CU - Write In the Rockies at the Boulder Creek Festival (Dream On)

If I were still directing creative writing at CU I'd have a table at the Boulder Creek Festival featuring Creative Writing Program authors: current & former faculty, students and possibly other CU faculty authors such as poets, Jeffrey Robinson, Vincent Woodard, Daniel Kim, Bruce Kawin, Suzanne Juhazs (now novelist?), Patrick Pritchard, Reiland Rabaca, Arturo Aldama; novelist, Paul Levitt, and any poets in the Spanish Department. I'd have a book table with time slots for signings, an area by the booth for ongoing readings. And, of course, applications for the program and classes (we screen non-creative writing majors, and often students don't realize that they have to submit a manuscript in advance.) We could have a list for a new Friends of Creative Writing organization. (I always liked my invented slogan for the CWP: "CU - Write In the Rockies" -- hey! I was instructed to "market.") We could have videos of readings going on, maybe sell some cds. Give away our free student mags, Walkabout and Square One (formerly Sniper Logic). (Maybe get a program newsletter going and give that away.) Maybe host local lit mags and independent presses. Put up my Stafford style instant publishing Poetry Wall. It'd be a great outreach and recruitment strategy. And, a good way to sell books. And, we'd get off The Hill. Maybe find new readership. Create community larger than our own little literary enclaves and, ahem, harems. But then, I've always been a Trabajadora Cultural. And have a decade of experience organizing book fairs and literary festivals; 30 years experience in the field -- since some were pulling up trainers. Gawd, how I love book fairs! The sound and smell of them. Boxes of fresh ideas. I love having my book to sell now because it reminds me of it, although it's not the same as hawking others I truly admire. Or having a press -- not to mention actually running one humming under my bare hands. How I love talking shop with printers & publishers. Salt of the earth. I spent 90 % of my time in the book fair talkin' to ole buds at the AWP. So it's an old habit to break. Besides, the possibilities for readings and appearances would be exciting; maybe retired faculty would attend: Marilyn Krysl, Linda Hogan, Steve Katz, Reg Saner, and newly retired, Peter Michelson. Maybe my former grad students with books would attend: Luis Urrea, Haas Mroue, Mark Spitzer, Alex Stein, Lisa Anderson and former undergrads, Alan Gilbert, Kristen Prevalett, Simone Muench, Brittany Baldwin. . . . And these just off the top of my pixels. Ah, free Poetry for the People! Oooo, support good writers and better publishers by buying their books! Yeah! Besides, it'd be good experience for the current students. Be a way for graduating and former students to come back and stay in touch. Good for the Boulder Creek Festival. Put the literary arts back in with the visual and aural arts. Making community is making heart -- by taking heart. yeah

A downhome girl can dream. And a down homegirl can write it down.

"We're the kind of people who lost California" ~ my brother

for lack of a pencil

"Well, write it up." ~ my mentor, Hayden White

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(still dreaming after all these years)
or did I dream this?
am I still dreaming?

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on another note:

WE NOW HAVE A NEW MFA!

lemme know
you know

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Re: Blog as Franklin Planner in action.
4:45 A.M.

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This weekend, I might just take my blanket and the portable mahogany book table/ display case I built "with my own hands" and hunker down by the creek and pull out some books. But it'd be just my luck to get busted for peddling poetry without a license.

Still. . . might attract a few. Poets, that is.

Care to join me? We could stage a Poetry-In. Throw it down. Pick one up.

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Speaking of which:

40,000 hits since last Cinco de Mayo, most looking for me. (Me to T: "Who ARE these people?")

WELCOME HOME, POET!

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POETRY ON, PEOPLE!

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Now,

"Hurry up, please. It's time."
~~~
"I've got to get
back to the gaaaaaaaaarrden."

yeah

Bird's up

Now's the time.