They liked my earrings
as a consequence, they are part of an exquisite corpse
What’s your favorite accessory?
The first day at AWP (the writing conference that served about ten thousand writers and creative writing professionals) at the Baltimore Convention Center, I proudly wore brown leather earrings that were tiny books on hooks - a Pen Parentis member, leatherworker, Steampunk aficionado and writer, Joe Kennedy, had made them for me. The insides were blank pages. I love them.
The first day at the Pen Parentis booth at the small press bookfair, an emerging poet noticed them and said, “I love your earrings, what’s in them.”
Inspired, I said, “Nothing yet, would you like to start the poem?”
Over the next four days, between hosting parties and greeting old friends, and making new contacts, every time someone would tell me they liked the earrings, I would let them write a page.
An exquisite corpse is a kind of poem or party game) where each person writes a line, knowing nothing about the poem except the line immediately prior to their line.
Oh of course! Exquisite Corpse came from the visual arts world - I love it when arts cross boundaries of genre. (I love it when just about anything escapes its cage.)
I invited all kinds of people to write in my book and got enthusiastic contributions from “nonwriters” to people with writing awards: published poets, essayists, novelists, and even a bartender!
Here is Tiny Book 1 - read and printed for the first (and probably only) time:
Once upon a time
there was a small rabbit
named Cecil
and this bunny
was frozen. We weren’t sure if
he would ever recover. Then a witch with a cake
saw the wicked thing, this way coming
and quickly ran to embrace it.
The underside of the leaves had already turned brown
by this time. Could no longer recall your name, your scent,
or the shape of your face,
you were already a silence on my heart. Bold, Black,
silent, stoic, strong.
She went to the sea
and never came back.
Barnabus T Bunny never suspected his wife was capable of
digging a hole that could bury them all under an avalanche!
And going forth into the green as best we can
grasping wild hours in our hands as we pass
the torch to the next generation
hoping they follow our lead, knowing they
had not been able to see since the crash
but the road could be heavy with the rain of millions
Be excited, there IS a book 2 in the works!
WRITING NEWS!!
I spent all week telling people that my first novel, THE BOY WHO LOVED TREES was coming out this October. Since most of these people knew the book when it was my MFA thesis in a very different form, it was exciting to discuss its evolution.
But I also got some other good news.
My essay about AI came out in the Medium publication Long. Sweet. Valuable.
Here’s a friend link. Please give it a “clap” if you enjoy it.
I was quoted in a doctoral thesis that got published as a book and just became available (VANISHED LANDS: Memory and Postmemory in North American LIthuanian Diaspora Literature by Dr. Laima Vince available at: peterlang.com).
(I do not know what postmemory is - let’s look it up….ah it is a phrase invented in 1992 to describe the memories of the descendant generation. That’s pretty cool.)
I was invited to the pages of Gargoyle Magazine (this is really a great magazine) and was very excited - I still am not sure when the poem comes out.
That’s it for now—or at least all that I can recall at the moment.
At the conference, I had some outrageously amazing reconnections with friends I lost touch with over the years. I hope they’re all reading this when I tell them, I wish I could give them another hug in case we lose touch another 5-20 years.
Random Final Thought:
Here are the earrings as well as some other stuff I picked up at the conference that gave me joy. I hope you catch at least a little ghost of a smile:
Oh and lest you think I forget this blog is called “This is Ridiculous” — look what came in the mail TODAY (at least I didn’t have to carry them to Baltimore!)
Perfect last page!
Oh, wow! You did artwork in them!