Recording Poems for the Radio and the first week of the book launch
- At March 07, 2015
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 0
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go into our local radio station, KUOW, and record a couple of poems from The Robot Scientist’s Daughter for a segment that will air the KUOW show “The Record” at noon on March 11, the fourth anniversary of the disaster at Fukushima. The two poems I read were on Fukushima, including this one “A Morning of Sunflowers (for Fukushima)” I worked with the gracious current Washington State Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen, who keeps poetry in the public eye by keeping it on the radio. I sat in “the green room” for a little bit with a professional athlete which was pretty exciting. They had a robot in the green room, too, which I took as a good sign.
Now, right before that, our brand-new (well, two-year old, so just over warranty) washing machine decided to crack one of its components and cease to work, so we were frantically gathering up laundry and such, right before we went downtown. This is the way life is: you get all excited to go record some poetry, then your large appliances turn against you. Hello to the laundromat once again, since they couldn’t get a repairman out til the middle of next week!
So, it’s the end of the first week of the book launch. I mailed out the last of the book postcards yesterday. This year I sent out about a hundred more than I did for the last book. I also sent out a book announcement e-mail and the best thing about that (besides selling books) was that it allowed old friends I hadn’t been in touch with to get back in touch, which is always a warm and fuzzy feeling. I’ve been very lucky in that I had three (!!) “official” book reviews in the first week the book came out, which is the first time that’s happened for one of my books, I think. (Here they are – reviews of The Robot Scientist’s Daughter at The Rumpus, at Poetry International, and at Escape Into Life.) I am very thankful to both the reviewers and the review outlets for this! Because I was telling a friend, I think I waited about six months for official reviews with the last three books.
So all in all, though it was a low-key book launch week (my readings for the book start on March 15 ) it was exciting, if not totally free from stress (the allergy testing’s 50 needle pokes left me bruised, sore, and tired for two days, and the washing machine breakdown thing made me think “Oh my God, I do NOT have enough towels for this to happen” and “Do I know how to hand-wash clothes in the bathtub?”) and I am very grateful to everyone who bought a book (thank you!!!) and everyone who queried about getting a review e-galley (thank you too!) Thank you to folks who’ve left reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. I am so happy some people are liking my little book!