LouderArts

Monday I had the chance to feature at Bar13, LouderArts. It was fun. I basically had all the poems I was going to read in this green folder with me and I paced around and around until it was time for me to go up. As soon as I step onto the stage, my eye starts to freak out, just one eye, and it waters for a good five minutes. Luckily, God has given me two, and the ability to see without needing both, and so the show still went on.

Before my reading, I was supposed to have a poetry elective class. My student and I were headed to the Starbucks - because it's only appropriate that one should hold a writing class in a coffeeshop - and got onto the elevator at my job and ended up getting stuck. For an hour. Yes. Stuck. Being the traveler that I am, I had plenty of reading material that I needed to focus on to keep from freaking out. I am mildly claustrophobic, and it is sparked when I can't see or feel or hear air flow. So to keep from thinking I was going to suffocate to death, and my last time on earth was going to be in this damned elevator, I decided to read some of the things I had with me. Of them, an essay about the Holocaust and how poetry - the embodiment of poetry - helped some of the concentration camp prisoners survive, how it sustained them. I thought it interesting that I should choose this essay at this time to read, and I pulled out some excerpts to frame my reading. It worked relatively well.

So. I read a billion poems. I don't believe it felt as long as it was. Everyone in the room was quiet and listening. My roommate came and recorded it, and it sounds amazing, and I hope to find a way to get it up here so that others can listen (if only in parts) if they want to.

I have this thing with poetry readings...it's why I like to have a weekly spot to read at, or why I like to do a lot of poetry readings - I want to read new work in front of an audience. New work. But then I realized, this is a prelude into what my own readings will be like when I have my book out, so I figured it only fair most of them come from there. So I did, but I still read new work...and I loved it. They loved it. Patrick Rosal and Aracelis Girmay were there. My roommate and several of my friends were there. It was a nice and lovely and just grand time.

I'll let you know if I get the audio up and running.