Okay! Here we go! Links and things from the past week(ish) that I’ve found interesting. Also, in part due to my new job, I’m back on twitter some more. So \@me, bro.
I Faked My Way as an Instagram Poet, and It Went Bizarrely Well
by Andrew Lloyd
This was originally farther down the list, but oh boy was this fucking great, so it’s now at the top. Just a joy.
I’m (obviously) very invested in poetry, and in people reading it, and though I am typically on a different corner of Instagram and so know very little first-hand about IG poets, but I like that people are engaging with poetry and language in an intentional, if perhaps misguided, way.
That said, this article was also fucking hilarious.
“I looked out the window and saw a pigeon sitting in a tree. This wasn’t exactly the inspiration I needed, so I did what the best Instagrammers do – I rejected reality, inserted something cooler and became: ‘Raven’.”
“The Greatest Liar in the World”(A Newly Translated Story by Etgar Keret)
by Etgar Keret on LitHub
New flash fiction by this guy. I like his work alright often. This isn’t my favorite, but it’s still quite nice.
“Because he chose to live life to the fullest and not just watch tediously from the sidelines as if it were yet another foreign film that the thin waitress dragged him to see at the arthouse cinema.”
Episode 13: ‘The Blueprint’
by the NYT
I haven’t actually watched this yet. So this is more of a placeholder. But I’ll be interested to see what the NYT looks like as a video-media company. Which I suppose they’ve been for a while. But I mostly just read the morning briefings on my phone, TBH.
What Not to Expect From a Grad School Workshop
I found this good and interesting and largely true to my own experience. And relevant vis a vis some stuff A. and I had been talking about a few months ago when she was taking her first CW workshop in a long time.
“I. It is not workshop’s job to “fix” your work. It is the project of the workshop to take your story apart and try to understand it. It is the project of the workshop to get inside the story and to try to show the consequences of the choices that you’ve made. Best case scenario, you’ll be better at making choices after workshop; worst case, you’ll take all the notes you got at the end of class, and all the notes you took while people talked, and try to apply them as if, somehow, a story were a broken thing to be fixed by the other people in the room.”
Now, some self-promotion.
1. Publication in S/word
I got my first story published! You can read it on S/world. I’m at the bottom of the TOC. You can read it on a phone, but you can’t direct link to my story (womp-womp). Not sure why they do it that way, but it’s also pleasing that I have a story published.
As per the vagaries of literary publishing, it’s a p. old story, but still a very fun one.
2. Reading at the Breakwater Review Reading Series
If you’re in the Boston area, I will be reading at the Breakwater Reading Series this Friday at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education at 7pm. I will be reading something brand-spankin’ new and it should be… interesting if not also fun and good. Come check it out!