Wordstock and More…(Picture of Dr. Peter Pereira at Wordstock. None of me because I am moving around so much during the readings that they are all blurry.)
Finally got some sleep last night (after a week of insomnia) after getting back late late late from the very fun Portland, Oregon Wordstock festival. Got there on Friday to have dinner with friends before the festival, and then stayed through the end of the day Sunday (exhausting but worth it!) A mountain of good readings, book booths…got to chat with one of the editors of Burnside Review, where I got a copy of Laurel Snyder’s chapbook, Daphne and Jim (yay! Looking forward to reading it!) a copy of Scott Hightower’s second book, Martha Silano’s Blue Positive and a copy of Barrow Street Review to read, even though my review stack is so high I can no longer see the top of it. I saw my wonderful mentors Dorianne Laux and Debra Magpie Earling do a spectacular reading, Seattle friends Martha Silano and Kevin Craft (who I got to introduce), Yusef Komunyakaa (who I see at every opportunity b/c he is such a fantastic reader,) and I got to introduce my friends Joseph Millar and Lisa Galloway at the very last reading on Sunday. I got to sit in the VIP room (!!) with a lot of famous folks I was too shy to interact with (Joyce Carol Oates, Edward Hirsh, Gore Vidal..) and hobnob with some very charming Copper Canyon authors at the reception on Saturday – including the aforementioned Scott Hightower and Amy Uyematsu, both of whom were wonderful. I saw so many faculty members and students (and Rusty!) from my MFA program it was like a little reunion! I heard that Thisbe Neissen (who I really admire) was reading, but I never saw her, so it could have been a myth. Dave Eggers read but that reading was so packed you couldn’t get near enough to hear.
Our reading, on Saturday, which was me and Peter Pereira, was opposite Joyce Carol Oates, so I thought we wouldn’t have much of a crowd, but I was overwhelmed by the number of encouraging faces in the audience, including old friends from Pacific U and just a good mix overall. Peter is not just a great poet but he radiates goodness like a little halo – of course his reading was fabulous, and he read first, from his book Saying the World and his new to-be-published-by-Copper-Canyon manuscript, which made the audience so happy the tolerated me quite cheerfully 😉 I did think I might even have heard a little woo-hooing from a girl in the back when I read my Buffy poem, but that could have been my imagination. We had a minor worry until my husband Glenn with help from Copper Canyon’s Joseph Bednarik graciously help us set up our books to sell after the reading (they were supposed to be on a table, but of course no books were there, etc…) so even the mini book signing went off without much of a hitch. My first ever book signing for Becoming the Villainess! It’s official now that this book actually exists. People have seen it. Happy happy!
In other news…when worlds collide – I was checking in on my site for animé news, http://www.aintitcool.com/, where they reviewed the show Can’t Get a Date – and they loved Jim Behrle! It does seem, then, that geeks love poets…
Must unpack and catch up on errands…more later…