AWP 2010

This year, AWP did for me exactly what a professional conference should do: it made me feel refocused, motivated, and, in the words of Gary Snyder, famous poet and environmental activist, "way stoked."

In years past, I've spent a lot of time in AWP's panels on writing and pedagogy. The AWP panels are one hour and fifteen minutes long, and they cover a wide range of topics. You can hear talks there on anything from charming magazine editors and teaching poetry in high schools to discussing trauma in a workshop setting and writing effective sex scenes.

This year, I didn't force myself to sit through too many panels. I went to three talks (one on on-line journals, another on writers collectives, and a third on careers in the literary arts), one reading (Anne Waldman and Gary Snyder), and I went to the book fair. The panels ranged from so-so to fascinating, and Gary Snyder was a let-down while Anne Waldman lived up to her reputation as a "human dynamo" with a highly theatric reading of her poems. And, yes, she was wearing one heck of a green and fuchsia scarf!

 Anne Waldman

But, as always, the book fair was my favorite part. It's always an overwhelming/disheartening/inspiring experience due to its size: I would guess there were nearly 250 tables packed into a single warehouse of a room. 

One half of the book fair.

Some of the exhibitors were literary journals, some were large publishers, and some were writing programs. But my favorite tables were the small presses, many of which were publishing visually gorgeous books of fiction and poetry. This year, there were more handmade publications than I'd ever seen before, beautiful books printed on vintage hand presses and bound by hand individually. I found myself lusting after hand-printed calendars of typographic art and chapbooks covered with reclaimed leather covers and literary journals bound in strips of carpet insulation!

The other half of the book fair.

What makes the book fair overwhelming is its size and the impossibility of really examining every book and talking to every interesting publisher. What makes it disheartening is seeing the thousands and thousands of new books printed each year, most of which are purchased and read by very few readers (selling 700 copies of a book of poetry is considered pretty successful). It can make you realize what a saturated, competitive market writers work in, and it can make you wonder whether the world really needs another book ever again.

But it's inspiring to see so many people writing, designing, and printing based purely on love. These people don't hope to turn a profit--even big publishers rarely do that any more. They just hope to create something beautiful and have it picked up by a few admirers. It reminds you what we all write creatively for, anyway: not for money (though it would be nice), not for fame (though it would be fantastic), but because we love literature, enough to travel to Denver and spend too much money on literary magazines and limited edition chapbooks!

Besides the book fair, my favorite part of AWP was meeting people. At past AWPs, I slipped soundlessly through the book fair and never asked any questions at panels. This year, I made the effort to meet my local writing community. I talked to one of the New Letters publishers, shook hands with an NEA program officer, met a slew of Lawrence's Bathtub Writer's Collective members, and even encountered a poet-programmer while chatting with a table full of on-line publication editors. 

I wasn't networking to find a job or create "business" connections. I networked to meet my local writing community and to experience the pleasure of speaking to enthusiastic people. Meeting these new people and getting excited about their ideas was almost--almost!--as rewarding as spending time with old friends from grad school who love writing as much as I do.

Me, Alita, and Stephanie.

My grad school friends and I drank excellent Colorado microbrews, talked about critical approaches to the memoir, bitched about poets who can't read their own poems out loud, and hoofed all over downtown Denver together, and that alone was worth the price of admission!

So, Washington, D.C., watch out! You're next!