hot under the collar

hot flash

hotbed

hot

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The Jack Straw Writers' Program 10th Anniversary Reading in the Microsoft Auditorium at the Seattle Central Library yesterday afternoon starred nine of the ten chosen writers. Trisha Ready wasn't able to come at the last minute, interviewing for grad. school in I think, don't get me wrong, somatic psychology. Dreamy.

Readers and our fair audience had to find their way through the Gay Pride Parade, heading downtown for the first year ever. Virtually nobody was able to get into the library's parking lot. I parked down 4th avenue about four blocks away and got to walk to the beat of "Dancing Queen" on the way back to the library.

My favorite of the readings was Anna Balint's monologue piece - affectingly in the voice of a young woman who repeatedly sabotages herself and probably will never be able to raise her own children as a result. Barbara Earl Thomas's story about a young girl's sexual awakening through communing with mannekins at The Lerner Shop came in a strong second.

The reading went by incredibly quickly. We had all been admonished to keep it under five minutes, and we all get gold stars. Such a gorgeous gardening Sunday, ferryboat ride Sunday, hiking Sunday, and yet we had an audience in the neighborhood of 50 people. I had memorized my four poems, thanked Joan Rabinowitz and Chris Higachi and went into a white marshmallow space for a half second. Luckily I had made myself a crib sheet from one of the Cracker Box cardboard covered books the volunteers make at Beacon Hill Elementary. I had pasted my typed poems onto the pages, one per page. I opened the book, saw what I was starting with, and was fine from there. It was an interesting experience to face an audience the entire time rather than looking down repeatedly to make contact with the mothership of the poem. I liked and was terrified by the sensation of speaking my mind to everyone. People afterwards, including other poets, seemed to respond to this manner of presenting. I think I'll keep it up - move to longer readings with this same memorization focus, and the crib sheet, just in case. Many people were moved by the Bobo piece - so many of us grew up here in Seattle. Someone, maybe it was Joanie Strangeland, maybe it was Ann Hursey or Anna Balint, maybe it was me, said we could put together a Bobo Poetry Anthology.

We went up to the opening celebration for the newly remodeled writers' room on the 9th floor after the reading. Food and good wine were spread out on the table in the small room next to the writers' room. My only gripe was that there were people blocking access to the side of the table with the cheese on it, and I felt too woosy (not woozy) to ask them to shove over, or around, or just get the heck over to the writers' room for a frickin minute. (It is hot today, have I mentioned this?)

The writers' room has a cluster of round tables divided into kiosks, each with its own bookshelf and its own plug-ins (2) for laptops. Over the heads of these tables are white leafy lor petal ooking fabric structures, perhaps to diffuse the light, perhaps to prevent observers above from pelting the writers at work. I'm not sure it is possible for observers to even be above, but it looks like there might be room between the top of the wall around the writers' room area and the skylight above. 30 Lockers line one wall of the room, below a gallery of photos of writers who have read at the library and are slightly more famous than those of us who read Sunday, to wit, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Don Delillo, the sci fi writer from Oregon who wrote the boat analogy writing craft book, also a fantasy trilogy with a strong girl protagonist that I enjoyed immensely -- Ursula LeGuin, and others. Nice b&w photos. A photographer took pictures of us as we schmoozed and drank the good wine. When he photographed me, I was making a weird face, sort of a one-sided chewing activity, with an eye scrunched shut. If you saw the old wise guy who led Eddie Murphy to the temple in Nepal in The Golden Child, you have a sense of my fabulous look.

At least one other 1999 Jack Straw Writer, Rebecca Meredith, was there. She no longer lives in Redmond, and no longer is involved with RASP. She said Victor's Coffee House, where we hung out as a 99 group, has become inhospitable to writers since the new guy bought it. He cut the RASP reading series. Peggy Sturdevant, who was a 2002 Jack Straw Writer, has become an official P.I. blogger in addition to the writing she does for money. She had a blog at blogspot for a few months, but got bored with it. When she switched papers for political reasons to the P.I. she noticed bloggers' stuff was printed sometimes and applied to be a P.I. sponsored blogger. They wanted resume, etc., and now she's the P.I. Ballard Blogger. Huh. She has a couple of regular commenters. Oh for regular commenters. It would be almost like having friends, no obligations, which is one of my issues. An issue that does not keep me from typing away so that I can push that orange "Publish Post" button and see my words on my green backgrounded screen.