New Notes from the Blue Atlas Tour

If it's Sunday it must be Portland, Oregon!

My goal is to write to you at least once a month and so before it’s too late, Happy April! Or rather, Happy May! This month has been a whirlwind. A cyclone. A different universe than my usually quiet life. For example, I had a visitor from India whom I had never met before. I gave more than a dozen poetry readings in three states with a fourth one coming up tomorrow. Let me explain.

The world has change in so many ways—-and the book world is one of them. It seems, especially for the month of April, everyone wants to host a poet. Launching a new book like BLUE ATLAS, especially from a top publisher such as Red Hen Press, means getting out and meeting readers. Although my normal life has me in my pajamas by 9 pm, I lived a very different life during the past 5 weeks.

Before the book tour even began, I had a surprise visitor from India (Niranj Vandinathan pictured above) a man whom I had met on the internet. Let me explain. One of the great joys of publishing a book is getting to choose its cover art. This varies from publisher to publisher, but I’ve been lucky.

After looking at literally thousands of images on the internet, I found myself returning over and over to Niranj’s photograph of four indigo pots along a steep stairway. I’ve already written an essay on why I chose this image as the cover in Lit Hub. However, once chosen, I needed to track down the original photograph. With the help of Red Hen, I had a name—-now all I had to do was find the human connected to it and convince him to let me use it. Niranj was remarkably generous and even when he needed to go back through documents to find the raw image of a photo he had shot in Mauritius 12 years earlier, he came through—only asking for a copy of the book. I was thrilled and said.. “if you ever come out to Seattle...”

The mileage between Bangalore, India and Seattle, Washington is 8084 miles (thanks, Google!) so this seemed an easy invitation. Imagine my surprise when I learned Niranj would be coming to Washington State for work — just two hours from where I live. Of course I invited him to visit —- the weekend before BLUE ATLAS launched.

In just three days we went from shy strangers who had bonded over a photograph to (I hope) lifelong friends. I showed him my beloved city and he in turn, told me stories about his life in Bangalore. That’s him holding up his copy of BLUE ATLAS on Vashon Island after his first ferry ride. I’d love the cover image from the moment I saw it, but now it means so much more to me. It means friendship discovered on the other side of the world.

* * * * *

There were so many highlights during the actual tour which included seeing old friends as well as my fabulous high school English teachers, spectacular, Abby Erdmann, and out-of-this-world, Beth Thompson. I adored reading at School-Within-a-School, my alternative (public) high school, with my former classmate, the marvelous poet Robbie Gamble, for the Creative Writing and Social Justice classes. And here I am, before our reading, hanging out in the quad, a popular meeting spot (but without flowers) during my four years.

I learned a lot about book touring during my 5 weeks (more on this in the next post) —some things I got right and some things I didn’t. However, with every single event in Massachusetts, California, Oregon, and Washington, I found joy. I read with dear friends and I made new friends; I stole an hour at the Emily Dickinson Homestead and another hour in the Chinese Gardens at the Huntington, also at Lan Su Gardens in Portland. These momentary landscapes of calm were vital to my spiritual and emotional health.

If you have a book coming out in the next year, it is definitely not too early to be planning your tour. Where do you have family? Friends? My advice for tonight: go where you know people who love you. Reading my abortion poems every night definitely got easier after 5 weeks on the road but it was never, never easy.

I have lots more to say on the subject — and will write again soon. I promise to get back to 20th century poets…although I no longer want to wait until they’re dead. Plenty of poets who influenced me when I was just starting out are still with us: Sharon Olds, Marie Howe, and Mark Doty—to name just a few.

I will post to some of the poems from BLUE ATLAS (left column) and if you like what you read, please feel free to order a copy from Elliott Bay Books or your favorite independent bookstore.

Thanks for reading this far! Happy Writing!