Oh yes, and cheers! to the overturn of Prop 8!!!!
I've been busy booking gigs for Chastity and working on sending out my applications for Hamline and Warren Wilson's MFA programs for Spring 2011. I hope one of them comes through! I was a finalist for the Loft Mentor Series for Poetry this year so that is uplifting. If all goes as planned, I will start working part time in January while attending school and writing. I also plan to keep at this booking business side of Chastity's music as it is another area in which to grow and learn new skills. I feel stunted if I don't try new things. Chastity has this non-stop way of constantly creating soul-wrenching songs. She is a wild one. I love her guts. She is excited to hit the road and I am excited for her to experience this new realm of folk-singer lifestyle. I'm trying out my camera in low-light settings and I need more experience, but here is an 80 degree songwriting evening:
Herbs Chas and I got from Flying Snakes Farm in Bayfield, WI:
*Burdock
*Comfry
*Lemon Balm (nerve relaxer -cold infusion with Brandy)
*apple-mint (for tea)
*Evening Primrose
*Horehound
*Horseradish
I need to study how to make cold infusion tinctures. Also just bought "Nourishing Traditions" and I'm excited to try my ideas out by using this cook book as a guide.
Favorite new green: Persling.
New poet discovery: Kevin Young. Am reading Black Maria.
Studying: Oliver de la Paz's writing process and collections. I've started a new long poem involving eruption as a theme, tornado-from-the-gut music scenes, and an exploration in tonality. And I'm trying out repetition of an image (reconfigured) and sound-meaning as structural skeletons in the piece.
Influences and skeleton texts: An overdose of James Baldwin (Going to Meet the Man). Lightnin' Hopkins. Emmy-Lou Harris. New Orleans Treme. High Noon Teeth.
I'm most definitely procrastinating getting my applications out...must. focus.
