AWP Report Part II, A New Poem in The Pinch, and a Video Reading

Sylvia with the new issue of The Pinch

A New Poem in The Pinch

First, thanks to The Pinch, who published my poem, “Another Rescue Attempt,” in their beautiful latest issue. Here’s Sylvia posing with it! And here’s a preview of my poem. My first fairy tale poem in a while:

With my lovely editors Kelli and Annette at Two Sylvias Press and Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

Report from AWP Part II, with Pics and Video

I finally got to go through the bookfair for a short time after the book signing. It was wonderful but dizzying – so many thousands of booths that you couldn’t possibly see them all, especially if you stopped to talk to anyone. I never saw many booths I specifically wanted to make it to, but this was my first pass through. I got to hit Cincinnati Review, my publisher Moon City Press (where they had just sold out of my book Field Guide to the End of the World after this picture – on Friday!) and Barrelhouse Review to see lovely and talented Killian Czuba. 

By 4:30 PM, we went back to the hotel room. I was planning to meet a friend (Hi Lesley!) for dinner at 5:30 and then go to my offsite reading at 8 PM. So I’d have to change, wash my face, and make it fifteen minutes away in rush hour traffic, and eat, and my body was feeling…well, I was basically lying prone on my couch and my legs and hands didn’t want to move. I had no idea how I was going to do the reading at 8 PM. Remember yesterday when I was talking about AWP making me feel my disability more clearly? This was one of those times. When I was younger, and healthier, I totally could have made this schedule work – but now, with my current stuff, I couldn’t. So I rested, drank hot tea, took some of my MS treatment medications, changed clothes, and went to the offsite reading. It was in a crowded hipster brewpub not far from the conference.

I asked the host from the Spoon River Poetry Review if I could read early, as I hadn’t eaten all I day and was shaking all over. So I went fifth and got to watch a few more readers before I had to go. I was really impressed – one, by how young everyone was (I think I was the oldest person in the room) and by the wonderful women poets of Obsidian Press, and the editor of Noemi Press. It was honestly a pleasure listening to all the readers and I left wishing I could have told all of them how great they were.

I went back to the hotel room with its eerie, mostly-construction view through the now empty beautiful, oddly-eighties-esque hotel lobby (see pic of me in reading outfit with Hotel Lobby collage art) and Glenn made some food (food allergies make most room service a no-go, so I subsisted mostly on string cheese and carrots for the three days I was there) for me and I put together my panel notes and reading for the next day and fell asleep. The third day was actually my biggest in terms of what I had to do – a panel on Poetry and the Body, a visit to the bookfair, and a reading that night before taking off for home – so I needed to crash in order to have some energy for the next day. Looking back, I wish I could have seen more people, socialized more, stayed later at things, but I know these days I have to be very careful about preserving energy – with MS, you go from fine to zero in about 30 seconds. 

Here’s a clip of one of the poems I read at the reading, “My Life is an Accident,” which is forthcoming in the next issue of Spoon River Poetry Review and part of my newest manuscript. (It’s not a flattering angle; forgive me for being vain!)

Next: AWP Part III, Where I talk about our panel “Poetry and The Body,” the Saturday Bookfair, and the final reading with Moon City Press.