Recently Robert Fleming was nice enough to get Old Scratch Press booked on Like a blot from the blue. Robert Fleming, Gabby Gilliam, Anthony Doyle, Alan Bern, Virginia (Ginny) Watts, and I showed up. I gave a little information on Old Scratch Press; Gabby gave some information Instant Noodles, and Anthony and Ginny read from their new books. Being there and presenting to an international audience was a fantastic opportunity for us, and the folks there were great.
What I liked even more were the other people who showed up.
I’m going to guess that there were about 30 people who showed up who were not us, one of whom was Fin Hall, the blot-in-chief. It was clear that many of these folks had been attending regularly for quite some time. One at a time, in turn, based on when they signed up, Fin called on each person, and the author read 1-3 poems, depending on length.
When I was in my twenties and thirties, which, sadly, I am not any more, I used to read at LIP (live, in person) open mics all the time, and I would often have to hang in until midnight to get my chance. Usually these were held in bars in Philadelphia, or in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I did my best to dress as “punk rock” as possible, and my general aim, if I’m honest, was to get laid. It’s frankly shocking how few times that happened, when that was clearly my intent. I usually had on a mini skirt and was showing cleavage, but, in truth, people who knew me then told me then, and will reiterate the very same thing today, that me punked-out and showing cleavage was, somehow, still giving Julie Andrews when what I was going for was Grace Slick. Ah well.
In any case, the thrill of reading, and the thrill of possibly getting lucky, and the location (always bars) also meant that, in all likelihood, by the time they got to me on the sign-up list, I was hella drunk. I was a smoker (Benson and Hedges 100s back then), but because I was also a poser: at those events I came with a pack of Dunhill Blue.
Waaaay too expensive to smoke all the time, but on open mic nights I always stopped at the news agent’s (Philadelphia had news agents!) to get a pack beforehand.
A few times/year the venues would ask me to be the featured reader, and I think that was because I was also volunteering with a little Zine called Magic Bullet (run by Andrew Craig, wherever he is today), which I had quite a few publications in, and, who knows, maybe I was good.
I was working my way through an MA and then an MFA from my twenties into my thirties, and my professors seemed to think I was good, as well, and I won the student awards each year, so maybe. When I read at the school events I was not drunk, but neither was I nervous, perhaps because my professors made me feel gifted.
And then, sometime around the end of my last degree, life took a turn. My very long relationship went very south. Another relationship pooped too quickly, and flamed out just as fast, and I remember I felt, while I was still prolific as a poet, that I had somehow lost at life. I wanted, you see, to become a published poet and a professor, and a spouse, and a parent, and I wanted all four things to work out perfectly, and just none of them did.
My life, then, became a series of edits. If it didn’t work to have the man with the red hair, then cut him from the piece, and write in another man, one with cheap beer on his lips. It was so time-consuming to send out work, one poem here, and one there, through the mail, keeping track of where it went, and keeping a lookout for the SASE to bring it back, and seeing if it was in decent enough condition to be mailed back out again, and I remember for awhile I was printing on onion skin to save money (who knows what that is?), and digging up the two dollars or eight quarters to send the piece of onion skin back out, and waiting for the SASE again to return, and each time writing a letter of introduction, sometimes including letters of introduction from my professors who were consistently and kindly encouraging. I remember two of them, who seemed to think my writing was the bee’s knees, were flummoxed that my poems weren’t getting entry, but maybe the long narrative style went out with Wordsworth. And life became more about driving from 9-5 job to college job to relationship, to moving out, to moving over there, to trying again, to keep on trying, to being, frankly, trying.
Little by little, returned SASE by SASE, edited dream by edited dream, the writing dribbled to a stop. Drip, drip, dr—
It was so quiet in my head.
Well, in the poetry part of my head at least.
And a decade and a half ran through my fingers.
And then I started writing again. Not only poetry, and not the plays I wrote in my twenties, but fiction, and memoir, which is, I guess, what this is.
I found myself in a place where the place, the locale, was so small and local, it felt small enough that I dared to go to a reading again.
But over the intervening years something just awful seemed to have happened. When I showed up to read at the open mics, even when I went with friends, I could not make it through a single poem without devolving into tears. And maybe there’s a reason for this shocking behavior, and maybe there isn’t, but it seems as inevitable to me as hair going grey, and as unavoidable as the red dot from a sniper’s gun in one of those movies with snipers.
And yet, at the simple evening with Blot from the blue I felt encouraged. The readers were great, and seemed normal (for the most part… I mean, poets, right?), and kindly, and on Zoom my head is no bigger than a Cerignola olive, so I am going to say I felt safe. I think it would be quite okay to join in, and I asked him later, and Fin said yes, folks can join. And folks could mean me, or you.
So what the hell, let’s try it!
And use this email to express interest likeablotfromtheblue@gmail.com.
And if you show up, be a goooood listener first, and a good reader second.
I’m not much of a drinker these days, so if I show up it will probably be very sober, and there hasn’t been any nicotine in these lungs for a long spell. I will, however, be caffeinated. And that’s at least something. The poem I am thinking of reading has some sound effects in it, which is probably ill-advised. But after I read, and make whatever sort of a fool of myself I am destined to be, I can write a new poem: Pearce With Her Pants Fallen Down.
Nadja often finishes her posts with a writing prompt, so here is me, stealing that excellent idea:
Think of an “edit” you made in your own life, by choice or by force. How did it work out for you?
Or
Have you ever read at an open mic? Write a flash memoir piece describing your experience.
Thanks for reading!
Dianne
OLD SCRATCH PRESS 