Okay, technically, my stop at VALA, a fantastic new arts organization, isn’t part of my book tour; I read new fairy-tale-inspired work as part of the Once Upon a Time event in conduction with the Redmond Poet Laureate program. But I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to show you this mini tiara. It’s not every reading at which someone gives you a little princess crown.

I also wanted to take a moment to talk about what an exciting place VALA is.  You might not expect that a community arts center would be nestled into Redmond Town Center (one of the sadder malls of the greater Seattle area), but even though it’s tucked in next to a Starbucks and across from a furniture store, VALA is a great gallery and work space for visual artists. And as a not-for-profit organization, VALA is committed to helping make the visual arts more accessible to everyone in our community. If you’e in the greater Seattle area, stop in, check out the art, meet the great folks who run the gallery space, and celebrate the fact that the Eastside is making the arts more readily available and visible in our area.

Next on the official book-tour docket are three more Seattle-area events: find me on Beacon Hill, Richard Hugo House, and Elliott Bay Books in June!

I may be back in home sweet Seattle now, but that doesn’t mean that the business of Burn This House is on hiatus! Some exciting things have been afoot lately, including:

one very kind review at Shelf Awareness, 

and another very kind review at The Rumpus.

I am also VIDA’s Lady In The House this week at the blog Her Kind. 

And this past Sunday, I had the opportunity to read at Open Books, A Poem Emporium, which I believe to be one of the coolest bookstores in the world. An all-poetry bookstore in the heart of Seattle–what could be better than that? (One of the reasons I’m looking forward to AWP’s being in Seattle next year is the fact that poetry people from all over the country will have a chance to visit Open Books.)

Not only was it a treat to read in an iconic Seattle literary landmark on the anniversary of its founding, but it was also a special occasion because it was my first hometown reading in support of Burn This House. Reading to an audience that included so many people I love was a shot in the literary arm after many days on the road, and there’s nothing like Seattleites’ literary spirit to make a poet feel welcome. On top of all that, I got to read with the fantastic Jeannine Gailey, whose impressive new collection, Unexplained Fevers, is just out from New Binary Press.

That’s what I call a hometown welcome!

We left this story in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, after a great reading at The Green Bar. The next morning, I was up early to grab breakfast with a friend before heading out to Louisiana for a reading later that night. About halfway through the process of getting dressed, I nearly passed out, apropos, apparently, nothing. Next came the beast-like sweating, then chills. I did the mental math. Yep, I’d managed to get the flu, or something like it, on a day when I had a three-state drive ahead of me. Good going, Davio! Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday, I got back on the book tour road, kicking things off with an early morning flight to Houston, then on to Birmingham, then finally to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a reading that evening. I sometimes forget that it would be a good idea to leave a day for cross-country travel before I need to read, but somehow or another, I managed to roll into Alabama with enough time to spare to drop a bag at my hotel room before grabbing a pre-reading dinner. Driving through Tuscaloosa’s main drag was was somewhat startling, if only because there is a defunct helicopter, suspended on some kind of plinth,  aimed directly at the main roadway. Pass by the helicopter, and you find yourself looking down the muzzle of a tank’s gun, also directed right at traffic. I later learned this was a war memorial, tastefully placed in the middle of a mall parking lot. Nothing like frightening passersby to commemorate the war dead. Added to that sight was the world’s jauntiest dialysis clinic, which is housed in what my host, Brian Oliu, confirmed was a former Old Country Buffet. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve discovered a new talent of mine: booking flights that require me to wake up at 3:00 in the morning in order to make it to the airport. They’re all flights that seem like great plans on paper (So cheap! So efficient!) but that contribute to an ever more bloodshot look for my eyeballs. The quick trip from Chicago to Minneapolis was no exception, but I was glad to have made the choice to fly to Minnesota rather than drive, as was my original plan, because the Midwest greeted me with a freak blizzard on my arrival.

Everyone in Minnesota swore that a mid-April snow dump wasn’t common, but I have my suspicions: everyone seemed to have a number of craftily knitted hats at the ready. Thunderblizzard notwithstanding, I was happy to be on the ground again and to have a couple of days until my next book tour event to relax with dear former Seattle friends in their new St. Paul home. Relax might be a strong word for what one does when one’s favorite 2-year-old is doing all he can to impress (Singing! Dancing! Counting on a base-two system!), but having some time to eat, sleep, and spend time with friends was a much-needed dose of normality in the middle of the surreal experience that is a book tour.

On Thursday night, after having discovered that my supposedly tough leather boots were, in fact, not as snow-proof as I might have hoped, it was off to Common Good Books in St. Paul. There are so many things to love about Common Good, the first of which is, of course, is that my lifelong love of Garrison Keillor felt strangely consummated by my reading in his bookshop. But Mr. Keillor aside, the bookstore staff was fantastic. They were clearly knowledgable, invested lovers of books, and their store felt as much like a well curated exhibit of literary work as it did a place of commerce. Much as I love our local bookshops in Seattle, the Twin Cities may just have us beaten on the indie bookseller front. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m here in lovely (read: cold! Snow-covered!) St. Paul, Minnesota, taking a little time out before my 7pm reading tonight at Common Good Books to let you know that I’ll be participating in this year’s Big Poetry Giveaway!

I’ll be giving away a copy of Burn This House, along with a copy of the Spring 2013 issue of The Los Angeles Review! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment here on my blog. On May 1, I’ll choose a winner at random, and then I’ll contact you and send you a book. It’s that easy. Sounds good, right?

Comment away, friends.

I fully intended to write separate blog posts for stops 7 and 8 on the book tour, and really, both deserve more than one blog post each. I suppose it speaks to the excitement to the Gathering of Poets in Winston-Salem yesterday that I didn’t have an ounce of energy left to spare for a blog after the day-long conference was done.

First of all, as a West-Coast person who’d never been to The South before and had a number of preconceived notions about what North Carolina might be like, I have to issue a blanket statement: I was wrong! I imagined, I’m sorry to say, a bleak landscape with shanty-like buildings along fast-food lined roads and people who might look at a liberal chick from the Pacific Northwest with suspicion. But North Carolina was truly gorgeous, and at every opportunity, people embraced me with such graciousness that I felt truly at home. The South has it going on, friends.

Speaking of immense graciousness, Kevin Watson, the editor of the impressive and ambitious Press 53, is officially the nicest man in publishing. Not only does he have a wonderful editorial eye, and not only has he published some of my favorite poetry and fiction collections of late, but he’s also genuinely interested in developing a vibrant literary landscape through positive, community-building approaches. The Gathering of Poets conference, where I was delighted to teach and read yesterday, is one such approach. The Gathering brings together serious poets from across the region for an intensive (and intense!) day of workshops, fabulous food, books, and a final faculty reading. I was pleaded and impressed by the quality and seriousness of the writers in my workshops on publishing in literary journals, and I hope I was able to provide those writers with the tools and inspiration to submit poems, to risk rejection, and to contribute to the literary ecosystem.

Personally, I was moved by two later-career poets I chatted with after the workshop–each had feared that she wouldn’t be taken seriously in the journal landscape, one because she was a lesbian writer, and the other because she had spent her career as a nurse, not as an academic. I was saddened to hear that they’d felt their words would not be heard in the literary world, and I hope I managed to convince them otherwise. I believe that there is room for everyone in poetry’s tent, and I have a feeling we may be reading some smart, well crafted poems from both of those writers in journals soon. Read the rest of this entry »