On the verge of ABD. . .

Wow, I've lapsed for almost a month. Shame on me. In my defense, it was a brutal month, and I'm glad to be on this side of the first week of April.

I have officially completed my exams-- a grueling process of four days of three hours each day of writing. . .each day answering one question from each of my committee members. It was rough, difficult, blinding, but mostly it's over. That's about al I can say right now. On April 18th I do an oral defense where I either get anihilated or praised. My guess is somewhere in between. Hopefully, though, I will be ABD in a week from today.

There is some good news on the poetry scene- I won the UIC award for poetry with my poem "Leave, light, entropy," which first appeared here on my blog! It's nice to be recognized, especially when I know exactly who my competetion was, and it's stiff competetion. I also won a competetion through UIC which results in publication in Near South-- an experiental journal here in Chicago. I get published, which is a treat. I've been meaning to submit there, so this saves me the chore! Garin Cyncholl is the editor- a fabulous poet who also reins from UIC. He has a book coming ouit by Pavement Saw press, if I'm not mistaken. Rock.

I'm way, way excited to start writing again, and my next challenge is the big dissertation. I'm luck enough to be able to do a creative dissertation, but still-- everything at UIC is about theory, as I'm sure my dissertation will have to be appropriately mapped on some theory trajectory. Such fun. I'm so sick of theory, I could spit. All four of my questions were based in theory. Ick.