Bring it, 2024! A sweet highlight of 2023 came toward the end of it, and I’m hoping portends more good news in the months to come.

My full-length collection made the finalist list in the Wandering Aengus Book Award competition. This acknowledgement was one more form of validation for the work, which amassed some very special recognition in 2023 with finalist nods for the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize, the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize and most recently the Wandering Aengus Book Award. It also picked up a semi-finalist nod for Ashland Poetry Press’s Richard Snyder Memorial Book Prize.

Hooray, right? I admit that each acknowledgement buoys my spirits and validates that the work I’m doing is reaching people. It’s always nice to see my name listed along with other writers I know and admire; let’s face it, so many of us are going after the same prizes, given the contest model being so prevalent in the poetry world, for better or worse. This is a cohort I’m proud to belong to, particularly when, unlike me, so many of these writers have published multiple books already and/or won prestigious awards. It’s kind of good karma, indicative that I’m on the right track but also in many ways, a win in itself to just be included along with them, even if none of us walked away with the top prize.

But it would be dishonest for me to say there wasn’t the sharp pain of rejection this past year as well, living right alongside the news that made me hopeful. One particular rejection came in early September, after I submitted during a press’s open reading period, especially hopeful after having received specific editorial comments I’d taken to heart. I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘devastated’ in this context, but I felt the sting of that particular rejection more sharply than some others, perhaps because I felt I’d done most everything the editor suggested I do to improve the work.

I never make an editor’s suggestions without reflecting on whether I truly agree with them, and in some cases I don’t make them at all, but I’d felt hers were sound. After licking my wounds for a couple of months, during which I barely wrote at all, I was that depressed, I found an editor I’ve worked with a few times, and who had seen the work in its much earlier stages a couple of years before.

She provided a comprehensive assessment of the work and some feedback on things like ordering and title, even asked me to send her some additional poems if I had them that I thought might work in this manuscript. Ultimately, I ended up adding around five new poems to the book, cutting one, and slightly changing the title of the work. So, The Grief Committee is now The Grief Committee Minutes, which ties better into the theme of time, manifested throughout the collection, but also works better with the title poem in its current iteration.

I am fortunate I was in the position of being able to hire this editor for additional feedback and perspective. She’s someone I trust, and she offered me her meaningful endorsement that the collection is indeed on the right track. More importantly, she helped resurrect my confidence after an especially painful rejection.  Now, almost six months later, I’m more of the view that things happen for a reason. That particular rejection led to my work being finetuned yet again, and hopefully with still better chances of landing a publishing home.

Stay tuned…I hope I can give more good news in the months ahead!