UC Davis Extension Creative Writing Certificate

I just received my Creative Writing Certificate from UC Davis Extension, which took me back to my post in April, where I said, "I hope it is printed on ivory, premium quality paper and has my name and the name of the creative writing program displayed in impressive type and has the seal of UC Davis Extension embossed on the bottom somewhere--in gold."

Well.  Here it is.  Premium quality ivory paper, my name and the name of the creative writing program in impressive type, the seal of UC Davis Extension embossed on the bottom--in gold. 

Can't get much better than that. 

So am I going to frame my certificate and hang it in a prominent place in my office, where I can see it each time I sit down to write? 

You bet.  I'll pick out the frame tomorrow.

Oh yes, make that three frames. 

In my April post, I also pointed out that I had a BA degree and teaching credential stuck in the safe for more years than I'm willing to mention and that I was going frame all three documents and display them with pride in my office. 

Because if it weren't for the foundation I built in my youth, I wouldn't be where I am today. I am a writer of fiction. And I love it. And it's something I will devote the rest of my life to.

Along with my certificate, I received two congratulatory letters; one from Dennis Pendleton, Dean of UC Davis Extension, and one from Kate Ashe, Associate Director of Arts and Humanities.

Kate's letter made a special impression on me, because it was personal and written from the heart.  She taught my first UC Davis Extension Creative Writing class (Reading Contemporary Fiction as a Writer) and the second-to-last (Structure and Style), and thereby followed my progress from beginning to end.  She encouraged my comments about the program along the way and responded enthusiastically each time.

In her letter, Kate stated that I was first student to complete this new program.  "The first on over the line."  She asked me to keep in touch so we could celebrate my future writing successes together, beginning with my upcoming publication in Sacramento's Tule Review.

How good is that? 

Thank you, Kate.  Thank you, UC Davis Extension.

Wish me luck.                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                        
(Illustration:  Writing for Story by Pesky Library)














                                                              

The Tule Review 2010 Summer Issue

I just got word that one of my poems has been selected to be included in the summer 2010 issue of The Tule Review, published by the Sacramento Poetry Center.

Just so you know, I'm not a poet.  I got lucky on this one.  I wrote it in my Structure and Style class at UCDavis Extension.  Our instructor, Kate Asche, asked us to do a 7-minute write on what mattered most to us at that moment.  I wrote fast, straight from the gut, and filled the page with twenty-one lines of prose. 

"What matters most?  Writing, of course.  Why else would I drive into Sacramento on a night when they predict wind and rain and messy, slick roads?" 

Then Kate asked us to shape our prose into a poem. 

Using our textbook, The Making of a Poem:  A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, as a guide, I chose to write a Pantoum.  And what is a Pantoum? 

According to Norton's Anthology:
                             

1.  Each pantoum stanza must be four lines long.
2.  The length is unspecified but the pantoum must begin and end with the same line.
3.  The second and fourth lines of the first quatrain become the first and third lines of the next, and so on with succeeding quatrains.
4.  The rhyming of each quatrain is abab.
5.  The final quatrain changes this pattern.
6.  In the final quatrain the unrepeated first and third lines are used in reverse as second and fourth lines.

Believe me, this sounds harder than it is.  Using lines plucked straight out of my prose, I completed this poem in less than twenty minutes.  And then I handed it in.

When Kate handed it back the following week, she suggested I send it to The Tule Review.
 

Yeah right, I thought.  But I did it anyway.  What could I lose?

This poem grew out a quick, emotional response to a 7-minute writing assignment.  Emotion, I've heard, is where the reader and writer connect.  So I got lucky. 

But it feels nice to be recognized anyway.

If you want to read my poem, you'll have to wait until June, the expected publication date of The Tule Review's summer 2010 issue.

For now, it's not mine to share, but when it's okay to do so, I'll include it here on my blog.  Or you can go to (http://www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org/tulereview.htm).

(Refrigerator Magnetic Poetry image above is by TaranRampersad)