Lights, Camera, Gulp
Last night (yes, on the erev Rosh Hashanah.... don't ask), I participated in a really cool event at a local university. It was part of their continuing ed opportunities and part of a whole weekend on writing and publishing.
I was asked to moderate a "conversation" about contemporary and independent publishing and begged off several times. Finally, I relented, though I didn't feel I was the right person to do it. Knowing this school's writing program and my co-panelists' backgrounds as literary publishers, I just didn't feel I was the person they ultimately needed, but I agreed. I have to admit--I was a bit flattered and star-struck. Not only do I think public speaking is generally a cool thing to do, and this is a pretty prestigious program (and something that will look great on a resume....), but we also had dinner at Anne Waldman's house.
Anne Waldman was one of the original beat poets, friends with Jack Kerouac and others, including Allen Ginsberg, with whom she founded the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics (at said--Naropa--university.) Okay, how could I say no?
It was a great evening, starting off with the much-anticipated dinner at Anne's house. In addition to meeting Anne, I met Colorado's poet laureate Mary Crow. Yeah, I'm the kind of geek that diiiiigs this kind of celebrity. There were interesting conversations filled with talk of people I've never even heard of and loads of inside jokes, but fortunately I was able to keep up enough that I didn't have to resort to bringing up last night's "Survivor".
We arrived at the auditorium and I realized that yeah, this was a real and professional event. There were about 200 seats, most of which filled! There were three chairs on the stage, a low coffee table, microphones, and bright lights. There were cameras in the back of the room. Wait a minute. No one told me we were being filmed. I should have anticipated that, but alas did not.
After a few moments of heart-racing panic, I calmed, and off we went. I was anticipating the crowd to be completely different than it was. I imagined lots of writers just starting off, but many were already published, either in journals or books or both. I also anticipated that they would be writers of poetry and fiction, but just as many said they wrote non-fiction (we didn't get more specific than that) and several actually want to pursue careers in publishing!
There were a few awkward moments as one of my panelists had his own agenda, but I learned long ago that poets are impossible to rein in. Thankfully, things stayed primarily on track, the four page history of censorship in the United States aside. We talked about whether or not this is a good time to be in publishing (overwhelmingly, yes, but....), some of our peculiar industry conventions (publishers are currently working on Fall 2007 books), and the changing landscape due primarily to emerging tools such as blogs, RSS, and podcasts.
As I mentioned earlier, I didn't feel initially that I was the right person for the job. My background is in trade (bookstore) nonfiction publishing and my co-panelists both come from the poetry and literary fiction worlds. I wondered where, and really if, our worlds would intersect. Sure enough, they did--a lot, and those differences in our different parts of the world made for some fasinating conversation and differing perspectives.
Afterwards we got loads of questions and it felt really good to have been a part of it all. I hope we were able to help educate and spark some writers into pursuing their dreams, and encourage those who were interested in publishing careers to give it a try.
I woke up this morning having a dream about giving a presentation as part of a competition. There were two of us competing (for what, I don't know.) The last round had been a dramatic reading lasting seven minutes, and for this round, we had to look at a written work and give an extemporaneous interpretation of it. The woman I was competing against was named Meredith and she'd gone before me. It turned out that the piece we were using for this competition was actually something she had written and I was only a little freaked out, knowing that there was no way I could succeed in this task, as I was behind the proverbial 8-ball, with a huge disadvantage. Thankfully I woke up before I had to go on stage. I think this was a bit of residual stress left over from last night! So, while I'm glad I did it, I'm really glad it's over.
I was asked to moderate a "conversation" about contemporary and independent publishing and begged off several times. Finally, I relented, though I didn't feel I was the right person to do it. Knowing this school's writing program and my co-panelists' backgrounds as literary publishers, I just didn't feel I was the person they ultimately needed, but I agreed. I have to admit--I was a bit flattered and star-struck. Not only do I think public speaking is generally a cool thing to do, and this is a pretty prestigious program (and something that will look great on a resume....), but we also had dinner at Anne Waldman's house.
Anne Waldman was one of the original beat poets, friends with Jack Kerouac and others, including Allen Ginsberg, with whom she founded the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics (at said--Naropa--university.) Okay, how could I say no?
It was a great evening, starting off with the much-anticipated dinner at Anne's house. In addition to meeting Anne, I met Colorado's poet laureate Mary Crow. Yeah, I'm the kind of geek that diiiiigs this kind of celebrity. There were interesting conversations filled with talk of people I've never even heard of and loads of inside jokes, but fortunately I was able to keep up enough that I didn't have to resort to bringing up last night's "Survivor".
We arrived at the auditorium and I realized that yeah, this was a real and professional event. There were about 200 seats, most of which filled! There were three chairs on the stage, a low coffee table, microphones, and bright lights. There were cameras in the back of the room. Wait a minute. No one told me we were being filmed. I should have anticipated that, but alas did not.
After a few moments of heart-racing panic, I calmed, and off we went. I was anticipating the crowd to be completely different than it was. I imagined lots of writers just starting off, but many were already published, either in journals or books or both. I also anticipated that they would be writers of poetry and fiction, but just as many said they wrote non-fiction (we didn't get more specific than that) and several actually want to pursue careers in publishing!
There were a few awkward moments as one of my panelists had his own agenda, but I learned long ago that poets are impossible to rein in. Thankfully, things stayed primarily on track, the four page history of censorship in the United States aside. We talked about whether or not this is a good time to be in publishing (overwhelmingly, yes, but....), some of our peculiar industry conventions (publishers are currently working on Fall 2007 books), and the changing landscape due primarily to emerging tools such as blogs, RSS, and podcasts.
As I mentioned earlier, I didn't feel initially that I was the right person for the job. My background is in trade (bookstore) nonfiction publishing and my co-panelists both come from the poetry and literary fiction worlds. I wondered where, and really if, our worlds would intersect. Sure enough, they did--a lot, and those differences in our different parts of the world made for some fasinating conversation and differing perspectives.
Afterwards we got loads of questions and it felt really good to have been a part of it all. I hope we were able to help educate and spark some writers into pursuing their dreams, and encourage those who were interested in publishing careers to give it a try.
I woke up this morning having a dream about giving a presentation as part of a competition. There were two of us competing (for what, I don't know.) The last round had been a dramatic reading lasting seven minutes, and for this round, we had to look at a written work and give an extemporaneous interpretation of it. The woman I was competing against was named Meredith and she'd gone before me. It turned out that the piece we were using for this competition was actually something she had written and I was only a little freaked out, knowing that there was no way I could succeed in this task, as I was behind the proverbial 8-ball, with a huge disadvantage. Thankfully I woke up before I had to go on stage. I think this was a bit of residual stress left over from last night! So, while I'm glad I did it, I'm really glad it's over.
posted by Kay at
6:06 AM
2 Comments:
It sounds splendid. But you didn't address the most important question, which is, do Beat poets eat Godiva chocolate?
Not if you forget to take it to them. Thankfully, Wild Oats had some stunning red sunflowers.
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