first dislocate reading

Tonight: (fiction MFA) Patrick Hueller, (poetry MFA and dear friend) Meryl DePasquale, (non-fiction MFA) Wilson Peden, along with U of MN professor and award-wining writer David Treuer.

Other figures in the pictures: Shantha Susman, dislocate Publicity Manger and that silly pair, Colleen Coyne (editor0in-chief) with Josh Morsell (managing editor), who run the show.

Coming soon: a post on Adam Zagajewski's visit and a post on my (hypothetical) Emily Dickinson anthology.

Of the == == == collective: Colleen + Meryl.

PS: If ever you wish to use photos I took, please email me or leave a comment for permission. (I have yet to say no, unless permission was not requested.) Thanks!

event: dislocate reading october 13

With my very not-so-much technological savvy, I did a trial-and-error poster for an upcoming dislocate event--our first reading of the 09-10 school year, which features one of my favorite fellow MFAers, Meryl DePasquale. So if you live in the area, you ought to come and check it out.

If, for nothing else, to admire my advertisement in person--since the photo is mine (from an Austin trip Ryan and I took this summer) and I even learned a little Photo Shop magic to get that darn logo on. This is coming from the girl who prefers the literal scissors-and-tape method of creating handouts. And overheads. No kidding.

what is found there

It is not for lack of topics or lack of movement and thought that this blog has so many gaping moments of quiet. It is from sheer exhaustion, from pulling myself along by inches, from one day to the next. Today's was no exception--starting with chauffeuring visiting writer Jim Shepard to his MPR interview and ending with handing out ziploc baggies to graduate students so they could take the leftover hors d'oeuvres home. (Hey, we haven't been paid since the beginning of June.)

I do want to show pictures I took from tonight's reading, want to share some thoughts about teaching freshmen writing, want to transcribe my notes from Trish's first two memoir classes, but tonight, before I stumble up to bed, confused at just how those stairs got to be so steep anyway, I want to share this: I have a little collective, a collection of four other women poets, and I am grateful for them. Tonight, we took a look at my haphazard chapbook draft and despite the clear indications of my eyelids that I am, indeed, very very tired, I also feel this strange sense of energy and purpose and excitement at sitting down and shuffling and clipping and tidying and generating and slicing and injecting. The work of revising terrifies me, mostly because I don't want to destroy a good thing or conflate a bad, but I'm gaining confidence, and with these four voices behind me, I feel almost brave, almost ready to polish and push this thing out into the world. A knock from the nest, so to speak.

mfa launch party

(Ray Gonzalez, current department head)

(Julie Shumacher, previous department head)

(Josh + Colleen, managing editor and editor-in-chief of dislocate)
(Colleen is also a member of the == collective)

second Colleen, also ==

At a space deeply ensconced in F. Scott Fitzgerald mythology, the MFAs of the 2009-2010 school year gathered for a bit of schmoozing. There was a bit of bobbing up-and-down as we introduced ourselves to the group, explaining our roles within this institution, and I tried to remember if I'd had caviar before this night.

Our first week is behind us and I'm still a bit worn at the edges, a weekend spent away with family and friends and a return to rigor, to three fully formed days on campus a week. Tomorrow: a four hour block of time as the creative writing office intern, a meeting with fellow MFAers to discuss the possibility of a joint critical essay which could take us to NYC, and an evening course on the memoir with Trish Hampl.

bon-fire

(Shawn, who actually knows how to use Photoshop, spliced the above version)

(photoshop diptych tutorial)

L to R: Ryan, Bart, Colleen C, Amanda, Colleen M, Garrett, Meryl, Shawn

This weekend, Ryan and I were blessed with a series of guests--Saturday evening, full of friends from various aspects in life, and Sunday was dedicated to some of my favorite MFA people: Amanda (who is recently featured in Lit and will soon be in New Orleans Review) (and her boyfriend Will would be with us, but he is Ph.D'ing at Cornell), Colleen C (our fearless dislocate leader) and her boyfriend Bart (who is working on a lit Ph.D and is also poetry MFA), Colleen M (whose work has been featured in dear camera, among other places) and her boyfriend Garrett (who is soon to be speaking in Austin on the Politics of Naming, which sounds incredibly interesting), and Meryl (whose poetry inspired by the work of Virginia Woolf has inspired my own focus on canonical writers and her blog inspired me to start this one) and her husband Shawn (who is hugely talented and I will be selfishly taking advantage of said talent).

Amanda, Colleen C, Colleen M, Meryl, and I make up a loose collective within in the program. Last spring, we did a bit of collective reading, and this autumn, we'll work on chapbook manuscripts.


(The evening before, I allowed my husband and my friend's husband to lighter-fluid a book I'd been using to futz with, found-text-wise, as these two charming men, one a bit tipsy and the other equally giddy, were seeking something compelling to toss into our bonfire--and I took a few photographs, which somehow allowed this fahrenheit 451'ing of a biography on one of my favorite poets--this Plath biography, I must add, I picked up a library book sale for a few pennies and discovered I owned a duplicate, but still. Burning books? Then: I kept thinking of the beauty of altered books.)

It's strangely beautiful.