I had a pen name, once, after I wrote two excruciatingly awful romance novels thinking this would for sure be my road to steady income. Submitted them with great condescension to Mills & Boon and they wrote back, saying (and I paraphrase) “We wouldn’t publish this shite even if you paid us.” I was so […]
I went to my parents’ place to bring them a copy of my new book. Afterwards I left the house and drove uphill, as though I were coming up out of a valley, though my parents do in fact live on a hilltop. During the 2009 floods theirs was almost an island, floodwaters drowned the […]
When a poet walks into a printer’s and says, I have written a book, I want to publish it, their eyes light up like neon stars. “It has to be on sumptuous papers and beautifully bound,” says the poet, and the printer’s salesman purrs, “Right this way, madam,” and leads her into an impressively empty […]
I have this really long poem which I have rewritten decisively – indecisively – thoroughly over about four or five years. It’s five pages long and it’s called Reaching for the Remote – about our longing despite celibacy for gods. Did I say celibacy? I mean atheism. This poem is one of three reasons the […]