Where In The World Is Lorna? Lorna Dee's Calendar

One of these days (years) I have to order the GigMaster, cool software for managing reading gigs and other Po'Biz fare/fair / faire but designed for musicians. Novelists get to have booking agents for that. And, agents. And, it's only in this generation, and the current state of whatever institution a poet happens to find herself in these days, that a writer has to account. What will be left for future generations of bibliographers to do? I need a secretary.

Anyway, final moon phase before the new, end of Mercury retrograde in my sign, Mars withdrawing in my sign, and that Jupiter thang squaring it all. Time to finish what I started. Time to deal with all this paper and pixels. Sorry if sometimes this blog seems like an ego-trip -- I started it in order to deal with getting my cv and biblio & biographical information in order and updated. And in order to stop missing reading and lecture opportunities because there's no time to deal with getting back to anyone. Seems to go with the canon, these cannonballs of correspondence, these reams of unfiled missed correspondences, these slips of phone messages (MY OWN BROTHER WAS IN TOWN AND I DIDN'T KNOW IT!!) (I'm a bloody hermit.) I started this in order to count coup, something I never counted as being part of or worthwhile to a writer. I never kept a scrapbook. My mother always did that. From my first poems and articles published in the high school newspaper. They all burned in the fire in '82. I never kept count of my publications. Not like other poets, with their files and fotos and clippings. (One well-known Chicano poet keeps a list of "Garbage" poems he sends out to mags in the "Garbage" file -- mostly Chicano and other independent publications. Sad. And, weird.) And, I started this because people ask. And I don't have time to answer all the questions and emails, and help with your report on a poet that is due tomorrow morning. (I just got one of those last week. I feel guilty, but as Ana says in her blog, it's derailing to get asked to think about explaining what was going on and what you intended in a poem you wrote 30 years ago while working on your first novel, say. Ya know? But, I try.)

I get by with a little help from my friends. And despite being a hermit, I am a Leo. I love seeing my friends of the road on the road. I love all the strangers who are friends I haven't met yet. And, coming up, I'll be in two of my "homes", my native land, California, my natal turf, SF, and Texas soon. Maybe I can meet you? Maybe I can come to your bookstore, your class, your venue, your writing group, their prison, the university, El Centro soon. Just ask. Backtrack me, as they say. Maybe I can work it into my schedule. Better now than later. Now that I'm feeling well enough to travel again. I'm looking forward to it.

And, I'm really looking forward to a reading soon with one of my favorite people and longtime po' buddy I haven't seen in a generation, (sigh), fellow poet/publisher, Maurice Kenny. Rumor has it they're trying to rustle up the esteemed and elusive poet, Wendy Rose, to join us at The Intersection on my birthday, August 6 (Hiroshima Day!) at 7:30 pm in San Francisco. That would be especially poignant to me, as I was on a long, long, long plane-train-bus poets tour with them when I heard (I dreamt) that my mother was killed. I had to fly back home before the big reading for River Styx in Saint Louis, Nov. 6, 1982. They are dear friends whose memories are woven into the incredible autumn colors of the St. Louis Botanical gardens that day, the coy Japanese koi and the wise and gentle poets -- how the leaves fell in shapes and shades of fire that day we walked the zen paths, the curved roads that would lead the devil away, that long day, waiting. I'm really looking forward to this homecoming event sponsored by the Native American Cultural Center -- back in my native land. August 6, San Francisco. See you there.

And, my little brother's getting married. How cool is that? August 12, San Francisco, in The Mission. I'll be there.

Beginning August 28, I'll the the guest blogger for the week for the Poetry Foundation's website. If you're looking for more poetry related posts, catch me there. Some of the topics I plan to blog about are (what else?) po'bloggers and how the best poets make the best publishers. I can't wait. POETRY magazine didn't run the review of DRIVE, as I predicted, but at least I'll be one of their po'bloggers, like one of my favorite poets, C. Dale Young last month.

The month of October's all about Texas and the border. Oct. 5-7, I've been invited to be a featured writer at the 9th Encuentro Internacional de escritores in Nuevo Leon, Monterrey, MEXICO put on by the Consejo para la Cultura y las Artes de Nuevo Leon. Cool. Also, this year's encuentro is dedicated to the memory of Salvador Elizondo and the theme is the "Frontera entre ficcio'n y realidad" / the border between fiction and reality. I hope to be accepting the invitation. I have a lot to talk about and present with this one. Especially challenging given the language barriers (mine) and the frontera entre academia y las clases socio-economicas. ¡Aju'a! ¿Nos vemos?

And speaking of favorite poets and writers, if you go to any, come to the Texas A & M Southwest Book Festival. My former colleague, Linda Hogan, for one, will be there, Oct. 24-26, where I'll be a featured poet. More on this later.

Then join me in Houston, Oct. 27, venue to be announced: rumored to be La Palabra. Could be UH. Any offers?

Then, use up the rest of the rent money buying more books at the Texas Book Festival in Austin the weekend of October 28 - 29 where I'll be a "guest author" which spells out fancy-schmancy hotel with all the perks and percs. Did I forget to say: I LOVE TEXAS!

Then back home, La Realidad, CU Boulder where I'll be teaching tuesdays and thursdays and I'll be performing in conjunction with the music department's ethnomusicology program with a group of traditional musicians from Mexico on Dia de las Muertos. I'll be back to my true roots, the influence of the Declamador tradition in 1974. Rumor has it that I'll be playing the part of "La Katrina" in life's true Passion Play: Death, and I'll be reciting Neruda along with traditional Mexico poetry and my own hurricane hay(na)ku and poems. Date & venue to be announced, Nov. 1 - 3. (Last year I wrote and recited a poem with musicians for Ofelia Viramontes.)

November 9th, I'll be at Purdue University, a guest of Mexican American, and noted Chicana literature scholar, Sonia Gonzalez, formerly of Stanford. (This could take place Sept. 28, which might be better for travel and my schedule, but is the day before my son's birthday -- which also means more money to help pay for all the hi'tech stuff he wants at 11. Sheesh, if it had been me, now, I would have gotten a collage of all the magazine ads for all that stuff he wants with names like "The Revolution" at age 12 instead of the old used copy of East of Eden my mother gave me, with the inscription: "For My Baby, So that you will know that all is not Light.") Look for Sonia in a new collection of critical work on, you guessed it, "Lorna Dee Cervantes" forthcoming from Wings Press which celebrates 30 years of literary publishing this year (along with me, had I done it consecutively -- and gotten my executive act together. Hey, I'm a poet. What do I know?) I know that Purdue is the one institution in the country doing any kind of chaya research at all. So, I'm there, man. I can't wait to talk botany shop. Yep, Purdue. I'll be there. Where there ain't nobody here but us chickens. Hmmm, what was that about "executive act?" Hmmm, maybe hung on another hat-rack or succumbed to another pack-rat. Hmmm. Maybe meet you in Purdue? Delighted!

That's all folks.

For Now.