From the Skagit River Poetry Festival

This morning I woke up, looked out at the blue Skagit Bay waters through a veil of tall thin pines in our hideaway cabin, and watched several quail scurry across a trail towards the water, while my husband cooked up fresh hot blueberry sauce for my frozen banana breakfast (like a sundae, but healthier!)
What am I doing here in the middle of a renovation and a move, you ask? I don’t know! I’m crazy! For poetry! Time enough for packing and moving when we get home tomorrow. And grading. And prepping for the new job. Ack!
Seriously though, had a lot of fun yesterday, though we came up late and only got to see the Carolyn Forche/Tony Hoagland reading. Carolyn read a poem dedicated to her grandmother, and then one dedicated to Ilya Kaminsky. I was distracted by the fact that Tony Hoagland, in a lavender t-shirt and black vest and little glasses, so resembled the dean character from the show Community that I could barely register his poems. (My favorite being the one about his neice in the mall – you know the one.)  There was also a Vancouver band who played early BarenakedLadies-esque vaguely folkish alterna-rock and a third male poet reading some very solemn poetry, during which time Kelli decided to send a message as me to my husband via my cell phone but accidentally sent it to my Facebook status instead. See what you miss when you’re not constantly watching Facebook statuses? Ah, reminiscent of high school, you say, girls texting during class? Even more so if you could see us trying to stifle giggles so one of the festival organizers (sitting immediately to our left) wouldn’t look over at us as if to say, how can you giggle during this poor poet’s frightfully serious poetry! Yes, that’s right. Don’t invite us to your well-behaved poetry readings. We just make trouble.
Aside from that, I stopped by a lovely little store where a local jewelry maker discussed making a little bit of custom jewelry with me (a little metal-stamped book pendant with real paper pages, what a neat idea!) I mean, that’s just the kind of town La Conner is, full of artists where you least expect them. And Kelli and husband G and I went out to dinner at Seeds, where they have lots of gluten-free safe food (some of the first allergic-friendly restaurant food I’ve had out here too!) I ran into Jericho Brown, whom I hadn’t seen since his book Please first came out in San Diego, and who has basically become a gigantic superstar, who was just as sweet and charming as ever. That book is on my recommended reading list for people who want to try persona poetry, by the way.
Today I am looking forward to playing around in the book fair small press area, seeing more readings (the stars at tonight’s reading include one of my favorite poets, Marie Howe, and Bob Hicok, whom I’ve never seen, and Nikki Giovanni, who used to live in both my childhood hometowns, Knoxville and Cincinnati.) I also hope to run into old friends (have run into several so far) which is really the best part of this kind of conference – the happy accidents.