Organizing your writing life

BUSY WEEKEND AHEAD: Tomorrow I'll be performing at the National Black Arts Literary Festival, reading from the poems created for the Body Maps exhibition. I'll be appearing with playwright Sindiwe Magona and author Gil Robertson at an event called "Honoring & Remembering," which is a response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa. Robertson (author of Not In My Family: AIDS In The African American Community) will host the event and there will be a cutting from Magona's new play Vukani!(Wake Up!) about the AIDS crisis. The 10 poems I've written are now printed on a broadside (created by the wonderful Cleo Creech) called After the Poison: Poems for the Body Maps Exhibition. I just picked them up from the printer and they look fantastic. I only had 50 printed up and I decided to sign each one. They will be sold for $1 (or more if folks want to make a donation) and the money will go back to the NBAF. The event is at 3 p.m. at City Gallery East at 675 Ponce de Leon Ave. For more information about this event and all the other art, theatre and music happening as part of NBAF, visit www.nbaf.org. I'm very excited to be a part of this.

Tomorrow night, I'll be a special guest at the opening of Charles Jupiter Hamilton's art exhibition, "Two Dancing Monkeys," opening at Sycamore Place Gallery in Decatur. Kodac Harrison will be peforming music and there will be readings from the Java Monkey Speaks Anthology, which will be on sale. The evening starts at 7 p.m. and gallery owner Sylvia Cross said it might not wrap up until the next morning! I won't be there at dawn, but, hey, if you're energetic...go for it. Go to www.sycamoreplacegallery.com for more info.

On Sunday, I'll finally be going back into the studio to tape new editions of The Business of Words with poets Beau Cutts, Ed Madden and Rupert Fike. The show has been on hiatus since April and in "reruns" at Leisure Talk Network. The new episodes will be available for podcasting almost immediately. Cutts just won a Georgia Author of the Year Award for his new poetry collection; Ed Madden is a wonderful South Carolina poet I met in Austin; and Rupert is a great poet and storyteller. Should be a set of fun interviews.

UPDATE: Blue asked where the Body Maps broadside is available. They are at the info desk at City Gallery East inside City Hall Annex on Ponce while the exhibition is up through July 23. However, if you can't get by there, email me and I will send you a PDF version you can download to make your own broadside.