Happy Birthday, All Day, Talking!
Today is a very special day. Well, yesterday was a very special day, but with fall semester preparations, family phone chats, bathing cats, and a number of afternoon gentleman callers (and one gentlewoman), I just couldn’t give this special post the time it deserves. Which, at least in my experience, is pretty much in line with most grownup birthdays; you don’t celebrate the day of because you have a work meeting, a shift you couldn’t trade, five classes to attend, your car broke down and you had to take it to the shop. Basically grown-up shit gets in the way.
So, if you hadn’t already guessed from the post title, what makes today so special is that it is the one year birthday of my little chapbook, All Day, Talking! I really cannot believe it has been a year since the amazing poet, editor/designer Kristy Bowen sent me the email saying the book was up and ready for ordering on the Dancing Girl Press website. That is most definitely in the top five of my most proud and stupid-happy moments.
Don’t get me wrong, getting the initial email acceptance of the chapbook was surreally thrilling, but it also felt ethereal, like an hour later it felt like a dream. But then I would check again and the email was still there. But of course by necessity these things take a little while, so the dark parts of me would think it wasn’t really going to happen. I received it by mistake, someone will change their mind, the earth will implode, etc. etc. For this reason, the day it went live online is when All Day, Talking as material entity, was really born. There on the site was the cover, my name, sample poems, a listed price. Someone might actually purchase this. That is also something that still trips me out – people have paid to read something I wrote. And it’s not about getting money,
it’s that someone would trade something valuable to them for something valuable to me. An exchange of items we have endowed with worth has happened. Just a little validation that this writing is worth something outside the confines of my heart.
This birthday marks not only my little babys all grows up, but also a little over a year since graduating from a PhD program, becoming Dr. Chavez (first person ever in my family on both sides; and no, being called that has not gotten old yet!). It’s a year since getting a multi-year contract job at a good University where I get to teach the subjects I love. A year in which I got to share poetry in at least a dozen different reading venues across the U.S., getting to meet all kinds of lovely people who also dig poetry & literature. In many ways, this has been a life-changing year, and I hope next year is no different. This is just the beginning; I have many more goals to reach, many more poems to write, many more people to meet, & more places to visit.
Thank you for sharing this special day with me and like a good American in a repulsive capitalist system, I am offering a special exchange of money for poetry. Along with the publisher's site, I have a new site where you can order the chapbook directly from me (mostly set up for on-the-road reading purposes). The first two (2) people to use this link to purchase a copy of the chapbook in the next 72 hours will receive a signed copy with a personalized haiku and an All Day, Talking book/tote bag.
The next ten people will receive a signed copy with a personalized haiku.
Make sure to use the special code: HB AD,T! in the note to seller section during check-out. I can’t wait to write a haiku for you!
