The Hungry Artist

A busy roadway here in Vancouver WA is besmirched by a confederate flag hoisted onto a chimney for everyone to see. That’s something I’d expect to see in Texas or somewhere in the south, but alas, evidence that in the Trump era, the far right is ever more emboldened to let loose all their worst instincts. I’d take Portland’s weirdness any day over racist hate.

I participated in my second protest of this year: May Day Immigrant Rights Rally!

Below are a few photos and a short video:

On April 17, higher ed unions, AAUP chapters, and student organizations
across the U.S. are coming together to fight back against the coordinated
assault on teaching and learning, and to mobilize for a system of higher
education that serves the public good. Join us.
— Read on www.dayofactionforhighered.org/

Our union at Clark College is holding Educators Resist Oppression Day today.

Here’s what it feels like to celebrate your birthday on the same day of a horrible day of American infamy:

https://www.fiftyfifty.one/

Today, President’s Day in America, we joined the “Not my president’s day” protests across the nation at Esther Short Park here in Vancouver, WA. Like so many of our comrades the first few weeks of Trump’s second term, we had felt a range of emotions, primarily despair. Today we showed up out of solidarity with we the people who demand Democracy over Oligarchy, Dictatorship, and cruelty. This is only the beginning; we plan to do our part in resisting the would-be-king/dictator and his entourage blowing up whatever Democracy is left in this country.

Below are some photos and video clips:

Early on in my MFA years, I spent quite a bit of energy, resources, and time searching for writing contests, hoping against all hope that I would win and finally get the affirmation that I desperately sought–affirmation of my right to call myself a writer. Contest fees aside, I agree with the the writer’s critique of literary prizes at Overland, even though he focuses on the Australian literary scene:

The same principles apply to the industry of literary prize seeking and giving. The writer does recognize a few advantages of literary prizes, such as increased sales and prestige, but there is no guarantee, and when it does happen, it only happens to a very small number. The list of what literary prizes are bad at is longer, and I quote:

“But prizes are also very bad at many important things, such as:

• encouraging substantive criticism, analysis, or discussion of books;
• engaging with or providing a sense of literary history;
• generating useful, defensible, or coherent literary traditions.”

Indeed, I know that when I see the winner of a literary prize, I don’t often think about what makes a book a “winner”: “prizes often present a mark of quality that ‘compels us to entertain the idea that this novel’s distinction should be regarded universally to be true.”

Can a book ever be objectively, universally “good”?

I especially appreciate this next point: “How many historically ‘great’ works of fiction were recognised as such upon publication or even shortly after? The answer, as we know, is very few; many ‘great’ novels – like Moby Dick – are effectively rediscovered decades after their original publication. Contemporaries are very bad at judging what books are likely to stand the test of time, and even prizes like the Nobel Prize in literature are as famous for the living writers who didn’t win (James Joyce! Virginia Woolf! Leo Tolstoy! Clarice Lispector!) as those who did.”

I can add many more to this list of ‘losers’: Jorge Luis Borges, Murakami…

Let’s also not forget another bad/stupid thing about writing contests, and that’s the fees; most if not all require some kind of a fee to enter their contests. This requirement automatically bars individuals who are hard up from being considered.

I used to spend a lot of time as a fledgling writer searching for validation of myself as a writer, whether through just sending my work out for acceptance or publication, acquiring an agent, and most of all, entering contests. I actually did win a small poetry press contest over ten years ago, but then they ended up folding before they could publish my chapbook as the reward. My creative nonfiction thesis, which turned into my first book, was longlisted for the Steel Toe Book Prize in 2021. Of course, it felt good to get some recognition, hey look at me, I made it (or rather my book did) to the long list of possible-winners. But when it comes to recognition, it cuts both ways. I also paid to get a review of my second book, Giving Up the Ghost, from Kirkus Reviews, but when the review turned out to be lukewarm, very brief and disappointing, I obviously declined using it to promote my book and there down the drain went 500 bucks. I’m still embarrassed thinking about how I forked out that much, confident that the reviewer would at least like my book. In thinking upon the state of the literary scene, I’ve decided that instead of seeking external validation when it comes to my writing and art, to continue to do what I’ve always done, and that is seeing the process of creation as a vehicle for learning and growing, and just Being.

Three of my paintings have been accepted to the December “Small Wonders” exhibit at Art at the Cave in downtown Vancouver, WA. Join us for First Friday Artists’s Reception from 4 to 8 PM on Friday, December 1st.

This will be my second art exhibit.

https://artatthecave.com/