Today I’m a fangirl. Padraig O Tuama is sitting two rows away at the presenter’s table. OMG!!! His podcast, “Poetry Unbound” is one of the things that got me through the pandemic and a regular listen when I go for a walk. I’m in L.A. for the annual AWP conference for writers and poets. The conference is not always in L.A. It moves around. I’ve only gone a couple of time before when the location was convenient, like N.Y. I came to L.A. largely because I have enough family and friends there to make it a fun trip.
His panel is titled, “Spirit Work: Talking (with) Sacred Texts through Poetry. I am in my element. So much of my writing this decade is in conversation with Tanakh. The BIG and little questions. Lately I have been exploring the minor female characters of Genesis and Exodus. I am glad for these conversations about craft and content with this small cohort of people who share my interests.
L.A. continues to recover from the fires. Time here is no longer measured from the before and after of the pandemic, now it’s the before and after of the conflagration. From my brother-in-law’s house in Santa Monica I can see the charred hills of Pacific Palisades. The Pacific Coast Highway remains closed. Drivers heading North or South must first head quite a distance east. Housing costs have skyrocketed.
I will not go to look at burned neighborhoods, though friends in Pasadena offer to take me. That feels voyeuristic in a not good way. I never went to “ground zero” either.
There’s been drizzle, or what passes for rain in Southern California, the past few days. Flowers bloom everywhere. It's Spring. Lovely for walking, but nobody walks in L.A. It’s rather unbelievable given the weather. I rode the light rail to the Convention Center. Public rail transportation is a relatively new thing in L.A. The train wasn’t crowded, and it took me a lot less time to get downtown than it did the cars I watched on the Freeway. I’ve been walking whenever I can.
The programs and readings and opportunities to connect with old and new acquaintances offer both a way to escape from and a way to engage with the craziness of today’s world. I am drawn to a panel organized by Jane Hirshfield, called, “Poetry and Climate: Building Eco-Resilience Through Poetry & Community Action.” If the idiots at the White House who do not know how not to use email properly do not blow us all to Kingdom Come with their plain stupidity, perhaps we can all do something for the planet. In the meantime, I have poetry. We have poetry.
The feeling of grace the conference generates will shield me for a while when I get home. I look forward to that. I hope that feeling will encourage me to notice those things that are good and dear, will temper my anger with all that is wrong, will let me breathe and let me sleep.
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Thank you. I found this peaceful and sustaining!
Now I know why you weren't at Girl Talk yesterday! I believe you're usually one of the readers? Anyway, how wonderful that you could be in LA for that amazing conference. And thank you so much for the Jane Hirshfeld poems! One other comment--sometimes people need to visit sights of mass destruction to personally grasp the devastation and horror. That's what it's like for those who visit concentration camps, for example. My two cents.