Greetings From the Midwest. Part One: Chicago

I am having so much fun doing my readings out here. As predicted, I haven't taken many pictures, and the ones I did take didn't turn out very well [Danny's is still so (charmingly) dark!]. I'm getting ready to head to Bloomington in a few minutes, so maybe I can persuade my mom to take a few pictures at my Boxcar reading tonight. I'll write this in installments so that those of you who are interested in my shenanigans don't have to read it all at once.

So anyway, my trip started out with a very early ride to Logan on Wednesday, October 13. I landed in Chicago in the middle of a thunderstorm, while the very gracious Paul Martinez Pompa circled O'Hare over and over again. We got to Triton College only a few minutes late, and I had so much fun with his lively and adorable Intro to Poetry lit class. The energy in the room is certainly a testament to the amazingness of Paul's teaching. After a very brief reading, I answered their questions and talked poetry with them for nearly an hour. I signed some books and even got a couple of hugs. I was a bit blown away by their interest in Post Moxie, which they had just finished reading in class. They asked me some tough and interesting questions. One of the best parts of the morning was catching up with Paul, as I barely talked to him at AWP this year.

The sun finally came out, Paul took me to my hotel, and I tried my best to chill out for a while before figuring out how to get from the airport to Wicker Park. Two hours later, the blue line deposited me right in front of Margie's Candies, and I had a nostalgic walk around the old hood before seeing the familiar beanpole of Joel Craig waiting outside of Laguardia Restaurant, a Cuban place in Bucktown. Nice reunion with Marc Rahe and his sister Kara, as well as some very yummy food. We headed to Danny's after that and I was so happy to see Paul again, sitting at the bar. The reading was so much fun. I drank about one beer too many, but hearing Marc read from his collection was very emotional, and I loved reading to the very attentive and poetry-loving audience. I met some cool people too, including an Iowa Writers' Workshop student named David who was an early reader for the Sarabande contest! Somehow I got back on the train and back to my hotel, where I crashed until I had to get up to get a shuttle to West Lafayette. More about that reading in the next post!

Reading Photos

My reading at the Coop was really fun. I was one of the youngest people in attendance, with the average age being around 65. I did my first live Q&A with Post Moxie which was a good experience for me. Because I wrote the book so quickly, I sometimes feel like I'm still learning what it's all about. Talking about it helps me to learn. The audience was very polite and attentive and interesting. My very good friend Heather Madden took these pictures.

Reading at Harvard Coop, Thursday September 23

Hi everyone,

I will be reading at the Harvard Coop in Harvard Square on Thursday, September 23. No pressure to my Boston friends who have been attending my readings diligently; I'm sure there will be plenty of undergrads stumbling in on their way to Charlie's Kitchen for the evening (hmmm...maybe not). Anyway. Me. Poetry. Books for sale. Two weeks from today. Thanks and maybe see you there! Maybe we can go to Charlie's afterwards.

Midwest Tour scheduled!

My Midwest tour is now scheduled! I am very excited about every venue. It will be good to return to the homeland. Here are the dates and venues:

Wednesday, October 13

Danny's

1951 W. Dickens Avenue

Chicago, IL

7 PM

Thursday, October 14

Purdue University

Locations TBA

Q&A 4 PM

Reading 7:30 PM

Friday, October 15

Von's Books

315 W. State St.

W. Lafayette, IN

7 PM

Saturday, October 16

Boxcar Books

408 E. 6th St.

Bloomington, IN

7 PM

Tuesday, October 19

Prairie Lights Bookstore

15 S. Dubuque St.

Iowa City, IA

7 PM

Thank you to my friends who know people (Marc! and Dad! and Joel--thanks for knowing yourself!) and Sarabande for helping me put this together. It's the perfect tour for me: tiny and comforting. Besides reading, here are some things I can't wait to do:

-Drink some great beer at Danny's! and hang out with Joel

-Go to Quimby's, Myopic Books, and Earwax in Chicago (is Earwax still there?)

-See my parents and walk the dog in the woods

-See the beautiful fall colors in Southern IN (yes, we have trees there too!)

-Meet the Purdue MFAs

-Go to Soma in Bloomington and get a PB&J smoothie

-Go to my old B-town neighborhood and sit on Julia's porch and pet her dogs

-And in dear Iowa City: go to EPB (English/Philosophy Building) and feel the memories.

Also: Hamburg Inn, the Foxhead, George's, and the Deadwood. Stare in sadness at the place Great Mid used to be. And most importantly, see my friends!

Post Moxie Updates

Hi Everyone,

The reading Deep Moat Reading last weekend was wonderful. There was such a great feeling in the room, and I loved meeting Nate and Francesca, two great poets that I think I'll see again. Pierre Menard in Harvard Square will be closing soon (its sister business, Lame Duck Books, is also closing--sad!) and I feel lucky to have read in such a beautiful space. Thank you to all of my friends who were there.

Other news: I will be reading and doing a Q & A at Purdue University on October 14. I will be reading with the novelist Jessica Anthony as part a debut authors series for the MFA program there. Thank you to my dad for helping me to set this up! I'm looking forward to meeting in person Lindsey Alexander, the Sarabande intern who has helped me so much in setting up my tour and who will be a first-year poet in Purdue's MFA program. And my reading in Bloomington is official too: I'll be at Boxcar Books on October 16, a Saturday, for a 7 PM reading.

And this I just found out today: I was accepted at the Vermont Studio Center for a month-long residency in March 2011! Though I did not get a full fellowship, I will be getting substantial financial help to attend this beautiful artists' colony in Johnson, VT. I think I'm going to have to do it. I have nearly 40 poems for my new manuscript and I think I could get some serious work done if I had a month to devote to writing. As many of you understand, the act of writing usually waits (patiently or otherwise) in the background as we go about the business of earning money, running errands, taking care of a house, and the million other little tasks that make us busy little Western worker bees. The gift of time will be very precious to me and to my new poetry. Oh, and they also have a beautiful meditation center there! Check it out:

http://www.vermontstudiocenter.org/

Will it be cold in VT in early March? Hell yes! And I will have no dachshund or Richard to help keep me warm. But it really feels like the right thing to do. Though it all feels infinitely far away as I sit in my kitchen in full-on Somerville summer, complete with blasting Brazilian radio, very loud construction crews, and traffic outside.

Reading in Cambridge July 24: Save Big Money At Menard's!

Hi everyone,

I will be reading with Nate Pritts and Francesca Chabrier on Saturday, July 24 at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Harvard Square, 7 PM. If you are from Indiana, your associations with this gallery name may conjure up images of two by fours and bathroom fixtures, but the space is pretty much the opposite of Menard's. It is beautiful and I'm really psyched to read there, especially with two other cool poets! And yeah, it's free (unless you want to buy another book). Here is a link to another blog with more info about the reading:

http://www.thedeepmoatreadingseries.blogspot.com/

Brian Foley is the curator of this series and I'm very happy that's he's around; he's a great poet and this series is probably the best one in Boston: excellent poetry and always very well-attended.

In other book tour news, I just found out that I will be doing a signing or reading at Von's Books in my hometown of West Lafayette, IN. That will happen on October 15. I spent most of my meager earnings from summer jobs in my dad's lab at this store (I'd like to say on poetry but it was mainly Morrissey posters and import CDs) so they kind of owe me, you know? Seriously, I am very excited to be signing there, as they are a great bookstore with a pretty amazing poetry section. Anyway, I hope to see you if you care to brave the Village on a Saturday night! We'll go to Harry's after.

Also, I don't have a date yet, but I'll be reading at Boxcar Books in Bloomington around that time. I love this store and can't wait to read there! I hope my Bloomington people can be there! I may also ask to sleep on one of your couches that night if you have a spare.

Hope you are enjoying summer! Love, Julie

New Review at Coldfront

Thank you to Kathleen Rooney, a writer I admire very much, for this kind and careful review!

http://coldfrontmag.com/reviews/post-moxie

Post Moxie Updates

Sorry about the huge space between posts. I'm going to self-promote if it kills me!

I am super excited about my Midwest tour, which I'm currently planning with Sarabande. The highlight will definitely be reading at Danny's in Wicker Park, Chicago. The curator for this amazing series is my very dear friend of many years, Joel Craig, and the reading will take place on Wednesday, October 13. I will probably be reading with someone else, but not sure who that someone is yet. I will give details as soon as they are confirmed. If anyone has any ideas or leads about Midwest reading venues, please let me know. I would love to read somewhere in Michigan if possible! My confirmed New England dates are below. In addition to the two listed, I will also be reading at my alma mater, the University of New Hampshire, on November 8. Again, more details about time and place when they have been determined.

Ok, so it's not official yet, but I recently found out that I am this year's recipient of the Zacharis Prize via Ploughshares! I was very shocked and honored by this information. More details when it becomes official.

Readings

July 24, 7 PM:

With Nathan Pritts

Deep Moat Reading Series

Pierre Menard Gallery

10 Arrow Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

http://thedeepmoatreadingseries.blogspot.com/

September 23, 7 PM:

Harvard Coop

1400 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, MA 02238

Post Moxie is out!

This is very weird...I found out via a Sarabande Facebook link that my book is out. I feel happy about this, but in my Capricorn way also feel the slight jolt that occurs when my carefully laid plans turn out to be bunk. I was picturing some kind of giddy countdown to the release day, followed by the release party a week later. But this is also cool. Countdowns aren't really necessary anyway. The party is still happening when I planned for it to happen.

So anyway, I hadn't planned to go to AWP this year because I'm broke and want to save my money for the book tour. But now that my book is going to be sitting at the Sarabande table, I'm thinking that maybe I should try to go. I'm going to look at plane tickets. And maybe Heather will still let me share a hotel room?

It's so weird that I have a book. It's so weird.

Some tired thoughts on form

It took me almost two years to write Post Moxie. The process included brief periods of time when I thought I was done writing, and then out of nowhere I would write a few more stanzas. About six months after I had decided it was completely finished, I started writing these long, thin, punctuation-less poems that eventually evolved into square punctuation-less poems. Basically they look like Post Moxie stanzas but without punctuation. They are also far less interesting. I'm starting to think that I can't write in lines anymore after writing prose blocks for so long. I'm willing to accept this, but it's a difficult thing for a poet to accept. Then today I started reading Tomaz Salamun, whom I haven't read for a long time. His are the kind of the poems I want to write. I wish it was as easy as just deciding this. But I'm going to keep him at the back of my mind as I write. Or maybe envision him holding my hand as I write. Starting something new feels weird, even though I've been starting something new for over a year now. Here is a poem of his that I love:

Pity

On the subject of god briefly

he never said very much

never said rosemary

never said peace-loving

if there were ants in the corners

the ants stayed in the corners

for example dust

wherever it falls

down or to the side

or the existence of roots

all that god solves expertly

at times he says Archaic

but nobody budges

nobody wakes up

really nobody wakes up

at times he says we kill

those who bring flowers

and he buys light-colored paper

I bought light-colored paper

he says we killed those who brought flowers

and he commands the little boat to sail the sea

the trees to bend

something to fall so it creaks

you're the light of the world

no hiding place even in the mountains

In an early attempt at self-promotion

Dear Friends,

Those of you who know me well know that I can be an awkward introvert who sometimes has difficulty making eye contact. I happen to be proud of my introverted nature and even believe that without it I wouldn't have written all of these poems, as I would have instead been out in the world being extroverted. However, I very happily won a book prize last year (the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry through Sarabande Books), and with it came a book contract, and with that this thing where I have to promote myself and try to get people to be interested in my book. Sarabande is helping immensely with both of these aspects, but I'm beginning to try my hand at self-promotion. Because I can't seem to get it together to create a website, I'm going to start with this blog. I'll use this space to give updates about what is happening with the publication process, reading dates, etc. Despite the whole introvert thing, I love to give public readings and I promise to look directly into your eyes in a way that will not make you uncomfortable, should you choose to attend one of my readings in the Northeast or Midwest.

I only have one date to note as of now: my book release party! It will take place on Saturday, May 22 at the Lily Pad in Inman Square, Cambridge: 1353 Cambridge Street. The party will begin at 8 PM with socializing and drinks, which will be followed by a reading that will include me and my wonderful poet friends. Think of it as a celebration of poetry itself. If you live nearby I hope you will come. My mom will be there!

Love,
Julie