Curse of the Poetry Festival

Wonderland in white.

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Uncle! [slapping the mat] Aunt! I give!

Poetry curse: 1. Me: 0.

My friends B, L and I just got back last weekend from a 2 ½-day retreat in Minnesota. Most of the 35 women at the retreat had been coming to the annual event for 25+ years. L and I were invited to give poetry workshops as part of the event, a yearly gathering to celebrate women and art. In addition to our poetry workshops, the weekend also included meditative drawing, acrylic painting, and interpretive movement. B spent her afternoons birding in the MN woods. We all had a lovely time and made many new friends, but it was NOT a poetry festival. You’ll see in a minute why that matters.

Under this sugar coating is a layer of ice.

My plan yesterday was to drive with another guest poet to a poetry festival in Aberdeen, about 3-4 hours northwest of here. Two other poets would drive in from Sioux Falls and MN. When I checked safetravelusa.com early yesterday morning, the northbound leg of our route was designated “No travel advised.” The westerly leg of our route was “ice and snow covered; slippery,” with continuing snow showers. So we scrapped the drive for the day and hoped that by this morning, the plow fairies would have swept it all away.

I think I’ve mentioned that each time my friend P invites me to Aberdeen to do workshops & readings, I run into freakish weather (see http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2008/08/hackers-really-raise-my-hackles.html for gory details of one of these trips). But what I haven’t mentioned is that each year in February, when I organize the annual one-day-only student poetry festival at our own Little Town U, something BIG gums up the works. One year, we had a blizzard the day before the festival. Another year, we had an ice storm the morning of the festival. And one year, on the morning of the festival (and because winter wouldn’t cooperate that year, I guess), Ray was sideswiped on the interstate by a distracted driver, flipped, and rolled his pickup into a ditch. He was okay, but of course I was a short-circuiting bundle of jangled nerves the entire day.

Time to refill the bird feeders!

So you can see why my first reaction when P called yesterday to cancel the festival was hysterical laughter. I’d been smacked down again by the dreaded poetry curse!

It’s true…I’m relieved not to have to fishtail across the frozen north. And the farmyard is a breathtaking wonderland in white (if you don’t have to go anywhere). And I cancelled classes today expecting to be gone, so I’ll have a nice long, snowy weekend to grade papers and knit (there’s no un-cancelling classes—30 seconds after cancelling a class, students have already made 30 other plans).

Still, I’ll miss hanging out with P, sampling Aberdeen martinis, and reading & writing poetry. And I LOVE road trips.

Brigid, in your shawl of snow, protect us.

I’m starting to think that me + poetry festivals = psychic disturbance in the Universe. But I won’t give up, dammit. Somehow, I will lift this curse. I will burn sage over my Yeats books. I will speak in trochaic tetrameter. I will knit bookmarks. I will memorize Christopher Dewdney’s “Grid Erectile” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN3AaYp_kyY). I will stockpile magnetic poetry kits. And next year, when plans are afoot for Little Town U’s poetry festival or another trip to Aberdeen, I will not reveal my intentions aloud, lest the Universe hear. As the goddess Brigid is my witness, one day poetry festivals everywhere will be able to raise their faces to the sun and shout out their slant rhymes, curse-free and unafraid.