2. recently back from my lengthy china trip, i received an invitation from india-based cyberwit.net. to publish a chapbook. they are very efficient: yesterday, i finished proofreading, and found the cover satisfactory as follows:
titled 'east idioms,' this is my eighth chapbook (focusing on chinese cultural traditions), which will be printed and released shortly. though i have written (and published) enough individual poems to prepare at least 30 chapbook mss, i do not really care about publishing them in such short collections, knowing that they would have little effect either on my writing career or on readers (if any at all).
3. at the invitation of Poetry in Voice, i provided a writing prompt to all canadian high school students. my title is: compose a poem in parallel. this is what i submitted to them:
Keep reading poetry ...
until you find a particular piece truly inspiring. Then challenge yourself by rewriting the work with the intention to emulate it; for instance, you could modify as many poetic elements as you like to explore your own thematic interest, or simply replace as many words as possible with antonyms to create a cogent contrast to the original work. By so doing, you are sure to accomplish what I call a 'parallel poem,' which may look very similar to, but essentially different from, the source work.
(Interesting perhaps, this is the way how Allen Qing Yuan, my younger son, began to write poems and even had quite a few published at age 15, as well as how many of my own 'best' poems have been written.)
the final version is slightly different, as they made some good edits, and decided not to include my little note. unexpectedly, i got 50 dollars payment for this.
4. also, at the invitation of Poetry in Voice, i will be serving as one of the six english performance judges for the senior online qualifiers (or semi finals of the national high school poetry recitation contest. The judging period will take place between March 6-17, and the total judging time within that period will be no more than 1.5 days. The role of an English performance judge is to score English recitations using the Poetry In Voice rubric. again, i am to be paid for this job. this made me feel not only interested but also honored. actually, this will be the first time for me to be a 'judge'.
5. released the last autumn issue of Poetry Pacific (8.2) two days ago. after long hesitation, i finally announced to change PP from a biannual to an annual publication mainly as a result of my eye problem.
6. the create abundance, now known as GT goldentouch, has contacted me several times through my friend (their general manager in fact) in the past month about their new book(s) to be published by PP. actually, since feburary, they seem to have never really made up their mind. on the other hand, they might be just trying to play games with me so that they can get the best possible performance at their lowest possible cost. while talking about this matter, my friend used an interesting word: hooking.
7. in the past 2 months, i have not been able to write a single line of poetry, just as before: every time i go to stay in china, i can never write anything at all!
8. my first and only short story 'worshipping ancestry' was finally published and translated into germany recently. i wrote it in 2007 after returning from my china-trip with my younger son. my author's copy will be arriving next week, hopefully in due time.
9. while listening to a lecture online a few days ago, i heard a very helpful observation to this effect: as long as you remain curious and can find interesting things to read, you will never run out of inspirations. this is one of my deepest fears, but keeping this in mind, it seems that i do not have to worry about losing my inspiration for poetry once and forever. the problem is: it's becoming so increasingly harder nowadays to find good poetry to read, either in english or in chinese!
8. my first and only short story 'worshipping ancestry' was finally published and translated into germany recently. i wrote it in 2007 after returning from my china-trip with my younger son. my author's copy will be arriving next week, hopefully in due time.
9. while listening to a lecture online a few days ago, i heard a very helpful observation to this effect: as long as you remain curious and can find interesting things to read, you will never run out of inspirations. this is one of my deepest fears, but keeping this in mind, it seems that i do not have to worry about losing my inspiration for poetry once and forever. the problem is: it's becoming so increasingly harder nowadays to find good poetry to read, either in english or in chinese!
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