Rarely comes a chance to break open the hard nut that encases the creative writer who’s necessarily enmeshed in a workaday schedule. This past month I’ve been broken open to new ways of processing experience and producing new work. While I will always prize the rumination/marination requisite for meaningful revision, I’ve learned to press pen to paper more quickly than I’ve ever done before thanks to the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project. An innovative venture, it features new work by pre-selected poets for thirty days. My work will come down tomorrow, so please check it out today. You can donate (tax-deductibly) to an award-winning independent literary press and select “Kathleen McCoy” in the “30/30 Poet” dropbox, or, if you see this after July 31st, name “Kathleen McCoy” anytime in the “Honor” box to credit my fundraising goal.
I’ve learned I can write everyday, even when the inevitable “stuff” of life comes up: surgery, two deaths, a reunion, six plane flights, gardening, grant-writing–oh, yeah, and an academic job. That none of this got in the way of the poems is a tribute to the support of my family, writer friends, Tupelo Press staff Kirsten Miles, Marie Gauthier, and Jeffrey Levine, and the other 30/30 poets for July: Alexandra Beers, C.W. Emerson, Sara Femenella, Tobey Kaplan, Juan Morales, Carrie Nassif, and Kenneth Wagner.
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The Real McCoy 