Here I sit, typing away on the 21st floor of a student residence in Toronto, Canada. I happen to be part of some cosmological research happening at the University of Toronto, but I am taking the time to reflect on my poetic progress over the course of the year as well.

I have published only a couple of poems in the first half of the year. A bit slow, but understandable since my focus has shifted somewhat to academics and I also am working on getting my debut chapbook ready for publication. I also have been rather sick, and recently was diagnosed with pneumonia. Things are looking up but they were certainly not good these past few months.

Lucky Lizard Journal is another project of mine that has resulted in a shift of focus. I am personally celebrating finally getting listed on Poets & Writers, as well as Duotrope and New Pages. That will help the journal for sure. Our second issue was a success as well. There were over 100 poem submissions from around the world, with double the competitiveness of the first issue despite doubling the number of accepted poems per issue. I am proud of the poems that I am sharing through that journal and it always makes my day to be able to tell someone that their poetry has been accepted. I am interested in changing the format and layout of the journal. I feel like there is too much space on the website as the journal exists now. It is inefficient and ugly. I am not fond of making any crazy changes for the time being, though, so I suppose things will have to stay the way they are. I would like to bring back that contest but we had no entries for the few months I had it up! I had to shut it down because I don’t have the sort of money to support last minute submissions that will inevitably win due to lack of submissions. I suppose we will see what the future holds.

I have not been on top of my goals that I set in my last post. I have not been researching a poet every month. I will probably not win any contests given that I am not keen on entering any of them. I will also probably not publish another short story as that has not been a task of interest this year. I have, however, gotten listed on pw.org as both a Poet and for my Journal. And my chapbook is oh-so-close to being published. So some things are doing well. I think the best thing for me to do is just keep reading poetry in my free time and writing poetry as well, and then just submit to as many places as I can. It’s annoying, but I won’t get published otherwise. I usually only ever have about 15 to 20 active submissions I am waiting to hear back from at a time. I also will no longer be doing the creative writing minor. I will be doing a philosophy minor. I just have to get through this summer internship and get into a good groove for this upcoming academic year.

If it’s not apparent yet, I don’t really know how to blog. I am kind of just ranting. But oh whatever.

C. Walker