April’s conversation with Poet Rebecca Foust continues.
Part II
I with Poet Rebecca Foust
VAH: What words of wisdom do you have for the emerging writer?
RF: Learn to accept rejection and to reject acceptance (Ray Bradbury). The writers who succeed are the ones who don’t give up. Do it for love, not money or fame because those things are not gonna happen. Enjoy the process. As Isak Dineson said, write every day with hope but without specific expectation.
VAH: What choices have you made regards to traditional or independent publishing and why?
RF: Traditional because with 5000 books of poetry a year getting published now, a writer has to do all she can to distinguish her work in the great wash.
VAH: What part does social media play in your writing career?
RF: Lately, more and more. FB is vastly more efficient than email for spreading the word. I am just learning twitter and the jury is out on whether this will be effective in helping to distribute my work.
VAH: Both can be useful marketing tools and just as effective time sucks.
Do you belong to writing or author organizations and what benefit have you found in doing so?
RF: Left Coast Writers at Book Passage in Marin is great. AWP conferences are great, too. And I love Marin Poetry Center, which offers so much for $25 a year: monthly readings by high profile poets, a monthly roundtable workshop, the chance to contribute to an annual anthology, and the opportunity to read in the summer traveling shows.
VAH: I’ll need to look into the Marin Poetry Center. Do you have any favorite online sites or blogs that you find useful or interesting?
RF: Narrative, Cortland Review, and the Best American Poetry and the North American and Mid-American Review Blogs.
More with Poet Rebecca Foust posting here on days that end in three (or occasionally begin with 3).
In the meantime, enjoy a sampling of her work:
Southern Indiana Review Spring 4014 Issue, “the fire is falling,” Jan 2014:
“Dynamic Response of Multi-Layered Soil Media in the Frequency Domain,” featured on Poetry Daily, 2/1/15
“Biography,” “But What Can Wake You,” and “Eulogy,” published in OmniVerse, Fall 2014
“Dream of the Rood” featured on Poetry Daily, 10/2/14
“Prodigal,” Valparaiso Poetry Review, Volume XIV, Number 2 (Spring 2013)
Rebecca Foust was the 2014 Dartmouth Poet in Residence and is the recipient of fellowships from the Frost Place and the MacDowell Colony. Her fifth book, Paradise Drive won the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry. Molly Peacock calls it “jagged” and “fresh” and Thomas Lux says “There is great music in these poems, and sonnet after sonnet is masterful. Not si
nce Berryman’s Henry have I been so engaged by a persona.”
Foust’s poems are widely published and appear in current or next issues of the Hudson Review, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, North American Review, Southern Indiana Review, and other journals. Her book reviews and essays have published in American Book Review, Calyx, Chautauqua, Prairie Schooner, and Rumpus, and her essay, “Venn Diagram” won the 2014 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Award and appears in the current issue of Malahat Review.
Find Rebecca Foust on the web and social media: Website. Twitter. Facebook.
Vicki Hudson 