LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: spells

  • Publishing in the apocalypse (please vote!)

    Publishing in the apocalypse (please vote!)

    My last poetry book, The State She’s In, launched on March 17th, 2020. I’m far from the only author whose disappointed feeling was swamped by the dimensions of pandemic disaster. Millions died; literary cancelations were vanishingly small potatoes by comparison. Other authors shared stories of their 9/11/21 launch dates or the collapse of the book-buying…

  • Future schmuture

    No NEH grant again, a magazine acceptance, a solicitation of poems from a magazine I’d never cracked (!), several poem rejections, some drafting and revising, lots of Shenandoah work, a vague but persistent headache, short days and blustery cold–hello from a mixed-blessing November in Sabbatical Land. I hereby mark the sixth-month birthday of my novel…

  • Not resolutions but invocations

    Last year, I substituted a mantra for a resolution: “breathe.” It helped a little. This New Year’s Eve I wrote up more resolutions, got upset about them, and then decided: to hell with self-improvement. I need fewer bullet points on my endlessly guilty, mildly self-loathing to-do lists. And better ones. In fact, let’s not even…

  • Uncanny paneling

    When you write a poem that resembles a spell, prayer, charm, curse, or blessing, are you trying to make something happen, and if so, what or how? That’s what we talked about on the Uncanny Activisms panel I organized for the C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference last weekend (the conference as a whole was wonderful,…