Geek Girl Con Appearance Saturday, My Review of Christine Deavel’s Woodnote, and Inspiration…

If you want to catch me at Seattle’s very first Geek Girl Con at the Seattle Center tomorrow, here is my schedule:
–Book signing and hanging out at the University Bookstore booth from noon-1:00 PM (Media Signing Schedule Here. PS I’ll be near former Buffy writer Jane Espenson! Eeeee!)
–Presentation on “Superheroines in Poetry” at 5 PM at the NW Rooms: Fidalgo (full Saturday presentation schedule here. There are a lot of fun sessions!)

My review of Christine Deavel’s Woodnote is up at The Rumpus.

Seattle poet Elizabeth Austen’s “Advice to a Young Poet” is up at the Hugo House blog here.

In other news, I got a rejection and an acceptance yesterday, which means my poetry spreadsheet is looking too thin. Need to send out some work. It’s the perfect weather for it – grey, meandering cold with petulant rain spells. I also had a wonderful package from a poet in Japan which included a Tanka journal in both Japanese and English and a collection of folk tales called “Uepekere of Chitose: Thirteen Stories from the Land of the Ainu.” Fantastic!

Dorianne Laux at SAL, Poet’s Market 2012, and Mari L’Esperance

Had a wonderful time at the SAL reception and Dorianne Laux reading/Q&A last night. It was cold and rainy as heck – one of those “classic Seattle weather” days – but I had a lot of fun. I saw some old friends, as well as my Crab Creek Review pals – and Dorianne read really well. Also, I met a friend I had made from the twitter “poetparty” – that’s social media for you!

So I’m finally getting around to talking about Poet’s Market 2012. I’ve got two articles in there, one about how and when to target a micropress, and another about how and why to put out a chapbook. But besides that, I think this is the most well-organized and helpful version of Poet’s Market I’ve seen, so kudos to the book’s editor, Robert Lee Brewer. There are 150 incredibly useful pages of advice and interviews before you even get to the market listings, from”must-know-before-you-start-sending-out-your-work” articles in there like “How to build a press kit” – something I wish I had read for my first book – as well as articles on craft, like a prose poetry essay by Nin Andrews and an article on formal poetry by Annie Finch. Collin Kelly talks about blogging and tweeting, Diane Lockward talks about how to get your poetry into the hands of readers. I used to sit for hours with Poet’s Market circling and marking good-looking journals when I first became a poet, and it’s still a good resource for those of us who like old-school market listings on paper. (I know we can always check a web site, but it’s nice to have these compiled in one handy place.)

I also wanted to talk a little a little bit about Mari L’Esperance’s book from 2008, The Darkened Temple, which won the Prairie Schooner book prize a few years back. Mari loves Japanese folklore and landscapes and these tropes show up throughout her book. From “The Bush-Warbler Laments to the Woodcutter:”
“You will say a grand house once stood
in a forest clearing. Then: nothing but birdcalls.

Longing itself is nothing but the heart’s empty spaces.”

A little good news – first book award nom, Northwest Bookfest, poems after readings

Yes, after a somewhat discouraging reading yesterday at Northwest Bookfest, I was feeling a little down and tired, but then I found out She Returns to the Floating World is up for its very first award! It’s one of three finalists up for the Florida Publisher’s Association President’s Award for Poetry.
http://www.kitsunebooks.com/assets/11-10-FPA-Newsletter.pdf
I’m very excited, because if I win, I get a sticker. Stickers are really fun!

It was wonderful to see and read with my friends yesterday, who all did a great job, but the crowd seemed a little…muted…and I didn’t sell any books. Which always makes me feel a little depressed. Glenn took a video of the reading but it didn’t turn out. We did avoid the rain, though, and I got to see the beautiful latest issue of Crab Creek Review (2011 Volume 1,) which has two mini-reviews in it that I wrote of Dorianne Laux’s Book of Men and Suzanne Frischkorn’s Girl on a Bridge. Here are some of the editors at work yesterday (pictured: me, Annette Spaulding-Convy, Kelli Russell Agodon.)

So I came home feeling tired (three readings in seven days will really knock you out – or at least, it knocks someone like me out) and a bit discouraged but weirdly, I got into bed and wrote a new poem – the first new poem in a while that I’ve been happy with. Then I found out this crazy FPA award news. We poets have to try to stay zen throughout the whole book launch process, but it’s more of a high/low situation. Sometimes, to use a California metaphor, I only see the smog in the sunset, and other times, I see an egret lifting in the last light.

Next post: I promise not to be so self-absorbed. I’m going to talk about the New Poet’s Market, Mari L’Esperance’s beautiful book, and more!

Update: Oh, and I just found this too – a new review of She Returns to the Floating World is up at Midwest Book Review! Check “The Poetry Shelf!”

Northwest Bookfest, Christine Deavel’s reading, and the funny thing about book sales

For those who missed my other two readings, and especially those on the East side of Seattle, here’s your chance! Tomorrow (Sunday) I’ll be reading – along with Kelli Russell Agodon, Elizabeth Austen, and Susan Rich – at Kirkland’s Northwest Bookfest at 2 PM. And after that, I’m not talking in public again for a whole seven days, when I’m doing a presentation on superheroes and poetry at Geek Girl Con…no rest for the wicked. Or the villainess.

Tonight I got a chance to attend Christine Deavel’s reading from her book Woodnote. She had an art exhibit in the background and a piano player accompanying her, and just read her poems – no inter-poem chatter, no introductions. Just another variation on how to perform poetry! And this week will also have a visit by the wonderful Dorianne Laux to Seattle for a reading Wednesday, which should be a lot of fun.

Just wanted to make a quick observation about book sales. So, at most readings, I sell a handful of books – at a really successful reading, it might be ten or fifteen. A funny thing that happens when I read – my Amazon rankings tend to go up afterward…which might mean people are going home, and later buying the book? Or is it just coincidence? And what’s really funny with the second book is, I think my first book is still outselling my second! Weird, right? Anybody else experienced this?

I just watched some scary dinosaur CGI animals try to eat some teenagers on television. That’s good background for practicing poetry, right?

Reading Report from Hugo House, Even More Readings, and Thoughts on Performance

Sorry I didn’t post this earlier – I didn’t get home from last night’s reading (four readers plus open mike – whew!) until 11:30, and then I ate dinner and collapsed. We didn’t get any pics last night (low lighting meant blurry photos and our video was shaky and blurry as well- sorry!) but it was a packed house at Hugo House’s Cheap Wine and Poetry night – about eighty people and extra spilling out into hallways and porch…definitely a reading series worth visiting! The crowd was friendly, slightly tipsy, and raucous. I met and got to chat with lots of great folks. And I sold some books, always a welcome thing.
This reading made me realize I really had been away for a couple of years – this reading series became so vibrant while I was in CA! The Richard Hugo House in Seattle has been undergoing a series of personnel changes, as well, so I’m getting to know new people. I didn’t recognize many people in the audience, either, so I was really grateful for my handful of friends who came. Sometimes I take for granted that I know all the poets in Seattle, but you know what? I don’t! It’s a big town full of folks I’ve never met!
I hadn’t met any of my fellow readers before, though one (Elizabeth Colen) was even a fellow Steel Toe Books author! The three other readers were all interesting, gifted female writers (hence, the “Ladies’ Night” theme event) each with a different style of performance – one quiet and shy reading straight out of her book, another a performance-oriented poet who had everything memorized and mesmerized the crowd in her fishnets. I think I’m somewhere in the middle, though I confessed to someone last night I think I would be a lot more comfortable at readings if I could just put a potted plant in front of my face as I read. I think the combination of vulnerability of reading your own work and the physical performance aspects of trying to be interesting/entertaining to an audience can be really challenging. I like reading but afterward I always feel like I’ve just gone twelve rounds with a boxing robot.
This reading made me think about the choices we make about how to present out poems – how performance can both enhance – and distract from – our poetry. Hearing a poem is so different from reading it on the page, and I try now to be aware of that, to slow down my naturally frenetic speech patterns, to try to make space for applause, a laugh, an offhand comment to connect with an audience. I also thought it was interesting that the other readers had been publishers, reading series hosts, editors, teachers and in other ways were connecting with their communities – something I think is really important! That probably explains the large crowd, come to think of it.
Now I have to get ready for Sunday’s reading at the new Northwest Bookfest in Kirkland, with friends Kelli Russell Agodon, Elizabeth Austen, and Susan Rich. It looks like it’s going to be a great time, I just have to get my energy back up! (Plus I have to catch up on writing work – a job application needs to be turned in, a poetry contest entry (or two) needs to be sent out, poems in general have been languishing from lack of attention! Promoting a new book tends to eat up all the extra time and energy in your life if you let it…I need to be sure to set aside as much writing time as promoting time…) Hope to see you Sunday or sometime soon!