Welcome to the Poetry Friday Party here! I am so happy to be hosting this Friday. I think the posts are even sweeter during National Poetry Month. I am so excited to share an interview with Carol Labuzzetta, and her newly released book, Picture Perfect Poetry: An Anthology of Ekphrastic Nature Poetry for Students.
(Spoiler alert: I have two poems in the book) The theme of my poetry month is 'doubleheaders". Double interview Fridays and double videos on my Saturday Matinees featuring my TWU students. 
JRM: What gave you the idea to curate a picture perfect anthology for students?
CL: My inspiration to create a photography-poetry anthology came from multiple sources. Being part of the Poetry Friday group over the years has impressed me with the quality of poems and the interest in photography many of us share on our weekly posts. I was also inspired to help get quality work published. My experience with submitting to literary magazines, contests, or other calls for submissions has not been positive. Some of you might remember that I even had issues with my own state poetry group due to poor communication regarding submission formats and acceptance or rejection of my work. These experiences led me to want to publish some of the great work I was seeing from other authors/photographers, as well as my own. I have excellent organizational skills and knew I could plan and produce an anthology that would be colorful, engaging, and result in publication for some that have never had work accepted before as well as those that were established authors/poets. My desire to have the work be for students and teachers comes from my own experience of founding and leading a third grade writer’s circle some years ago at our local elementary school. My group was comprised mostly of above benchmark learners, talented and gifted students, and highly motivated ones, willing and able to do more than their usual assignments. One of our month-long units was on poetry. My approach to poetry with the students was to instill confidence with various simple forms such as haiku, diamante, cinquain, and color poems, focusing on creating a picture with words for the reader. We also worked on the use of descriptive words, syllable counting, and not worrying about rhyme (since not all poetry rhymes). This approach seemed to alleviate some pressure for the students that surrounded what seemed like the daunting task of writing poetry. Poetry is scary for students; my aim was to have it not be. The poetry unit ended up being the most popular of our units during our yearlong meetings. I wanted to provide a volume of poetry that could be used as a mentor text, an instructional manual, or a self-instructive text for highly motivated students. Thus, I included back matter that could be referenced easily by teachers, students, homeschool groups, or anyone interested in writing poetry. My hope is that I’ve accomplished that with this anthology. JRM: What draws you to ekphrastic poetry? CL: My formal introduction to ekphrastic poetry occurred in 2021 when I participated in an anthologies webinar by Pomelo Books’ Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell that resulted in the book– Things We Do. Their webinars were informative and after taking Antho101 and 201, I was sure I could publish one of my own using ekphrastic poetry based on photography. Of course, I had heard of ekphrastic poetry before but never tried my hand at it, seriously. I am an avid photographer and often find that my photography informs my writing. There are two ekphrastic poems I’ve written that capture what I saw in my photograph. You can see these on my blog here, and here. These are not part of the anthology. I also feel that this form of poetry is something that students can try without feeling too intimidated. The artform that inspires the poetry, gives them something concrete to work with when writing. Ekphrastic poetry is also inclusive in that you can use a form of poetry that appeals to you to express what you see in the art whether that be a haiku, golden shovel, triolet, nonet, or others. JRM: What surprised you about the submission? CL: I think my timeline for the book worked out well. I provided three months, from August 1st to November 1st, for a submission window. All of the poems in the anthology were submitted and accepted during that time frame. I asked for a $10.00 fee from submitters for up to three poems. Only a few people questioned that fee. In the submission description, I informed those interested that the fee would help cover the cost of color printing and hiring an editor. As well as an indie author, I am an indie publisher–a one woman operation at Northern Loon Press. I created this publishing house when I released my poetry chapbook, Life’s Reflections in Few Words in 2022. In reality, the total of submission fees received covered about 75% of the editor fees. But it helped. I was surprised by the number of people I was able to attract to the anthology. I expected some I knew from the Poetry Friday group to participate but I also got participants from posting the call to twitter and to my state poetry group (which I had some difficulty with my call). I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the poems and photographs I received as well. Strangers were trusting me with their work and that really surprised as well as pleased me. JRM: What was your process for assembling the collection? CL: As I received submissions, I decided on whether to include the work in the anthology or not. Most, but not all, of what was submitted was accepted. Then, I had to get the photo and first rights releases signed by each author. This was an ongoing process for several weeks. Once I had all the submissions and permissions, I had to decide how I was going to layout (assemble) the book. But first, I had to make sure that submitted photographs were sized with the correct pixelation (minimum 300 dpi). I knew this was important because I had taken a graphic design course (mandatory curriculum) as part of my graduate degree (MS) in Natural Resources. Luckily, I own photography software to help me do this. In addition, I had to reorient some of the photographs. I had asked for portrait orientation in the submission directions but still got many landscapes. When necessary, I worked individually with an author to optimize their photograph(s) for publication. As they started to come in, but after resizing the pixels on the photographs as needed, I started adding them to Canva software for a trade Sized (6” x 9”) book templet. Somehow, I thought adding a colored background to each page based on the colors in the photograph would be nice. At that time, each author’s poems were grouped together, on consecutive pages, and given the same colored background. This changed at the end a bit, as I made sure the two page spreads were side by side. Early on, I decided on the font size and style for the poems, titles, and by-lines. I was careful to keep these consistent throughout. I kept track of all this information on a notepad and a spreadsheet at my desk. My editor, Rachel, Reyes, who I had worked with previously on my chapbook, caught any inconsistencies with font, size, layout, and style. She was a joy to work with and I hope we can work together again. When Rachel was finished editing, I sent most authors a note about what changes were suggested. All of these changes were very small. Most accepted the editor’s suggestions without hesitation. Once the book was reviewed, I reviewed it again and again and again, checking for different things each time. Small tweaks were made. The front and back matter were added. This was all done in Canva. The last piece was the most frustrating and demanded patience. It was uploading the book to KDP and reviewing the format for their trade sized books. The cover is a separate file from the book and the initial draft of the cover took me three days! The inside of the book was less frustrating but unfortunately I had internet issues with a slow and intermittent connection when I was trying to upload the manuscript. Going to my public library solved that issue. After three proof copies, ordered to review the small changes I made because I felt they were necessary to have the book be the best it could be, I pressed the publish button on April 6th. On the morning of the 7th, I woke to a message from Amazon that they had rejected my cover due to some illegible text. After examination It turned out to be the text on the spine of the book. I spent several hours trying to figure out how to fix it, but finally I came across a solution. The book went live that afternoon! JRM: What tips do you have for people who are interested in indie/self-publishing? CL: Each day in April, I am releasing tips on indie publishing on my WordPress blog, The Apples in My Orchard. You can check my posts for more of my process and the tips resulting from it. One thing that should be impressed upon the readers of this interview is that if you have a desire to publish or be published, it is doable with today’s technology. Do not believe everything you read in forums about whether you can or cannot use certain formats to create your book. If I had stopped after reading some of the “advice” online, this anthology would never have come to life! The Picture Perfect Poetry book was laid out in Canva. The files were converted to PDF and uploaded to KDP. Both of these methods were touted as not being possible by people in online forums. Do NOT believe everything you read. Instead, try it for yourself. I am working on finishing the book’s upload to Ingram Spark for it to be distributed to their markets as well as Amazon’s. I hope to have that done soon. However, it is another platform with another learning curve. Bear in mind that you will almost certainly have to do one or more part of a book more than once, unless you are well versed in the self-publishing world, the software you use, and the distribution platform you choose. It is all worth it! I hope the book is widely read and enjoyed. I want to thank Jone for this interview and allowing me to share my perspective on creating a poetry anthology and the field of indie publishing. I enjoyed working with the poet-photographers and plan to do this again in the future. I thank them all for trusting me with their work. I hope they feel that I treated their pieces with reverence. Thank you, Carol, for this encouraging and insightful interview. I for one, have been toying with the possibility of an anthology one day. Below is a sneak peak at one of my poems. I originally had written the seedling poem for submission in one of the Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell books. I went in search of the picture perfect seedling photos. Seedlings are not easy to photograph! And it was quite comical with me on the ground or bent over fallen logs to capture a seedling with my husband , daughter and grand girls on the adventure. I hope that this book reaches a wide audience. 
Next up is Liz Garton Scanlon's new book and interview. Please leave your link with Mr. Linky. NOTE: Mr. Linky is cranky. You need to have a small image to upload. Elect the image, when you push enter and it says close, close it and refresh your page, your link should be there.
Carol at The Apples in My Orchard is celebrating bats and a milestone birthday. And she's still ope for submissions for her nature anthology.
I am sharing a Spooky Spectacular Found Poem even on Padlet. I hope you will share your poems. Here's the link to add yours. 
 ©Graphic by Amber Fleek Today Linda B. at TeacherDance is hosting Poetry Friday. She is reflecting on the end of summer and the beginning of school and new adventures as some head to college. This time of year is always a new year for those in education. And even when you retire, you feel it. This week, I'm sharing the gifts of summer; the annual Summer Poetry Swap, organized by the fabulous Tabatha Yeatts. My swap partners were from Sarah Grace Tuttle, Marcie Finchum Atkins, Carol Labuzetta, Rose Cappelli, and our host, Linda Baie.  For the poems I sent to my partners, I found lines from their poems and wrote golden shovel poems for each.
For today, I combined their lines and a line I wrote for their poems for a cento, |
AuthorAll photos and poems in these blog posts are copyrighted to Jone Rush MacCulloch 2006- Present. Please do not copy, reprint or reproduce without written permission from me. 
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2023 Progressive Poem
April 1 Mary Lee Hahn, Another Year of Reading April 2 Heidi Mordhorst, My Juicy Little Universe April 3 Tabatha, The Opposite of Indifference April 4 Buffy Silverman April 5 Rose Cappelli, Imagine the Possibilities April 6 Donna Smith, Mainely Write April 7 Margaret Simon, Reflections on the Teche April 8 Leigh Anne, A Day in the Life April 9 Linda Mitchell, A Word Edgewise April 10 Denise Krebs, Dare to Care April 11 Emma Roller, Penguins and Poems April 12 Dave Roller, Leap Of Dave April 13 Irene Latham Live You Poem April 14 Janice Scully, Salt City Verse April 15 Jone Rush MacCulloch April 16 Linda Baie, TeacherDance April 17 Carol Varsalona, Beyond Literacy Link April 18 Marcie Atkins April 19 Carol Labuzzetta at The Apples in My Orchard April 20 Cathy Hutter, Poeturescapes April 21 Sarah Grace Tuttle, Sarah Grace Tuttle’s Blog, April 22 Marilyn Garcia April 23 Catherine, Reading to the Core April 24 Janet Fagal, hosted by Tabatha, The Opposite of Indifference April 25 Ruth, There is no Such Thing as a God-Forsaken Town April 26 Patricia J. Franz, Reverie April 27 Theresa Gaughan, Theresa’s Teaching Tidbits April 28 Karin Fisher-Golton, Still in Awe Blog April 29 Karen Eastlund, Karen’s Got a Blog April 30 Michelle Kogan Illustration, Painting, and Writing |
