Where I'll Be at AWP

With the AWP Conference a little over a week away, I wanted to note some of the session/activities I'm looking forward to attending. I've highlighted the events I'm really excited about or am a part of. Of course, I'll be blogging and taking photos to post.

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Wednesday, January 30

7 p.m.
CUNY Reception

10 p.m.
2nd Annual Cave Canem Fellows Reading, The Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery. This is a charity event so come out to support CC. And come and hear me read--I can use all the support I can get!


Thursday, January 31

10:30-11:45 a.m.
Celebration Song, Circle Song: Kundiman Looks Back at Its First Five Years

Noon-1:15 p.m.

1. Blog Form and Function in Writing Communities
2. Serving Poets and Poetry: Surveying the Field. The Serving Poets panel has the directors of four major poetry communities discussing the state of contemporary poetry—I’m leaning toward that one. But, good to see panels on blogging at AWP.
3. Poetry reading by Yusef Komunyakaa and Sharon Olds. May have to skip this one, believe it or not, because it will be packed!

1:30-2:45 p.m. (Hmmm … this is tough, and when am I going to eat lunch?)

1. Homosexual Tradition and Black Aesthetics
2. 40th Anniversary Reading by Fine Arts Work Center Fellows
3. High Profile Indie Publishers
   

3 p.m.-4:15 p.m.
Reading and Interview with Galway Kinnell, hosted by Alice Quinn. (May skip this to eat lunch.)

6-8 p.m.
Welcome Reception Hosted by National Literary Organizations of New York City.

Friday, February 1

9-10:15 a.m.

1. Off the Page: Multidimensional Writing
2. 2. How to Set Up a Reading Tour for Your Book. This looks like a no-brainer. I’ll probably be here.
   

10:30-11:45 a.m.

1. Graywolf Press Reading (Tracy K. Smith, Mary Jo Bang, Ron Carlson, Mattea Harvey, Benjamin Percy, Terese Svoboda)
2. Courtland Review 10th Anniversary Reading (Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Thomas Lux, Anne Marie Macari, David Rigsbee, Maurice Manning

Noon-1:15 p.m.

1. Don’t Call It a Comeback: Re-Birthing the Black Male Poet
2. Writing and Motherhood
   

LUNCH

3-4:15 p.m.
Book Contracts—I really could use help now.

4:30- 6 p.m.
Blue Flower Ars Presents: Poetry of Grief and Faith

8:30 p.m.
Academy of American Poets Presents Louise Gluck and Mark Strand

Saturday, February 2

9-10:15 a.m.

1. The Edges of Dispora: Callaloo on Avant-Garde Black Poetics
2. It’s Not Hopeless: Independent Presses, Publishers, and the Media
3. Literary Boston: The 20th and 21st Centuries
   

10:30-11:45

1. Split this Rock: Poems of Provocation and Witness. I’m really excited about this panel. Since I can’t go to the festival in DC in March, this will give me a taste of things to come.
2. Why Ballet Is Good for Football Players: How Screenwriting Informs Fiction and Poetry
   Not Your Usual Workshop
   

LUNCH

1:30-2:45 p.m.

1. Blockheads: A Roundtable Discussion of the Pleasure and Pains of the Prose Poem
2. Four Way Books 15 Years
   

3-4:15 p.m.
Broadening the Circle: How Cave Canem and Kundiman Became Family. Does my heart good to be here because I have intimate knowledge of both groups.

Joseph Legaspi is a panelist and Kundiman co-founder, and will be at the CavanKerry Press (also my new publisher) booth to promote his new book, Imago, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m., I believe. Go by and tell him I sent you. Hee! Hee! Hee!

4:30-6:15

1. Split the Lark: The Border of Music and Poetry
2. Twenty Years of New York City Slam: A Guided Tour of Gotham’s Competitive Poetry Scenes
3. Readings by Billy Collins and Frank McCourt
4. Poetry with History
   

7 p.m.
A Reception Hosted by The Poetry Foundation

8 p.m.
A Reading by Robert Pinsky and Natasha Trethewey.

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Lots of receptions, parties, and off-site readings going on throughout the conference. So if you want to meet up (and you’re not crazy or a stalker) e-mail me at jgill27494@aol.com and I’ll give you my cell number.