The Inkblotter at The King’s English

May is just TOO MUCH! Starting out the month with a bang — Sarah Burningham, Jessica Day George, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee at the Library, Storytime Extravaganza with Rick Walton, Sharlee Glenn, and Kristyn Crow all before May 4 — and then continuing right on from there with Ed Lueders at First Unitarian, Ted Kerasote and now the UCCR (coming to you live from the SLCC Miller Conference Center!) has left so little time for other things, which sadly include blogging.

In the midst of all this, things manage to converge — they usually do, somehow — in a rather odd way. Ted Kerasote, who wrote the amazing, thought-provoking, and tear-jerking Merle’s Door and who I highly recommend meeting in person if you have the chance, came to the store on Monday night and gave an incredible reading. His theory is that, instead of having to completely dominate our relationship with our dogs, we should give them a little more freedom and be alpha-pairs. He had the good fortune to be living in a tiny Wyoming town with lots of dog-friendly open space, of course, so this is easy for him to say. But when I asked him what us city-folk could do to help our dogs have more freedom in our world of fenced yards and leash laws, he gave a simple answer: Get yourselves to open space as much as you can, where dogs can be off leash and investigate the world on their own terms.

This seems to me to be great advice on so many different levels. Dog parks, city parks, hiking trails, et al are great places for dogs because of all the interesting smells, sights, and sounds. They’re also great places for us; dog parks, because of all the fun social time with other dog owners, hiking trails because (let’s face it) who of us couldn’t use a good hike now and then, and there’s nothing better in my mind than a good excuse to be outside, whether or not it involves exercise.

Then, while the UCCR folks were in their sessions yesterday, I picked up Cesar Millan’s Be the Pack Leader to skim through. End of the conference came around, and to my shock I had finished it! It was a fascinating read. While the focus is on dealing with “problem” dogs, Cesar’s tips on “calm-assertiveness”, emotional cues, and energy management are applicable to pretty much anything you can think of — personal relationships, work relationships, pet relationships, you name it.

While Millan focuses more on the alpha role of humans in dogs’ lives, put his tips next to Kerasote’s and there’s not much of a difference. Both advocate lots (LOTS!) of stimulation, not just physical but mental as well, for dogs and their people; I know that in my dog-owning past (currently on hold for renting reasons) I often forgot about that bit. And both advocate taking dogs seriously, instead of succumbing to the knee-jerk “Oh my god! This dog is so cute!” reaction that is so very hard for us to suppress.

So, as I head off to a week on the East Coast (vacation! wedding! plane travel!), a little bit mournful that I will be missing out on all the event fun (Mameve Medwed! Stephenie Meyer! Peg Hevel! Jack Todd!), what am I thinking about? Missing work? Vacation plans? BEA? Next month’s ever-lengthening To Do List? Nope: Dogs.

*This is a “reprint”, as it were, of a piece I wrote for Shelf Awareness 05/08/08. For pictures of our PōM Night, click on the picture below!

April was looking sparse, and there’s nothing worse for an events manager. What to do? I thought: Well, it’s April. It’s National Poetry Month. Why not have our very own slam? I wasn’t really sure what a poetry slam was, but it sounded like fun. We could even give it a fancy title, call it the First Annual Thingy, and start a new tradition. At this point, I envisioned maybe 10 poets, 20 chairs (but only 15 of them filled) and a quiet night in the store. What I got was 70 people, only 60 of whom had chairs to sit in, and two rounds of 20 plus poets each, slamming, declaiming and generally having a poetically fantastic time.

Sound like fun? You, too, can put on a poetry event. Here are three easy steps:

1. Seek help. Immediately.

As I mentioned, I wasn’t really sure what a poetry slam was. It sounded like more fun than a simple open mic night. So, like any good twenty-something, I went online to Wikipedia. Turns out, there is a LOT to a slam, and I knew right away that I would need help. Help as in experienced-people help–experienced people who also like poetry. I began e-mailing the published poets we’d had readings for over the past few months, asking them if they’d like to “host”–a code word that translates to “help me organize, publicize and fraternize with the poetry community.” One by one they turned me down, each with a different reason: vacation, prior engagements, ill health. One, however, who also teaches at the University of Utah, offered to put me in touch with some of his graduate students.

2. Don’t call it a slam.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting at a cafe table with three graduate students, all poets, some of whom also taught creative writing. It was starting to look like maybe this wasn’t going to happen, after all.

“You want to do a slam? I don’t know if I’d be comfortable helping with one of those . . . ” We talked in circles for a while before I realized what was going on.

It turns out that in Salt Lake, there are rival poetry gangs. The University scene is focused on the art of crafting a poem. Then there is the spoken word scene, which itself is split into different groups. There are the official slams, which are deadly serious about performance, points earned and involve national competitions; then there is the Ruckus, a spoken word group that doesn’t have points, doesn’t compete, but puts on shows every month, with music and performances, that gather hundreds of onlookers and dozens of participants. How to get them all together? The answer is to call it anything you want, so long as you don’t call it a slam.

Once I accepted that I would have to change the name and format of the evening I’d already started marketing as a slam, things started to go swimmingly. My new collaborators got excited and came up with brilliant ideas: prizes! judges! judges from each rival gang! the Utah Poet Laureate as a judge! flyers! extra credit for students who participated! And on and on, until my head was spinning and I had three pages of notes.

3) Get excited!

There is nothing as energizing as working with enthusiastic people, and I was lucky enough to have the three graduate students in addition to the energetic support of the bookstore staff. With their help, I secured three amazing judges: the Utah Poet Laureate Kate Coles; Jesse Parent, a Salt City Slam organizer; and Joel Long, a local teacher and City Arts organizer. We distributed flyers, teachers offered extra credit for students to participate, I sent out press releases and e-postcards to the store’s mailing list, and then sat back and crossed my fingers.

On the day of the event, at 5 p.m. I came out of my office to see if anyone was there to sign up to read and saw a line of 10 people waiting at the registers. Half an hour later, I had signed up 20 people for our First Round, in which participants could read either their own work or another poet’s, and 30 in the Second Round, for original work only; some even signed up for both! Our staff was busy setting up extra chairs for the many participants and their friends and family.

Poets ranged from the published, to the aspiring, to the nine-year-old girl who not only held her own but was so inspiring that we made an extra prize just for her: a $15 gift certificate for the Youngest Poet Present. In both rounds there was a winner who received $25 gift certificates for the store. Every performance, some as short as 30 seconds and some as long as three minutes, was greeted with wild cheers from the audience, and our two winners (one from each round) walked away with their $25 Gift Certificates and enormous smiles on their faces.

As for me, I’m still smiling, and I’m dreaming of next year. I may even add a monthly Open Mic night to our events roster to keep our poets in practice and ready for next year’s competition!

Yes, today is finally the day! The Host has arrived, and we are set up in our back driveway handing out copies to all you wonderful folks who were lucky enough to get tickets to Stephenie Meyer on the 17th. Those who haven’t (some, anyway) have already started advertising on craigslist — I fully expect there to be scalpers present on the day, too.

No tickets? Don’t despair — you could still get a signed copy of The Host! We will have Stephenie sign every single one that we can get our hands on. Give us a call on the 18th and claim your copy!

In other news (non-Stephenie Meyer news! shocking!) we’ve had a string of wonderful events, yet again, that I haven’t had time to do justice to on here. I’m hoping that Enna Isilee will help me out on Sarah Burningham; As for the rest, it says “blog catch-up!” in my day planner on Thursday…

As I am short on time and energy today, I will present you with a recap in pictures, those things I’ve been told are worth thousands of words!

• Our First Annual TKE PōM Competition
• Trenton Lee Stewart, signing for The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey
• Jeff Stone, signing for The Five Ancestors: Eagle (#5)

In anticipation of his reading/signing next month (I know, I probably should have waited to post this, but I couldn’t resist!) on Wednesday, May 28th, at 7 p.m. for his new book, Dead Lucky, we asked author and mountaineer Lincoln Hall to answer a few questions. I should mention that Lincoln is my new hero, and if I weren’t so excited about going to BEA, I would be really sincerely upset that it is making me miss his event. No, I take it back — despite being excited about BEA, I am sad. So I will console myself with this fantastic interview!

TKE: When did you first know you wanted to: climb mountains? write books? Were these two ambitions connected to each other initially, or did that come later?

Lincoln Hall: Sometimes as a child in grade school I was asked to write two pages but wouldn’t stop until I’d write ten, such was my passion for writing. This was encouraged by my mother who wrote satire for our local newspaper. When I discovered rockclimbing at the age 15 I was immediately hooked, but I had no interest in mountaineering. Then one climb led to the next, which led ultimately led to climbing difficult mountains in New Zealand, then Himalaya, the Andes, Antarctica and elsewhere.

I wrote my first book when was 22 years old and recovering from frostbite received during my first Himalayan expedition in India. I had a great story to tell, but did not tell it well enough to get published. Six years later I wrote a book about my first attempt on Everest which became a bestseller, so I was on the road to being a writer. My next book was a novel, so while I get great satisfaction from conveying the other reality of mountaineering, I also enjoy exploring different themes through fiction.

TKE: In Dead Lucky, you talk about your family, the tensions between being a father and husband and a mountaineer, and your struggle to unite these parts of yourself. Do you feel that there are any ways that these things complement each other?

LH: I was a dedicated climber for over 15 years before I become a father and a husband. Climbing strengthened my character and my honesty (kid yourself in the high mountains and you die). Climbing also strengthened my spirituality and my belief in the power of commitment. All these were good things to bring to a marriage and family life. The irony of my 2006 Everest experience is that I am a very safe climber. On three other occasions have turned back while my companions pushed onto the summits of major peaks. I was prepared to push the boundaries when I was single and childless, but I reined myself in once I had met Barbara, who became my wife. When things went bad on Everest, the lessons of my wild climbing years stayed with me and contributed to my ability to survive, as did the power of love, which proved stronger than any obstacle.

TKE: You are someone who has gone beyond the limits of normal human endurance, and come back. Any advice on coping with challenges not just in extraordinary circumstances, but in every day life?

LH: These days I do a lot motivational speaking. I tell people that lessons from the mountains are more potent than those of every day life because your life lies on the line, but the lessons are the same. For instance, when something really matters to you, the first rule is never give up. If you give up in the face of desperate odds, then that’s the end of the road for you. But if you don’t give up, you’re in there with a chance.

Lincoln Hall will be at The King’s English Bookshop on Wednesday, May 28th at 7 p.m. for his new book Dead Lucky.