Organizing your writing life

PUBLICATIONS & REMINDERS: The new issue of New Delta Review arrived in my mailbox yesterday, featuring two of my poems, Ian(which is also in Slow To Burn) and As The Rush Comes. I was also delighted to see work by two of my other favorite poets in this issue...Lisa Zimmerman and Cecilia Woloch. Great company to be in.

For those who are not faint of heart, check out the new issue of Velvet Mafia. Queer novelist/poet Trebor Healey and I talked by phone and email last month to put together this candid interview, where we dish about poetry, sex, bus boys, religion and more. His new book of poetry Sweet Son of Pan has just been published by Suspect Thoughts Press. VM editor Sean Merriwether also selected two poems from Slow To Burn...Ian and The Virgin Mary Appears In A Highway Underpass. Both of those poems are getting a lot of mileage these days. The theme of this edition of VM is "Burn This," which couldn't be more appropriate.

Tonight is Poetry at Portfolio Center featuring Ginger Murchison, assistant director of Poetry at Tech and editor of The Cortland Review) and another fine poet, Jennifer Wheelock, who's been widely published. If you're in Atlanta, PC is at 125 Bennett St. in Buckhead. Visit www.portfoliocenter.com for details and directions.

Tomorrow is the day-long Spring Writers Festival sponsored by the Georgia Writers Association at the Smyrna Community Center. I'll be doing a noon reading with fellow poet Beau Cutts, co-sponsored by Poets & Writers. Around 3 p.m., I'll be giving a workshop on preparing poetry for publication, finding a publisher and marketing your writing. Hope to see some of you out and about this weekend!

Quote of the Week: "I am not in the intelligence business." U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld (a.k.a. the man running the "war" in Iraq) in a response to pointed questions by a former CIA analyst in Atlanta this week. Not in the intelligence business...brother, you ain't kiddin'.