Thursday, March 4, 2010

The entry in which I declare that I am now officially a slam poet, the founder of an upcoming poetry magazine, and a prize-winning screenwriter!

I make no apologies for being a negligent blogger. Anyway, I’m back now, aren’t I?

Managing a magazine is a lot of work! Here’s the scoop on that project: I’m basically in charge of ten people now, and that doesn’t even count contributors, so I’ve got a lot of delegating to do. BUT – I think it’s worth it, particularly since I’ve put together a web team. So now, not only are we going to produce a poetry mag, but a complementary website too. I can barely contain my excitement. We’re even going to include videos of slam poets. (I’ve a few slam poets in mind I’d like to ask for submissions from. Two have already agreed. We’re even going to have illustrations and music.)

This brings me to another thing I’ve neglected to mention, having been gone so long – I am now officially a slam poet! At least, I am, in the sense that I’ve participated in one poetry slam. I’m performing at a second open slam this Saturday. As such, I am no longer a poet hiding in the attic, writing in the dark. (Well, I do still write in the dark sometimes, but you get the idea.) I am now a poet who speaks out, on stage, in front of real people. It’s pretty thrilling, I must say. Thrilling and terrifying. It’s terrifying because, for those of you unfamiliar with slam, it is essentially a spoken word competition, with judges.

Incidentally, Scrapbook Girl was one of my judges, as if things needed to get any more terrifying. She’s a slam poet too now. That’s about all I can say on the subject though, as we haven’t really talked since I wrote her that poem three months ago.

Finally, you remember that 72-hour film challenge I entered? Well, my film WON! I’ll post a link to it soon, if there’s some demand. That’s it! Those are the highlights of the last five weeks. I’ll try to post some of the poems I’ve been working on later too.