Countdown to the Inaugural Reading and the New Poet’s Market

The Redmond Reporter ran an article today about my upcoming Inaugural Poet Laureate Reading this Saturday…
http://www.redmond-reporter.com/entertainment/172142351.html
Sounds like fun, right?! Here’s the set up for Saturday, October 6th – a quick poetry reading by the new Poet Laureate (me!) with interactive video art show from 4:00-4:40, then Q&A, reception with wine and cheese and nuts and other fun stuff where you can wander around SecondStory Repertory looking at Michaela’s beautiful art collection curated for geeks (ie geek-friendly paintings of zombies, mermaids and foxes!) Feel free to hang out, ask questions, etc til 6 PM!

What would you set up for an introductory reading for the community if you had no budget limit? Would you have art? A band? a short opera? a rave? I’m super nervous about people coming to Saturday’s event so I hope you will come and bring friends, especially the kind of friends who have always been scared of poetry (most of the poetry will be youth-friendly, FYI.)

I picked up the new 2013 Poet’s Marketand really enjoyed Kelly Davio’s article on how to get out of the slush pile, Diane Lockward’s article on how to build an audience, and I might be in there too, though the article on chapbooks is slightly outdated, sorry! (Pudding House Press is out of business now, for instance, so don’t send there!)
One thing I noticed about the newest version of Poet’s Market is how much good solid introduction to poetry writing and submitting there is now, and how that makes it a great gift for the aspiring poet in your life! This year was the first year they also included original poetry, an interesting choice. I’m looking forward to paging through it at more length soon!

Cough, cough…so, what does a city Poet Laureate do?

Cough cough. My asthma combined with a bronchitis and sinus infection have conspired to keep me at home with my inhaler and antiboitics, so I thought this would be a good time to post on a subject that, well, I’ve been asked about a lot since I became Redmond’s Poet Laureate. What exactly does a Poet Laureate of a city actually do?

There was a bit of a dustup recently when LA announced they would pony up 10K for a city Poet Laureate. Predictably, some folks grumbled that a city as low in funds as LA was just throwing money away at the arts, and other people defended the decision.

So let me tell you what I’ve done this week for my Poet Laureate job, despite being laid low by my upper respiratory infection:
–Scheduled a high school class visit
–Solicited donations of food and drink for my October 6th Inaugural Reading, Art Exhibit and Reception at SecondStory Reperatory Theater. (Believe me, my budget does not stretch to a lot of extra food and drink, so every little donation helps.
–Talked to a neighboring city’s council member about how they might start a Poet Laureate Program.
–Set up and post on social media (twitter account and blog posting)
–Had my husband put up posters around town about our quarterly events (the Inaugural reading, a library reading program and book group, and a talk on social media and e-publishing for poets, so far.)
–E-mailed back and forth with Redmond’s Arts Council members about such things as the PR, payment, and details about planning next quarter’s events.
–E-mailed back and forth about setting up a teen workshop at the local Teen Center next quarter.
–Met with artist Michaela Eaves to go over the art exhibit content and planning.
–E-mailed with local librarian contact about getting more copies of our “Redmond Reads Poetry” first quarter book choice.

So you see, nothing earth-shattering, but lots of little things, planning, trying to get folks together in the name of the arts.  (And all while periodically going to the doctor, sucking on my inhaler, and manically gulping hot drinks with honey and soup! I am like a sickly superwoman!) Some weeks are harder – like, when I was asked by a local group to judge a limerick contest(don’t ask), or when I had to present a budget plan to city council.
So, is it important that a city devote a bit of their monetary resources to someone who cares about getting more poetry into schools, libraries, and the community? I think it is. But what do you think? What would you do if you were Poet Laureate of your city?

When is a Reading Worth Doing, Artist Collaborations, and Thanks to Rose Red Review

The question for poets when invited to read is often, “How do I know this reading is worth doing?”

You never know, and there are considerations in terms of costs, time, gas, energy, even our health, all the expenditures writers must make to do a reading. Recently, for instance, I drove an hour and a half to an obscure town with an audience of eight people, none of whom bought books or made any kind of enthusiastic response to the reading. So that felt like a huge waste of time and gas money (and of course, because I am a poet and not an automaton, came with those feelings of “why am I even a writer, no one likes my work, etc.” )

But last night’s reading at A Grape Choice with Northwest Bookfest, happily, was not that kind of reading. I have had a head cold all week, the kind that just keeps you in bed but keeps you from sleeping, if you know the type, and was actually thinking of calling the organizer and telling him I couldn’t go, but at the last minute decided to tough it out and do the reading. All the other readers were older men, slam poets mostly, and I was the only female (the other female reader did cancel. Maybe she had my head cold?) The venue was charming – a wine bar on the edge of the water in Kirkland – and it was packed. (I found out later the owner of the bar was a Kirkland Arts Council member.) The mayor of Kirkland showed up for the reading. I had a sore throat, there was no microphone, and the guys who read before me were definitely, let’s say, in a different vein that the kind of poetry I usually read. And several toddlers (at a bar?) near the reading area made a ton of noise the whole time I read, which is bad for me because I don’t have a big voice to begin with. But the audience was wonderful. Afterwards, women hugged me, whispered secrets in my ear, and cried. Men cheered. I sold a few books, which was nice. But even better was the feeling that – and maybe some of this was the wine – that people had actually connected with my work. Most of the folks there weren’t poets – in fact, the couple we shared our table with ended up being our down-the-street neighbors! Those are the times that readings feel worth doing. The moon was bright orange in the sky over the water as I left, happy, even more sore-throated, and exhausted, but happy I had pushed myself to go.

And I got the good news from Rose Red Review that they had nominated my poem “The Little Mermaid Loses Her Voice” for “Best of the Net” while I was at the reading. Thanks Rose Red Review! I really enjoyed the other nominated poems as well.

Today I spent the day with artist Michaela Eaves planning and collaborating for our October 6th Inaugural Reading/Art Exhibit. She’s doing an interactive art display on a screen during my reading that syncs up her art work to the different poems I’ll be reading, plus a conventional hanging of her work around the SecondStory Repertory theatre. We talked about introductions, wine, cupcakes, and other things that make readings great. I think it’s going to be a really good time. But I’ll admit I’m nervous about my first Redmond Poet Laureate reading! I hope it will be the fun kind of reading, not the other kind. Maybe the wine will help?

What do you think makes a reading work? What are the most important elements? And which are under a poet’s control, anyway? How do you know when to say yes to a reading? For me, it’s a combination of liking my fellow readers, liking the person that invited me, liking the venue – or, for me, and this is a risk – trying places I’ve never read before. Success at a poetry reading means more than book sales – it can mean finding a new poet’s work to love, making a new friend, or discovering a new venue you might ever have visited otherwise. But the simplest answer to “What makes a reading worthwhile” is “Did your work connect to a new reader? If so, then yes.”

San Juan Island Interlude, Aimee Mann and Poetry Wisdom, Northwest Bookfest Reading

Thanks to Seattle Met for calling out our very fun poetry reading  in Kirkland wine bar The Grape Choice (7 PM on Saturday September 22nd) that we’re doing for Northwest Bookfest as one of the Bookfest’s highlights! Readers will include David D. Horowitz, Greg Bee, R.R. Seitz, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and Jack McCarthy. Wine does make poetry better, they say.

Just got back from a weekend away from the television, the internet, and cell phone service in San Juan Island, communing with seals, porpoises and eagles (and even baby alpacas, camels, and black foxes.) This time, we happened to have nice weather all three days and even though I was slightly unable to hike thanks to the usual ankle issues we were, surprisingly, able to visit all the good stuff: American camp with its hares and foxes, English camp with slap-happy barking seals, the alpaca farm and lavender farm, watching sunset from Lime Kiln Point while schools of porpoises hopped around the horizon. The time away allowed me to finish the Seattle-based farce of wound-too-tight mommy-and-former-architect Bernadette, in “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple. Though, in my opinion, the book got a couple of things wrong about Microsoft, Seattle, etc…the main tenet, that artists who don’t create become menaces, could be true. I note that when I am forced into a world of less fulfilling practices (say, a lot of doctor appointments, long meetings, and spreadsheets/forms/taxes) I become, let’s say, more grouchy, less sunny-poetry-girl. Lately I have been thinking of ways to live, not to be too Oprah-esque, a more fulfilling, authentic life – how to enjoy life more, spend more time with people who improve our hearts/minds/etc, and, in the poetry world, less time worrying and doing unproductive, stress-inducing stuff. You know, more baby alpacas and beach combing, less traffic, bureaucracy, and BS.

 To segue, I read an interesting interview today with one of my musical heroines, Aimee Mann, who is releasing a new album called Charmers. The interview (click here to read) focuses on something many poets will understand, “The perils of publishing something no one wants to buy.” When we go to unpaid readings with a blank audience where no one buys a book…or a treasured book project gets sunk by unforeseen circumstances, or you bring out a book and no one notices…it can feel like a futile mission, being a poet. My favorite quote from the interview is Aimee’s response to why release an album: “It’s probably as simple as, “Well, this is what I do, so I should just do it.” You have to take a leap of faith.” Not only does a fulfilled life as an artist involve continuing to create, it involves continuously telling ourselves that our work is worth doing in a world that tells us it isn’t.
No one will ever force you to write a poem, paint a picture, or try to live a better, happier life. Guilt, strife, anger and sadness abound, and believe me, there will always be someone asking for your time, money, and energy. You are the one who has to take steps to be saner, more joyous, to appreciate the things around you and embrace the creator inside you, not the destroyer.

Reading in Arlington, and more coming!

If you live anywhere near: Bellingham, Arlington, Skagit Valley…I’ll be up your way tomorrow for a reading with Lana Ayers at the FogDog Gallery in Arlington, WA at 7 PM. I like reading at art galleries, so it should be fun!

Thinking about all the readings coming up in the next month (as you can see on my blog reading list at left, they are proliferating – and I haven’t even got them listed on my “event page” yet!) It’s one of those poetry things, readings – you don’t really have any control over how they’re going to go, how many people show up, if you sell any books – you just have to show up and do the best you can, and hope the people who booked you do some publicity (and of course, we can do some of our own publicity, such as it is, too, as discussed in the last post.) For me the challenge is also to stay as healthy, mobile (stupid re-spraining ankles) and as calm as possible (for the immune-system-stuff.)  Wish me luck!