I went to the Boston Globe Book Festival at the Boston Public Library to listen to the publishing panel. Frank Bidart, Diana-Der-Hovanessian, Helen Rees, Tony Rose and Alice Quinn spoke. Bidart had some good tips about putting together a poetry manuscript for publication. I jotted down a few of his points: Make sure you have a coherent theme to the collection, keep in mind what you are doing, isn't different from what other poets are doing?, put your best poems at the begining and end,
there should be a calculated order to the poems, you must have the experience of reading the manuscript fromcover to cover, the TITLE is crucial, but it does not have to be the same as a tiltled poem in the collection.

There will be other events throughout the month...