I feel I am a child of both water and the desert. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I have chosen to make my home here in Albuquerque. I am grounded in these elements and fascinated by the push pull of the water…..  CONTINUE READING AT DukeCityFix.com  ONLINE–>

Amy Beeder’s poems are forthcoming this fall in Poetry, The Southern Review, Indiana Review, Quarterly West and The Laurel Review.

Her poem, “Captain Haddock vs. the PTA,” which appeared in Poetry’s July/August issue, was also featured on a Poetry magazine podcast.

In September she will read poems as part of Ellen Rothenberg’s exhibition Reading Landscapes at the Albuquerque Museum–an installation that combines text & visual production.

Here’s a sneak peek at Amy reading for last years Poetry Month Presentation at UNM’s Bookstore

Dana Levin recently interviewed poet Louise Gluck, from www.poets.org–  This article originally appeared in issue 36 of American Poet, the biannual journal of the Academy of American Poets:

Dana Levin: I wanted to start by asking about your new book, A Village Life, which is coming out this Fall. Time feels spatial in the book, as if all the book’s varied voices are speaking, events are happening, in a simultaneous temporal moment.

Louise Glück: There’s something very strange in these poems that I’ve been unable to put my finger on. It’s certainly not a willed or deliberate quality, but it has to do with that simultaneity. And it strikes me that the book has something in common with “Landscape,” a poem in Averno, in which the stages of a life are represented by individual sections, but the narrative elements and even the point of view shift from section to section—and yet what’s represented is the whole of a life. It occurred to me that A Village Life engages that horrible axiom that, at the end of your life, as you’re dying, the whole of your life floods back. That’s what the book feels like to me: the whole of a life, but not progressive, not narrative: simultaneous. And there’s no drama attendant in the idea of dying. It’s beyond the drama of the forfeit of the world; it’s just a long exhalation.

DL: What did the book teach you aesthetically?

CONTINUE READING ONLINE –>

Elizabeth Tannen (MFA/ creative non-fiction) just had a piece published over on NPR.org, Victorian Thorns In Today’s Modern Love:

I tend to think of my romantic dilemmas as distinctly modern. You know, navigating things like Facebook and text messaging and everything else along that awkward precipice between men and technology.

Recently, though, it’s the love life of a 19th century Victorian with which I’ve been identifying. I began to relate when I first came upon her on the page this summer, and when — two weeks ago — I watched Vicki Kennedy elegantly mourning the terrible if not unexpected loss of her older husband, I thought of her again.

I’m talking about Dorothea……CONTINUE READING ONLINE –>

Congrats Elizabeth!… and note, this is not Elizabeth’s first essay published over at NPR… a quick search will net several essays on dating and other topics like Mothers, Dads, memories and even text messages…

If you haven’t done so already, do check out Julie’s article, “Act Truly,” in the May/June 2009 American Book Review, in which she responds (along with 8 others) to the question, “Why Teach Creative Writing?’

It’s an interesting question, with a thoughtful response, and one that bears pondering. As it happened, in one week’s time, I read this article, Louis Menand’s New Yorker piece on the subject: “Show Or Tell,” and (reread) John Casey’s “Dogma,” which looks at whether creative writing can be taught.

From Julie

Lori Ostlund, whose wonderful story “No One Walks to the Mennonites” appeared in Blue Mesa Review Issue 19, will give a reading and host a fiction workshop on Friday, November 6th. Lori is the author of THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD, which won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction award. I just received word that the collection was one of six selected for the 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. I’m very excited about Lori’s visit and hope students in the creative writing program–both MFAs and undergrads–will take advantage of this opportunity to come hear Lori read and show her some of your work.

Gary Jackson – I heard the good news from Lisa Gill over the weekend that Gary Jackson, MFA grad and former teacher of 224, has won the Cave Canem First book award for 2009. This award was judged by poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Gary’s collection will be published by Graywolf Press.

Still more good news:

Elena Sanchez, who graduated from our creative writing program, went on to Mills College for her MFA, and is currently teaching in South Korea, had a story short-listed in Glimmer Train’s Starts contest.

Robyn Mundy, who received an MA from our creative writing program in fiction and is living and teaching in Australia, has published her first novel THE NATURE OF ICE.

My poem “Earthquake: Nicaragua,1972″ will be published in Whiskey Island. Thanks! See you soon.

Best,
Erika Sanchez

Tanaya Winder spent the first year of the MFA program traveling once a month to her home on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in southern Colorado where she volunteered teaching creative writing workshops at a local library.

She was nominated for the First Peoples Fund “Community Spirit Award,” which annually honors established American Indian artists who have made significant and sustained contributions to their communities through their leadership, teaching, generosity and artistic endeavors and who are leaders, teachers, and mentors in their communities. Unlike other national awards that select recipients based on a long resume of art shows, exhibitions and awards, the Community Spirit Award recognizes the selected artists as keepers of traditional tribal wisdom and culture who are nominated by their tribal community.

This past spring semester ‘09 Tanaya received The Lynn Reyer Award in Tribal Community Development fellowship to work on her nonfiction
dissertation on the originof alcohol in Native Am. communities and its transference through ancestral memory from that past pain to the trauma of today.