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Eat My Words is a great bookstore in Northeast Minneapolis—one of those it's hard to walking away from empty-handed. It was a privilege to read with rock-star poet Deborah Keenan, whose new book—her eleventh!--The Saint of Everything, is out now, and Chavonn Williams Shen, who didn't have a book out when I reached out to her to organize this reading, but in the interim landed a book contract. Congrats, Chavonn! Woo-hoo!
A great crowd showed up to listen and linger, including THP pressmate Kirk Wilson. I love talking with folks after readings, when they share morsels from their lives, as if the poetry continues to be made but communally, ephemerally.
I've got the sets down now—short, medium, medium-long, long, with variations for venues—such that it feels like I'm on the stump or am a band on tour writing up play lists in Sharpie to duct tape to the floor of the stage each night. Despite that, not a reading goes by after which I don't berate myself a bit for forgetting something I wanted to say. I toured Ernest Hemingway's home once in Key West and remember the tour guide telling us that Hem would stop writing when the going was good, when he knew what came next and had more to say. A feeling like that is what I have when I remember that I forgot something. It makes me eager to go at again, to get to next time.
Images: The three that share the same design style are courtesy of Eat My Words staff. The "one of these things does not belong here" image is my creation, using the InDesign skills I honed working in alt-press and children's publishing, featuring a photo taken at dusk in my backyard on an unseasonably hot evening early in warm season.
A great crowd showed up to listen and linger, including THP pressmate Kirk Wilson. I love talking with folks after readings, when they share morsels from their lives, as if the poetry continues to be made but communally, ephemerally.
I've got the sets down now—short, medium, medium-long, long, with variations for venues—such that it feels like I'm on the stump or am a band on tour writing up play lists in Sharpie to duct tape to the floor of the stage each night. Despite that, not a reading goes by after which I don't berate myself a bit for forgetting something I wanted to say. I toured Ernest Hemingway's home once in Key West and remember the tour guide telling us that Hem would stop writing when the going was good, when he knew what came next and had more to say. A feeling like that is what I have when I remember that I forgot something. It makes me eager to go at again, to get to next time.
Images: The three that share the same design style are courtesy of Eat My Words staff. The "one of these things does not belong here" image is my creation, using the InDesign skills I honed working in alt-press and children's publishing, featuring a photo taken at dusk in my backyard on an unseasonably hot evening early in warm season.
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