Blogger thought this blog was a spam blog, so I couldn't post for a few days.

The reading in LA was great. I've hung out with Dana Ward in a number of cities, but I'd never heard him read--it seems like he's playing around with a variety of tones at the moment, though all very much within a kind of experimental lyric context. And I don't want to write like Susanne Dyckman, but I felt like I learned a lot from her extremely precise images and use of texture--I enjoyed both their readings.

Plus, Michelle Detoire and her partner came down for the reading! Yay!

I'm starting to feel familiar enough with LA audiences that I'm a bit more comfortable and relaxed reading, although a certain amount of nervous energy is essential to the way I perform. I was also glad to be able to see Stan before he heads off to Tampa for the foreseeable future. I read a brief section from See it Everywhere about a swimming, leaping iguana in honor of Stan and Tampa (and canals and Florida rivers).

To blog about later:

1. My little sister Sarah and her love of coconut shells and how she (like I used to and probable many other people) projects her longing onto seemingly bizarre objects.

2. How I never fantasized about my future wedding or house as a child or teenager, but I did spend hours diagramming the perfect horse barn, or cat jungle gym. So the fact that I have been fantasizing about building Lester a cage that is both inside and outside is nothing new. (How this also sounds, rhetorically, like frat-boy fantasies of having a permanent keg or a keg in the truck, etc).

3. I forgot

THE SMELL LAST SUNDAY READING SERIES

Leaving tomorrow for LA this weekend to bid Mr. Stan Apps goodbye and to give a reading.

THE SMELL LAST SUNDAY READING SERIES

Sunday, July 29, 2007

THE SMELL LAST SUNDAY SERIES features:

Susanne Dyckman
K. Lorraine Graham
Dana Ward

THE SMELL
247 S. Main Street, between 2nd and 3rd St, downtown Los Angeles
(enter in the alley in the back)

Doors open at 6:30 pm
$5

Susanne Dyckman received her MFA in Writing in 2003 from the University of
San Francisco, where she is now one of the program¹s graduate thesis
advisors. After being named co-winner of the Five Fingers Review 2003
Poetry Award, she was invited to join the journal¹s editorial staff. She
has been a panel moderator at the 2005, 2006 and 2007 AWP conferences, and
in 2006 presented a Creative Writing Pedagogy paper at the RMMLA annual
conference in Tucson. For the past three years she has hosted the Evelyn
Avenue Reading Series, which features experimental poetry, prose, and, on
occasion, fine art.

K. Lorraine Graham is the author of three chapbooks, Terminal Humming (Slack
Buddha), See it Everywhere (Big Game Books), and Large Waves to Large
Obstacles, forthcoming from Outside Voices' Take Home Project. Dear [Blank]
I Believe in Other Worlds was originally a pamphlet from Phylum Press.
Narrowhouse Recordings recently released Moving Walkways, a limited-edition
chapdisk of her work. Lorraine has just completed the extended manuscript of
Terminal Humming.

Dana Ward is the author of New Couriers, The Wrong Tree, and other
chapbooks. He has new work available or forthcoming in The Recluse, string
of small machines, the DC Poetry Anthology and seconds. He lives in
Cincinnati, where he edits and publishes Cy Press.

The SMELL LAST SUNDAY READING SERIES is co-curated by Teresa Carmody (Les
Figues), Ara Shirinyan (Make Now Press), and Stan Apps (Insert Press)