Monday bits

We had our first Poets Dinner of 2011 at West Egg Cafe on Saturday night. In attendance (clockwise from top right): Colin Potts, Karen Head, Rupert Fike, JC Reilly, Julie Bloemeke, Cleo Creech, yours truly and Christine Swint. Great conversation, great food and a lovely way to spend a Saturday night. This was our seventh poetry dinner since 2008.

Speaking of Rupert, his first collection, Lotus Buffet, will be published this fall by Brick Road Poetry Press! Woot!

Ben Tanzer's new novel, You Can Make Him Like You, is available for pre-order. He's a fantastic writer, so you definitely want to check it out.

Jeannine Hall Gailey shows off the cover of her next collection, She Returns to the Floating World.

Have you visited Nic Sebastian's Whale Sound lately? Hear Nic read other people's poetry. It's a revelation!

If you haven't attended the Sunday night #poetparty on Twitter, you're missing a good time. The party starts at 9 p.m. eastern time and you just follow the hashtag to join in. Last night the discussion was on how film, art and music influence poetry in honor of the Oscars, which were a dreadful bore. Next Sunday we're talking chapbooks.

Blogs are dead again...sorta

You might have read the article in The New York Times called Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter. The Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier. Old farts like me weren't polled, apparently. The article said kids found Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr (which is...uh...a blog platform) easier and more sociable.

The fact is blogs – like printed books – will never die. Blogs will always be a place to find more substantive work than status updates on Facebook or 140 character tweets. The majority of news sites are now built on blog platforms, such as Huffington Post and even CNN, allowing readers to interact and leave comments. Personal blogs fill a niche – whether it's sharing recipes, celebrity gossip or book reviews.

As I stated in a post last year, the number of visitors to my site has dropped off dramatically while the number of readers and interactions at Facebook and Twitter continue to rise. Does that mean I'm going to stop blogging? No. I think everyone should have a hub, whether it's a blog or static website. I like the way a blog archives your writing and thoughts, where on Facebook and Twitter they are a flash in the pan unless you want to scroll endlessly through previous posts and tweets.

Blogs have certainly shown their worth in the poetry community lately, especially in the debate over whether or not Tony Hoagland's poem "The Change" is racist (check out Seth Abramson's lengthy post at The Suburban Ecstasies) and the controversy over the theft of the Langston Hughes cutout from Busboys and Poets in D.C. (a good place to start is Sandra Beasley's Chicks Dig Poetry blog) in protest of the low fees they pay to poets. Blogs have facilitated discussion on these issues, which is what a good blog should do.

I don't think blogs are dying, just evolving. Declaring the death of blogging is premature and greatly exaggerated.

Weekend Music: Beth Ditto - I Wrote the Book

Beth Ditto - I Wrote The Book


My new anthem.

Vlog 5: Verizon iPhone geek, fanboy, wanker

My first vlog with the Verizon iPhone 4. Still trying to sort out the lighting issues.

Sunday bits

Book review and editing projects complete, but no vlog. I simply ran out of time, so hopefully this week at some point.

As for Remain in Light, I wrote the chapter tonight that I had sort of been dreading: detailing Jean-Louis' death in Paris during the 1968 riots. How he died was the main unanswered question from Conquering Venus, so being able to expand and tie it all together has been both a thrill and a challenge. Although I've been working from an outline for this novel, Jean-Louis' final moments came as a surprise even to me. Fleshing out his character (and his secret lover, Frederick) has been one of the most exciting parts of writing this book. I hope you'll agree.

Already talking to a couple of fellow poets and writers about potential panels for AWP 2012 in Chicago.

Saturday night fever

I'm on deadline. I have a novel to finish, a book review due and articles to edit for the day job. I missed Ayodele Heath's book launch tonight, so apologizing for that right now. If you want to read a fantastic collection of poetry, check out Otherness on his website. Hope to post a new vlog tomorrow night using the new iPhone. Oh, iPhone...how did I live so long without you?

That is all.

Wednesday Bits

I've been a bad mood all week. A little overwhelmed with projects, people, parents and life in general. Sometimes I just want to hit a reset button -- especially yesterday when it seemed liked a perfect storm of fuckery. Rather than focusing on the bad, here's this week's good news:

I haven't made a new vlog in a couple of weeks because the MacBook camera seriously sucks. That will be remedied tomorrow when I pick up my shiny new Verizon iPhone at the Apple store. The iPhone has a gorgeous HD video camera, so I'll start filming with that. Plus I'll actually be able to make phone calls from my cell phone. What a novelty!

I'll be teaching a master class on social media for writers with publicist extraordinaire Michele Karlsberg at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival in May. More details on that soon.

My poem "Credentials," which originally appeared in SubtleTea, along with my interview with poet M. Ayodele Heath is in the new issue of International Gallerie. Based in Mumbai, the journal is the Vogue of literary journals. It's glossy, oversized, full color – stunning. That's the cover at right.

Although I can't tell you the date for the release of my second novel, Remain in Light, I can tell you that the ebook version will be available first followed by the print edition. Very excited!

Many thanks to Patrick and Randall at Decatur Market & Gallery for asking me to lead a social media workshop for artists this evening. Great group of folks and so many fantastic questions!

No AWP for me

Many of my blogosphere, Facebook and Twitter buddies are in Washington D.C. at the AWP 2011 Conference. I'm in rainy Atlanta writing – this blog, my novel, a new poem, articles for the newspaper I edit.

Honestly, I didn't see the point of going to AWP this year. While I would love to meet up with some of my fellow writers, I simply couldn't afford to go (no university subsidy here), wasn't invited to be on a panel and I'm between projects, so nothing to shamelessly self-promote.

I do plan to attend the 2012 AWP in Chicago, so if anyone is putting together a panel on poetry, fiction or social media, do let me know. I'll start saving my pennies now.

If you're kicking yourself for not attending AWP, read Jeannine Hall Gailey's handy-dandy "How To Survive Not Going to AWP DC" guide at her blog. It's funny stuff.