Marie Gauthier

Mea culpa! I didn’t mean to disappear for a week, and I wish I could say it was because I was at AWP in Denver with so many from the poetry blogosphere, but alas, I was simply BUSY. I had every intention of updating yesterday, but the project I was hoping to post didn’t work out, and working on that ate up all my blog-time.

That project? Last Friday night I joined my friends Lea Banks and Susie Patlove on a local cable show, “Over the Falls,” hosted by the dapper James Sullivan, in a special program devoted to National Poetry Month and the local poetry scene.  We chatted about the Collected Poets Series, the Third Friday open mic that Susie and the Arms Library run, and the big National Poetry Month event we’re all participating in (with our other poet friends Laura Rodley, Jim Bell, and Tom Yeomans) at our local independent bookstore, Boswell’s Books, this coming Sunday. Then we each read for a few minutes.

It was enormous fun to do, and what’s more, we were each given a DVD of the show before we left! My plan was to share some of it here, but though I can watch it on our DVD player fine, it’s not opening on my iBook. I’ll have to fiddle with it some more and see what I can do.

We don’t actually have cable at home, so without the DVD I wouldn’t have been able to watch the show — though Susie tells me that they get copies in at the library, so patrons can watch them there — and let me tell you, I was bowled over by the production values and talent on display! This is not the local cable channels of my childhood! And it’s almost entirely volunteer-run! They do amazing work.

If you’re looking to get the word out about what’s going on in your local poetry world, by all means, don’t overlook your local cable channels — they’re always looking for show ideas, and I bet you’ll be as impressed as I was by the work they do.