Poetz: It's alive...ALIVE!

The wonderful poet, musician and iconoclast that is Jackie Sheeler has relaunched the Poetz.com website, and it is gorgeous! Poetz was long the home of New York City's most comprehensive calendar of open mics and events, not to mention regular postings of poetry by a bevy of familiar and unfamiliar names Jackie thought everyone should know.

Poetz spawned calendars in a number of other cities. Jackie farmied out curating duties to others, but over time those calendars died off and Jackie was busy with her job and many other projects, so she shut it down. Who knew there would be such a disturbance in the force when Poetz went quiet?

Now, after months of work, Poetz lives again and it's damn spiffy! The NYC calendar is back along with Atlanta (courtesy of Poetry Atlanta), San Francisco, Philadelphia, Nashville, Chicago and more.

Jackie will also regularly feature new and established poets on the site, and I'm honored to have three new poems posted for the relaunch. You can read them at this link. I'm in fine company with Ellen Bass, Wendy Barker, Meagan Brothers, Elizabeth Harrington, George Held, Jee Leong Koh, Gianmarc Manzione, D. Nurkse, Jane Ormerod, Thaddeus Rutkowski and Hal Sirowitz.

You'll definitely want to bookmark Poetz and check back in often, especially if you're looking for an open mic or just want to read some great poetry.

Baby got back...and books

Many, many, many thanks to Anne Stanford for the brilliant review of Conquering Venus that appeared today on the popular blog, Baby Got Books. Anne said the book contained "an intriguing story and fantastic writing." You really can't ask for more than that. It was the perfect tonic after the sales report from the weekend. You can read the full review at this link.

Tomorrow night, Georgia Center for the Book will reveal The 25 Books All Georgians Should Read at a special event at the Decatur Public Library at 7 p.m. Eleven novels and short story collections, eleven nonfiction titles and three poetry collections are on the list, which is being kept a secret until the ceremony. I'm guessing I'm number 26 on the list. So close...

If you missed American Idol this week, you didn't miss much. Shania Twain was the mentor and they sang her songs, but not the good ones like "That Don't Impress Me Much" and "Man, I Feel Like A Woman." Fail. You can read the performance recap at this link and tonight's "shock"elimination (and it actually was...sorta) at this link. You can read my recaps every week at Project Q Atlanta.

Why I Want To Be Pam Grier

Clearing every book I've half read off the coffee table to make room for Pam Grier's memoir, Foxy. And if you haven't read my love poem to Ms. Grier here's the link. She really is just amazing.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell...

Many thanks to Lori at The Next Best Book Blog for asking me to write an essay on how dreams connect the characters in Conquering Venus. When the novel was first being sent around to editors by my then-agent, many were put off by the magical realism sprinkled liberally throughout the pages. I agreed to alter many things about the story, but the dreams and visions the characters share was something I refused to change. Read the essay at this link.

Many thanks to Amaris Guiterrez-Ray and the folks at Georgia Tech's literary magazine, Erato, for hosting a poetry reading for me and JC Reilly this afternoon. Was happy to see Tom Lux, Bob Wood, Robin Kemp and Blake Leland in the audience. JC's first chapbook, La Petite Mort, will be published in July by Finishing Line Press (which published my own After the Poison). I highly recommend you pre-order a copy because JC is the real deal.

I have new poetry coming in the next issue of The Chattahoochee Review, the resurrected Poetz website and in a forthcoming anthology. It's been a big poetry acceptance week!

Tinkers, Tailors, Soldiers, Poets

The New York literati were taken by surprise when Paul Harding's Tinkers won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction earlier this month. It was published by the tiny Bellevue Literary Press and had sold less than 2,000 copies. The New York Times failed to review it, and Book Review staff editor Gregory Cowles had the temerity to write a post for the Paper Cuts blog calling Tinkers "the one that got away." He closed the post with the final kiss off that he still hadn't read it, but that the Book Review had reviewed the runners up.

Essayist, nature writer and blogger David Gessner took issue with Cowles' blog and posted his response at the blog he shares with Bill Roorbach, Cocktail Hour. The post, We are all poets now, has caused quite a stir as it takes a shot against the New York publishing world and the Book Review for not only ignoring Tinkers, but thousands of other books that don't come from well-known publishing houses.

"We are all poets now" refers to the fact that poetry is the tiniest niche in literature, which the public at large neither reads or reviews. There's no money, glory, book tours, Oprah appearances or multi-million dollar movie deals in poetry, and now that is trickling down to fiction as well. I have first-hand knowledge of this in both poetry and fiction.

Gessner's post came just as I received some sobering news about Conquering Venus -- the novel has yet to crack the 1,000 mark in sales. When Vanilla Heart told me this, I admit that I was devastated. Despite a dozen glowing -- or nearly glowing -- reviews, countless interviews and traveling about for readings, the book has yet to catch fire. I'd be thrilled if it sold a couple thousand copies at this point.

As Gessner notes, moments like these can fill a writer with self-doubt and rage. I've felt a wide range of emotions this weekend, but I am not deterred. I don't expect to sell a million copies or find myself in the pages of the Book Review (as a matter of fact, the press didn't even bother to submit a copy to them for review), but I do want to find a larger audience. I'm not saying I've written the great American novel, but I think it's a pretty damn good story and will hold the interest of readers beyond its labels of "literary fiction" and "gay fiction."

For a brief second, I thought about abandoning the sequel to Conquering Venus, but Gessner's post reminded me that I need to free myself of expectations and write for the love of the craft and make the next book as great as possible. I know there are many of you who read this blog -- or lurk -- who have yet to read Conquering Venus, and while that's disappointing, I can't put a gun to your head. You'll read it or you won't. I can only hope that you will and tell your friends and post something about it at your blogs or a few words at Amazon.

I worked on Conquering Venus for nearly 15 years, went through two agents, countless rejections and editors who pretended like they were going to publish it, then reneged on their promises. It spent many years in a drawer. The fact that Vanilla Heart picked it up and put it between two pretty covers is almost a dream beyond measure. I can't take that for granted.

So, it's back to working on the sequel. And if the "important" newspapers and magazines, don't review it -- fuck 'em. I know there's a few hundred of you out there wanting to know what happens to Martin and Irène, and I can't wait to find out myself.

Nothing Compares 2 U

Sinead O'Connor speaks honestly, bravely and succinctly about the Catholic church cover up of child abuse around the world on The Rachel Maddow Show.

Blog and Idol

Still trying to sort out the header for the blog. It says it should be 400 pixels wide, but you can see that is totally wrong. I've checked in the html coding and that's the width it's supposed to be, but as you can see, it's still too short. If anyone has a suggestion on how to fix it or determine the size, I'd appreciate it.

Note: As you can see, I figured it out. I realized that the design of this blog is actually in three columns and not two, so my friend and graphic designer extraordinaire, Liz, adjusted the header and we updated the title with a new font. It's actually the same font -- Windsor -- that Woody Allen uses for the title cards on his films.

Diane Lockward reminded me I hadn't posted the links to this week's "American Idol" recaps. Tuesday night's performance show is at this link and the Wednesday night marathon "Idol Gives Back" and elimination is at this link. You can always read the recaps first at Project Q Atlanta.

Notgonnachange

Jennifer Perry and I were supposed to be at Variety Playhouse seeing Swing Out Sister tonight, but the Icelandic volcano forced them cancel the tour. Praying for a reschedule. In the meantime, here's some vintage SOS. Oh, and if you didn't catch my interview with the lovely vocalist from SOS, Corinne Drewery, here's the link.

What do you think?

I'm trying this new look for Modern Confessional on for size. Yes, there are some issues (the confessional header needs to be widened) and all the pages aren't populated, but I'm kind of digging this. What do you think, gentle readers?

Hold up, wait a minute

Wellll, I might not be moving the blog to WordPress after all. Last night, after nearly an hour of restarts, WordPress imported all 1,471 blog posts I've made over the last 7 years. What it didn't import was any semblance of formatting or the hundreds and hundreds of comments left by readers. I've already spent more time than I wanted to trying to fix the comment issue, but nothing has worked. The idea of trying to reformat all those posts makes me nauseous.

In the meantime, I've been working in the beta Blogger In Draft, which allows you to create pages, customize templates and more. Score one for Blogger. These new customizations puts them on the playing field with WordPress and allows for some nifty looking sites. I'm going to give that a whirl and see if I like the results before deciding what to do.

You can already see part of what's happening with Blogger in Draft on the current blog. If you look above the Modern Confessional header, you'll see links marked "Home" and "About Collin." The latter takes you to a new page I've been tinkering with for all my bio information.

Moving to WordPress soon

Yes, folks, Modern Confessional is on the move to WordPress. I've started working on the new site, which will allow me to integrate my other two blogs (About Collin Kelley and the one I created for Conquering Venus) into one site. It's already looking cool. I'll keep you posted on the move.

Playing Catch Up

It's been a whirlwind of a week, and I'm just now getting to blog about it. First, I want to mention two fabulous review of Conquering Venus that were posted online this week. On Monday, Nanette Rayman-Rivera posted her take on Venus at Goodreads. Here's a little sample:

Mr. Kelley does a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of Paris in the 1990’s and Paris under siege during street revolutions in the 1960’s under DeGaulle. Mr. Kelley finds a compelling way to wind each character’s story around and back from the past to the present.

Yesterday, The Next Best Book Blog posted a lengthy review from Lori Hettler, who gave it three stars. Here's a sample:

Overall, an intense look at a world of which I was not overly familiar with. While I don't have much experience with Gay Lit, I do have a TON of experience with reading in general, and Kelley can certainly hold his own with the best of them.

Those reviews bookended my reading from Venus on Tuesday night at Tallahassee Pridefest. I was thrilled to be back (I read poetry there in 2008) and delighted to share the stage with my pal Terry Galloway, who read excerpts from her Lambda Award-nominated memoir Mean Little Deaf Queer. Seriously, folks, if you haven't read it, go to Amazon or your local bookseller and buy it. I hope she wins! We had a packed house at The Warehouse for the reading and I also got to have dinner with the reading's organizer, Patrick Patterson, a charming and dapper host.

Today, I read from and discussed my chapbook Slow To Burn with Karen Head's literature class at Georgia Tech. The students have been reading Southern poets and I was happy that the book interested them enough to prompt some good discussion. I was particularly interested in their questions about being a "Southern poet." Anyone who has read my work knows that I rarely touch on the South, and when I do it's a passing glance. Why don't I write more about where I from? I suppose because I've travelled so much over the last 20-odd years that I don't necessarily feel like a "Southerner." The whole "citizen of the world" thing is a bit cliched, but it's sorta true.

The South finds its way into my work in little ways, in many cases about repressed boys struggling with their sexual identities, politics and racism. In Venus, Martin and Diane are from Memphis, although they can't wait to leave it. I often feel like I don't belong in the South, that its Bible-thumping, conservative, right-wing leanings are against everything I believe in. But I do love Atlanta, and it's my home. Until I win the lottery. Or I marry a rich guy from the UK. Or Oprah calls. Oprah, can ya hear me?

Since I was in Tallahassee, I missed Tuesday night's American Idol, so Project Q's Mike Fleming stepped in and did a wonderful job with the recap. I was back last night to recap the double elimination of Andrew and Katie.

RIP Malcolm McLaren, 1946-2010

Here's Malcolm with Catherine Denueve singing the sublime "Paris, Paris," from his 1995 album Paris.

Also check out McLaren's "last mix," the soundtrack he created for Dries Van Norten's 2010 fashion show, at the New York Times Magazine.

Thank god(dess) it's Friday

If you haven't checked out the Tallahassee Pridefest website, please do. It's an exciting line-up of events and folks, including yours truly. I'm reading Tuesday night with Terry Galloway at Pridefest's literary event, Quill, at The Warehouse, 706 Gaines Street. It begins at 7 p.m. and it's free!

Many thanks to Jessica Handler (author of the brilliant memoir Invisible Sisters) for recommending to the organizers of the Red Clay Writers Conference. I'll be leading a workshop on confessional writing (both poetry and fiction). The conference is in November at Kennesaw State University and I'll be in fine company with Marc Fitten, Hollis Gillespie and many others.

If you missed "American Idol" this week, here's the performance recap from Tuesday and the "shock" non-elimination recap. As always, you can catch my recaps at Project Q Atlanta every week.

On Wednesday night, I went with some friends to a sneak peek at the Spring premiere episode of "Glee" at the Plaza Theater in Atlanta. It was a fundraiser for the Grammy Foundation and the theater was packed with "gleeks." No spoilers from me, but I can tell you that this episode, which airs Tuesday night after "Idol," is a game-changer for many of the main characters. Jane Lynch is more venomous (and hilarious) than ever as Coach Sue Sylvester, who will stop at nothing to see the glee club destroyed. Idina Menzel -- from "Rent" and "Wicked" fame -- also begins a multi-arc storyline as the director of a rival glee club. She's fantastic!

The wonderful poet Mark Doty also skipped AWP this year and summed up his feelings quite succinctly in a recent blog post:

This is the first AWP conference I've missed in a while. Truly my system just rebelled at the thought of doing it again so soon after last year; Chicago felt like a kind of psychological boot camp, as if we were all slogging together through some difficult period of being in a community so large, vibrating and edgeless that it seemed to swallow all individual life. Everyone's always trying to analyze what's so strange about the experience of the conference: a vast number of fundamentally introverted people in one place, a social situation that makes everyone want to feel known and recognized, and then makes the known and recognized want to run and hide. These are true but not entirely an adequate explanation of the existential peculiarity of it.

You can read all of the post on Mark's blog.

AWP bits

Poets and writers will be converging on Denver later this week for the Associatiation of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, better known as AWP.

I'm not going to AWP, after all. I'm going to Tallahassee Pridefest instead, where I'm featuring with the wonderful Terry Galloway, author of the brilliant memoir Mean Little Deaf Queer. To be honest, I couldn't afford Denver. The hotel room prices are outrageous, plus the airfare, meals, drinks, hookers... it was just too rich for my blood. Tallahassee is a leisurely drive, they are kindly putting me up and I am thrilled that an LGBT festival has made a literary event one of its focal points. Hooray for Tally.

I will still be taking part in my AWP panel, "Poetry By Any Means Necessary," with Lola Haskins, Karen Head and Megan Volpert through the magic of the cell phone. If you're at AWP and decide to attend (it's Thursday morning early...9 a.m. I think), know I will be there in disembodied spirit. Since it will be lunchtime here, I'll probably be sipping a Mai Tai on the beach with my slim, beautiful, 21-year-old boy toy, but maybe the waves won't cause too much noise.

If you're at the book fair, don't get trampled by the MFA students rushing around with their packets of poems and manuscripts looking for a publisher. Did they ban that behavior after Atlanta? I hope so, but who can blame them? So many poets, so few teaching jobs and residencies.

Sigh.

Two Poems for National Poetry Month

This is the video originally created for Shape of Box before it went on hiatus. I'm sharing it with you here on the blog for National Poetry Month. Both poems -- "Blowing Rock, NC" and "Stroke" -- are from a new collection in progress.