Intonation 2021.

1. The concept

I am deeply grateful to Paul Rabinowitz (and David Crews) for enlarging my world in a way that now feels irrevocable. Here is the project concept, which I was fortunate to be a part of this year.

The Intonation Project, sponsored by Arts by the Peoples, is a collaboration between North American poets, musical composers from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, as well as dancers and choreographers from Montclair State University. Six poets will participate in two (virtual) writing residencies to create new work. Artists working in dance and other medias will be invited to the residency to conduct workshops to inspire and broaden an understanding for the project’s focal themes. Once completed, the poems are given to six choreographers who will set each to dance. They will record their work, then both the dance and poems will be sent to Jerusalem where composers will create original scores. This is a circuitous project that emphasizes collaboration, interpretation, and a deeper understanding of the creative voices of others.

I am deeply grateful to Paul Rabinowitz (and David Crews) for enlarging my world in a way that now feels irrevocable.

Jack Puluka dancing in “Retrograde”, which he also edited as videographer.

2. The “kindred souls” and kindling

While working on this project, I couldn’t help thinking how much composing and choreography feels like a form of translation—the generative creational mode that brings art into another language.

Any poem should be translated as many times as possible, even by the same translator over the years. Only fundamentalists believe in a "definitive" translation.

- Eliot Weinberger arguing that all can be translated; the "untranslatable" as that which waits for its translator

There is a sense in which what was so breathtaking was watching how the words would be translated into music and motion, into the languages which fascinate me. Perhaps because I’ve been reading lots of epistolary forms this year—lots of letter between and among poets—Boris Pasternak came to mind, particularly in his view that artistic creation becomes greater than its creator when passing from the subjective realm to the objective realm, or the realm in which one is read independently of selfhood.

Watching Noam, Jack, and Miguel was a little like Pasternak’s epiphany upon reading Marina Tsvetaeva’s “Poem of the End” and Rainer Maria Rilke’s letter:

“Nothing but splinters all about me: there are kindred souls in this world—and how extraordinary they are!”

How extraordinary to feel this kinship across artistic mediums, rather than simply among poets, and to read one’s self apart from one’s self, especially in the case of “Retrograde” which wears its dread like a wedding dress. So I leave the room with words from Marina Tsvetaeva to Rilke, from one creator to another, staring at Orpheus, admiring the distance between wings.

3. The composer

Noam Leor is a Composer, Music Producer, Songwriter and Audio Designer. Born and raised in Israel, Noam was trained both as a pianist and guitarist. Later, out of curiosity and with the belief that there are no real barriers between music genres in the 21th century, Noam became involved with Hip Hop, Avant-Garde, Jazz, Downtempo, Musique concrète and more. Noam just released his third album under the name 'Hrzl', and is currently a student in Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, finishing his bachelor degree.

4. The choreographers and dancers

Miguel Miranda, originally from Peru, is a current student at Montclair State University pursuing his BFA in Dance. Miguel has had the privilege of performing works by Ohad Naharin, Frederick Earl Mosley, Eduardo Vilaro, Antonio Brown, Gregory Dolbashian, Joshua Manculich, Jessica Di Mauro, Donna Scro, and many others.

Jack Puluka is a New Jersey resident & currently a sophomore BFA dance major at Montclair State University. Jack began his dance career specializing in Irish dance. Under the training of Maureen Collins at Lynn Academy of Irish Dance, he taught & assisted choreographed traditional Irish dance classes. Jack has both performed in & instructed classes for Hammerstep Irish dance Company, since joining the organization in 2018. He started formal contemporary dance training at Somerset County Vocational & Technical High School. At Montclair he’s performed in works set by Jessie DiMauro, Christain Von Howard & Brandin Steffensen. Jack hopes to further pursue teaching & performing in a variety of different genres. As well as continuing to expand his dance vocabulary in choreography, dance education, & editing for dance film.

5. The final performance

And all my gratitude for the beauty and inspiration it brought to my life.

"Retrograde" by Alina Stefanescu
Composer: Noam Leor
Choreography: Jack Puluka, Miguel Miranda
Costumes: Jack Puluka, Miguel Miranda
Videography: Jack Puluka, Miguel Miranda
Editing: Jack Puluka

A reading of "Lust Is Grief"

First published in the beautiful Virga, with so much gratitude to editor Laura Page. I’m including the text so that everyone can hear it.

I cut off the intro of my night porch reading of a poem first published in @Virgamag but I’m grateful to @TaraSkurtu & everyone out there right now. All the love for #InternationalPoetryCircle and my fellow mammals. All the broken terrified love. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/MNLMCx8prW

— Alina Stefanescu (@aliner) March 18, 2020

---

Lust Is Grief

"Lust is grief that has turned over in bed to look the other way."

Donald Hall

Writers for Migrant Justice, Birmingham

On September 4th, writers throughout the country will host readings to raise money for Immigrant Families Together.

Poet Emma Bolden and I are organizing the Writers for Migrant Justice reading in Birmingham, which will take place on September 4th from 5:00-6:30 pm at @discobirmingham.

We want to make sure that Birmingham shows up and makes an impact in this devastation and dehumanization launched against immigrant bodies whose crime is derived from the fact of their foreignness. And from the xenophobia and racism that makes such criminalization possible.

How This Works: Donate Online or At the Reading

We're asking readers to sign up and either ask sponsors to make donations or make a donation to sponsor themselves. A sponsor who donates $50 or more can choose a poem to be read at the reading.

Sponsors can donate online using the Writers for Migrant Justice page. Please ask your sponsor to write "Birmingham" in the comments section so that we can track donations.

We will also collect donations at the reading in the form of cash or checks made out to "Immigrant Families Together." You'll also be able to donate electronically via Venmo and the Writers for Migrant Justice GoFundMe page.

Until then, here’s the Facebook page which remains far more interesting and important than any cute kitten meme currently doing the rounds. (Peace kittens, I love you—but migrant lives matter more to me than the multiple feel-good vessels we use to ignore them.)

AWP 2019 etc.

I have this quote from James. J. Gibson running through my brain, namely: “Events are perceivable but time is not.” Meaning we can only perceive time when something happens—our experience of time is event-dependent. And the way I feel the breath of AWP is both dizzying and terrifying. I am grateful, afraid, and absolutely small in the face of all this.

Held in reserve: Visiting the vets, c. 2011

In my hometown, the less there is to discuss, the more impassioned the discussions. This is true at gas stations, in school parking lots, in hair salons, in every place where people huddle and clot except the Veteran’s Administration Hospital.

At the V.A. Hospital, words are held in reserve, marshaled for unknown future action.

We visit the vets to honor them. We pronounce each name aloud as if part of a liturgy.  We sing songs, play piano pieces, and attend to geographic details in their personal histories.  We intend to offer hope, although the vessel which bears hope is usually nothing more gilded than a story, a vignette from outside the handsome red colonial brick walls.

*

When we arrive, the administrator’s smile chloroforms us.

“There will be two separate holiday performances for two separate groups of vets,” she drones.  

I try to speak, joke— I didn’t realize the demand for carols was so high.

“No, it’s not a logistical issue.” The administrator assures me they have all the space they need. The bad joke rolls like a penny across the glossed floor.

The caroling needs to be divided because the recent vets refuse to share a room with the Vietnam and Korea vets. That is all she can tell me. Words are held in reserve, held back like reserve troops, not wasted on minor explanations. I imagine a massive aluminum tank bubbling with abandoned verbs, the gradual condensation of past tense.

*

Since our visit is divided according to wars, I begin to mark off each carol as a particular battle. Each song one breath closer to victory. There are no losses in our vocal battles because we have nothing to lose whereas they have already lost the things they hoped not to lose. Independence sounds abstract but aches like a concrete pillar pinning a foot in place.

My son performs a piece he composed especially for the vets. The piece is named “V.A. Vets’ Carol”.

A ward asks if he can’t play “Carol of the Bells” instead, since most vets prefer familiar, popular tunes to personal ones. There is so little we can offer these men and women that does not feel intrusive or privileged.

Be polite, I remind the kids between carols.

It is unclear whether I am referring to the sudden jumping jacks or the burgeoning impulse, the ongoing spontaneous impoliteness, that burning flame of childhood that runs and bumps and jumps and finds occasional release in a string of why why why whys. I worry their actions might be misinterpreted.

Neuroscience studies have shown social anxiety to be an entombment within first person— an inability to adequately hear or see other human beings. Jokingly, a researcher said the cure for this anxiety-induced lack of empathy might be as simple as good manners. The researcher was kidding but the truth isn’t funny.

The truth is a web of over-taut nerves which threaten to snap. I fear that my words will cause harm; that my nouns will turn against me; that my children will sell me to the hospital administrators. Selling information, after all, is as natural to them as withholding has become to me.

I don’t remember being innocent enough that my words caused unintentional hurt. My empathy deficit widens to include my children alongside the silent, smiling veterans.

*

Thank you for….—and I’m not sure how to finish after making eye contact and realizing the man cannot see me. He is blind. I am a voice drifting through the room to thank him for his service and this phrase suddenly feels vulgar and ominous. I am a conventional arrangement of meaningless platitudes floating past. I am a hallucination. Mostly, I am so very very sorry.

Ten feet away, my son chatters about heirloom seeds with an elderly female in a wheelchair, her silver hair bobbed into a sleek helmet. She is beautiful. She is resilient tomato stalks pummeled by southern rain. She is still standing— despite the wheelchair.

The heart stutters, bats its wings against a closed window, when I overhear the words protest and pacifist coming from Max’s lips.

It is over. The moment has arrived. I will be unmasked as the traitor who carried cardboard signs with the words Not In My Name painted in black tempera. Every eye in the room will turn to erase me.

A nurse will speak firmly when she asks me to leave.

The firmness in her voice will be thick and unyielding as a druid oak root.

Veterans will rise from their chairs and raise their fists in anger and fury.

I shoo the hummingbird in my heart away, tell it to settle down. Slurp soda water. But the drum in my head leaves me deaf.

The vet who resembles Ursula K. LeGuin motions to me, “Come here”. Here it comes. Finally. My son flaps his hands and continues speaking.

I smile, my name is Alina.

The surface of the heart is silent but the not in my name by now marches to its own underground drumbeat. As it always has. As it will continue.

“Your son says you’ve had a rough year,” she says hoarsely, a soft grin easing the corner of her lips upwards, a genuine expression of a school teacher’s retired sympathy. She is not what I expected. A fellow-veteran of American female-ness. A rebel, I imagine, to have served in the military so long ago—back before females were officially acknowledged.

“WWII,” she explains. “I was telling your son about flying old aircraft. He said you were a feminist.”

Did she use the f-word? What is familiar for us— a word still forbidden.

She isn’t going to confront me. Her name is Margot. She’s happy to make my acquaintance. She believes we have something in common.

I don’t know if she got the whole story.

“I told her about your tinnitus, mom.” Max leans against my arm, confident, the ghost of Howard Zinn between us.

Margot nods, her squint resembling the fruit in a bowl of cereal. “I’ve had tinnitus since my thirties. Other mothers didn’t understand. It made me feel lonely. And different.”

Does it ever go away? I want to pretend I didn’t ask. To erase my silly question and the silly flower-skirted face of me.

Margot shakes her head. “Tinnitus lasts longer than most marriages these days. It’s a very faithful friend.”

We have tinnitus in common. But the other mothers could never understand—they weren’t vets were they?

Mar-got. I tender her name like a tiny mollusk still attached at the center, a fragile mystery I can’t bear to break.

“They weren’t vets…” That smile again. Only now do I notice her hand trembling. The expression on her face, nonplussed, says they’d been trembling all along.

“Are you a vet?” She asks in earnest. Her face is a tapestry, a splendid map, and I am only just now beginning to read it.

“No, I’m not a veteran. I’ve never experienced war. Or combat.” I fight so many colors of shame.

Margot’s face lights up. “Oh, you’re a veteran, alright. Your son says you homeschool. And that you have tinnitus. And that you’ve brought that kids with you. To protests.”

The moment has arrived— brighter, more blinding than I could have imagined.

My son had told Margot about my involvement in the Fellowship of Reconciliation. About the protests against war. And Margot is still smiling without a hint of anything hidden below the surface. Looking at me as if she’s not afraid to read the whole story.

Her eyes honor me.

The honor of her eyes is relentless.

She honors me with her eyes until the word changes colors and honor becomes a word that has everything to do with seeing one another outside our social anxieties and comfortable scripts. On this trembling, quake-prone ground, a child’s earnest impulse is the true one. Looking back, I can’t see anything else.

Reading a poem from the new manuscript.

Grateful to my middles grill for taking this fancy video… and to Art Town in Birmingham for providing a space for readings and art.

P.S. I am SO HUNGRY to read and share these poems. Please email me at rainscented@gmail.com if you’re looking for readers and strange Romanian-Alabamians for your event or attic.

Book launch and miscellany at Art Town

Yesterday, Heidi Lynn Staples and I launched our latest collections at a small place named Art Town in East Lake, a part of Birmingham. Being able to host a free book launch means the world to writers, and Art Town provided us with both space, a free sound system hook-up, a food set-up, tables, chairs, dishes, plates, anything we could have imagined. 

It's hard to convey the coolness of this poster designed by Craig Legg, layered on top of old movie screen canvas pilfered from the former adult cinema across the street.... and it meant so much that Craig also added this book launch on the marquis across the street. That's right, Heidi and I were billed on the old adult theater sign. Don't be jealous. 

Setting up the room

The marquis

Poet Lori Lassetter Hamilton and hubs

Getting book fair ready

The amazing Mojo Mamma, Laura Secord

My son reading comics

It was stupendous--and I was rendered, literally, stupid--by the opportunity to share the mic with fellow Birmingham writers and poets tonight.

Among my gratitudes, I have to mention Mojo Mamma Laura Secord and the women of Sister City Spoken Word Connection, a local writing collective that pops up whenever poetry needs to happen. I am proud to be a member and lend my voice to the many readings and fundraisers they've hosted throughout the years.

While the parents read, the kids will practice automatic drawing on the walls. Art Town has a strong penchant for surrealism, nourished by LaDonna Smith, whose multiple artistic talents include improvised violin solos, surrealist poetry, and anything her beautiful imagination conjures. This event would not have happened without LaDonna's encouragement and assistance.

My usual last-minute reading selection

The church of poetry

Feature readers Ashley M. Jones, Jessica Smith, Maria Vargas, and Lori Lasseter Hamilton warmed the stage (and the room) with their incredible poems. 

“What lands lord the riverwalk? what in the lord is this lands all who walk? what when lord verb to walk the riverwalk to lord? what is lord over? what is lord under? a host of knobby riverwalk river cooters lords while neon nylon shorts thump thump thump the trail’s heartbeats or is beaten the fog wafts the deodorant wafts and as a barge of coal laden back slips along the Black Warrior river walk’s, water glinting with carcinogenic yet youthful highlights. ”

— Heidi Lynn Staples, excerpt from "All Who Walk"

Heidi Lynn Staples read seven poems from her latest collection, A**A*A*A (Ahsahta Press, June 2018).

I read a few unpublished new poems from a collection-in-progress, including:

• "When the Nice Men Hang Their Civil War Costumes to Dry on the Line"

• "Longing in a Foreign Body"

• "Chamber Tone Poem"

• "Alabama, I Knew"

• "Sul Porticello"

And then read a few unpublished micros from a fiction collection in progress, including:

• "Zooooo"

• "On being vulgar sometimes"

• "On watching a woman fight with a man who is not her husband at the park"

Ashley M. Jones reading from "dark/thing"

Jessica Smith sharing new poems

Heidi Lynn Staples launching her book

Alina reading from a new fiction manuscript

I finished off my set (or maybe I started) with a flash from Every Mark I Tried On, namely, "He Takes His Waking Slow," the title of which is inspired by a favorite poem by Theodore Roethke.

I love bringing poems to bear on fiction--dragging the lyric into the paragraph, changing the tempo of expectation, enlarging the possible escape route.

Readers, improvisors, good people

Heidi Staples and Jessica Smith

What happened on June 21, 2018

Dogs regularly run away during storms but not before them.  The coffee is cold. The children want cereal. The fern on the front porch tells morning walkers that I don't water her enough. The fern is not a true friend. 

My fourteen-year-old son is a pianist who loves Gogol Bordello, admires Aristotle, and despises gender-reveal parties.  He pauses in the middle of a fugue by Bach to grumble about Donald Trump. "I can't even practice," he says. I slide into the tone that must be doubled when resolving a dominant seventh into the tonic.

My neighbor makes Reborn dolls for money. The dolls are sold in a digital nursery. She offers medical services for the dolls when they are damaged. She refers to a damaged doll as a sick baby. It's important to find a cute name and market the babies.

Good marketing increases the chances of adoption. She is hosting a baby shower for a new baby next week. There will be cupcakes and name-guessing games. There will be a happy expectant mother. There is a registry my neighbor can share with me if I'd like to attend. If a reborn is created from a kit as opposed to whole manufactured doll, it may be called newborning. 

As I load the car for a day's outings, the neighbor runs her hand over my youngest's hair: "You have beautiful hair," she says, "how would you like to donate your hair to a baby that needs it?" I tell the kids to run inside and water the toilet. I want to hug my neighbor and tell her that I'm sorry, we don't do reborns. Instead, I ask if knows a good place to pick blueberries. She doesn't. 

In the car, we listen to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade, Op. 35”. The harp creates massive ocean waves that roil Sinbad’s ship. In the story you tell to save your life, a maiden must rise to the surface of whatever happens. Emma Goldman believing love would learn and grow stronger from freedom. Rosa Luxembourg believing that females could share power.

There is a private, glitzy club on top of Red Mountain that offers a panoramic view of Birmingham. I am curious, eager for trouble as child who wants to be forbidden. Trespassing is a boundary violation grown-up.

We stop for gas at a nondescript station and let my son fill the tank. I purchase a soda and four blue raspberry ring-pops; slip on a ring as I pay. One iced bottle of Coke to split among four mouths. We pass it around the car, cold sugar coating our tongues like that silence in a bathroom stall after a secret. "Where are we going Mom?" is an excellent question.

"Somewhere," I say, still deciding.

I miss the cordial misogynies of my childhood. Hatred of females is so blatant and subsidized that I dread answering my daughter's innocent question: "Mommy, what is a gentleman's club?" "I don't know sweetie. Maybe it's a place for gentlemen to go."

She watches the long black building smear past.

"But why doesn't it have any windows?"

"It costs more to cool a building with windows in the summer." 

I change the music to Maria Tanase. Because I need a little Romanian to get through this part.

There it is: The Club. I drive up to the "Members Only" sign and pause. My kids can read now. They don't want to see the city if it means getting arrested.

I reassure: "There are no grounds for arresting children on the basis of trespass." We park and play it cool; rehearse the cover story in which I am an event planner scouting locations for a possible state conference in the fall.

My middle-schooler rolls her eyes--"That's a lie, Mom."

At the entryway, an electronic sign welcomes the members and spouses of the Alabama Coal Association. The kids look serious. On our way to the look-off point, we stroll past rooms with gilded mirrors and opulent chandeliers.

Seven elderly ladies in Sunday dresses perch around a glass table playing cards. "Those must be the spouses," my son whispers.

"Pretend we belong here," I reply. 

Photo by Nelson Brooke, Black Warrior Riverkeeper. Flight by Southwings.

The view is spectacular. To the left of the city, Alabama's aging Coal Contessas can feast their tired eyes on the James H. Miller Jr. Electric Generating Plant,  "the nation's largest emitter of carbon pollution", also one of the nation's last major coal-fired power plants. "What is that ugly smoke way over there?" my youngest wonders.

"It's the beauty of electricity and human invention."

The Contessas can see us through the glass window overlooking the patio. I am sure they know their kind. I am sure they are getting suspicious. 

I cannot stop thinking about the babies or the image of a rose petal trampled into hay. An article online describes an incident where a reborn was mistaken for an actual baby and rescued from a hot parked car after being reported to police. There is the possibility of oxytoxin being released through cuddle therapy. Studies suggest that cuddling a realistic doll has a similar effect to cuddling a living baby. A sex doll may soothe more effectively than a wife. In one year, it may be inhumane to analyze the costs of objectification. Since objects fill a basic human.

After dinner, I unstrap my softest leather sandals and sit on the edge of the bed, near the bay window. The house settles, a scuffle of voices inches through the hall. I wait for him, replay old scenes in my head. That time he accused me of "doing something" with a co-worker. "I don't know what you did," he says, "only you know what you did. You're the one that did it." But I didn't do anything. No matter how interesting it would be to have done something plot-worthy, I failed to act in a way that contributed to rising action.

It is impossible to convince someone that you did not do something if they have not decided what the thing you did might be. Marriage is an ontological problem with epistemological applications. Marriage is an event that demands rigorous music. I turn on the Rimsky-Korsakov and pick up the thread from earlier. The Tale of Prince Kalendar. The hands of the harpist, a flock loosed into a field. And the bear of a man entering the room, the man asking what I did with the kids today. "You, lover of storied women, fool for the glorious tale, I have one. To beguile you. Here's how it happened..."

(What Happened on June 21, 2018 Project sponsored by Essay Daily)

5 things that make me happy this week

Hanging with beloved writer friends at Ernest & Hadley Booksellers in Tuscaloosa
last weekend plus this fascinating young photo of Annie Dillard.

1. Druid City Pride

When we moved back to Alabama and decided to raise small mammals, Druid City Pride was a beacon of light, hope, and love among the fundamentalisms. That's why I was thrilled when Brandy asked if I would donate a signed copy of Every Mask I Tried On for their fundraiser. As I pack up the book (with a few secret goodies), I want to make sure that Tuscaloosa mammals join Druid City Pride on Saturday June 16th from 6 to 8 pm for Equality on the River Tuscaloosa at Another Broken Egg Cafe as they celebrate equality in West Alabama! Admission is FREE, but you will want to purchase some tickets for your chance to win some fabulous prizes. There will be light hors d’oeuvres courtesy of Crimson Catering and a full cash bar provided by Another Broken Egg.

2. Amazing poetry in Pidgeonholes

Being poetry editor at Pidgeonholes has been an incredible experience--just getting to read so many different poets and covet so many forms of word magic--absolutely humbling. Jennifer Todhunter is a genius. Ana Prundaru is a freaking maven of every art medium and language. Cathy Ulrich is a fiction goddess of the first realm. On that note, if you have speculative, experimental, or absurdly unclassifiable poetry, please submit it. In the meantime, read these incredible poems by Devin Kelly, Chance Dibben, Kelsey Adams, Laura Page, Jim Zola, Gad Kaynar Kissinger, Christina Lee, Emily Tuttle, and Shriram Sivaramakrishnan.

3. A new flash in Dime Show Review

It's called "Asylum Junkies," and here's an excerpt:

The nation-state rose and fell like a wind tunnel of plastic grocery bags in the park square. She swatted a fly from her nose. No, she hadn’t been trafficked. She loathed the loaded words he wedged against her. 

When in Rome, I speak Italian. She lifted her voice at the end of the statement as she’d observed American women doing when speaking to men. Was she flippant? She had watched soda commercials where females spoke flippantly in a very convincing manner. American men watched those commercials as well, given how much television they watched, given how hard it is to avoid it.

4. A reading/signing in at Little Professor Book Center

All the glorious details. Thursday evening. 

5. Guest editing for Issue 27 of Cahoodaloodling

Submissions due 9/14/18. Issue live 10/31/18. Submissions call below. Submission magic right here.

Joy is elusive, sudden, unexpected, gradual, and sometimes grotesque. The week after my mom’s death, I remember a hideous joy on the fifth day at 3:47 pm when the sun burned my shoulders and all the world—the dogwoods, the warm pavement, the mockingbirds near the porch—was implicated in her presence. I could feel her laughing, smell her apple-tinged perfume, watch the red of her hair burn their way across the yard. Just one single minute of exuberant impossible and then back to the banality of living lies, telling others I was fine, negotiating the absurdity of death and imagining someone could be erased, gone, eternally absent.

Joy is so many flavors of awe. There are joys we fondle—memories we pick up and unspool in private. There are public joys—a friend’s description of holding her girlfriend’s hand for the first time on a public playground, the relentless joy of a gay pride parade. And yet, despite countless publications that swear to deliver it if you put your knees over your head and eat only almonds, there is no formula for joy on this planet. By its nature, joy is unsustainable, untenable, hard to hold, impossible to coerce.

What surprise is lovelier than joy? So give us your public joys, your private joys, your foolish fondles. Give us your transient, shameless, vulnerable, wimped-out absurdities. Give us the harrows of joy, its horrors. Give us your smallest joys, your childhood joys, your most monumental. Give us the elusive object that lacks a template. We can’t wait to read it. However it looks. However it haunts. Whatever it touches.

. 

Storycorps on World Press Freedom Day

I'm excited to be part of PEN America's #worldpressfreedom interviews. You can listen to the interview on Storycorps here.

New Orleans Poetry Festival, 2017

A four-hour drive to New Orleans in which I caught up on Ezra Klein's podcast and revved myself with excess configurations of Lady Gaga and Slackwax.

Thanks to Maureen "Wonderful" Thorson, I got to sleep in an Airbnb filled with female poets and located blocks away from the New Orleans Poetry Festival's location.

Amazing street art.

After the drive, wandering those blocks between building, getting a little lost, retracing steps, agreeing to lose a little more.

 Reprieve from the sustained visual banality of the interstate. 

Then discovering amazing publications by Tinfish Press and others at the book fair.

Can I pause for a second and plug the magnificence of Timothy Dyke's Atoms of Muses? Incredible book. 

A Tribe Called Quess rocking the mic.

....and hearing the incredible poetry performance of A Scribe Called Quess.

Being blown away.

Tweeting as much.

Buying a book. Asking him to enscribe it for Max, my teenage son.

Asking him to speak through the anger Trump has unleashed into our lives.

Being blown away again. Blown and blowing.

Running into Brooke Champagne on her home turf.

Vaguely discussing French politics.

Sign in a yard in New Orleans.

Wandering again. Eating soup from the co-op.

Pausing to hear open mike performances made possible by Dusie Press.

Coveting babies slung on hips, babies in strollers, babies making the poetry festival rounds with their mothers.

Feeling awkward.

Feeling less awkward while eating.

Feeling perpetually awkward and too self-conscious to write it. Around writers. 

Parked outside the New Orleans Center for Healing Arts.

Remembering the only other time I visited New Orleans was with my mother. Her joy all over the place. Her joy oozing from banjos and street speakers.

Drinking a Trappist beer alone near the waterfront at sunset. Vowing to be social. Failing.

Finding out that every bookstore in New Orleans closes at 5:30 pm!

Drinking another beer. Calling it even. 

Watching kids do P.E.-like things in a dirt courtyard. Wondering why.

About all of it.

Putting on deodorant.

Putting on my mother's special necklace from Taos.

Deciding what to read while sitting at a table with Maureen, Jessica, and Michelle. Being grateful. 

Being grateful again for the beautiful mammals from Negative Capability Press.

Missing the presence of Sue Brannan Walker.

Eating alligator cheesecake.

Meeting Carlos Matos, poet pugilist.

Meeting so many incredible poets whose work inspires and provokes me.

Coven Press Reading, the best, the best, the best....

Jessica Smith's enchanted Coven Press hosted a two-hour reading on Friday, and Claire Trevien (fuck typepad's lack of accent marks) was amazing enough to record it for Sabotage Review.

At which point she is grateful to the audience that remains at the end of the 2-hour reading marathon.

I read bits and pieces from a forthcoming prose poetry collection, Stories to Read Aloud to Your Fetus, set to be published by Finishing Line Press in September 2017, and felt generally drained by my own lukewarm performance. On the other hand, I was invigorated by readings from Heidi Lynn Staples, Vane Pacheco, Lisa Samuels, Ginger Ko, Maureen Thorson, and Michelle Detorie. 

You can read Claire's coverage of the New Orleans Poetry Festival here and here, including the eye on J. D. Scott's amazing Sacred Grove Reading Series, a staple of the Tuscaloosa literary community.