"Congratulations!

I am writing to inform you that your poem, "Thrush," is a winner in this year's Intro Journals Contest and will be published in Colorado Review."

Thus began the letter I pulled out the mailbox about an hour ago as I left the house to go get something for lunch.

In November, my poem was one of three poems sent by poets from my school to the AWP Intro Journals contest. Creative writing programs throughout the country send in poems from their writers. I was very excited to be nominated from my school, and didn't think there was much chance at all that I would win in the larger pool. Today I saw the return address on the envelope, and I thought, "Oh, this is a letter saying how I didn't win that contest."

About a year ago, I began submitting my poems to literary journals. If you want to publish a book of poetry, it's good to have some poems in journals first. And if you want to teach creative writing with your MFA degree, it's good to have published a book of poetry. (I would love to be able to teach poetry in a college, because teaching poetry is the best job I've ever had, and because the college professor life is, in my opinion, super-cushy: good hours, fun things to teach, long summers in which you can write.) Every poet I've ever read who's written about the publication process tells you to expect rejection after rejection. That's been the case with my stuff so far. In fact, I got a rejection email from a journal just today. Every now and then I will get a kind note from the journal's poetry editor saying something like, "Thanks anyway! Good luck!" It's the kind of thing that makes you feel like your work maybe at least got past the first round of editors. So I wasn't bitterly thinking how I didn't win the contest or anything, just matter-of-factly.

Still, I decided to go ahead and open it because it looked sort of thick for a rejection letter. (I thought maybe they were trying to get me to join something.) Then I opened it, and saw the word Congratulations!

It's very exciting! My poem will be published in Colorado Review AND I get $100! You can see the announcement of the contest winners here.