Today at Highline College, Spring Skies, and National Poetry Month

I had the lovely opportunity to read and teach at Highline College in Des Moines, WA today. Not only did they have a huge crowd in a giant auditorium, they had put up several of my poems (and also poems by Terrance Hayes, who’s visiting the college next week) up as broadsides in a huge artistic poetry month display in their public library. I was honored! Here’s a picture of me with Highline professor Susan Rich and very sweet administrator Lindsay Seeley. It was a great day but now I’m ready to crash. I love National Poetry Month but it wears me out!

: Lindsay, Susan, and me at Highline

: A broadside that Highline created

We’ve been having cool, stormy weather, which has kind of matches by health stuff, marred by upper respiratory stuff and migraines. I’m ready for some great warmer weather AND great health! Hoping for that by the end of the month.

Coming up on the schedule is a reading at Soul Food Books on April 20 with a few Two Sylvias authors like Natasha Moni and Michael Schmeltzer. It’s a fun lineup and a relaxed East side reading venue, so put it on your calendar.

Since last posting, I got to see Alice Notley read thanks to a friend’s spare ticket, and that was really something. I feel like there are twelve times as many poetry events in April as I can possibly attend! I’ve been writing a bit more than usual too, as well as reading more books.

Here are a few pics of April’s Seattle skies…the Pink Full Moon with cloud cover, a rainbow in sunset clouds. And it’s almost the end of the cherry tree season, so, appropriately, a picture of white cherry branches in bloom, and the fallen blossoms after a storm.

: The pink moon, obscured

: Rainbow in sunset clouds

: White cherry tree

: Fallen white cherry blossoms

National Poetry Month, Cherry and Magnolia Blossoms, and an April Apocalypse Poem

It’s the beginning of National Poetry Month (and my birthday month,) so even though we’re still in a weather-whomp of rain and lower temps, I’ve been cheered by the appearance of more singing birds (one that insists on singing outside our bedroom at 6 AM every morning,) more trees blossoming, and finally. a few bulbs in my garden blooming – the pink hyacinths in my boxes have appeared healthy and hearty after our cold, wet winter. These are the cherry blossoms down the street from our house, our in full snowy blushy splendor. The Japanese call the time of the advance of the cherry blossoms “sakura zensen.” To the right, you can also see Glenn and I posing with some new magnolia blossoms in the Kirkland neighborhood, where Google and Facebook employees wonder by, bearded and ensconced in their phones. This was also a day I got a bunch of medical tests done, all of which came back with mostly good news. No liver cancer, for one, which was a concern, and a negative tumor marker test on a rarer kind of carcinoid, plus only minor problems with liver function from all the tumors in there, which was also a concern.

I started the month by getting another round of a cough and sinus thing (probably from going into two different doctor’s offices for the lab tests above) but I did manage to squeak out a poem yesterday, so we’ll hope for the same today! I’ve been inspired by reading Siri Hustvedt’s new book, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind. Fascinating stuff! I love reading about art and gender, and Siri has such a fierce intellect, she just automatically makes me want to write something. I also really am loving Aimee Mann’s new album “Mental Illness,” and tweeted that my fave rhyme so far this month is her rhyme in the song “Good for Me” of “smoke machine” with “taste of dopamine.” I love art and music, and learning more about them, but am terrible at singing, instruments – I can do a little piano and guitar, neither all that well – and making art. It’s a good thing I have poetry!

So I wanted to post another April poem, this time apocalypse-oriented, from Field Guide to the End of the World:

Spring Flowers, Medical Testing, and Submission Parties

Looking for Spring
Spring has been late to visit the Pacific Northwest this year, so I’ve been desperately seeking signs of spring. In this spirit, we took a drive up to La Conner, home of The Tulip Festival, where at this time the last two years all the tulips were already up. This trip, just a few fields of daffodils and a few ornamental trees were in bloom. Around my neck of the woods in Woodinville, I found some plum and cherry blossoms. At this point with all the wet and cold we’ve had, we need all the flowers we can get!

I’m going in for some more medical testing today, which is always nerve-wracking, especially the tumor marker tests, which can be tricky and misleading and very scary. Wish me luck! I purposefully try to schedule something pleasant afterwards and nothing stressful beforehand. Today involves two different sets of doctor offices in two different systems, which is a bit more complex than usual…

Submission Parties!

No, it’s not a sexy thing, it’s a poetry submission thing!
Last week I had a “Submission Party” with a few poet friends via Google Hangout, and it was really fun – and three of us had acceptances within a few days! It was a good way to motivate yourself during what can be a dreary time of year and help some of us get our of our usual submission ruts. (I tend to send to the same journals over and over, for instance.) I very much recommend doing this with your friends if you can get them together – we had a few prep rules that helped – preparing a poetry packet in advance, bring at least three places you’d like to send and share, and have your spreadsheet and cover letter templates at the ready!

: Me in the daffodils

: cherry blossom closeup

: plum blossom lane (smelled like candy!)

: plum blossom closeup

: Glenn and I in the La Conner daffodils

I am looking forward to April, National Poetry Month, my birthday month, Easter and baby animals! We did see a mother deer with her baby in the grass yesterday while we were stalking flowers in our neighborhood. How about you? What are your plans for April? Anything ambitious? I’m doing a local college visit at Highline College and a reading at Soul Food Books with some other Two Sylvias Press authors on April 20.

Interview with Stephanie Wytovich and Cheers to KCLS Library

Thanks to Stephanie Wytovich, amazing horror writer – she is on the Bram Stoker finalist ballot this year for her poetry book, Brothel – for taking the time to interview me today on apocalypses, my new book Field Guide to the End of the World, my thoughts on the future of science fiction, and advice for writers (spoiler alert: stay weird!)

http://stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com/2017/03/author-interview-getting-apocalyptic.html

I have to say I have found the horror writing community to be so warm and welcoming, especially for such a spooky and scary genre! Stephanie is a great example, as are the writers in the local Seattle chapter I’ve met with. I’m very happy I joined the Horror Writers Association last year and encourage other poets to do the same!

Also, I was super touched that my local library tweeted about my new book yesterday:

Zombie strippers and Martha Stewart can both be found in the whimsical poetry of Field Guide to the End of the World https://t.co/kj38CN4dN7 pic.twitter.com/U1D0h3syUf

— King County Library (@KCLS) March 23, 2017

KCLS is one of the best library systems I’ve every belonged to (and I’ve belonged to libraries since my mom first got me a card at 6!) I really appreciate their support of local writers!

Signs of Spring, a New Review of Field Guide on The Pedestal, and Spring Poems

First, thanks so much to The Pedestal and Stephanie Chan for this excellent, thoughtful review of Field Guide to the End of the World. Here’s a little bit from the end of the review:

She makes the end of the world strangely relatable, filled with details of normalcy that have been flipped on their heads. Field Guide to the End of the World feels very much like a collection of postcards, poems sent from a series of desolate vacation spots, each inscribed “Wish you were here”—with romantic nostalgia for a future that may or may not come to be.”

(If you’d like to purchase a signed copy of Field Guide to the End of the World, you can do so here! And here it is on Amazon in case you’re just dying to write your own review 🙂 Did I mention I’m in the middle of revising and trying to finish my PR for Poets book? I’ve re-organized it into more bite-size chapters and interview tips, and So I thought I’d practice a little of what I’ve been writing about.)

Had a bit of a hard week with the aftermath of more medical testing – I’ve got a couple more important ones to do, then hope I can get a break for a while, as in, no results will be worrisome and require even worse follow-up testing. And at the end of the month, a new Aimee Mann album drops – “Mental Illness,” so I’ve got that to look forward to!

Today’s the first day of spring, and yesterday we had actual sunshine (after two months of record cold and wet) so I went out hunting for signs of spring. Nothing in my own garden is blooming yet, but we put roses, blueberries, and sweet peas in the ground anyway. Here are a signs of spring from all around town…plum blossoms, camellias, and other early blooms:

I thought I’d post a poem from my previous book, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, called “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter in Spring,” as appropriate for today: