It's been a rainy weekend here where I live; kind of dreary out, so what's the best way to beat the rainy day blues I thought? Go out to a workshop, which is what I did this past Sunday afternoon. I'd been kind of looking forward to this one, billed as a How To Get Your Poetry Published workshop, lord only knows how hard it can be especially if you've been out of the game for so many years like I have and am now just jumping backing into it.Make no mistake however; I am a seasoned veteran of being published in poetry journals and performing throughout the United States, so I wanted to see what exactly Michelle True had to offer with her workshop.
I'd been emailed twice about her workshop or so read the email I had received from Michelle True, which looked exactly like this:
HOW TO GET YOUR POETRY PUBLISHED
Date: Saturday, April 30/Location, Niles Public Library, 6960 West Oakton Street, Niles, Illinois Time: 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Price: FREE!
Michelle True is a published author, poetry webzine publisher, poetry workshop leader, poetry anthology publisher, and Internet radio talk show host/author interviewer who will provide powerful tips and inside information about getting poetry published. Topics include how to make your poetry publishable, how to find poetry markets, how to submit your poetry, how to track your poetry submissions, and how to publish a chapbook of your poetry. This workshop is part of the Inside Writing & Publishing Series sponsored by the North Suburban Library System. Call the library to reserve a seat for this popular workshop! Contact: Michelle True at michelleailenetrue@yahoo.com or visit www.michelleailenetrue.com
So, I called the library and made my reservation to attend her workshop. I asked if there was any room left and a staff librarian implied there was lots of room. What confused me was the email had implied that the workshop was to take place Saturday, yet it was meant to take place today. Mistake number one!
In between the raindrops, I speed along Howard Street from my apartment, took the curve along Frontage Road, parallel to Interstate 94 and turned left at the corner and onto Oakton Avenue and hurried along to the Niles library.
When I got to the meeting room, it was fairly packed; 15 people total. I took a seat to the right of the room, not my normal side, but the left-handed side was pretty full. And there was Michelle True, talking about donating her hair for a worthy cause (well, at least it wasn't her poetry which isn't all that great either, but I'm getting ahead of myself slightly).
The workshop started kind of abruptly, yet it didn't seem like a structured workshop to me. It was more like a questions & answers session with expert mega poetry whore Michelle True, whore in the sense of everything she claims she can do or appear to do all in one blow!
What I gathered from her humble beginnings is that she was writer; well aren't we all? She said she finally returned back to writing poetry in 2003 and "it was like I had diarrhea," referring of course to her spurt of writing poetry.
True explained that she was at first an impatient person and didn't have the time to wait around for journals to let her know whether or not they planned to use her poetry, so she just decided to go into self-publishing, though I don't know if such publishing companies as PrintAmerica, which published her first two books count as real publishing companies, rather vanity presses.
The term vanity press, for those of you who have no heard that term before, simply means you pay someone a set fee to publish your manuscript, as opposed to a real publishing firm that doesn't charge you for publishing your work.
Throughout the two hour session, among other things, True offered up basic information, on how to copyright written poetry and how to perform at open mic sessions, interspersed of course with all of her great accomplishments, including her up and coming new book entitled “The Poet's Manual: How To Go From Aspiring Writer To Published Author And Beyond (LuLu.com, late 2006), being published by another vanity press.
Among the questions she fielded were from a woman who sat directly in front of me who wanted to know how to go about getting a literary agent and how to be published by Random House.
I always have admired someone who aspires to shoot for the moon without having to go through the motions of what the rest of us poets go for in terms of our hard work in the trenches and needless to say, True gave that woman wishy-washy advice, but it was the kind of advice that was meant to satisfy that particular person's question; in other words it was a crappy answer.
When True touched upon leaving a self-published book or chapbook on consignment at a local bookstore, that's all she did. True didn't bother to inform the audience that consignment means splitting the cost up with the bookstore and the author, meaning, the bookstore gets the majority of the profit, while the author gets the shorter end of the stick.
True also touched very briefly on blogging, only stating that "everybody blogs." Needless to say, True didn't offer up any websites for the audience to take a look at.
When someone else in the audience asked her what poetry slams were about and if she had ever attended one, True told the woman she had never been to one and described slams as "dramatic" and also confided that she didn't go because she was afraid of the stinging criticism that often is displayed at a slam against a poet.
As a 1999 Chicago Team Poetry Slam finalist, I can agree with that much; it is a dramatic competition, but at least I've been through it and willingly experienced the scene whether or not I agreed with it. The mere fact that True doesn't want to be criticized by unknowns at a poetry slam or be booed or hissed if the poetry truly sucks (the judges are usually hand-picked by the slam host who assign points), tells me a lot about her; that she's vulnerable to such harsh critiques and is probably in the wrong field if she can't handle it.
It also seemed ironic that True said I'm not a salesperson," when referring to her books, yet a couple of minutes later, she said, "I'm always looking for ways to promote myself." Those sets of remarks truly takes the cake!
This was no prepared workshop I went to; no, rather it was a celebration of self-promotion that was disguised as a workshop to sell moreidealismem> Michelle True idealisms, a true (pun intended) scary thought.
True confessed that her goal is to bring her workshop to every public library in the state of Illinois and southeast Wisconsin.
God! I sure hope not!
