Have you ever wondered what it takes to transform the written word into a piece of published art? Tara Propper, Ph.D., is not just an assistant professor of English at UT Tyler, but she’s also a poet. Listen as Propper pulls back the curtain on the often hidden and intricate process of getting published. She brings both personal experience and practical advice for writers and poets who aspire to see their work in print. Learn the essentials of crafting a disciplined writing routine, the art of handling rejection, and strategic moves to keep your submissions in constant flow. Her wisdom is not just about getting your work “out there,” but also doing that with a cultivated resilience that turns the sting of “no” into a stepping stone for improvement.
Propper also celebrates poetry’s power to connect people through common threads of human experience. She shares the journey behind her own poetry collection, “This body was never made,” offering a glimpse into how personal trials and the beauty of language intertwine to create works of art. Whether you’re a writer, a lover of words, or someone who finds solace in the brushstrokes of language, you’ll find this conversation a source of inspiration and guidance in the pursuit of literary success.
TRANSCRIPT
LANDESS:
The great American novel, the great book of poetry. What is it that you’d like to write and get published? I’m UT Tyler News Director Mike Landess. To get insight on that process, UT Tyler Radio Connects with Dr. Tara Propper, assistant professor of English and the recently published author of a book of her poetry. Is it hard to get published?
PROPPER:
Yes, it is difficult to get published. There is, it’s not impossible. It is an imperfect process, I would say. It’s a process that requires a lot of patience, which can be difficult for me. Again, we were just talking, I’m a native New Yorker, so I always want everything done in a New York minute, and so it requires patience, it requires dedication, perseverance. That is the hard stuff and, of course, the craft. So that’s the hard stuff. The publishing process. Once you get the acceptance, once you have an oeuvre of materials that you could send out, it becomes a little bit more routine.
LANDESS:
So, tell me a little bit about how you begin the process. What do you do?
PROPPER:
So one thing that I don’t want to neglect when discussing the publishing process is the writing process.
LANDESS:
Well, yes.
PROPPER:
Because they’re pretty interrelated.
LANDESS:
You have to have the product, that’s true.
PROPPER:
Yeah, sure. So when it comes to writing, when it comes to art, it takes many, many, many, many years, hours of laboring at your desk, of wrestling with the page, of rewriting, of revising, of reflecting on what went rightly, wrongly and indifferently. And then repeating the cycle. It also it constitutes many hours of receiving feedback from peers. That’s exceptionally important, and so there’s no shortcut to this ingredient of the publishing process. For perspective, I’m an English professor, so I like to always historicize a bit. Can’t overlook John Milton. John Milton was 56 when he wrote “Paradise Lost.” So unless you’re John Keats publishing at 21 or so, you need to be patient. You need to hone your craft for many years.
PROPPER:
Sylvia Plath, who is a poetry godmother, I call her. A huge inspiration to me. She wrote “Colossus” and “Ariel.” “Ariel,” I think is one of the most important collections of poetic work of the 20th century — had a daily writing routine in which she wrote 6 hours a day, 8 a.m. to noon, 4 to 6 p.m. When she had young children, she famously would wake up at 4 a.m. to ensure that she’s getting her writing hours in. My mentor, when I was in my MFA program, would say that a daily routine ensures that you are opening that tap daily and clearing out all the muck that gathers and collects overnight or over time away from the writing habits. So she’d say that when you sit down to write at first it’s like turning on the faucet in an old cabin that hasn’t been used for a while.
LANDESS:
Very well put.
PROPPER:
What comes out at first? It’s a lot of muck, it’s a lot of sediment, sand, algae, whatever is in there. But as you leave the faucet running, the water will eventually turn clear. What you want in writing is that clear water. That’s when the creativity and clarity come, when the truth, beauty and goodness or transcendentals come. So you want to leave that tap open, which is what a regular writing routine will allow for. But the regular routine of writing not only makes you a better writer through practice, it also ensures that you produce a lot of writing, which is essential for the publishing process, right? It’s key for sending out a variety of work. You need to write prolifically in order to be able to easily slot different types of work that you’ve produced into publishing opportunities.
LANDESS:
Well, don’t you have to have sort of a rhino hide, so to speak? When you do that, I mean you’re putting your heart into this. You hand it over to someone who reads it and says, “Eh, I don’t know, it needs work.”
PROPPER:
Yes, those revise and resubmit. Reviewer two is always I don’t know the meanest reviewer. Reviewer one’s the nice guy, and then reviewer two always comes in, and sometimes you feel like you have to put your body back together again after receiving some of those comments. But again, I’d go to Plath here. Plath famously wrote in her journals, “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” That’s a quote of hers, and so this is going to sound a little soccer-coachy, but I played soccer for the greater portion of my childhood and teenage years.
PROPPER:
In some ways, I was a bit of a jock, so some athletic wisdom applies here. If I had to bet on somebody with simply raw talent versus someone who is the smartest person in the room versus someone who is doggedly persistent in their craft, I’m choosing the doggedly persistent person every time. So, yes, you lick your wounds. Yes, pick your metaphor, get back up on the horse, do what you have to do to put that work back out there. When I receive a rejection slip, a rejection notice, I make a habit of sending work out that day.
LANDESS:
And what kinds of things do you find are the most helpful when you get the rejection slip? I mean, do they make any effort at all to say, “And this is what’s wrong,” or do they just say, “Nah.”
PROPPER:
So it depends on the publisher. I always long for the decades in the ’50s and ’60s where they would give you a very thoughtful rejection slip that would tell you why it was rejected or what’s good about this work and how to try again. Some publishers will give you some feedback. Other publishers will require, when you submit for a reading fee, that if you would like feedback, that you’d have to submit a little extra for their reading fee. I actually never take them up on this, being an academic. We have revise and resubmit, which is free. We get pages and pages of feedback.
LANDESS:
I could get beaten up for free. I don’t have to pay for it.
PROPPER:
Yes. So the creative arts are a little bit different in that regard. But I would say in terms of my own experience, mostly the rejection slips are, “We’ve had a large amount of work,” which they’re not lying. Creative work is really hard to get published because there’s just so much to select from, and “unfortunately, we had to not move forward with your selection.” Everybody gets rejected; it’s part of the process.
PROPPER:
It doesn’t mean stop writing. It does mean, like I said, A) be persistent, but B) it also means be deliberate. Just being doggedly persistent doesn’t mean being blind and not kind of recognizing where you’re putting work out. So you have to be sensitive to the journals that you are seeking publication for. And so you know, I tell my students, my creative writing classes, I actually make this an assignment.
PROPPER:
They need to create a creative composition. They also have to have a journal in mind in which they like to publish. I have them do research with respect to the journal. They have to look at back issues. They have to read the mission statement. They have to get a sense of the journal’s ethos or identity. What do they tend to like to publish? Are they publishing fixed verse forms? Sonnets and sestinas? Are they publishing more narrative poetry? Are they publishing animal poetry? What have you? Again, this is where the having a lot of writing to pull from is helpful here, and so being aware of a journal’s identity is an important, also part an important part of the publishing process doing your research, sending work out to the right types of publishers and, of course, trying to avoid the predatory journals as well.
LANDESS:
Based on everything you said up to this point, I have to assume that if you want to be a published author for the first time, don’t quit your day job.
PROPPER:
I would say that you do want to make publishing a kind of job, right? It does require a lot of time, and it does require a lot of effort. You want to make sure that your day job can allow for an afford a night job, because it’s a pretty persistent job. It’s a pretty demanding job.
LANDESS:
Years ago, I got a solicitation saying that I was a candidate for a book called, “Who’s Who in America.” The catch was I had to buy the entry of my name in the book. Self-publishing could be a little bit like that, can’t it? Fueled by ego, sometimes with perhaps marginal success.
PROPPER:
I think that self-publishing does get a bad rep. Again, it depends on where you want to be and what kind of identity you’d like to have as a poet. But with technology advancing in the ways that it has with social media, everybody’s their own kind of marketing team. They’re their own kind of press team. They’re their own kind of publishers, of course. Also, self-publishing was something that was around in the medieval period as well, and a lot of artists would self-publish that way. I think that it’s OK. I don’t personally have a problem with self-publishing. I think that there’s a lot of great work that comes through.
LANDESS:
I was just thinking about the great American novel sitting in 52 boxes in my attic. Because nobody wanted — it’s not appearing at Barnes Noble anytime soon.
PROPPER:
Well, poets, we have a kind of advantage here. Our advantage is that our medium is small and short, and we can send a lot of work out there. We can see if our work is receiving traction or what type of work is receiving traction. This can inform us when we’re putting together a larger collection because we can say, hey, these fixed verse forms are really working, these skinny sonnets are really working, or something like that. These sestinas are really working. Said by no poet ever these sestinas are really working. You can get a sense of the market, the field, the environment, by sending little bits of your work out and seeing where the traction and the momentum lie.
LANDESS:
What kinds of tips do you have for those who have a manuscript or a poetry journal, as you were talking about, just waiting to be sprung on the world?
PROPPER:
I would say, like I said, continue writing, don’t stop writing, continue sending work out. Also, you want to pay attention to special collections, or what we call CFP, so “Call For Papers.” I use UPenn CFP. It’s a collection of — UPenn CFP basically collates for you different special issues.
LANDESS:
This is a computer program?
PROPPER:
It’s a link online. It’s called, it’s by the University of Pennsylvania. They basically collate all the different CFPs for different types of writing, for academic writers, for creative writers.
PROPPER:
The CFPs themselves are basically little summaries by journals and editors talking about what we’d like to publish We’ll be having, for example, I submitted to a CFP, the theme was “Home for the Holidays.” They were only looking for journals that reflected on home and nostalgia. You want to again pay attention to special collections. Upenn CFP is great.
PROPPER:
You also want to pay attention to the AWP Book Fair. So that’s the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. They have a book fair every year for professional writers, professional creative writers, poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, flash fiction writers. Any kind of writer you can think of. It’s a wonderful book fair. There are editors there. So when you attend the book fair, you get to actually talk to editors of journals. You could be the name behind the virtual signature. You also have a sense of a lay of the land in terms of which journals to submit to, which journals have some notoriety, which journals are seeking young writers, which journals are seeking different cohorts of writers, different themes for writing. You want to have AWP Book Fair on your radar.
PROPPER:
I would say Poets and Writers Organization has a list of small presses and large presses. There’s actually a little filter so you can identify what genre of work you’d like to publish, and they find for you presses. Get a Submittable account. Again, make, get a submitable account, with the caveat that not every piece of work that you put out there is going to get accepted. Submittable is a way of, is a space for creative writers to submit work. But again, when you’re, if a publisher has a Submittable account, they’re probably receiving a lot of work. So keep that in mind. I would say support your local readings. Support your local poetry readings or fiction readings. Support your local journals. UT Tyler’s “Inspired Minds.” It’s a great way to have something to put in your author bio. It’s a great line to put on your CV when you’re sending work elsewhere. UT Tyler’s Creative Writing Club is always looking to talk about writing with people and has some really wonderful features set up. Listen to Dr. Anne Beebe’s poetry podcast.
LANDESS:
She’s doing well with that, huh?
PROPPER:
Yes, I love how she contextualizes the kind of culture surrounding poetry. So these are all good things to do if you’d like to become published.
LANDESS:
I mentioned earlier that you have recently published a book of poetry. It has an interesting title.
PROPPER:
Yes. So this collection of poetry, “This body was never made” is largely a meditation on surprise, surprise, the body, the female body, and all of its personal, maternal, cultural, biblical connotations and context. But more so, it’s an exploration of the human body as a kind of mortal being, right? Think Shakespeare’s mortal coil. So in this book, I am very interested in grief and mourning. What does it mean to love a body that we all know will eventually cease to be? How do we love a sense of self or being before and beyond the body? So that’s a bit about the book and the title. I have to say the book cover is actually a photograph taken by my husband, who is also a professor here at UT Tyler, Dr. Matthew Kelly, of the mini-lake behind my house in The Woods subdivision. So I think it’s called Lake Lee. So we have a little bit of Tyler representing the collection as well.
LANDESS:
So what was your inspiration to write it? And are there others just waiting to go to a publisher?
PROPPER:
My inspiration to write this collection again came from some of my own experiences with grief and loss. I’ve been writing poetry, I think, since I could use language to express something other than a demand, right? As soon as I had that Lacanian notion of desire, right, I want this thing, and why, and somehow my identity is wrapped up in it, poetry came out. And I think this might have something to do with the fact that I’m a cradle Catholic, and so we read. My favorite poem, I always like to say, was Psalms 23, right? “The Lord is my shepherd…”
PROPPER:
So I always had that kind of poetic rhythm and perspective in mind. And then I’ve mentioned Sylvia Plath a few times, so I could sort of mention her again. The first kind of secular work that I engaged with and that kind of changed me was Plath’s “The Hanging Man.” I was in 8th grade. I wore a back brace from grade 7 to 11, so I avoided the cafeteria. They weren’t a fun place for me, so I would go to the library. That was a safe space for me.
PROPPER:
And I remember we were, I think, reading “The Bell Jar.” And I wanted to do some extra work for homework. And my friendly high school librarian said, “You know that she’s a poet.” And I said, “Oh, I didn’t know that she’s a poet. I’m reading her novel.” And so I encountered “The Hanging Man”:
By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue vaults like a desert prophet.
The night snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid:
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.
And I was hooked. I was hooked that blew my shoes, socks every. I wanted to do whatever that was. I wanted to say whatever that was saying. I wanted to have that revelation in language. And so that, you asked me the inspiration for the book.
PROPPER:
It’s this love of language, this love of the literary through the visual. I often say that poetry, you have to understand, it’s the most visual of our literary arts. It’s like looking at a painting or something. When you look at Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” you’re not thinking, “So what’s this all about? It’s a steeple and some big skies.” No, it’s the brush strokes, right? The brush strokes for a poet is metaphor and rhyme, right. It’s the color. It’s the living into a sense of or a sensual word, an effective relationship between two images. So the love of poetry, the desire to be transcendent through my work, obviously, and also, always the conviction to be reflective and to sort of think about not only myself and how different experiences shape and impact my own reading of the world and staying there, but sort of thinking about how these experiences are part of a unified human experience that we can utter and share together and kind of revel in its beauty.
LANDESS:
Thanks for listening as UT Tyler Radio Connects with University Assistant Professor of English and Poetry Author Dr. Tara Proper.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
