I had a lovely time visiting both my alma maters this past month. In an odd alignment of the stars, they both contacted me within a 24 hour window back in February to return to their campuses as a “distinguished alum” – aw.
My first visit was to Muhlenberg where their new/reinstated chapter of Sigma Tau Delta (English major honor society) invited me back to be the inaugural alum guest speaker. I gave a multimedia reading, showing some of the visual art my ekphrastic poems engage, as well as the calligramme of Marilyn’s face, and led a workshop on Poetry & the Visual Arts, taking them through calligrammes to poem comics to an extended look at the ekphrastic mode. I had a great time visiting with my old professors who were like proud parents at my homecoming, and the new generation of students had me breathing a sigh of relief–engaged, smart, inquisitive.
After a quick reading at this year’s Rainbow Book Fair here in NYC, where I aired out some poems from my upcoming collection, The Erotic Postulate, I was off to Ann Arbor for their inaugural UpstART festival. I gave a TedX-style talk on collaboration in the arts, beginning with my own journey since leaving the MFA program and my appreciation for that web Virginia Woolf described in A Room of One’s Own, encouraging the students to think about what anchors they need in their life to secure and spin their creative webs. One of my anchors is collaborative experiences, and the talk turned to lessons learned from some of the collaborations I’ve been part of in recent years. Despite some technical glitches with my slides and videos, I think the talk went well. And I got to visit with some friends who are still in Ann Arbor. I hope to make it back this fall for a reading at Literati, the new bookstore filling the void of the departed Shaman Drum and Borders.