Allergic To Cats
Wednesday night I attended a poetry reading of younger women poets on Capitol Hill. Organized by Jocelyn Macdonald, it was called Allergic to Cats A Feminist Poetry Reading. While some poets could have “sung shorter” as they say in Taos, the evening was thoroughly enjoyable and it is delightful to see younger folks organize readings. Below, the audio – as it happened – in four hunks. Each offered at least one quite poignant moment: Laura Wachs, thoughts about her late friend and mentor Jack McCarthy, Anastacia, her serial poem portraits of some of her middle school students as they turn into young women, and a detailed account of an abortion by Clare McGuinness. Here’s how the reading was promoted on Facebook:
Allergic to Cats 2
Intro, Jocelyn Macdonald (4:03)
Laura Wachs, Part 1 (16:06)
Laura Wachs, Part 2 (10:54)
Anastacia Tolbert (18:17)
Claire McGuinness (19:35)
About Splabman
Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.
