Free sky.

Up there above the hills and the smokestacks and chimneys and rooftops, maybe that's where the poems are roiling without us.

I am beginning to feel as if June is getting away from me. Perhaps it is.

So glad to have time to get things done, but so much to get done.

Contemplating an attempt to "block off some time."

Not sure that's an option for me.

Derailed, back on track.

On the cusp of finishing what was the most difficult teaching experience of my life (in terms of compressed workload and exhaustion held over from the previous semester).

Graded the last set of papers today (exams tomorrow) and suddenly lines for poems flooded back into my head as if they'd almost been there all along.

I have much to catch up on, including a new collection of poems that needs to be spread all over the upstairs landing where we put our manuscripts when we're sequencing them.

Dogs and cats find this very confusing.

There's so much I need to do, but not quite yet.

Hello, May

May rolls in with a bit of hope and a sense of relief on the horizon. I just finished final edits on A Sunny Place with Adequate Water. I made it through another semester (well, almost there, at least). I can finally leave my pansies outside overnight (fingers crossed).

A library reading tomorrow afternoon.

Come hang out.

Tonight (4/17/13) I'm doing a live National Poetry Month hangout for Google+ with Jeannine Hall Gailey, Aaron Belz, and Nate Pritts. Details are here. We'll be reading poems and talking shop.

Please join us if you can! If you can't, it'll be on YouTube afterwards.

Next week, on the road again

Boston and a Case of the Great Expectations

Boston was here, and we were there, and now we're back. This year's AWP began on an impossibly high note with the Barn Owl Review + Thrush Poetry Journal Birds of a Feather Reading. There were over 100 poetry enthusiasts in attendance, and we had comfortable chairs for every one of them, as well as elbow room, a private bar/tender, food, cheer, and a tidy and spacious loo. 

Huge thanks to Helen Vitoria of Thrush and all the readers and listeners. We will be having Birds of a Feather II as a Wednesday night AWP offsite in Seattle next year, so mark your dance card now.

Aside from Wednesday night's awesomeness, this AWP was not among my favorites. It's going to be pretty damn hard for any AWP to live up to AWP Denver. This year, for some reason I just wasn't feeling it.

There was also a huge snowstorm that made us live like mall dwellers and run through glass tunnels that contained all the makings of migraine headaches.

On a happier note, it was awesome reading for Steel Toe Books, iO/Interrupture/Jellyfish, and The Country Dog Review. I signed copies of OHI at the Black Lawrence Press table and sold out (of copies). Thank you to everyone who asked me to sign a book! It was also a delight hanging out with the Akron Series in Poetry & Poetics authors and selling their books like hotcakes.

By the last day I was a very tired girl. It's emotionally exhausting seeing so many cool and dear people for way too little time. I was a little blue. I wish AWP let you rent parlours where you could relax with your friends in oversized and intimidating chairs with drinks service and plenty of space to catch up. Maybe we can find a forest parlour in Seattle.

Farewell, AWP 2013. I never liked the number 2013 anyway. Hoping to restore my high hopes for 2014. Who knows what color 2014's Barn Owl Review (issue 7!!!) will be.