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WING ON WING, SAILING
Freya, Apostle Islands, Lake Superior
Yesterday I sent the latest version of Wing on Wing, Sailing, my 78-page poetry manuscript, out to readers and publishers in Minnesota. I’ve spent the bulk of the last year revising and reorganizing the poems and submitting parts of it to many contests even as I refined the poems. The process never ends, even after publishing 24 poems in the chapbook, MIssing, I revised that work. Twenty-one poems in the manuscript have also been published in literary magazines, but I have continued to fine tune them to integrate them into the context of this new manuscript.
I envy some writers who have published many, if not most, of their books with a single publisher and know that that publisher will take the next book, too, when they have it ready.
Even as I sent the latest revision (78.3) out, I wrote that the next version would include more about Freyja. Freyja is the Norse goddess of “love, beauty, fertility, gold, seiðr, war, and death,” a quick check of Wikipedia reminds me. I sail almost exclusively in the north country; northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, that is.
Freya is also the boat I sailed on in the Apostle Islands for several years. I found photographs of that boat yesterday while looking for the jpeg of the MIssing chapbook cover.
Recently, I also learned that Freja is also a yacht brand name. Gabriel Heyman of Sweden designed the latest version and took the category in Britain’s latest Yachting World competition.
Although I mention the boat I sailed on in several poems in Wing on Wing, Sailing, I don’t explore these connections in the current revision. The poems that do are currently in draft stage. After reading several literary magazines and poetry books recently, I’ve decided that adding references to gods and goddesses can sell poems to larger venues.
Right now, though, I’m moving back to work on my novel, Available Light, which needs a rolling revision. The novel integrates another passion of mine, photography.
MY INTENTIONS
As I begin my blog posts I offer my intentions for the project. As an avid journal keeper since 1975, I’m accustomed to writing down all manner of thoughts and feelings on a daily basis for my private use as well as use in poems, stories or arguments. This blog will present short, more polished versions of my daily writing that explore my process as a writer. It is the second blog I’ve created.
My first blog, DISCIPLE OF WATER, integrates photographs, poems and short essays exploring my devotion to water, especially sailing the waters of Lake Superior every summer. Sailing has fed my work as a writer and a photographer, but it has also led to a hemorrhage in my left eye in 2005 and a stroke in my right eye in 2008. Both events were misdiagnosed as optic neuritis at the time and only in December of 2008 did I learn the full extent of my vision loss, caused by AION, and its consequences, double vision. With the help of stronger lenses and prisms in those lenses, I’ve learned to adapt.
