Sudden Flurry of New Reviews and a Meeting with the Mayor…

Sometimes, a book can be out for a while, and it can be kind of quiet; then, for no reason, a sudden flurry of book reviews come out! Such is the case for She Returns to the Floating World. Yesterday I received a copy of the new issue of one of my favorite lit mags, The Mid-American Review, to find a wonderful review in the back of the issue.
Then, Galatea Resurrects issue 18 came out, with not just a fab review by Kathleen Kirk but a close reading of one of the poems from the book by John Bloomberg-Rissman.
A banner day!

Though we are still in the middle of cleaning the old apartment and trying to unpack the new townhouse full of boxes at the same time, life continues to spin around – yesterday there was a horrible group of killings in Seattle near the University of Washington, and crime has just generally been up downtown over the past few weeks. It’s so chilling in such a beautiful, laid-back city to have people suddenly murdered in a drive-by or random shooting.

In other more cheerful news, tomorrow, for some mysterious reason, I am going to be meeting with the Mayor of Redmond. I hope I am able to find both a blowdryer and an appropriate suit from the cardboard boxes…And why, you ask? Well, I can announce that…tomorrow!

I Review Plume, Saying Goodbye to C. Dale’s blog, In Between Boxes

Well, we survived our holiday-weekend-move with very few major injuries, so I consider it a success! Never mind I can’t find anything and that our house is a labyrinth of boxes…

My new review of Washington State Poet Laureate’s second book, Plume, is up at The Rumpus:
http://therumpus.net/2012/05/lie-down-patriot-dont-ask/

Super Secret announcement coming soon!

Got my first blurb for the third book, Unexplained Fevers. Nothing could have made me happier this weekend…thanks R.G.!

C. Dale Young says goodbye to blogging after all these years. His was one of the first blogs I read, along with Kim Addonizio’s and Kelli Agodon’s…don’t go anywhere Kelli!

I was joking that our moving truck was filled with fifty percent boxes of books, twenty percent furniture, and 30 percent kitchen stuff. I’m afraid that might be true. We have two bookshelves Glenn built by the fireplace, plus three Ikea seven-foot bookshelves, and they’re all already full. But the books still surround us! Do I have a problem?

When Poets Do Too Much…

I am operating on about four hours of sleep every night since last weekend. In the last nine days, I’ve been in the middle of renovating multiple projects at the new townhouse as the seconds ticked down to our move-in date this weekend (final projects to be finished this weekend;) I went on an overnight trip to a poetry festival last weekend; this week I guest-taught a class at Cascadia Community College and drove the 6-hours round-trip to Port Townsend to do a reading. Today I packed up the last of our unpacked belongings, an overnight bag for the transitional day, and tried to remember everything you have to do before you move out of a place: cancel utilities, change the address with bills and insurance and all that. Every night I’ve been having anxiety dreams about not getting everything done, for some reason.

My friend Annette and I had a lovely time at last night’s reading in Port Townsend, with the Northwind series. The host Bill was very gracious and I even recognized a handful of people in the audience! A really gracious group to read for, and they always buy books! The weather was just gorgeous, we saw about six deer and all the mountain ranges were visible, and when we went out to dinner beforehand, the waiter remembered me from a reading I did last year at the Writer’s Conference. Hilarious! I do not have the kind of fame where I’m recognized in restaurants often, in case you were wondering. We did miss the ferry going back, so while we left the house at 2 PM, we did not make it home til past midnight. And we had to be at the new house to let in the glass installers this morning at 8 AM. Good times.

This note is a reminder that we all have an energy bank we draw from, and sometimes we (and by we, I mean I) need to learn when to put on the breaks. For instance, the week you are moving into a new house, perhaps you should not schedule several public appearances where your brain has to work in order for you to be successful. You would think after the thirteen moves in the last fourteen years we would be better at it, the planning, the packing up, the organization…But no. We are just as crazed and disorganized as usual. Oh well! At least we don’t foresee moving again for a few years at least! The wind is crazy outside and our power is flickering on and off, a pathetic fallacy that is echoing my blinking inner energy lights. When I post next time, I’ll be moved in, a real homeowner again, with a park next door and a little garden plot for me to try to attract hummingbirds with. Wish us luck!

Reading in Port Townsend on May 24; Cascadia Community College Class

Tomorrow I’m traveling to the lovely seaside resort town of Port Townsend, WA to read with my friend Annette Spaulding-Convy at the Northwind Arts Gallery. I hope to see you there!

Thursday, May 24, 2012, 7:00pm

On Thursday, May 24, Northwind Reading Series features Jeannine Hall Gailey and Annette Spaulding-Convy. The readings start at 7 p.m. in the Northwind Arts Center, 2409 Jefferson St.

Jeannine Hall Gailey is the Seattle-area author of Becoming the Villainess and She Returns to the Floating World, which is an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist for 2012. Her upcoming collaborative book of poetry and art, Unexplained Fevers, is forthcoming from Kitsune Books in 2013. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in journals like The Iowa Review, The Seattle Review, and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches part-time at the MFA program at National University.

Annette Spaulding-Convy’s full length collection, In Broken Latin, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2012 as a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, In The Convent We Become Clouds, won the 2006 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review and in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, among others. She is co-editor of the literary journal, Crab Creek Review, and is co-founder of Two Sylvias Press, which has published the first eBook anthology of contemporary women’s poetry, Fire On Her Tongue.

Northwind readings are free, though donations are gladly accepted to support Northwind Arts Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting the arts to our community. For more information contact Bill Mawhinney 360-437-9081

Location : Northwind Arts Center, 2409 Jefferson St., Port Townsend, WA 98368

…….

In other news, I visited my friend Jared’s Intro to Poetry class at Cascadia Community College yesterday to talk about persona poetry with the students. For a lot of the students, this class is their first exposure to poetry. I had a lot of fun talking with them about pop culture, persona, and how to make a poem that is really more of a short story or dramatic dialogue. Visiting the class reminded me of how much fun I always have with these in-person visits. I think I really have a lot more fun when I can interact with students in-person versus online; it reminded me on the benefits of real-space teaching versus online interaction.
The weather has been blustery and cold. In the last few days, we’ve visited tortures upon ourselves…trips to Ikea, loading up vans with furniture and clothes, buying potting soil and pricing laundry machines at various hardware stores. Looks like moving day is almost upon us. I know I will feel like a prickly and yowly cat until we’re totally into the new place – I hate being in this in-between space, where I can’t remember which place I left my favorite shampoo or shoes. But it will be worth it, if for nothing else than not having to move again next year! Wish us luck!

More Notes from the 2012 Skagit River Poetry Festival – with pictures!

Above: Me with the lovely and talented Jericho Brown, Me with Motley Crew including Kelli Russell Agodon, Lana Ayers, and Jared Leising…

SO I am back home safe from the excitement of the Skagit River Poetry Festival in La Conner, Washington once again. There were some wonderful readings yesterday, in particular the reading where every single conference participant read one poem (a great way to see people you missed during the weekend – every conference should do that) and the evening reading with Nikki Giovanni (a revelation – and so beautiful!), Bob Hicok (yes, as funny as advertised, but also more moving that I remembered his poems being) and Marie Howe (whom I already knew I loved.) Through the festival I got to see old friends (Rachel Rose from Canada for instance) that I usually only get to see at AWP, meet other friends like Marci Ameluxen and Lorraine Healy that I previously only knew by e-mail. And I discovered new poets who live right in my hometown – Karen Finneyfrock, for intance, who has not only a great name for a poet but wrote poems that just really resonated – and had an excuse to catch up with poets and talk poetry during a really busy and stressful time in my life, which is never a bad thing. After stopping by a poetry reading on the way out, I felt really happy we had decided to go despite our need to pack, build things, prepare, work, etc. This festival only occurs once every two years, so you’ve got to seize the day and go when it happens. These events remind me that I’m not just a teacher, I’m a writer, and I like being with other people who care about poetry, an eccentric but lovely crowd.