Reflections on the First Issue of Jelly Bucket

By: Tasha Cotter, Jelly Bucket’s first Editor-in-Chief

Ten Years of Jelly Bucket

Being the Editor for Jelly Bucket was an incredible experience. Not only did I get to work with my fellow editors and faculty advisor Young Smith on creating the identity for the inaugural issue, but I also got to sharpen my own skills as a writer. It proved to be another way that the MFA program helped me to get better in those two years I was a student in the program.

Although I had been an editor for the University of Kentucky Honors Program journal during my undergraduate days, I had initially been hesitant to sign on to the role of Editor-in-Chief for Jelly Bucket. Poetry was my comfort zone, and so taking on the role of Editor for the journal was intimidating for me – how could I possibly help select fiction or nonfiction? Fortunately, I had excellent genre editors to lean on – Russell Helms handled fiction submissions and Janice Clayton was a superb Nonfiction Editor, allowing me to focus on poetry submissions and chiming in occasionally to answer any questions or concerns from the genre editors or on the production of the journal itself.

I was completely unprepared for how rewarding it was to begin sifting through the envelopes and encountering those rare pieces that stopped you in your tracks. Truly, that’s the experience I cherished the most – the hidden gems. I received boxes of submissions (we weren’t using an online submission manager!). It was a joy landing on a poem – or many poems – that I couldn’t wait to publish. Getting to be the one to reach out to the writer with an offer of publication was the best part of the job.

Another experience I cherished was getting to interview and publish Hank Lazer. Hank’s inventive and experimental approach to creative writing intrigued me from the start. I loved learning about his creative process, and it was incredibly meaningful to me that two of our writers – Hank Lazer and Robert Wood came to EKU and gave readings to a packed house!

““The great work always drives us to pick up the pen after seeing how powerful the written word can be.””

Being a reader of submissions – and certainly being an editor – played an invaluable role to me as a writer. It helped me get a sense of what works within a poem and what doesn’t. It helped me see pitfalls and think about how to avoid them in my own work. And the truly wonderful work helped open my eyes to new ways of writing that spurred me to keep reading, keep learning, and keep writing. The great work always drives us to pick up the pen after seeing how powerful the written word can be. In short, being an Editor was a great teacher.

Here’s to another ten years of Jelly Bucket!

Tasha Cotter