Chunks of Wisdom from AWP panels

Two weeks ago, I'd have been getting ready to go to the first AWP panels.  I took my purple legal pad with me to each panel.  Before we get too far away from the AWP conference, let me go back through my notes.  I'll remember these nuggets more often if I also write them here. 

Some of the best book promoting wisdom came from a session on, no surprise, promoting the first book ("Where's Waldo?:  Marketing a First Book"):

--Be specific when someone asks what you're working on.  Don't say, "I'm working on poems."  Say "I'm working on a collection that explores/shows . . . "

--Think about your audience as you help your publisher with marketing.  The best quote from this panel came from Jeffrey Lependorf  :  "The more narrowly you focus, the more people you will reach."  It sounds counterintuitive, but it's not.  If you say your book is for everyone, no one can find it.  You may reach readers you never knew you could have, if you think about your work in terms of other pop culture that's similar to yours (my poems explore our current time using metaphors from the Civil War, so people who love Hamilton could be a good audience).

--The panelists talked about the importance of building community.  Perhaps we want to do one big thing a year, like organizing a reading or a festival.  Or here's an alternate approach:  for every 3 things you do to share your work, share someone else's.

--And here's one that seems so obvious, and yet it never occurred to me:  the signature of our e-mail should have a link where people can buy the book.

The first panel I attended was "The Body's Story:  Narratives of Illness."  The presenters talked about approaches to writing when the narrative doesn't follow the expected narrative arc:  there is no healing, there is no resolution, there is no happy ending.  The suggestion to surround ourselves with people who love and support us is not a surprise--but I found myself nodding at the idea of the ghosts of non-love, which can be so destructive.

In the second panel, "From the Stanza to the Paragraph," Marilyn Chin asked, "Why waste time writing beige?"  Why indeed.

In a Friday panel on "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs," we were advised not to invite anxieties into our lives.  Ah, if only I knew how to refrain from that.

In a Saturday panel on "Bridging Campus and Community," a panelist told us about Useed, which is like a kickstarter site for universities.  One panelist told us that as we approach various audiences for help, that we should use the language that the entity will understand.  So, for one department, it might be the potential students we'd reach, for others, it will be the issues of budget, and for others, a pipeline that brings in __________.

I finished my time at AWP by going to a panel entitled "The Ganesh in the Room:  Speaking of Faith in the Literary Community."  They began by noting the potential offense and insensitivity contained in the title, especially for a panel that contained no Hindu participants.  I wrote more about the panel in this post on my theology blog--that's how much it impressed me.  Here are my two favorite take-aways, both from Amy Frykholm, the Christian woman participant.  She talked about her Christian belief as being less of an identity than as a location and a territory.  I loved that metaphor.  It explains the wrestling to leave as well as the longing to return.  It takes our faith away from the issue of what we believe (and can or cannot prove) and the creeds.

In the two weeks that have zoomed by since the conference, I've had many happy moments thinking back over the great conference.  I confess, I was underwhelmed by the idea of Tampa as a city and by the conference schedule.  I'm glad that I got over my petulance and had a great time.