Mixtape- June 25th

I read from Boyishly and talked about the importance of going big in poetry at the Casbah on June 25th for Mixtape

Mixtape is a great series; it's been around in several versions. Originally, Brian Howe ran it and asked writers to read from works that had been important to them. It met in living rooms and was pretty informal although always fascinating.

Now Chris Vitiello runs it in conjunction with the Hinge, a literary group here in Durham. It happens at the Casbah and has a wider focus; all kinds of artists take part. Some talk about influences, some show their latest work, while others give a type of talk. I kind of combined all three, reading examples from the work of others and my own that illustrated techniques used in large, epic, ambitious poetry. I later gave a different version of this talk at the Duke Creative Writers Camp.

The others in the Mixtape lineup were also great. Francesca Talenti showed a sample of her work for the stage and in instiallation. Below is an example from her work A Bride For All Seasons.

Michael Itkoff showed a slideshow of his work, including a picture he took as a boy of David Robinson. Both artists were really great and I thought all three presentations worked well together. Below is a sample of his really fabulous White Board Project.

May 21- State of Things

On May 21st, I talked about and read from Boyishly on the State of Things with Frank Statio. You can hear the interview and reading here

The State of Things runs on NPR stations in North and South Carolina and has an arts and news focus. I enjoyed doing the interview- it was obvious that both Frank and the prep person had read the book and were interested in it. I was especially impressed that they both saw the book as active, as having real work to do. SOT regularly talks to artists of all stripes and is a show worth listening to online or on the radio.

Boyishly Launch-May 15th

Boyishly got a warm welcome to its Durham home on May 15th at the Pinhook

 Books screeched into town on the 14th (Despite the fact my street was closed by a traffic accident. The FedEx driver whipped it around the roadblock to deliver my book. Well done, good man.) and an all-star lineup tore the house down.

Chris Vitiello read dressed as the Pope

the Bull City Slam team proved they will be a force to be reckoned with again this year

 Jim Haverkamp graciously showed us When Walt Whitman Was A Little Girl,

shirlette ammons read and performed from her new album like the multi-media threat she is

and the Fuck Yeahs proved to be an outstanding houseband (seen with shirlette in the video)

It was a great start for Boyishly, a great send off for the Minor American Series (which has been bringing great work to Durham for several years now) and a brilliant evening of all the Bull City has to offer.

Boyishly- Available!!!! Here!!!!

I am happy to say that Boyishly is available to order here from the YesYes Books. They've done just a beautiful job with the book.




The cover photo (which runs over to the back) is by Eleanor Bennett whose work is amazing; she's a 17-year old photographer from England and her work consistently blows me away. She shot this picture particularly for the cover after reading some of the poems. It's perfect.

Alban Fisher did the design work; he does a lot of work for YesYes and I was so pleased with what he came up with.

It's thrilling to have my first book. It's even more thrilling that it's so beautiful and that the inside and outside of the book work so well together.

What I'm Listening To- Emergency Ward!, Nina Simone

This is Simone's album length response to the Vietnam War- cover songs, poems, discussion. It's smart and thoughtful and heart-breaking.



This album is stuck with me right now because it's what I want to do next as an artist; stop and explore where the country is, "a minute" (as in right this. . . .) book just like this is "a minute" album. A snapshot.

It's hard though, which is why I admire this one so much. It's far from perfect, but yet it is perfect in that it is that exact moment. I know it is because Simone knows it is and tells us as much by the way she performs it.

That's the other thing I love about Simone, her ability to crawl into a moment, drag the song and the audience in there with her, and muck about.

Which is just as much what Eileen Myles says in a great new essay in The Volta. Myles does a great job of this too, this crawling inside and dragging you along with her.

So I"m thinking about these two works as guidelines and models. But they also leave me wondering how have we gotten to a place where we don't value this kind of artist anymore? We label them crazy or too personal and yet what they do is brave and crucial and dangerous.

What I'm Doing- Finishing Memes- Next Big Thing

kate pringle and L. Lamar Wilson were generous enough to tag me in there Next Big Thing responses and since I do have a book coming out, I thought I would jump on. How do you know a meme is dead? It finally gets to me.

What is the working title of the book? Boyishly. Not just the working title but the actual title, about to be birthed by YesYesBooks in May 2013. Did I steal it from Carol Mavor's Reading Boyishly? Little bit. Let's say adopted.

Where did the idea come from for the book? This is my first book, so it wasn't a book I sat down to write. Instead, I just wrote poems. Eventually, I started to feel like I had the number of poems that belonged in a book. So I tried to make them into a book. And I kept writing poems. Then I started to figure out that these poems had some things in common. So I put those poems together. And that's when I had the idea that I really had a book. Having worked backwards for the first book, let me say that working forward (exploring an idea in poems) is a lot easier.

What genre does your book fall under? Poetry. Other than that, I think poets spend way too much time trying to figure out what "kind" of poetry they write. Even worse, they spend more time trying to figure out which "kind" of poetry is poetic enough. Who is my book's poetic family? CA Conrad. Dorothea Lasky. Susan Howe. Claudia Rankine. And we all live together in a house way up high in a tree.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition? Who wrote this meme, James Franco? Characters present are John Brown, Andre the Giant, Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, Muhammad Ali, Chang and Eng, and a Chinese vampire. Plus a young girl and adolescent girls and women. But I want Quvenzhane Wallis to read the audio book. And then I want her to spit out James Franco's bones at the end.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? All the things of the world that slip around unseen, that get labelled monsterous, talk back.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript? I wrote poems for probably 10 years. Once I knew what the book was, I worked, wrote and reordered for about 3 years.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? I wrote some as an undergraduate, but not well. When I became a grad student, I focused on becoming a better academic writer. I wanted to take some MFA classes when I was at UNCG but they wouldn't allow it. (MFA students took PhD classes, but it didn't work the other way around.) My first job out of grad school I taught creative writing and did the exercises with my students. Then I started going to open mikes and reading and discovered a deep need to write poems. Hasn't gone away yet.

What else about your book might pique the readers' interest? The cover is likely to come from a photographer, Eleanor Bennett, who is a 16 year old wunderkind from England. Her work is amazing and I'm thrilled to be working with her to find an image for the cover of Boyishly. http://eleanorleonnebennett.zenfolio.com/

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? No agency and not self-published. Boyishly will be published by YesYes Books in Portland OR.

What I'm Doing- Asking Elvis

I currently have two shrines at my house, one to Elvis, one to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. I use these shrines to show respect, to generate particular kinds of energy/mojo, and to help me think. Do Elvis or Gertrude really channel through my shrines? I think they do and I love having them both. (The next shrine I'm going to build is going to be for Thoreau and it's going to be a Three Sisters garden (corn, beans, squash) like Thoreau built for the newlyweds Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne when they moved into the Old Manse in Concord.

Today I lit the Elvis shrine and asked for release from Loserville. (Loserville is the handy term I use when I get on a string of poetic rejections. It can include other rejections as well but the poetic ones are usually the trigger.) Elvis told me "Loserville will let you go when it's done with you darlin'. Until then, keep taking care of business."

Thanks Elvis. I always find comfort in your advice.