My poetry chapbook is a finalist in two contests!
The past month has been a busy one!
I went on my first official writers retreat at Gazala Projects in mid-May. It’s an art gallery in Gettysburg, Ohio—halfway between Columbus and Indianapolis—owned by the Palestinian text artist Mona Gazala. We met last summer and hit it off! I helped out with her latest film project called “Trail Markers” and wrote poetry in the gallery until the wee hours every morning. I went into the retreat wanting to complete two poems that were essential to the collection but had been proving difficult to finish and an intro essay, and I came out with all that, plus seven new poems I didn’t anticipate!
A still image from “Trail Markers” I’m so thrilled I got to skate in a short film about Palestine! The dream!! Also, my shirt says “We Are Not Your Terrorists” and I got it from Luetti.
While at Gazala Projects, I finished my full poetry manuscript, so I’m officially ready to submit it! I’m feeling confident that it’ll get picked up somewhere because the chapbook version of the manuscript (a shorter version with a quarter to a third of the poems in the complete manuscript) has been a finalist in two contests where it got rejected, and it’s currently a semifinalist in two other contests!
The title of both the chapbook and the full manuscript is We Had Mansions, an homage to the poem “our people had mansions” that Kaveh Akbar chose as the winner of the 2024 Porter House Review Editor’s Prize in Poetry.
This list is from Wolfson Press.
It’s entirely possible that I won’t make it past the semifinals in either of these contests, but I think it’s a good sign that I keep getting close.
Send good thoughts/vibes/prayers/wishes! I’ll take whatever you’ve got. <3