The official website of Nathaniel Lee Hansen
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be a guest in classes taught by a colleague. As a part of her Religion & Literature courses, she assigned my poetry collection, Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life. I visited both of her sections twice, with the one class session focused on the first half of the book and the other session focused on the second half.
For a writer, this is a regular question: you finish a draft of a piece, or perhaps even a piece finds a home somewhere, and then where do you go next?
Three weeks ago my new poetry collection, Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life, was published. It’s making its way into the world, and I’ve been signing and selling copies. More promotion lay ahead. Yet in the few months leading up to its publication (while reviewing the proof, approving the cover design, filling out paperwork, etc.), I started pondering a question: What’s Next?
In this particular case, the question has some important clarifying language. What’s the next poetry book? I am now at stage in my writing life wherein I’m thinking more about which individual pieces of writing would mesh to make something larger. This is an unexpected but necessary shift in my focus.
I began looking through my folders (both electronic and paper), taking down titles of poems that might be possibilities. Not even looking at whether they necessarily fit together, but were they possibilities as individual poems, even in their nascent stages. As of this point, the document has around forty poems, and the list is not yet complete. In that process I noted several recurring ideas that could help shape a book.
On a related note, I have been drafting a poem a week this new year, something I hadn’t planned on doing but has just sort of happened. My writing momentum is helped because I’m teaching my junior-level poetry-writing course this semester, immersed in the world of contemporary poets and young poets-in-the-making.
So as I continue into 2018, I’ll be promoting the new book, while at the same time, looking ahead. A writer’s work is never done. And that’s one big reason why I enjoy writing so much.
I wrote the title poem of my forthcoming book in 2013, and that poem was published in 2014. Now I’m on the cusp of the book being released very soon. Part of my semester break involved reading and rereading the proof (as I noted in an earlier post). Last week, I received the front and back cover images. I couldn’t wait to open the attachments.
Since the publishing process began back in July when I set my manuscript and its accompanying materials to the publisher, I’ve wondered what the book cover would look like. In some ways, waiting for the cover was like waiting for a gift at Christmas. Several friends and acquaintances have published books with Wipf & Stock, and their books have had great covers.
Even though I released the cover images via my Twitter and Instagram feeds (both handles are “plainswriter”) and my Facebook author page, I wanted to post them here (in a larger size). First of all, I like the color scheme of the covers, as well as the way the book title is the focal point. It still seems bizarre and unreal to me that this book is at last making its way into the world.
I was struck as I read the words of writers whom I admire. I was humbled that they had taken time to read my book and to offer their words of affirmation. After all, by the time I had signed off on the final proof, I had little objectivity about my own work. During the process of working on this project (especially from its initial versions), I was uncertain about its future. Would it materialize into a book? And if so, when? And what would it look like? Now I know the answers to those questions.
Plainswriter 