Individual Artist Project Grant (INDIVIDUALS ONLY)

I've received messages from a number of readers about how my work has helped them heal or identify or find some way forward into and through their own trauma. Musicians have set my poems to music, film makers have used my poems as scripts to short films, painters and photographers have used my poems as inspiration, and young poets have published work based on my own (eg.: https://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/79/ritter.php#1). I labor with the hope that my new poems are a way to continue this conversation with the community.I'm trying to accomplish creating a new collection of poems and with that a new personal poetics. The ways in which I used to build my poems no longer works with my new subject matter. As I wrote above, I require a new approach. My measurable outcome will be a finished rough draft of my new manuscript by the end of summer, 2020, in which this shift in tone and approach (from my older work) is evident. I have track record of successes due to time afforded from grants. With funds from my first Career Development Grant, back in 2010, I traveled on an invite to New York where I was a featured reader at a number of venues, including a reading at Carnegie Hall. With funds from an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, I spent a summer and fall finishing my book, To Keep Him Hidden. With funds from my second Career Development Grant, just last year, I traveled to Ireland to promote my book, where I was invited to read at the Clifton Arts Festival (among a few other venues). I credit my reading tour in Ireland with my book going into its second printing. So, thanks for your support. I couldn't have done it without you.I will assess this work by submitting individual poems to prestigious literary magazines. The book is already under contract to be published by Salmon Poetry in 2022, but I plan to prime the market by publishing poems (if I'm successful) in a number of lit mags. Two of the poems in the collection have already been published by the Cortland Review, and another, "Preschool", is forthcoming in Blackbird this spring. Blackbird is out of Virginia Commonwealth University and widely considered to be one of the top online lit mags. My success is this shift in approach and tone will be measured, hopefully, by editors and my publisher. If the poems are getting picked up by magazines, I'd say it's a success.