Sandra Beasley's Blog, page 31

Over at Best American Poetry: On Signings

Want to see what happiness looks like? See Politics & Prose on Sunday. Here's the view as I hide during the introduction to my reading...






...and here is the audience smiling to say hello to you all:

Afterwards, there were books to sign. A lot of books. I took far too long with each one--as always, I find myself slipping back into the mode of signing high school yearbooks--and while there are certain phrases that come easily to me, I always approach each title page from scratch. The ritual of...

Over at Best American Poetry This Week!

Between book touring and frantic nonfiction writing, I have been On the Run. But for all this week I'll be posting over at the Best American Poetry blog. Please come visit me!


First up: a glimpse at the woman who made me a poet....

            Red, green, blue horses, I wrote, ride up and down.

            I paused, wondering how to complete my ode to carousels. Up and down, I scribbled a second time. Repetition was poetic, right? Our third-grade teacher circulated the classroom, reading over...

"I sort of defenestrated poetry all together"

In 2007, Virginia's Poetry Out Loud state champion, Alanna Rivera, took third place in the Poetry Out Loud National Finals. She won a sizable scholarship and round-trip plane tickets to anywhere in the USA. I was so proud to cheer her on as her coach. Here's a snippet from the interview she gave at the time to the NEA. 
NEA: What's your favorite memory from the National Finals?
ALANNA RIVERA: My favorite memory from the National Finals was meeting Garrison Keillor. He inspired me to wear my...

Publisher's Weekly Review!

From the April 19 issue of Publisher's Weekly :



I Was the Jukebox     Sandra Beasley.   
Norton, $24.95 (96p) ISBN 978-0-393-07651-6

More fun than most recent books, Beasley's second collection can also get quite serious: in the best parts, the poet pretends she is any number of nonhuman things—a jukebox, an orchid, the Egyptian god Osiris, an eggplant (in a sestina), grains of sand. She also writes "love poems" to big ideas: "Love Poem for College" begins "You hit on me. You hit on everyone."...

IndieFeed

IndieFeed has made April its First Annual IndieFeed Literary Journal Appreciation Month, and this week they are celebrating the amazing BARRELHOUSE . My poem, "Antiquity," which first appeared in Issue 7, went up today; check back for work on Wednesday (Catie Rosemurgy) and Friday (Farid Matuk). The shows can be downloaded via iTunes and the Indiefeed Performance Poetry Channel. Journals featured earlier in the month were  PANK  and  RATTLE .

Speaking of Barrelhouse, I picked up the brand-spankin'-...

Are You There, God? It's Me, Sandra.

I'm not going to offer excuses. I will simply say that to go ten--10!--days without visiting my blog gives me no pleasure. There was Denver, for AWP; then New York, for the big fancy Barnard reading with Joy Harjo; then Pittsburgh, for a laugh-laden reading with Jason Koo; and tomorrow morning, New York again, for a Sunday afternoon reading with Dora Malech at the Four-faced Liar's Frequency Series.

What can I do to make it up to you? Even though I've missed the tide...I figure I can offer up ...

The Book in the Wild

Why do I love the team at W. W. Norton? Not just because they host booksignings at AWP--though that's going to be great, and if you come to mine I will give you champagne--but because they do things like send me photos of my book in the wild. In this case, the untamed jungles of the shelves at McNally Jackson.


Go, little book, go! Over at She Writes I did one last "Countdown to Publication" post, celebrating I Was the Jukebox's official April 5 release date. Now--running to catch a plane for D...

If I weren't going to Denver...

...this is where I'd be:


The Lannan Literary Symposium and Festival
Georgetown University 6 and 7 April 2010


Georgetown's 2010 Lannan Literary Symposium and Festival will explore the most vital and purposeful connections across the themes in its title, Literacy, Literature and Democracy; the Symposium welcomes a rich selection of writers, journalists and activists to the Georgetown campus over the two days following Easter break, Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 April, to discuss and to demonstrate...

The Ways of Poetry (Happy April!)

Happy National Poetry Month, everyone. In celebration, I put together this little video:



...and while I have your attention, here are my AWP events in Denver next week...

Thurs. April 8 at 9:30 PM - TypewriterGirls Poetry Cabaret
at the Mercury Cafe (2199 California Street)

The TypewriterGirls' Dada-bred performances are collage-work theatre formed from sketch comedy, poetry, music, whiskey games, collaborative writing, burlesque, and a little magic. In essence, they strive to embody the Comte de...

Rain, Rain, Go Away

I am settled down in DC for the week, putting together a little video in celebration of National Poetry Month, working away on the nonfiction book (more on that in my latest She Writes "Countdown to Publication" post, here ) and watching the rain fall. 


March is a month of birthdays for me, and according to a quick skim of the astrological charts, the pairings of Aries and we Taurus types--my birthday is May 5--tends to be predicated on "strong determination, honesty, and passion for life....