A wonderful evening at the Center for Book Arts last night where I had the honor of reading alongside Patricia Smith. Sharon Dolin gave insightful and spot-on introductions and everyone commented on what a perfect pairing Patricia and I made. New friend Tom Healy summed up the sentiment quite well on my facebook wall today: “It was actually a brilliant pairing to have your sharp-focus aesthetic interiority balancing Patricia’s emotional investigations of persona.”
Patricia started her set with her poem “Mississippi’s Legs” from Teahouse of the Almighty. The poem is dedicated to Koko Taylor and we had just learned of her passing minutes before the reading, so it was a fitting tribute. Those of us in the first row heard her decide not to read her orgasm poems, which we expressed our disappointment over, but she rewarded us with moving performances of some of my favorite poems from Blood Dazzler, her book about Hurricane Katrina, including “34,” the one that started that whole book.
I love hearing which poems were people’s favorites. There seemed to be much love for my Cézanne poem “This Is Not About Pears” and the Jamaica poems, in particular “Dear Chanticleer” my poem in the shape of a rooster. I sold a lot of copies of the chapbooks, in particular Pear Slip which seems to resonate with a wide cross-section of people.
It was great to see so many friends there–work friends, city friends, poetry world friends; I finally got to meet Marie-Elizabeth Mali who is quite lovely and took the following pics:
And here are some pics of the evening from the Center:
The poem of mine they chose to broadside was “Orange Colored Sky” which was designed and printed by Taelor Reid. Here are some pics of me signing the 100 copies they printed:
I’ll do a post on how you can order a copy of the broadside from the CBA once the ordering information is posted on their website.
Thanks to everyone who came out!