A Whole Bunch of Editing

To start off the week, I edited and re-submitted a copy of a press release to Gerry. The press release is the same that I worked on last week about Heather Altfeld, the winner of the P@W book prize.

To "beef up" the press release, I added a small blurb about Gerry, the Executive Director of P@W and my boss, as he ran the contest. I also changed some of the wording so the release sounded smoother and more professional. At the end of it, I added information about P@W.

The poem of the week was due today at 12, and Gerry sent it on time this week, so I was able to get that put together and sent out to our mailing list. The poem this week required additional research on the poem and what collection it stemmed from. I re-worded the email to suit the poem, and the additional information I added, such as the publisher of the collection, and where a review of the collection could be found.

Yet Another Press Release

I drafted up a press release about the P@W book prize winner. Stephen Dunn, the judge, chose the winner for 2015, Heather Alfeld, out of over one hundred contestants. I wrote my press release about the contest, the judge, and the winner. I haven't heard back about whether or not I need to add or detract anything from the press release, but I am hopeful the the draft is good enough to be sent out to our 7,000-some  contacts,

Intern Frustrations: Week 3

On Tuesday, February 17th, I never received the poem of the week. Normally sent out by noon every Tuesday, the poem of the week is a way for Poets@Work to stay connected with our following. Skipping this schedule not only threw me off--I constantly checked my email on Tuesday, afraid I had missed the message--but could potentially throw off the subscribers to P@W.

Aside from the frustration of not receiving the poem of the week until long after it's intended send off date, I am supposed to be writing a press release about the Mechanics of Failure, the winner of the P@W first annual Chapbook prize. If I counted how many times I had written and re-written this press release, I doubt I would believe the number myself. Gerry told me to write the press release, but I have no idea what to include. Poets@Work sent a press release out regarding the prize and the winner of it in August, 2014. I spent the last few days struggling to come up with fresh information to include, and mostly failing at that.

At the End of Week Two

Gerry and I met, finally, on Wednesday. Forty minutes of our hour long meeting were spent fighting with the different websites used to communicate for Poets@Work, trying to obtain usernames and passwords for me. Once we got the login information sorted out, I could explore the websites.

Part of my duties as an intern for P@W includes website maintenance. This week, I went onto the P@W websites and listed everything that could be done as immediate, clean-up type maintenance. This included a lot of typos and basic editing errors. As I finish up this week, I will be going through and fixing all of these grammatical errors on the site. 

I sent out the Tuscany email after some minor corrections were made to it. I also sent out another poem of the week. This time, I had to do some digging to find the information for the poem before sending it out. Gerry sent me the author of the poem and the poem itself, but I still needed to find the publication information, the P@W book review, and some information about where the book could be bought. I had no idea how extensive the process is for sending out one email. I had to go over everything included ten times to make sure the information was clearly expressed, not too formal, but not informal, and not brief, but also not too long. I ended up re-writing some aspects of the email, but, eventually, it could be sent out. 

I need to get together a press release about Mechanics of Failure, the book winner of the first annual Chapbook prize. This task will start with some basic research about the book, the contest, and how to write a formal press release. 

Thoughts on the Upcoming Week

Week Two 

February 9-15 

So far, this week seems fairly uneventful. Gerry said that he had a long list of tasks to complete for P@W, though. As the week progresses, I have a feeling everything will become busier.

I meet with Gerry on Wednesday, probably at Mountain City Coffee, the local coffee shop on Main Street. He said on Friday that I should look out for emails regarding work I need to complete, but, thus far, I have heard nothing. On Wednesday, I'm sure I'll be getting a good amount of work to do.

I finally sent the email of possible changes Gerry and I--well, mostly I--could make to the P@W websites. My observations and listing of ideas turned out to be a great success. Gerry liked all my ideas, and suggested we meet up with a Professor on campus, Dawn Armfield, to see what she thinks about the ideas we have. We would ask her opinion because she is a web-expert. Both Gerry and I think she would be great to have as an ally for the updates and changes we want to make.

What I Have Recently Learned About Technology

Gerry and I have been playing phone tag, and I believe I am at fault.

Old Faithful, the iPhone 

The iPhone 4s is old, and a bit outdated, and this is starting to show. No matter what, no matter how often I restart and power-off  the shiny black rectangle of technology I fail to fully comprehend, it refuses to ring when I get a call, or ding when I get a text message.

As an intern for a fully online, technology driven organization, having a quality phone is important. I love my phone. For years, it has been reliable. And yet, now, when I need it most, I am being failed.

Perhaps I need an upgrade.

On Food Poisoning and Meeting for Coffee

So I'm sick. 
Really, it's as if I couldn't be any luckier. I have a meeting with my boss at 10a.m. tomorrow, on Friday, and I'm sick. I blame cafeteria food.
I, unfortunately, have learned my lesson from this. I will not be trusting school food again. Ever.

I had been planing to meet the bossman on Wednesday, at 10, but he had another meeting and forgot about me. I both felt and looked, I'm sure, that I had been stood up by a date.

On the plus side, I am now able to log on to the website I am interning for! I finally received the email with all the lovely information I needed.

Later tonight, I'll be sending my boss an email with all the updates I deem necessary to the website. Hopefully that goes well.

Week One February 1- February 6

Week One 

February 3, 2015 

Writing bulk emails to awesome, published poets far beyond my league turned out to be more intimidating than anticipated. I had never been tasked with  emailing people a press release type of document before--I had never even emailed strangers before, and here I was, emailing a list of over 7,000 people; 7,000 strangers.

Gerry requested that I email members of Poets at Work regarding the first annual writer's retreat hosted by Poets at Work to Tuscany, Italy. I had to research the trip, the destination, and find quality pictures to include in the email. In total, I took three days to do this. Not because I procrastinated, but because I took my time to ensure a professional, well researched, clear, and concise email. I finally sent the draft on Sunday, February 1st.

On Monday, February 2nd, after I sent the draft email to Gerry, I had to download an Excel workbook with 87 contacts recorded in it, and cross-reference the contacts in the workbook with those on the Constant Contact website used by Poets at Work to send out emails. Unfortunately, there were only 27 contacts on the website. Needless to say, it took a fair amount of time to cross reference the databases.

On Tuesday, February 3rd, I sent out a created document with the poem of the week to all contacts in our database. The poem was a sample tantra from Harryette Mullen's recently published work, Urban Tumbleweed. The collection follows her life for a year and a day. She wrote a three line tantra every day for this period regarding her surroundings and thoughts.