Breathing room

Yesterday was the day of unscheduled time. There were no workshops, no afternoon classes. Just big blocks of unscheduled time. So what did I do? Turns out, it was the best weather we've had all week (high 70s, brilliant sun), so what better time than to be outdoors, engaged with the landscape?

After the morning lecture, I had a writing date with a few people from my workshop. We sat at a picnic table in the grass, near a spruce tree, and wrote. The prompt I provided was to take a photo of something nearby (taking angle & light into consideration as well as focal point). We then exchanged photos and wrote about what we got. Here's the photo I got:

And the prose poem that ensued:

"A Blessing"

The telephone booth has asked the earth for an invitation. She has been abandoned, her purpose lost to the wind of technology. She has no tribe. She wants to belong, to no longer exist in isolation. The sadness of rain glazing her plexiglass windows, a kind of weeping, a grief she cannot escape. An end, a swallowing of her rectangular body would be better than this. The dark clouds, the icy chill of wind. Anything is better than this.

The earth listens quietly and without a word, obliges, fulfills the phone booth's request.

The next morning, she wakes to a sun vibrant with heat, the soft grass warming her rusted joints and the most beautiful gift of evergreen hair: soft triangular spikes laid upon her aluminum head.

This is life! This is blessing.

*

Prose poem, huh. That's what I've been thinking to myself. I'm caught between poetry and prose right now. Workshopping poems, but writing prose (e.g hello, blog!). Just an observation.

After that, I went to a yoga class in a big meadow in the middle of this Bread Loaf campus. It felt so good to be in downward facing dog, hands and feet grounded in the grass. To do sun salutations with the late morning sun beaming on my face (god, I know how corny that sounds! The word "beaming" is just too... cliche? Hokey? Cheesy? I need to find a better word.). Such a truly grounding experience to reconnect, not just with the self within, but outwardly with the earth.

And then a picnic lunch at Frost Place (yes, as in Robert Frost). We hiked there. A mile and a half through the woods on cross-country trails, the terrain of which was not ideal for my tender right ankle. After all that rain in the beginning of the week, there were puddles, at times small streams, and plenty of mud on the trail, which forced me to navigate rocky terrain strewn with stray twigs and branches. I also worried that I'd brush up against poison ivy as I was not wearing long pants (high 70s!), forgetting what that plant actually looked like (remembering vaguely something about three leaves, but nothing more). After eating, I walked back the easier way (the paved, albeit uphill, road!) with a couple of friends.

That was a lot of physical activity in a span of two and a half hours.

The afternoon filled out with Bread Loafer (that's what they call participants) readings and a faculty book signing happy hour on the Treman lawn during the gloaming, one of my favorite times of day during the warmer months -- that late afternoon / early evening sun, the quality of it -- clean and soft. Add a couple of cold beers and some friends on a grassy knoll with the mountains in the background and you've got a perfect happy hour.

Dinner was great conversation. The evening reading was fun, particularly Craig Childs and his photographic enactment of Burning Man (which was only part of his reading, but most hilarious). Then off to the Barn for another Bread Loafer reading, prior to which Ross said to me: when are you reading? I said I wasn't. And well, he gave me this look like it really wasn't an option.

So I moseyed over to Stephen, organizer extraordinaire of these readings, and asked if I could read at the very end since I would not be around for the final reading on Saturday night (I have to leave the conference that afternoon). He is very strict about time --three minutes-- in which he holds up a red cushion and shakes a rattle to signal thirty seconds left (which is humorous from my vantage point as audience member). He was reluctant to add me, but I promised that I would only read this very brief poem that would probably take thirty seconds. He conceded. As the reading progressed, one woman whose name was called said she read yesterday. So Stephen calls out: where's the alternate? Hahaha! That's me! I go up to the podium, introduce myself and say: is Ross here? I scan the room --nope! I said, He put me up to this & he's not here? Then, I read my poem, the one I wrote that morning (see above). When I finished, there he was, by the door. Probably walked in when I said, thank you. Hah! Anyway, it felt great to just take that risk of reading a raw poem, not thinking about what it means or what it's about or worrying about word choices or anything like that. Just to read it. In front of an audience. To bear witness.

This is why I'm here.

Last night's reading

Ross Gay, my buddy, was one of the readers at last night's faculty reading. And he rocked it. He read the title poem of his latest book catalogue of unabashed gratitude (plus a few others). I was really impressed with how he sustained the energy of a poem that length in a reading. (It's quite a long poem.) Here he is, in the midst of reading it:

The audience really responded to his vibrant energy. You could feel it in the air.

Speaking of energy, while I want to write more, I must turn in. I'm exhausted. More details in tomorrow's post!

Maps & mapping

So I'm writing this post after breakfast, after having talked and interacted with people. What does this mean? It means that it'll be tougher to recap yesterday's events as today's events have begun. And for me, when the day begins, it's hard to turn away from this day's excitement in order to look back at yesterday. But I'll try.

The highlight reel:

* Morning lecture felt like a lecture, unlike the previous one which felt like storytelling. Complete with a powerpoint presentation. That took an adjustment of my expectations. Still, it was fascinating to learn about how essential artistic expression has been for us human beings. It has been created by humans as far back as 42,000 years ago (at least I think that was the number). There was a slide of this artifact: a lion-man figure carved from a mammoth tusk, the detail of which was incredible. The overall aim of the lecture was to illustrate how necessary art is, how necessary artists are if we are to survive as a species.

* Workshop was relocated to the Barn. We left our fluorescent-lit classroom for the wide open space and naturally lit Barn (which is literally the larger part a barn, the rest of which have been made into classrooms, so you can imagine the very high ceiling, which is also the roof itself) and sat in cushioned rattan chairs. What a difference setting makes! We all felt so much more relaxed and casual in our conversation about each other's work, really working to excavate the poem beneath the draft that lay before us. Pretty awesome.

* Afternoon class: this was something you could sign up for. A class in which one of the instructors just ran a class, teaching something about writing and/or creating. Today's class? Mapping. Ross facilitated that class and it was a lot of fun. He, being not just a poet but a visual artist (a painter, to be precise), brought in giant sheets of paper and colored pencils. He had us draw two maps: one of a dream we had, one of a childhood place in which many significant moments happened. I was screwed on the first one; I don't have dreams every night and when I do, I inevitably forget them the minute I wake up. So I doodled. What else was I supposed to do? I couldn't even make up a dream! So I just drew some spirals with different colors. The second map was interesting: it was of the street I grew up on, Sunburst Lane. The name alone evokes not just memories, but a natural image: that of the sun bursting with light at daybreak. The breaking of day, the day broken by a sun exploding with light, so much light that it bursts, it explodes. Um, yeah. Sorry. Poet here. That kind of thing tends to happen. Anyway, along with this map of my childhood street, I listed five significant moments that happened there. I had never stopped to think about just how many events happened on that street, literally ON that street. Not in my house or in a neighbor's house. The street itself. A lot of shit happened. And in thinking about memory, I'm asking: how much of it actually happened? How much of it am I making up, thinking that this is what happened? Isn't that the nature of memory? Did I really learn how to double dutch at Alicia's house? Or did I just really want to, and in my remembering, inserted the notion that I actually did learn how to skip dual ropes? I don't know. Does it matter? Isn't the essence the important part of memory?

A third collaborative map was called for. So, we broke up into groups of five and were presented with the task of mapping out a solution. I told my group that we couldn't do something predictable and boring like solve climate change or anything related to nature and the environment. I told them that everyone would be doing that. How boring! (I know: I'm trouble.) So in our brainstorming conversations, we came up with the idea of a stadium stampede as our problem. How to solve this? I came up with the idea of retractable walls that fold into each other, similar to an accordion (I have no idea if this is architecturally sound, but we only had 25 minutes! so whatever!). My group loved it & then took off with their own ideas. It was one of my better experiences with collaboration yet! The results were hysterical and entertaining (To summarize: there was a halftime show in which Janet Jackson was about to make her big finish with a giant boob piñata, which was to set off fireworks, but something caught fire & the whole thing exploded, thus triggering the stampede. Our protagonist, Joe, got trampled and in trying to escape, was somehow lifted up by the crowd & crowd-surfed his way out of the stadium towards one of two DJs in the parking lot. Would he travel his way towards Queen's "We Are the Champion's" or Kenny Chesney?). Not to worry, we met all the requirements asked of us and understood the lesson Ross was trying to teach us: that maps are like stories: they are not always what they seem as the mapper chooses what to show you and how to show you. (And by the way, the other groups *did* do boring predictable environmental stuff, like how to save the bees.)

Anyway, I gotta run. Morning lecture starts in five minutes! More to come later... maybe!

Back in the saddle

Yesterday was so full that my cup runneth over.

The morning lecture was given by Pam Houston, a talk called "What Has Irony Done for Us Lately?" She prefaced by saying it was a work-in-progress; it felt pretty finished to me. It was broken up into sections and one in particular really hit home. In it, she told the story about the last days of her Irish wolfhound, Fenton. The tenderness. The very real relationship between human and dog. The small actions we take in the face of death. Like the generosity of the butcher who, after stacking high quality steaks on the scale and listening to Pam's reason behind the purchase, took one off and said, his steak is on me. This moment had me in tears. I could not stop thinking about my first dog, Hannah, who died in 2012. How I spent her last night on my living room rug, her head in my lap, both of us watching tv. How I knew that she knew, that we both knew the end was very near. How hard it was to be in that room at the vet's office, watching her go, but needing to be there, to comfort her, to not let her die alone. How her breath slowed and eventually stopped. How I was a mess afterwards for days. How my oldest, at six, didn't recognize tears from my eyes, asking, what's that water coming from your eyes? How my second child understood so deeply that she, a then four-year-old, was almost as heartbroken as I was. This is what writing does. This is what storytelling does. It connects us. The lecture was moving. The audience, again, was left in silence, processing, digesting.

Then off to workshop. Which was terrific. A good group of folks who really give a shit about poetry. I know: this is a "duh" statement, but it's more a commentary on how long I've been away from a writing community. I was so excited to be in conversation with people who understood the significance of a comma and its placement, to be in a poem or not. For you non-writers, this is dorky. For you poets, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For the first session, we stumbled a bit in how we responded to each other's work, still trying to feel each other out, but I thought we did great, offering feedback that was useful to the poet when framed through questions and descriptions rather than judgment and opinions ("I liked..."). What was really great for me was that my brain was actually working! It was stretching and expanding on preliminary basic thoughts about a poem -- I mean really stretching. I can envision my brain twisting around, reaching for deeper layers in a poem and searching words to express what I notice. This is something I've missed. Teaching undergrads for so long, my critical eye has gone soft. This is like me doing basic level yoga for so long after not having done a level 3 class and just easing right back up there. The joints are a little stiff, but I can feel them loosening up, I can feel my body poised to take on Bird of Paradise. Not just yet, but soon. Warm ups are important; we want to avoid injury. I'm really looking forward to our next session later this morning.

After lunch, I took a short hike along some ski trails (translation: it was all uphill!), but felt good to be in the quiet of the mountain (well, mostly quiet. There was a distant mower buzzing away), the small calming rush of the stream. Then, I had a small group meeting with Patrick Thomas, managing editor at Milkweed, which was great. Lots of good information about how, generally, small presses might work and specifically, how Milkweed works and what they look for. Doesn't hurt that he's young and good looking (hahaha! Did I say that out loud?). He did say, towards the end of our session, to give love to the editors... to which one person said: "I like your shirt." And everyone laughed. In all seriousness, though, he meant that editors like to know that you have done your homework, that you've researched the press to see if your work fits with their vision, based on their book lists, for example. The fact that he said this told me that way too many people don't do their homework because, perhaps, they just want to get published any way, any how and as a result, mass submit. Not the best approach. It's like looking for a job: you're not going to just apply to every single job out there. And even if you narrow down to your field of expertise, don't you want to work in a place that suits you? Of course! Same idea. But for some reason, this kind of common sense doesn't translate in the writing world. Generally, any kind of common business sense doesn't cross over. See what I mean by writers being a weird species?

There's a wide variety of folks here. Sure, they're all writers, but where they come from is an interesting mix. During happy hour yesterday (yes, there is an actual hour in the schedule in which we socialize before dinner. And yes, there are beverages available for purchase during said hour.), I talked to a man named Stephen for a while. He's in his early seventies (he looks much younger than that! I'd guess his early sixties) and he's a retired astronomer & professor. He's currently a photographer who is now pursing writing, working on a collaborative project with his granddaughter. Incredible! And while he lives in Arizona, he grew up in the Bronx. We argued over who was the epicenter of sarcasm: Jersey or the Bronx (Pan Houston made mention of Jersey sarcasm in her talk). We decided it depended on which decade you were talking about. He was talking 1950s Bronx. I was talking late 20th century/early 21st century Jersey. Hah! That was a fun conversation.

The meals have been interesting, sitting and talking with both writers and translators (the Bread Loaf Translators conference is also happening here). What I've loved so far is being able to talk to others about language and the choices we make, whether translator or writer. To talk about these things to people who get it, who share my passion for language. This is why coming here is good for me. I don't get the chance to have these kinds of conversations back home.

And now to begin Day 3, which promises to be sunny and a bit warmer! Hooray!

Kicking things off

As part of the opening event for the conference, Luis Alberto Urrea read his story, "The Southside Raza Image Federation Corps of Discovery" (Click here to hear him read the story for Orion magazine.) What an honest and heartbreaking story about living on the US-Mexico border. The storytelling was so captivating (he recited the story from memory, adding some performance to it) that I was right there with the two young Chicano boys. I was in that canoe with them, seeing the lay of the land, the mix of water flows and the discards of human beings (a shopping cart half submerged, covered in algae). By the end of the story, with all the weight of the protagonist's silence and his looking away from what has happened to his friend, we the audience were quiet. Uncertain as to how to transition out of that definitive moment back into "hey, we're at a conference" mode. Someone eventually said, Thanks for coming -- won't you join us for a dessert reception next door.

What an awesome way to kick things off!

So, I got to thinking: what is this place? Bread Loaf Orion is a conference and workshop for environmental writers. What does that mean exactly? I don't consider myself an environmentalist, not in the activist kind of way. The word "environmentalist" alone suggests political activism. I'm an activist, but not when it comes to the environment. More social justice activist. So what does it mean to be an environmental writer?

To be completely honest, the first thing that comes to my mind are a bunch of hippy Birkenstock-wearing tree-hugging white people. I know. Terrible. I'm better than stereotypes, right?

But then I looked around the room where the reading was held (a place called Little Theater) and it was a sea of white faces. Just to be sure, I did another scan of the room during the dessert reception. Yup. I'm not mistaken. Totally white. I think I saw about three other people of color, aside for the two faculty of color (Urrea being one of them). Soooo, there's six of us total in the wooded mountains of Vermont. This should be interesting.

So what does it mean to be an environmental writer? I hope to find out this week. I hope that it's more than what I'm presuming.

How did I get here? Good question. I received an email from Bread Loaf (I'm on their mailing list) that said, "A few poetry spots left!" I hadn't considered applying to BL Orion because I didn't consider myself an environmental poet-writer for the reasons stated above (ie. not white, not a tree hugger --though I do recycle!, no Birkenstocks). But then this email came at a time when I was feeling pretty crappy about where I was as a poet-writer --so crappy that I wanted to give up on writing altogether (which is highly unlikely, but that's how bad I was feeling). I took this as a sign & said to myself: hey, why not? I have nature in my poems -- that's "environmental", right? So I whipped up something for the application and submitted it the next morning. The day after that, I get an acceptance email. Seriously? I thought to myself. I guess this was the universe's way of saying: you're not done with writing. And voila! Here I am.

But the main question still stands: what is an environmental writer? I have no idea. At least with regard to the poets. Sure, the creative nonfiction folks write about various things related to nature & the environment (that's the impression I'm getting), but what about the poets? I read some of the work in my workshop packet and it seems the poets in my group write solely about nature, observations and such. My work? Well, that's where the "interesting" part comes in. My poems, more often than not, address race in some way or another. The work I've submitted for this conference uses the natural world as metaphor to illustrate racial tension. Because of my past experience with workshops outside of VONA (i.e.. the rest of the world), I'm bracing myself for the worst, but really hoping and praying for the best. The worst? Feedback in which readers do not get what I'm trying to do with the poems or offer suggestions so that I can explain the context (racial history) of the poem. The best? Readers who understand my aim and offer critiques that focus on helping to uncover, shape, and polish the poem on it own terms. The good news? My worship facilitator is a man of color and also happens to be an old friend, who, yes indeed, gets it. Thank goodness for that!

Day 2: First workshop. Here we go!

Arrived!

Greetings from Bread Loaf Mountain! I got in about an hour or so ago. Checked in, settled into my room in a cottage-style dorm room (the dorm is literally a cottage!). I had planned to take a short nap to recharge from that 5+ hour drive in the rain. I laid down, about to fall asleep, and my phone lit up like Christmas. Suddenly, everyone and their mother is sending me a message about this or that. And my brother calls about the first summer swim team practice being delayed due to thunder.

Man. So much for spotty cell service. I was really looking forward to disconnecting from the mama life.

And so much for my nap.

*sigh*

Well, what better time to write a blog post! Though, to be honest, I don't have much to report. It's cold and damp. About fifty degrees. Fortunately, the rain has stopped for now. My room is chilly -- it was warmer before when the heat was blowing, but now it's not. Good thing I brought a fuzzy blanket. I'm considering pulling my winter coat out of the car (I threw it in there, just in case) -- it's supposed to get down to the mid-40s. The people above me are noisy & heavy footed & use the bathroom a lot. I think that toilet flushed at least 5 times in the last hour. The one on our floor? Twice. I just hope the people upstairs are early sleepers.

It's weird to be back in a conference / workshop setting. Feeling anxious and nervous, which is par for the course when I'm experiencing an unknown -- new surroundings, new people --and not just regular new people... writers! Writers are a weird species. I should know. I am one. Socializing with writers gives me anxiety. They're so unpredictable and sketchy, hard to read, tougher to trust. (That's for another post.) But isn't this what it's all about? Going outside our comfort zones? Pushing ourselves to experience new things?

I think I'm hungry, but my belly is all nerves that I can't even think about eating. There's a welcome social in about ten minutes and I'm thinking about hiding out in my room until dinner at 6:30. But of course, I can't do that. That's just dumb. If only I brought a flask of tequila. You know, liquid courage. Just a swig to ease the nerves, warm the belly, loosen the guard.

Jeez. I sound like a college freshman!

Bwahahaha!!

Okay, off I go to socialize...

Oh, and speaking of college freshman, I didn't finish my homework of reading all the participants' work prior to our first workshop meeting tomorrow. Guess what I'll be doing tonight? *tsk tsk* Typical frosh!

A new adventure

Well, I tried my best with that 30/30 challenge for April. At the very least, the poetic muscles got limber. Now, on to the next adventure.

I leave for Bread Loaf Orion on Monday. It's their conference and workshop for environmental writers. It all happened rather quickly -- I hadn't even thought of applying. But here I am, packing for the mountains of Ripton, VT. I am both excited and nervous about the whole endeavor. I haven't been in a workshop setting --as a student-- in over ten years. I haven't left my kids for more than four-day-weekends to attend AWP and I'm going away for a week: a full seven days! Also? A friend of mine from college and grad school will be my mentor for the week. How weird and fun is that? (That's how quickly things unfolded. I didn't even look at who was on faculty when I applied. I just did it on a whim.) Needless to say, it will be an interesting (what a terribly generic word!) week. I'm hoping to document my experiences here on the blog while at Bread Loaf Orion, which hopefully will include plenty of hiking, reading, and, of course, writing!

Here's to new adventures!