Ok, nobody else has started this thread yet, and I’m sure there are many folks out there dying to weigh in, so I’ll bite: How was Y’all’s AWP, from a poetry perspective, that is: favorite panels? readings? moments?
Affrilachian Poets Reading, Chicago Art Institute, Associated Writing Programs 2009 Annual Convention. Photo by Stephanie Pruitt-Gaines
For starters, I loved the Wednesday evening group press poetry reading at Roosevelt University organized by Ravi Shankar, which balanced translation so well with writing in English; the Poetic Dialogue exhibit of poetry/art collaboration at the Chicago Cultural Center; my own Multiformalisms panel, with Hank Lazer, K. Silem Mohammed, and Susan Schultz, which, until the last five minutes, was not contentious at all in spite of what people are saying; watching the poets (I figure they were poets, from the original and heedless ways they arrayed themselves) draped and perched each day with their notebooks and programs all over the lush carpeting of the Hilton lobby around the piano; and hearing rhapsodic accounts of the mega Gwendolyn Brooks tribute with Lucille Clifton, Michael Harper, and Major Jackson. . So now it’s your turn…
So many elevators, so few going up. People I wanted to see, but were nowhere to be found. Three yummy presentations in the same hour–only one of me. Wanting to attend some of the off-site readings and running out of steam, on brain overload. Dinner with good friends: one with a first book, the other in the last semester of her MFA. Getting to see the Second City building, but no improv. Terrance Hayes’ “triangle” essay on Wallace Stevens, complete with diagram. Book Fair merriment: buttons, chocolate, $1 journals on Saturday. Snow sculptures on Michigan Ave. & the awe of the Art Institute. Readings that rocked: FIELD’s 40th Anniversary, Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves, Water-Stone Review 10th Anniversary & Paul Muldoon. Some yawners, here and there, but you can’t win ‘em all. Just about the time I had the layout of the hotel figured out, it was over and I was on the shuttle van headed back to O’Hare talking with my seat mate about yoga, natural healing, India & Tagore. Didn’t get her name. Wish I had.
Posted By: Hari Bhajan on February 17, 2009 at 12:28 amReport this comment
I enjoyed the multiformalisms panel, Annie, but look forward even more to spending some quatlity time reading the book.
Posted By: Michael Theune on February 17, 2009 at 1:03 amOne of my favorite panels was the one on the renunciation of poetry. Led by Christina Davis, it featured some terrific poets discussing the reasons behind some great poets’ decisions to give up poetry. Donald Revell discussed Rimbaud; Spencer Reece discussed Hopkins; Joy Katz discussed Oppen; and Susan Wheeler discussed Laura (Riding) Jackson.
Great presentations, with great, idiosyncratic ideas. (E.g.: Revell: Rimbaud was *happy* after he gave up poetry; Katz: the real reason Oppen gave up poetry for so long was because he had a child…) Didn’t agree with everything, of course, but the panel was thoughtful and moving.
In fact, the presentations included in this panel moved me to suggest to Christina that she consider collecting them and trying to get them published. Should this happen, I’ll again very much look forward to reading the book.
Cheers,
Michael Theune
Report this comment
Thanks Hari and MIchael! At least in this format we can vicariously have been more places than one at once; I have a richer sense of the conference already from reading your posts.
Posted By: Annie Finch on February 17, 2009 at 9:35 amAnnie
Report this comment
I spent a lovely Valentine’s Day weekend with my very significant other in New Jersey. Saw two movies, a presentation at the Newark Museum, and an amazing dinner downtown.
But all the pictures and descriptions (and the fact that she’s going to Chicago THIS week) have put me in a Midwest state of mind. I need to catch up with a pair of pure Vienna Chicago hot dogs. And then on to AWP Denver and DC!
Posted By: Rich Villar on February 17, 2009 at 1:22 pmGood to see you here, Ms. Finch.
Report this comment
I’m only beginning to process this first year at the conference. Each night it took an hour or so to fall asleep; so much was whirring around in my brain!
Posted By: Molly on February 17, 2009 at 10:29 pmI took lots of photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acertainslantoflight/sets/72157613647607493/
There was indeed a spot when I wish there were more of me. So good to reunite with old friends, to see old teachers (Carolyn Forche is so wonderfully supportive), realize new goals for my own work.
Still, still, trying to process it all and keep going in this semester!
I did pick up a handful of a certain Annie Finch’s critical work as well as a book or two of her poetry. I’m looking forward to reading it… but at the rate I’m catching up on coursework, I might need to wait until summer.
Report this comment
Vowel Movers (vowelmovers.wordpress.com) has it just right:
Posted By: michael robbins on February 18, 2009 at 11:37 amWhoa, it was really great to meet you at the conference and sorry we haven’t emailed you yet and we’re going to submit to your journal and paypal the latest issue of your journal and reject you when you submit to our journal and we’ll get a subscription to your press for the next two years and you’ve totally changed our ideas about poetry and that wasn’t me who feel asleep at your panel and that also wasn’t me who farted in the elevator and i wrote you this amazing poem, it’s occasional and an ode and uses modernist tecniques and you remind us of Zoolander and we left our beret in your hotel room, Mr. Linen Whisperz, so please please facebook us asap…
except that I would have included the word Vocoder in there somewheres.
Report this comment
Annie:
Posted By: Camille Dungy on February 18, 2009 at 3:20 pmGlad to see you, too, come back from AWP still thinking it over for several days. I like your question. The Brooks Tribute was my number one highlight, and seeing so many folks I miss seeing more frequently. The book fair, also. I just can’t get enough of that book fair. It’s a bibliophile’s dream. So much wonderful and wonderfully-bound poetry in one place!
–Camille
Report this comment
Camille, so glad you mentioned the bookfair. In the 15 (!) years I’ve been attending AWP, since A Formal Feeling Comes was launched at a panel in Tucson in 1994 (I seem to remember there were 400 people attending that AWP–that can’t be right, but it may be!–this year it was 8400) my experience of the conference has gone through three phases that are quite distinct in retrospect. The first group of years I spent most of my non-performing time going to events and panels, as many as I could manage to attend; the second group of years I spent most of my non-performing time in the bookfair by day, and at night at huge amorphous dinners of poets that seemed to magically assemble themselves in the lobby each evening; and in the third phase I seem to spend most of my non-performing time in prearranged meetings with various configurations of people and at off-site events. I wonder if this pattern is something that other people have experienced. The bookfair is of course still unparalleled…
Posted By: Annie Finch on February 20, 2009 at 10:12 amReport this comment