Happy National Poetry Month, April Gloom (and Blooms,) and More Post-AWP Thoughts

Camellias

Happy National Poetry Month!

Are you enjoying April so far? We’re having our longest, rainiest, grayest stretch so far this year in the Seattle area, and I have been down both physically and emotionally, so not a lot of getting out and about, though I have a couple of shots of cherry blossoms at the Seattle Japanese Gardens. I am planning to get up to the tulip fields sometime soon, too! Those always cheer me up.

April Blooms (and Gloom) and NaPoWriMo

Do you try to write a poem a day (NaPoWriMo?) in April? It’s National Poetry Writing Month as well. I don’t love prompts (or the pressure to write every day) but I always do write a bit more during April. April is also my birthday month, so I always have a lot of emotion – blossoms, birthdays, poetry, and always, always, inevitably, some damn medical testing! LOL. I went in for some routine blood work to see if I was well enough to start a new MS drug, and the results came back that I was severely anemic (like, enough to get an iron IV?) and sicker than I thought. I had felt a little tired and groggy since I got back from AWP, but I thought it was just MS and allergies. So I am doubling up my iron (steak! mushrooms! beets!) as well as supplementing with iron, folic acid, and b12 and apparently need to rest and get better from a big upper respiratory virus. I’ve been trying to read more, sleep more, take my vitamin c and up my liquids. I have written maybe five poems that I’ve liked so far this month, and lots of weird fragments. The black hole (of course) inspired one, and somehow every time I have to walk into a hospital in spring I write a poem about it. I’m also working up the courage to send out my two in-progress poetry manuscripts out some more – one is very political and feminist, and the other is more somber in tone, about getting diagnosed with cancer and then MS, and all the surrounding solar flares and eclipses. I also have to send out some work – during my down time after AWP, I’ve gotten lots of poems back (hello rejections!) so I have to get on the ball. I was encouraged that I got a positive, ‘send more’ rejection from the one piece of fiction I had out – I don’t have more, but it was nice. I may try to write another fiction piece this month if I get inspired – it’s much harder work for me than writing poems. I listened to a Sylvia Plath reading and realized how much her sense of line and sound – I started reading her at around 19 – had influenced my own work. Her voice was pretty great, too, kind of deep and clipped and a pronounced New England accent. I also have a review or two to do. I find that reviewing takes a different kind of mental energy than poetry writing – or even fiction writing. I also have plenty of reading from the stack I brought home from AWP! Which reminds me…

A Few More Post-Mortem AWP Thoughts…

A few more thoughts from Portland’s AWP now that they’re over and I’ve had some time to think.

• A Greater Influence of Social Media – I noticed this for the first time at this AWP, and no so much at AWP LA (2016.) Many people – including the nice people at registration – mentioned how they followed me on Twitter, Instagram, the blog, or Facebook. I had lots of people come up already familiar with my writing, my life, and tell me things that had inspired them or that they loved. That was really nice, and different. I literally could not walk (or wheelchair) anywhere without stopping to talk to people who recognized me (again, this did not happen at AWP LA.) So what does this mean? All of our work on social media is not in vain, after all? That it really does help build community? Especially meaningful: writers who also had MS or other medical problems who told me reading about my journey had helped them. Wow. Also got a lot of positive feedback about talking about the discouragement of rejection. Interesting!!
• Bigger Bookfair: I missed seeing some big names at the Bookfair (some pretty big places decided not to have a table this year) but it had to be one of the biggest bookfairs ever – I don’t think anyone could hit every table over three days. And there was a bonus off-site small-press bookfair for local small presses that couldn’t afford AWP (I loved the idea, but did not make it.)
• It’s Hard to Take Your Own Advice: So, remember all those posts about eating and drinking enough and getting off-site from AWP and enjoying the city? I got off-site exactly one time, and ended up subsisting on handfuls of carrot sticks with Greek yogurt in between events, and sometimes string cheese. Never had time for room service or a regular meal of any sort, because I was rushing around so much – partly because it was hard to get around and to and from the hotel due to construction, but partly because I expected to have the same pace I had when I was younger. I should have scheduled much less. I’m afraid AWP had more of a toll on my health than I should have let it have. Note I am still mostly in recovery mode!
• AWP: A husband’s perspective. Glenn was able to come to all of my events because of the “accessibility assistant” ticket he got to AWP, and besides the difficulties getting into off-sites and into the conference area itself (“they need to do a better job of making off-sites handicapped-accessible,” he said, “and the entrance was much too far from the bookfair”) he seemed to have a pretty good AWP experience. I always think about how weird industry conferences appear to outsiders – after all, I’ve been to robotics conferences, web security conferences, and Microsoft tech conferences – but people were very friendly to Glenn – many recognized him from pictures on social media – and he thought all the readings were very engaging. He was sad we didn’t get to see more of the bookfair, which he felt was much easier to navigate than, say, the art-and-comics fair at San Deigo’s ComicCon, in a wheelchair. We do have a lot of friends around the country now – which made the whole conference feel more convivial.

Overall, I am glad I went, but probably won’t go for the next few years (San Antonio, Kansas City, and Philly are all pretty far from Seattle, and travel can be problematic with a wheelchair and a faulty immune system.) I hope the next time it comes within my orbit it will be a little more disability-friendly. We can always hope! That would have made things a little easier. I’m glad I got to see so many friends and faces from the literary community across the country – friends from Florida to California, and all points in between, and it’s always nice to discover new lit mags and publishers that might not have been on your radar. I wish I had gotten out into Portland more – it was mostly beautiful weather and I had a plan to hit a couple of bookstores and art galleries that didn’t happen. And now, into April – hoping I can get my energy (and iron) back, get out into the tulips, and get some more writing and submitting done!