Justin Sirois is doing

a lovely remembrance project for the poet and prankster David Franks. I contributed a poem that is up today:

And Amen and Amen and Amen

Please visit the site to find other poems about Franks and great links to stories about him on The Signal.

How about it?

I'm very excited about this weekend. I think (and hope) that the reading is going to be well attended and that I've put together a diverse group of artists and poets. The freak flag is a gonna be a flyin.

Long week of interviewing-- I logged 25 interviews at three different places around the state. Lots of driving and talking. I met God and he was lovely. I'm not being a smart-ass.

I started a new poem after hearing my mom describe the sound of the siding being torn off her house by the wind.

I think that I am going to attend Jen's workshop at the Creative Alliance tonight. I have to see how much it is. I haven't been in a fiction workshop in years and years. The workshops really killed fiction for me, actually. So it's dangerous that I'm considering attending.

I almost forgot!

Issue Ten of Robot Melon is live. My story, Glass, Clay, Agate is included. It's about two Russian immigrants squatting in West Baltimore. That, and grief, and welding.

New Year, New Year, New Year

I made it out of the house to visit the Gorky retrospective at the Philly M of A. I highly recommend that you make the trip before the show leaves on Jan 10. It was truly incredible to see how many studies ( some of them included grids) he created before painting. It was inspiring to see how something so chaotic and unplanned-looking actually had so much thought and reason behind it. I drew parallels to writing, of course.

I am working on a critical theory. It's exciting to be thinking this way. It has had me digging up essays on Modernism and Naturalism, etc.

Today is my first day back at work since the 24th. God, it was good to have that time off, even though I spent just about all of it sick and feverish.

I'm starting a new project, too. A "living book." I plan to start it and then pass it on to book artists and have them grow the book and the story. At the end of the year I'll display it and the other works of the artists that have participated in the project. I'm calling it, And, Afterward. If you would like to join me, please email. You don't have to local, either. I'd like to mail the book around the States. Maybe the world? But I don't know how much that will cost. Whatev-- if you want it, let me know.

Let's get started, 2010.