Workshop will offer advice on publishing poetry
The St. Louis Poetry Center will host a workshop on publishing from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Regional Arts Commission, 6128 Delmar Boulevard. The cost is $30; registration is due by Sept. 29.
Poet Joshua Kryah will lead the event. Here’s how he describes the workshop: “This workshop will deal with contemporary book publishing in poetry. We will discuss self-publishing, publishing through university and independent presses, and manuscript contests. We will also discuss how to prepare a manuscript for publication, where to possibly send it, and how to make a group of poems into a unified collection. There will be examples provided to illustrate the various routes a poet may take when publishing today.”
Payment should marked “Kryah Fee Workshop” and be mailed to St. Louis Poetry Center, 567 North and South, #8, St. Louis, MO 63130.
For more info: call 314-973-0616, or go to www.stlouispoetrycenter.org
(30 bucks? Man, it’s tough being a poet today, evidently. This guy pays an entry fee, wins a contest, and now he’s an authority on publishing poetry?)
Anyone who writes poetry seriously can investigate on the Net how to go about getting their poems published.
Here’s some free advice:
Go to Newpages.com for a list of places to send your poems. It’s a comprehensive list of places for publishing poetry and an excellent source to find quality magazines that publish poetry. If your stuff is good enough and gets in these magazines, then you’ll be on your way.
Most of all, read great poets! Study how they put together a manuscript!
(I suggest locally Mary Jo Bang and Rodney Jones- brilliant poets, all within calling range of you…Read everything they have written, study their structure, what they are trying to do. Try to figure out who their influences are and read everything by them! No workshop is going to do your work for you)
If you still need a workshop—well, Mr. Kryah, and the rest of the St. Louis Poetry Society, will gladly help you do something you really should be figuring out on your own and for a nominal 30 dollars.
How I would spend that 30 dollars? I would go on Amazon.com or Abebooks and buy copies of great poets like Whitman and Eliot and Keats and buy used books for 3/4 dollars and read them, then try to write poetry.
Perhaps I should have included the information that Joshua Kryah has his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop and a Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, where he is Schaeffer Fellow in Poetry. So he might know a bit more than the average bloke.
There are many magazines and books on publishing stories, poetry, essays or journalism, but some people, of course, like to ask questions from someone who is experienced or get advice from more than one source.