Three Things #14: Online Book Launch
Hello! This issue is all about my two book launches. One of them is over, the other is (at last!) imminent.
ONE: Next Chapter
My book launch at Next Chapter last week went very well. It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces. I hope everyone else had as good a time as I did.
And the book feels truly launched: it’s out in the world now, taking up actual space. It hadn’t quite felt real before, for some reason; not when my author copies arrived in November, not on publication day in December, not when people began telling me they were reading it. But an extended performance of several long excerpts before an audience sharing the same space: this act completed the book’s first journey from creation, and launched its second journey outward to its readers who will create their own versions of the book.
TWO: Online: March 15th at 1pm on Zoom
But don’t worry if you missed it — I’ll be throwing another book launch online in the form of a Zoom webinar. Tune in from anywhere in the universe at 1pm Central Time on March 15th. That’s less than two weeks away!
I will read selections from Vessels, and maybe some other poems as well. Ana Morel, who has been studying me in captivity and in the wild for over thirty years, will host the event. She’ll ask me some questions, we’ll have a nice chat about various and sundry poetry-related topics, and we’ll take questions from the audience.
The event will be recorded, and we will post it online soon thereafter. So if you missed the first launch, and then you miss this online launch, you will not miss out completely.
I will send out another notice with the registration link closer to the day, or you can keep an eye out on my events page, which will have all the most up-to-date information.
THREE: Some Recipes
The poems of Vessels were composed using a method called the 10-Minute Spill, a writing exercise I discovered over twenty years ago in a book called The Practice of Poetry. It’s simple: you choose five words, some sort of adage or folk saying, and with ten minutes on the clock, you try to write a poem using the words and some variation on the folk saying. For my book, I chose both the words and the phrase at random. (I have subsequently discovered other variations of this writing exercise.)
At the Next Chapter launch, I distributed bookmarks to everyone. Each bookmark had three things printed on it: a list of five words, a line from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and coordinates that guided you to a line in a book on a shelf somewhere in the book store. There were sixty bookmarks, and they were all unique.
I told people that they were free to use either the Shakespeare or the line from the randomly chosen book as ingredients to compose their own poem.
Those of you who did not attend the launch probably feel terrible for having missed it, so to help you feel a little more included, I have supplied the contents of five bookmarks below. Keep in mind that the coordinates apply to Next Chapter Booksellers specifically, where there are fourteen fiction shelves. But other than that, I’m simply telling you to open a book to a certain page, and count down to a certain line. You should therefore feel free to try to apply the coordinates to any nearby library or bookstore, or to your own personal library. The trick is to find a line in a book with as little conscious choice on your part as possible.
one
thousand / native / memory / family / unknown
55:5 — when wasteful war shall statues overturn
fiction 9 / shelf 5 / book 16 / page 174 / line 23
two
queen / watch / snow / garlands / earth
82:7 — and therefore art enforced to seek anew
biography / shelf 7 / book 40 / page 147 / line 29
three
village / sun / books / day / wine
86:6 — above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead
fiction 13 / shelf 6 / book 3 / page 30 / line 22
four
devils / heart / within / commotions / kings
59:6 — even of five hundred courses of the sun
biography / shelf 4 / book 27 / page 348 / line 12
five
farmers / generations / difference / ancient / spell
97:7 — bearing the wanton burden of the prime
fiction 6 / shelf 5 / book 35 / page 162 / line 22
Have fun! Your poem may very well be terrible, stupid, funny, absurd — but no matter what, it will be surprising, which is an excellent place to start.