An Anthology for Fukushima from Japan and Finalizing Proposals

I was so pleased to find this in my mailbox – a contributor’s copy of the beautiful anthology from Japan in English and Japanese, titled “Farewell to Nuclear, Welcome to Renewable Energy: A Collection of Poems.” I was happy to contribute to this project, and proud to have my poem “Cesium Burns Blue” next to Alicia Ostriker’s “Gaia Speaks” in a small section of the anthology called “Poems for Fukushima from Poets Overseas.” It really is a beautiful book, too, and I love to be able to read the poems in English, then flip the book and see all the poems in Kanji. Interestingly, I wrote “Cesium Burns Blue” about the real experiments they did burning Cesium in Oak Ridge, which is where I grew up, a few years before the Fukushima disaster. One of the editors and translators, Yorifumi Yaguchi, and I have been corresponding for months talking about translations, and I’m happy to have discovered another poet I might never have encountered otherwise because of this venture.

I’m finalizing my Poet Laureate Proposal this week, so I’m booking venues for readings for myself, for other poets, trying to put together a panel for this fall, trying to figure out what will attract audiences and balancing budgets and trying to “measure results”…generally doing everything but writing poetry, which I need to get back to one of these days. I’ve been getting acceptances and I noticed I don’t have a ton of poems to send out left on my Excel spreadsheet, always as sign I need to get writing again.

How is your summer going? I can’t believe it is already almost August. We’ve barely had a handful of days over 70 or any sunshine yet…We had a coyote sighting near our house and picked our very first blueberries from our tiny backyard garden. Seattle in the summertime is so beautiful, I just want some more time to be out in the mountains, out in the wild…it’s my own fault for overcommitting, but I’m longing for some lazy outdoor summer days…