So I’ve signed up to be a part of this thing called the
Poet Bloggers Revival Tour … I think. At least I think I signed up for it.
Anyway, I’m going to try blogging at least once a month starting in 2018, so
might as well try to start today. January 31, 2017. Maybe it’s just my way of trying
to piggyback onto something larger than me, and so motivate myself to write on
a more regular basis.
So to continue, I’m going to be using this opportunity
to shamelessly self-promote my book, which I never really did on this blog, Analog
Verse.
(See I’m even better at promoting my blog than I am my
book.)
But it’s been a good year for me, for my book, for my
writing, for poetry. We had a book launch all the way back in January of this
year (2017) at Angst Gallery that I didn’t really promote on this blog. Then we
had another Portland book launch at Mother Foucault’s Book Shop – that I dind’t
really promote. A little bit. But it takes a lot of work to do promotions. (That’s
why a lot of companies have their own promotion department, as a paid staffing
gig.)
We don’t. Tourane Poetry Press is a very small company
run out of Willow Glen, California.
So because I didn’t do the promotion thing, maybe I
short-changed my supporting readers who helped me do the whole book-launch
thing. So let me begin with that.
At the Angst Gallery book-launch we had Nathan
Tompkins, Alex Vigue, Toni Partington, and Jennifer Robin as guest-readers. And
we had cake!
It was a very family-friendly affair, my mom brought a
cake, my wife brought our children, and a lot of folk from the community showed
up as support. Lots of people from my church, Toni Partington’s husband (and
the poet laureate of Clark County) Christopher Luna MC’d the event – it was
quite overwhelming, and filled me with so much hope. Very lovely. Leah Jackson,
the gallery’s proprietor was smiling as it did just what she built the gallery
for, to create community and support artists around the Vancouver area.
At the Mother Foucault book launch we had Jennifer
Robin (again), Amie Zimmerman, and Mike G. Adam Strong acted as the MC. And
again, it was just an amazing night. So to all those artists that helped and
inspired and supported and wrote and read and submitted work and were turned
away, and turned away, and turned away again … and then finally published, I
owe a great debt of appreciation.
I continue to read at the Ghost Town open mic (which continues
to be run by Toni and Chris) and also I want to still support Tony’s Talking
To, which has now been taken over by Mike G. And the writing community in
Portland and Vancouver continues to be lush and amazing. (And I continue to
have a big box of books to sell.) And so to all those things continuing in
2018, I say hoorah!
And so to hopping on the Poet Bloggers Revival Tour, I
say hoorah!
Hoorah!
