two readings next week in NYC

Monday, November 29, 2010; 7:00pm: Monday Night Poetry Season at KGB Bar, KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY
Readers: Reb Livingston & Ben Mirov

Tuesday, November 30, 2010; 6pm: Boog City presents d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press, ACA Galleries, 529 W.20th St., 5th Flr. New York, NY
Readers: No Tell Books authors - Bruce Covey, Lea Graham, Karl Parker and Reb Livingston
and music from Binary Marketing Show

deadline for Dream Poet Anthology 2010

I begun tallying the contributors to the Reb Livingston Dream Poetry Anthology 2010 and damn, it's huge. I hate to break it to you, but if you don't appear in the 2010 edition, you should probably just hang up the poetry thing all together. This is the only relevant poetry anthology and this is a make or break year. Get to psychic work.

DEADLINE: December 31, 2010

Last year's contributors

a postcard to my aunt

2002 wasn't "my year" either -- so glad I still don't perceive the world this way

hot poetics

I was walking Gideon to school the other day and he pointed out a boy in his class:

G: That's ____, he's cool. And hot.

I was a little take aback hearing a 5 year-old call another 5 year-old hot. Later I asked him what "hot" meant. Here are the possibilities:

Somebody who's really cool.

Somebody who dresses really fancy and all the girls crowd around.

Somebody with nice, dark clothes.

Somebody who appears on the News making the girls and other people gather around that boy.

Chris suggested a meter where someone can be so cool they go all around the meter and get to hot.

Gideon told Chris that he didn't understand because he was a man.

I asked Gideon if he was hot. He said sometimes he was hot, sometimes he was cool, but really, there's no word to describe him.

elsewhere stuff and blogging

I'm interviewed (along with Craig Morgan Teicher, and folks from University of California Press, BOA Editions, Copper Canyon, Coffee House, Wesleyan) about poetry eBooks in Alizah Salario's "Breaking the Poetry Code" at The Poetry Foundation.

I'm given quite a bit of space, considering that I have yet to personally format an eBook myself. I've outsourced one (The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel - Second Floor) and while it's OK, there's issues and I wasn't satisfied with the technical support or communication so I won't be using the service again. But apparently I was one of the few poetry publishers Salario could find who wasn't all fuck yo eBooks. I plan to start work on converting (at least some) No Tell Books titles next year. Yep, that makes me the person to ask (and there have been quite a few people who ask me about eBooks). That's a totally sad statement on 21st poetry publishing. There are a lot of opportunities for poetry publishers. Why aren't more of us taking advantage?

Anyhow, I sort of didn't want to participate in the article because I don't feel especially qualified to speak on this . . . but I did, mostly because I have an agenda. I mentioned my agenda during my two discussions with Salario (not using the term "agenda," I am slicker than that), knowing it was unlikely to make it into the article. But the article would be a good springboard for me to launch my agenda in a response.

I feel like a poetry mastermind and am considering shaving my head to look the part.

Here's my agenda at We Who Are About to Die:

We who need an e-publishing hero.

and

We who need an e-publishing hero, part 2. detailing Adam Deutsch's experience trying to format Cooper Dillon's titles into eBooks


Yes, that's right, Little Miss DIY-pants is calling out the Poetry Foundation to pony up and help find a solution so our poems don't look like ass on eReaders. This is the 21st century. The technology CAN be created.

Help us Obi-Wan, you're our only hope!

links

For those of you coming here for the first time (via the Twitter #poetparty or elsewhere), here are some related links:


No Tell Motel (online poetry magazine)

No Tell Books (poetry micropress)

Better Homes Through Poems (indie-cooperative bookstore)

We Who Are About to Die (literary blog)


My books:

God Damsel

Your Ten Favorite Words


My author page (links to poems, interviews, bio, etc.)

#poetparty in my . . .

Hey, I'll be a guest tomorrow (Sunday, 9PM, ET) at the Poet Party Twitter Chat.

Hashtag #poetparty