It’s not every day you win an award, and I’m learning to relish every happy step of the journey, every affirmation which says, I may be obsessed but I’m on the right track. The Harbor Review’s Jewish Women’s Poetry Prize, judged by Nancy Naomi Carlson awarded my micro-chapbook “This is Why We Don’t Look Back” first place, and it will be published online. This is all very new forme. I wasn’t expecting to publish my poems in a book, albeit short, small, micro-chapbook, but still a book.
Perhaps this is the space to note how many rejections I have received along this journey. That the rejections are what make me a real writer (ask any real writer). How part of the poetry publication process is to write, submit, pray and receive a yay or nay. The nays are part of my poetry, they are the buried bones under which my stanzas are built. There is no such thing as wasted words. They are ghosts which whisper what words to write next.
This is definitely the space to share what an introspective process choosing ten of my Iraqi Jewish inspired poems was. Positioning them so they spoke to each other. Positioning them so I understand what I am really writing about.
I look forward to sharing it all with you when it’s out. So watch this space.