How to Start a Reading Series
My book launch party* is 4 pm this Sunday, February 7th at Polestar–a poetry series I curate at the lovely CakeShop. (Yeah, it’s a little weird that I’m reading at my own series. Whatev.)
In honor of Polestar (now in its 18th installment–rock!) I’ve put together a few tips for those of you looking to run a reading series of your own. Here we go.
1. Be sure to choose a venue with an ice machine that sounds like a DeWalt hammer drill. Ice machine should have no off-switch. For optimum effect, ice machine will go into high gear when your most prominent, and/or well-connected poet is reading.
2. Your venue should have a microphone that flickers on and off throughout the reading at random. For added flair, you may want to work with a microphone that gives out entirely.
2b. Never completely figure out the microphone or speaker system.
3. Give your reading series a name that could also connote a strip club.
4. When requesting a poet to give a reading, always copy and paste the email you sent to the prior poet verbatim. This way, you can address Henri Cole as “Dear Ms. Marvin” and Marie Howe as “Please forward to Arda Collins.”
4b. If you happen to address a certain beloved and lauded octogenarian poet by the wrong name in your query email, you’re encouraged to add: P.S. Would you consider blurbing my book?
4c. When you don’t hear back from the beloved and lauded octogenarian poet (we’ll call her The BLOP), ask the most hypersensitive poets in the community if she is still “with us.”
4d. Rest assured that you will soon see The BLOP’s newest collection at St. Marks Books. Consider Tupac Shakur and his many post-humous releases. Then consider that The BLOP is alive and well. She’s just avoiding you because she thinks you are lame.
5. Yes, absolutely include a bloody glove in your initial website design.
6. In preparing the poets’ bios, there’s no need to learn how to correctly pronounce Pleiades or “Nurkse.”
7. Make sure to host the hippest poets on July 4th weekend. This way, when no one shows up, you get to experience their judgemental silence in its pure, undiluted form.
8. Spend time making friends with your shame.
9. Come to terms with the fact that everyone dreads a poetry reading.
9b. Come to terms with the fact that you especially dread a poetry reading.
10. Keep the thing damn thing afloat anyway. After all, that hot dish from your MFA program shows up every time.
10b. If you are following instructions correctly, the dish should move to Berlin very soon.
* Again, can we call it a party if people have to buy their own drinks? Questionable.
* Again, can we call it a party if people have to buy their own drinks?
Yes, yes you can.
I’m pretty sure you can call it a party as long as there’s whiskey. Otherwise, I don’t know why all my roommates refer to my room as the “party room”.
Polestar is supposedly one of the best poetry series in NYC. Congrats!