Dispatches From The Weirdo Convention
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" - Jesus Christ, 'The Book of Matthew'
Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!
There’s something necessary about being face-to-face. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Internet. Those idealistic saps always going on about connectivity and the world opening up through our computers? I’m sorta one of those guys. I also kinda think technology should stop right here, maybe go backwards in some places, but that’s a different column. Point is: the internet is a good place, seeing people is special.
It’s hard though, with social anxiety and a five-year-old and a general weirdo personality. My social circle is robust enough to make a decent cookout, but I have to fight this little voice that says ‘yep, exactly this amount of people is the right amount of people to meet.’ Luckily, they made a whole convention for total weirdos writers!
The first and second times I went to AWP, I was a junior in college and a 24-year-old getting his ass thoroughly kicked by post-grad life, respectively. Both times, I didn’t pay anything, just loaded up on books at the fair and hit some offsite readings. One time was an excellent experience, the other was clouded in shame and drinking when I wasn’t with other people. There’s no need to rehash my descendent into burnout and subsequent falling in love with writing again, but suffice to say:
I didn’t feel like I could even be at AWP with a straight face until this year. Going and having such a great time? Fulfilling even? Aw, hell.
Mallory and The Child did the trip with me, making the eight-hour Chicago—>Kansas City drive on Thursday. The hotel had a pool and was across the street from a Chuck E. Cheese. Everyone was set up for success.
Tempting to type out a blow-by-blow of the trip. How the first thing I did was drive to a reading, hug my beloved Bob, meet his cool-as-hell partner, and sit down right as the astounding Maya Williams was introduced. How Maya was followed by the exhilarating Melissa Ferrer Civil, the inaugural Poet Laureate of Kansas City. How after a quick bite to eat, we walked into another reading seconds before cool-as-hell
went up onstage. Day One was already going great.
Again, I could do the full recap, how the book fair was like eight city blocks of farmer’s market except made of books. How the panels I went to (only three, told you I was overwhelmed, but also pacing yourself is good?) were awesome and insightful. It was thrilling to learn about Furious Flowers, poetry center for Black poets and once-every-10-years conference at James Madison University. It was sick to go to those first two readings in cool art galleries. It was rad as hell to go to a definitely unsanctioned reading in a cramped hotel room. It was comforting to take my family to Bob’s house and eat our body weights in barbecue and play with cats. It was pleasantly surprising to see my hometown MTSU have a table at the fair, and then have my aunt tell me poetry readings down in Murfreesboro have recently drawn crowds as big as 60.
Oh, and we got A TREAT for you on this month’s The Line Break podcast.
Any list of people will almost certainly be incomplete, but shouts to everyone who made my AWP great. Line Break homies, Cotton Xenomorph homies, talk-on-the-internet homies, random new friend homies. Bob Sykora, my guide in both literature and the pick-and-roll. Chloe N. Clark, my literary bestie until our skeletons are high-fiving in our coffins.
and Erin Schmiel, every bit as fun in real life as they are in the CX chat. Diannely Antigua and Maya Williams, incredibly generous people I don’t feel cool enough to be friends with but somehow am. Laura Villareal, for picking me out of a crowd when I was at my most overwhelmed. Stephen Furlong, the Bob Ryan of Poetry, for being a rock and buying me Unmonsterous by John Allen Taylor. Isaac Pickell, for talking to Bob and me about basketball. Han VanderHart and Amorak Huey, for being cool and understanding when I was shy (and pointing me to Anne Carson reprints). Casie Dodd, for being encouraging about my poetry. , for recognizing me at an open mic—I’m sorry I had to jet before I could say hi, your reading was awesome. Jaswinder Bolina, for being nice while admitting flat-out that he did not remember me from 14 years ago, then signing my book. Victoria Lancelotta, Todd Osborne, Alex Miller, Matt W. Miller, the person at the Tin House table who recommend The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman, the Laurel Review Gen Z staffers who called the name LAZY&ENTITLED and the concept of a band writing novels ‘iconic,’ and Debra Marquart—all for being super nice at the fair. The Fonograf Press dudes, for selling Alice Notley records alongside Trouble Finds You. I will buy some soon.
For certain it is known: I am forgetting someone. It’s 10:50 p.m. on Tuesday and I’ve been thinking about this all day and I am still forgetting someone. This blog goes live like right as I’m walking out the door to take my kid to school and I just know I’m going to strap on my seatbelt and go FUCK HOW COULD I FORGET
Writing is lonely. You spend all day with imaginary people in made-up situations. Sometimes, when I’ve been writing all day, I’ll check Bluesky or Instagram and expect people to be talking to me about my work, as if they’ve been sitting in some corner of my brain, watching my mind work all day. Life goes on like this for years, and then when you finally finish and sell a book, it takes years for it to come out. Sometimes it even takes years for your friends to read your book, because everyone’s busy and books take time. It’s lonely! To be able to see these people that I share hyper-specific interests with, to be in the room when ideas that anyone with an MBA would scoff away as quickly as a shooed fly are discussed with utmost seriousness, to be able to give someone that smiling-eye twinkle that tells them they nailed a line or a sentence—what a treat, dudes.
Not to drift into Sam Elliot’s cowboy and narrate beyond the sand dunes of time, but: I am grateful for my time at AWP. I am grateful for my friends, old and new, and the opportunity to see them.
I am grateful to have been in spaces where radical ideas are both discussed and lived—ways of living as writers and ways of living for people who exist more immutably on the margins of society. It was a privilege to hear Black people, trans people, gay people, former sex workers, people with mental illness, and survivors of society’s various violences speak. People young and old, all walks of life, as the fella says. People who can spin a yarn or see the world weirdly enough that poetry makes sense to them. People who, when I talk about my social anxiety, remind me to breathe.
I used to worry “does writing have enough positive impact on the world that I won’t feel like I wasted my life?” Around 2020, I kinda gave up on the idea that writing can do much to save the world—climate change continues apace, a literal genocide is happening in Gaza, the US is still staring down the barrel of Trump-Biden II. Slaughterhouse Five didn’t stop the Vietnam War and Between The World And Me didn’t get the cops disbanded, y’know?
SO WHAT THO
Art and arts communities can change lives, give voice to feelings we don’t understand, allow us to seriously imagine what a better universe looks like. There is an amount of bad in the world and there is an amount of good. A few high-profile, Billy Collins- and Martin Amis-shaped exceptions aside, writers contribute to the good. Writers and art are a ballast against the soulless grind of capitalism. For the writers at AWP, it’s not about money—it’s us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something to those dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins. Ah shit, I Swayzed again.
My experience of AWP proves writing’s worthwhile. I hope others had similar experiences. Like I said, I am grateful. Most of all, I’m grateful for all the parenting Mal did back at the hotel, and how cool The Child was about everything. He even taught my beloved Bob how to clean and replace a ceiling fan.
Easy stuff, Bob.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
So good to meet you face-to-face! Here's a cheers to doing it again.