Twilight Poem, Marin Poetry Festival
I am not a Twilight fan. I notice that Twilight is creeping into my students’ poems. So I decided for poetry month to write one of my own. Yes, it’s supposed to be funny.
The Problem with Twilight
She looks at him and thinks
I am worth more dead
He looks at her and thinks
what’s for dinner
In other news, I got to go to at least part of the Marin Poetry Festival, though it was in the least handicapped-accessible venue I’ve ever seen – to make it to this ampitheatre in the woods, you had to climb down a steep, rocky, rooty, unpaved hill. Neat! I felt sorry for all the poor elderly women with walkers (way to to think of others, poetry festival organizers – at least half the crowd was over 65) and thankful for Glenn and Natasha’s help navigating (using my pink cane. I’m now to the cane phase of my two-bad-ankle-injury recovery, by the way. Our of the wheelchair for the most part. Yay!)
It was set in a quite beautiful park, with a wide stream and under the shade of giant evergreens in the Old Mill Park. I had never been to the town of Old Mill before, which was quaint and cute with lots of weirdly upscale shopping and I want to go back and visit later. I got to see J.P. Dancing Bear (of American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press) and C.J. Sage (of the National Poetry Review) read and that was a lot of fun. I also got to catch up with poet-friend Natasha Moni, who is currently training for medical school, because being a poet isn’t enough, she also wants to be a doctor. Some people! 🙂
California Poets in the Schools
Today we drove out to Santa Rosa, about an hour away, to participate in and enjoy the California Poets in the Schools reading. The best part was watching some little fourth graders reading their own poems. It was inspiring, because these kids delivered good solid imagery with poise. I wish every open mike was that entertaining. Plus, fourth graders are adorable! I also got to catch up with some of the CPITS poets, who are all wonderful women with just good spirits. They remind me of my Seattle poetry friends, in that they are generous, good-natured, and good poets all at the same time. It was great to get out and about a little bit. I’ve been laid up so much in the past six months that I haven’t been able to socialize as much as I’d like. Tomorrow if I’m well enough I’m going to try to make it to the Marin Poetry Festival to see some more poets read. That’s what poetry month is all about, baby!
Sorry I had to do the blog move so suddenly; google’s blogger decided it didn’t want to support the kind of blog I had, so I had to change it to a kind they would support. Please remember to update your links!
Also, had interesting news from my last set of blood tests. I was just ranting and raving recently about all the tests I’ve had done over the past ten years, but I think I might have found a doctor who actually ran some of the right autoimmune tests this time. We’ll see. I want to confirm with the doc before I say anything for sure, but I’m cheered up that I might be near the end of the testing tunnel, with a real answer perhaps!
Keep putting comments in for the book giveaway contest!
But…
I have to migrate my blog this week, because Google’s blogger is no longer supporting FTP sites, which mine has been. So the new blog address will be:
http://myblog.webbish6.com/
Please make a note of it. Update those blog links!
If you subscribe to an RSS feed or anything, the new RSS link is
http://myblog.webbish6.com/feeds/posts/default
And I’ll have a redirect page as well, that will hopefully work just fine.
Poetry Book Giveaway
Post a comment (along with your e-mail address) and I’ll put your name in a hat. The lucky winner gets three books! Then a runner up will get a different two books, because that’s how I roll! Two chances to win!
WonderCon not AWP
Well, here I am entertaining you while all the other poets are off at AWP. WonderCon was definitely fascinating, I met some wonderful writers while I was there, real life superheroines, and got to do some very unique people watching (stormtroopers? anime characters come to life? A bevvy of Boba Fetts?) I still miss the literary slam dance at AWP, of course.
April seems to have come to California in stops and starts – it was forty and driving rain on Sunday, today it is seventy and sunny, this Sunday it is supposed to be cold and raining again. The sky can’t make up its mind. This is my birthday month, which maybe I am also ambivalent about, like the weather.
It’s also poetry month, and I’ll be participating later in the month in a poetry book giveaway. I’ve been thinking about work – work that sustains poets, work I should want to do, work I should try to get – lately, too. Teaching versus marketing writing or technical writing, the practical versus the passion. There were some interesting conversations on the Harriet blog about poets who do something besides teaching for a living.
Are you writing a poem-a-day this month? I always think this idea might work better in August than April, because for me, April is usually a frenzy of events, family visits, and work overload. And besides that, I find I only write the usual amount of decent poems a month even if I write every day; if I don’t try to write every day, I usually write about four poems a month, give or take. I do try to read more poetry and attend more readings during April, and also to take in more art – I went in to San Fran for some blood tests and got to go beforehand to a couple of art galleries, because that makes the trip less onerous, and also because I feel I write more when I get to see more art. Reading good books helps too.
My little brother and his wife are coming in town tomorrow, and that means doing more of the tourist stuff around Napa, which should be fun. Wish me luck and health!
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
