Labor Day weekend recap

This assignment is so gay anthology launch

Labor Day weekend, for me, has become synonymous with the Decatur Book Festival. This year, I had two gigs - one on Saturday on the Local Poetry Stage at Java Monkey Coffee House and on Sunday at Eddie's Attic.  I also had a list of other readings and panels I wanted to get to and, as usual, failed miserably.

Friday night was the big keynote address from Congressman John Lewis, and after sitting in nightmare traffic for four hours on Atlanta's disaster of an interstate system, I threw in the towel, came home and went to bed. On Saturday after my reading and hosting for an hour on the Local Poetry Stage (which featured readings by Cleo Creech, Lisa Allender and Louise Runyon), I went to the Best American Poetry Anthology 2013 launch event with Denise Duhamel, Tom Lux, David Lehman, David Kirby, Jericho Brown and Kevin Young. Then, I raced over to the launch event for the This assignment is so gay anthology edited by Megan Volpert and published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Two really fantastic events. I decided to just immerse myself in poetry all weekend.

My main stage event with Theresa Davis and Kodac Harrison at Eddie's Attic was fun. We decided to share the stage and do a round-robin reading of our work, as well as sharing stories about how we met at the Java Monkey Speaks open mic. We had a great audience and we sold a few books.

After the Sunday gig, it came up a big storm and everyone was running for cover, but I decided to go home. I was absolutely exhausted from the busy week, getting the new edits for The Venus Trilogy ready to send to Sibling Rivalry Press, plus a host of other projects.

On Sunday night, I hosted the monthly #poetparty on Twitter and we made the trending topics list - right up there with Syria, David Frost and Lady Gaga. If you're on Twitter, make sure to mark your calendar for Oct. 6 at 9 p.m. EST for the next #poetparty and join us for some great discussion and camaraderie of the poets who tweet.