tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10313071968466521892012-03-09T09:57:31.669-08:00Many Words for Welcomewords that fascinate or agitate or just plain stop me in my tracksword worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.comBlogger191100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-47845914186155999752012-03-07T19:35:00.002-08:002012-03-09T09:57:31.794-08:00Writers in Unexpected Places"Our being in the world is subtly influenced by all the people, creatures, landscapes, climates, luxuries and deprivations that surround us."
-- From my writer's notebook, September 2011, while at a national park
At the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference last week, I had the pleasure of talking about non-traditional writers' residencies with two literary lights who deeplyword worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-86260632360572660562011-08-11T06:30:00.000-07:002011-12-06T21:08:53.828-08:00Forests, Once and Future"Between 1850 and 1900, 85% of Vermont's land was deforested."
-- Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP Park Ranger
As July turned to August, I began a new writing project – spending time in, ruminating on, and writing about our National Parks. I’m taking advantage of the travel required for my No Word for Welcome book tour to explore our national parks and our relationships to them. Like many word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-1396796403756585672011-07-13T11:55:00.000-07:002011-07-13T11:55:27.305-07:00Words Across Borders: Translation and Interviews "Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn / The language of the trees."
--Howard Nemerov, from the poem "Learning the Trees"
Today, as it happens, I'm blogging on two other blogs. Catch my Q&A about doing radio interviews at Midge Raymond's The Writer's Block and my thoughts about translation in nonfiction writing at Lisa Carter's Intralingo: a culture of language and thought.
word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-4434201819611807582011-06-17T16:43:00.000-07:002011-06-19T20:28:22.776-07:00A Conversation with KPFK in Los Angeles"No Word For Welcome is written with an attention to narrative and prose that is rare among non-fiction works."
A few hours after the Los Angeles Premiere of No Word for Welcome ended on Wednesday evening, I arrived at the Studio City offices of KPFK, the Southern California Pacifica station, for an interview with morning host Hamid Khan. He and I had a most enjoyable conversation about word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-37229784229233630662011-06-14T12:11:00.000-07:002011-06-14T12:21:31.953-07:00Welcoming No Word for Welcome"When the last tree has died, when the last fish has been caught, then we’ll understand that we can’t eat money."
Here in San Francisco the sun is finally out, the soy lattes mean serious business, and the independent bookstores are vibrant and welcoming. (And for a Seattle girl, each of those details is crucially important.) Tonight, one of those bookstores, The Booksmith, will host the word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-69374263480969699272011-05-26T10:47:00.000-07:002011-05-26T10:47:00.071-07:00Happy "National Short Story Month"!"[Midge] Raymond's prose often lights up the poetry-circuits of the brain."
The Seattle Times had it precisely right when they described my friend Midge's short story collection, Forgetting English, this way. When the collection first won the Spokane Prize for Fiction and was published a couple of years ago, I devoured its delicate stories and gave several copies of the book as gifts. Now, word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-82170112204450403382011-05-24T12:42:00.000-07:002011-05-24T12:42:37.289-07:00My Journey Through Words: Writing, Editing, Translating Them<!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-15479144625154723772011-04-18T22:58:00.000-07:002011-04-18T23:00:44.276-07:00Celebrating National Poetry Month at Harborview"Harborview Medical Center channels pain into poetry."
Next week, the Harborview Art Program will deliver a Haiku and an American Sentence to every patient in the county hospital, and invite them to write their own poems. Peggy Weiss and I planned this project during my residency last summer, and it's coming to fruition during National Poetry Month. This morning, journalist Brandi Kruse at word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-23588385712541381942011-04-16T23:19:00.000-07:002011-04-18T23:00:16.097-07:00Talking about Death at Harborview Medical Center
With Michelle at Harborview, June 2010
photo by Clare McLean, University of Washington
"I gotta get outta here.
Though I could be walking into a hell."
Last summer, I spent six weeks as Writer in Residence at Harborview Medical Center, Seattle’s county hospital. (Next week, I'll be returning to Harborview for the last -- for now -- phase of my residency, but more about that later....) word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-74352767361970932212011-04-09T22:11:00.000-07:002011-05-04T08:53:43.610-07:00The Art of Losing"The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster."
This is not my favorite Elizabeth Bishop poem, though I know that many of my poet-friends worship "One Art." To be fair, "Wendy's Favorite Elizabeth Bishop Poem" would be a hard-won title, indeed.
In the first (and, it must be said, only) poetry workshop I ever took, word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-53518746059776109922011-03-27T20:18:00.000-07:002011-04-03T19:20:46.058-07:00Finding Wild Florida"Lie with your ear to the ground. Let birdsong trace its complexities onto your eardrum."
Susan Cerulean, nature writer, Floridian, biologist and educator, writes these instructions in the elegant (if alarmingly short) anthology she co-edited, The Wild Heart of Florida: Florida Writers on Florida’s Wildlands.
Eighteen months ago I came to live – part-time and unwillingly – in Miami. I did not word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-23363256938366829912011-03-11T10:02:00.000-08:002011-03-12T00:58:12.284-08:00A Harborview Haiku and American SentenceLife's garden shelters…
soil, sun, weed, root, rock. Bright shoot
cut, will grow taller.
As in our bodies: a break might mend more strongly than a bone unscarred.
Peggy Weiss and me, July 2010
Peggy Weiss, the Art Manager (aka Miracle Worker & Duchess of Art-Healing) at Harborview Medical Center, orchestrated my six-week immersion in the grit and wonder and pain of King County's public word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-15384198917920664622011-02-25T09:00:00.000-08:002011-03-12T00:56:28.764-08:00The Light of Translation“You can’t think of it as a transfer from one language to another, because we would be left with something horrible in Spanish. You must think of them as parallel poems, a poem created in our language and another poem in Spanish. Both versions uphold their respective literary traditions.”
And so poet / educator / activist / translator Irma Pineda explains the difference between the Zapotec and word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-84759792521447027052011-02-20T11:16:00.000-08:002011-02-20T18:53:46.129-08:00Notes on a Poetics of Indexing"Anglo-Americans: all look alike, 29"
That is one of the first lines in the index for No Word for Welcome. I recently reviewed that index, a project by turns frustrating, illuminating, and entertaining. I approached the task with dread, avoiding it for as long as possible. Not because I fear order or laborious detail – even my spice rack is alphabetized – but because it required reading my book word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-87144409921701722612011-02-05T17:25:00.000-08:002011-02-20T21:27:58.091-08:00Scraps from a Grief QuiltFor the last four years, I’ve been writing about hospice, grief, all things funereal. It began when my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2006. Until 2009, I wrote only short fragments; the subject was too painful for sustained attention, yet too overwhelming to ignore. Now, I’m basting those small patches into something larger. Here’s one from the scrap bag:
Doing the Math
Mom’s word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-58195784000262834062011-01-30T11:03:00.000-08:002011-01-30T11:03:58.386-08:00The Last of Her Village
“My horoscope advises: notice connections to your childhood
home. Women and men the age my parents were
when they died are everywhere.
One has my mother’s hands. She weaves insights
like soft cloth, holding it to my shoulders when I chill.”
This is the ending of a magical, fearless poem called “Festival of Lights Revisited” by Yael Flusberg. (In March 2010, Yael dazzled my students at New word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-76182316442329557152011-01-27T21:30:00.000-08:002011-01-27T21:31:24.552-08:00Out in the Silence“We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re going to show a film in your library.” Those are the words of a movement in the making.
All over America, local LGBTQI-rights organizations are going into their local libraries, explaining that they have a documentary film about LGBTQI rights in rural America, and saying they would like to hold a showing. All over America, the film Out in the Silence is endingword worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-71884472831135702852011-01-08T22:27:00.000-08:002011-01-27T21:21:51.346-08:00"Of course." Three Moments at Harborview Medical CenterFor six weeks last summer, I was Writer in Residence at Harborview Medical Center, Seattle's county hospital and regional trauma center. (I still figuring out how to write about that experience -- among the more powerful of my professional life.) One of the phrases I heard often there, in response to patient requests, was "of course." This short essay, about one day in the life of palliative careword worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1031307196846652189.post-46361547841457240972011-01-01T22:00:00.000-08:002011-01-27T21:20:34.686-08:00No Word for Welcome leads to Many Words for WelcomeOn June 1, 2011 University of Nebraska Press will publish a book I wrote called No Word for Welcome. It's about three villages in southern Mexico, and how the people who live in those villages have dealt with the global economy. They have not had an easy time of it, hence the book's title. When I started No Word for Welcome -- a very long time ago, in the late 1990s -- I worked as a grassroots word worker • book binger • story smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09530059087776703414noreply@blogger.com0