Two of my poems, entitled “On Animals” and “Ocean, Okay, Okay” appear in the new issue (#9) of the quirky and wonderful journal Pear Noir! It’s not JUST my excitement; there actually is an exclamation point that comes along with the journal’s title. See:
I’m also a couple weeks late with this update, but not only did I attend my first AWP conference, but I managed to survive it even with a Nor’easter barreling down on the coast and the crush of 13,000 writers converging on one building in Boston. In fact, as I was taking the commuter rail in from a town north of Boston, I missed Thursday due to the storm. And for those of you who were there, now thinking, “Wasn’t Friday a lot worse for travel?” Yes. Yes it was, but like hell was I going to miss two of the main three days. The car on the way to the rail station may have slid all over the roads, my shoes may have been soaked before I even made it into Boston (and stayed that way all day) but I made it there. And I’m very glad I did: it was pretty amazing.
The readings I went to were fantastic (I even had the honor of reading alongside some ridiculously talented writers at the Thrush Poetry Journal/Barn Owl Review reading Wednesday night), the small number of panels I did make it to (curse you, missed day!) were interesting and fun, and most of all I met so many nice and talented people. I won’t list them all here, but I was happy to have met in person writers and editors I have conversed with online in the past, some people whose work I’ve admired (and at AWP I was given the chance to tell them so), and some writers that I had never heard of but after hearing them read, made note of their names, excited to look up more of their stuff. It felt really terrific to meet all these people, and to talk to them about our shared passion. Very rejuvenating.
Oh, also, the bookfair. Here’s (most) of my haul just from the day and a half I was able to be around the bookfair:
Yup. Add to that the subscriptions I got: Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, The Journal, Iowa Review, 32 Poems, Slice Magazine and West Branch, and I have a lot of really terrific reading to get through. Could not be more excited about that. When you’ve wanted to pick up a lot of these journals/books for awhile, and they’re way cheap at the bookfair, you end up coming back with sore arms.
Oh! I also got to meet Swarm contributor Karen Skolfield for the first time in person at AWP. She’s terrific, and quite funny. Very lovely to meet her. I made her take a goofy picture with me, but given her (seemingly only half-joking) protest when we took the photo, maybe she’d prefer I don’t post it here. 🙂
There’s also a little news about a journal where a new poem of mine will be showing up soon, but as it IS soon and the whole journal is online, I’ll hold off on announcing that for now. But keep an eye out!
Brandon Amico 