Up to date

I've started posts about the amazing and successful Kickstarter experience with John's book project. And I've started a post about the recent benefit reading for Dean Young at UC Berkeley, from my personal point of view. And now I want to point you to Jeannine Hall Galley's interview with me (thanks, Jeannine!) on her blog. So this blog post attempts to do all of that (and more) and bring you up to date.


First, the Kickstarter. We are, as some of you know, in rather dire straits financially — well, in that matter we are hardly different from a great many others. But at the same time, we're both trying to complete art projects and put them out for the world in the form of books. Publishing, for me, for my second book of poetry, is not unlike the first. At this point, I'm entering second-book competitions and approaching some publishers through open readings. Hue and Cry has evolved from its original version in 2008, and I'm pretty happy with it and optimistic about its success. John's fine art photography project is a much more ambitious enterprise, and for that we used Kickstarter. His goal was/is to use the funds generated to finance the creation of a book dummy by a top book designer and hopefully convince a publisher that his book is worthy to publish. Well, I don't want to say much more here other than succeeding with Kickstarter seemed utterly hopeless at first (if you don't make your pledge goal, you end up with nothing) and then, thanks to our incredible friends and family, it worked! (More news on his book to come, when there is something to report.)


The benefit reading was June 23rd. I had already contributed what I could to Dean, whom I adore, but I was very excited by the terrific slate of readers. In addition to hearing them read, I hoped to meet Michael Wieger, of Copper Canyon, who was responsible for placing my poems in the voices of Picasso's women friends / lovers / wives on Narrative. Well, after a glass of wine, I did approach him. We talked about the Picasso exhibit that's now in the De Young, and he told me that he visited that show in Seattle with his daughter and took my poems with him to help relate to the paintings. This made me very, very happy!


There's not that much to say about Jeannine's interview with me other than she's a super poet (her She Returns to the Floating World, will be published by Kitsune Books in late 2011) and very nice person, and I hope you go read the interview.


Well, houseguests have come and gone. We've returned to applying for jobs, keeping our fingers crossed, and fixing up the house in case we have to sell it — what passes for normal these days, chez nous.