Organizing your writing life

WEEKEND REPORT: On Saturday, I recorded two new programs for The Business of Words with Lee Passarella and Larry Jaffe. Lee and I have had our differences over the academic vs. slam thing, but I enjoyed his new book, The Geometry of Loneliness, and we have since smoothed things over. I had been wanting to get Larry on the show for months, but he's been busy as hell with his work for Poets for Human Rights and traveling around the world to promote the organization. I met Larry three years ago at the Austin Poetry Festival and was immediately captivated by his work. He was a mover and shaker in the LA poetry scene for many years (including creating the online resource Poetix). I'll post when both of these are available for download. In the meantime, you can still hear/download my interview with Bruce Covey by clicking here.

On Saturday evening, I went to a book launch party for Megan Volpert's (aka Dr. Madelyn Hatter) first collection, face blindness, from BlazeVox Books. There was a good group of folks in attendance, and Jessica Hand and I were "surprise" readers at the party. Megan's poems are quirky and interesting little slices of life (although they may or may not be Megan's life), especially her tales of visiting Paris with her mother. Megan is double-dipping this year, with a chapbook called Domestic Transmissions coming this spring from MetroMania Press.

Sunday night was our first quarterly open meeting for Poetry Atlanta. We held it at Java Monkey before the open mic and a few folks turned out to ask questions and get caught up on what we're doing. The open mic was packed, as usual, and Megan featured. It was a fun night at Java Monkey, with a lot of the old crowd there and some funny, sexual poetry being read post-Valentine's Day.

I finally got caught up on The L Word, watching three episodes in a row. While some of the plotlines are still ridiculous, there has been some much-need humor injected into the show -- again mainly by Leisha Hailey and Cybill Shepherd's bizarre romance. Marlee Matlin is fantastic as the deaf sculptor that Bette is falling in love with. Mia Kirshner's character Jenny should be killed off. The writers have turned her into this vengeful, prima donna bitch and her story arc doesn't match the tone and feel of the rest of the show. With so many new chracters recently introduced (you almost need a program at this point), ditching some folks wouldn't hurt a bit.

I realized last night while working on Wake that I have a set of poems -- mostly political in nature -- that could make an interesting chapbook. These are poems removed from the collection because they don't follow the three mini-arcs I've created. Now, I'm trying to decide whether to group these together and enter a few chapbook competitions that are coming up. Working on two manuscripts at once was not my intention, but chances are these won't ever have a home outside of a chapbook. A number of them have been previously published in both print and online journals. I'll have to give this some more thought...and welcome yours, gentle readers.