Day 4 Chapel Hill

A recounting: On Day 1, I began at State College. Aldon was kind enough to take pictures. Check them out here

On Day 2, after driving 9 hours to make it to Chapel Hill on time for the 8pm reading at Madison 462, I learned via facebook that the reading had been canceled. This was only an hour before I was to walk over to the venue. It was disappointing to say the least, but because it was not certain - I was actually told that the reading was given a shortened time - I went to the venue. While there, there was a kind fellow who took a shine to me as I looked good in red, his favorite color, I learned. He brought me a seat to watch the game that was better than that of many behind me ... oh, yes, this was the NCAA Championship game in which the Tar Heels were playing.
Imagine me: jet-lagged, tired, hungry, beginning to half hallucinate into the darkness of blacking out, watching a game I wasn't too involved in. College basketball has never really moved me. I worked in 2005 during the last championship game that we won. I went down to the Franklin street parties after that one, but then found my way back to my car and avoided the traffic like the plague. This time I barely made it to half time, before I left - it was at that point that it became crystal clear that there would be no reading of any sort- to go get supermarket sushi at one of my favorite chains, Harris Teeter. I ate in the car while waiting to pick DeLana up, and I was pretty tickled to do that.
What I would have read at this readin:
Negro Bembon Daddy p. 49
Catholic Puberty p. 36
Wolf Rock School, October 2006
The Pistol's Confession
On the football field
Bop: Extinguish the flame
New York Tunnels

If I had been given 5 minutes, I would have read the last poem and maybe a shorter one from the book like Addict.

Day 3: My birthday
I woke up to the sound of my stateside cell phone ringing; my father calling me. And then it was my mother and then my father again. These were the only people with the phone number as I just got it (on Day 1 of the tour).
Yesterday I was 28 years old, exactly half the age of my mother when she had me. I have this whole year of 27 philosophy, and it tickles me that I, that my becoming, was a part of my mother's year of 27 project/vision/legacy.
So after all the birthday greetings ... and then later from close, close friends ... and breakfast with DeLana and Teresa, I went off to buy a dress.
The fellow invited me to a military ball. I went over to Southpoint (Macy's, JC Penny's, and the smaller shops) and then David's Bridal. I later tried University Mall with DeLana. No luck. I rarely have a day where everything I try on seems wrong. Yesterday was that day. I couldn't find anything that I liked for this ball. Not one thing, and it made me frustrated. True, there's still a try to DC and Philadelphia and the possibility of finding things in either one of those locations, but it was more than a little exasperating.
After Southpoint, I picked up DeLana and went to campus. I had a meeting with Jim to discuss the reorganization of the dissertation. Before that, I ran around to get a new student ID - yay! student discounts again - and then to print out the dissertation (I don't have a copy at home).
The meeting was pretty cool. I'm essentially going to be reimagining the work as an intersection between memoir and autoethnography, infusing it more with a poetic understanding of change and memory in relation to academic considerations of both. I'm still focusing on the high school literacy project, my involvement with it, but it seems that I've been given a lot more freedom to also talk about a discovering of self, a particular identity influenced by all of these choices. I'm hoping that this can give a clearer indication on where I have arrived and what I want to accomplish as a teacher, poet and lover of poetry today. We'll see.
After the meeting, I was off for Kurama sushi on Franklin and Columbia. Great sushi, though I had a rather strange conversation with the fellow next to me ... or rather he had a conversation with me, telling me all about his plans to move to the area after living in Florida. Strange.
I met up with D after that, went to University Mall, for the disappointing shopping, then off to Market Street Books and Maps (as it was once called) to prepare for the reading.
Day 3 set list:
Catholic Puberty p. 36
Christ and Magdalene (with quotations from Wuthering Heights) p. 90
Oracion del cuerpo p. 79
Magdalene Saved p. 85
Pixie Stick p. 86
Strands p. 92
Magdalene teaches the last less p. 94
The newer poems: On the football field (The Sixers Review), Blackbird, Vermont Studio Center: Fire Fridays, and Escape (Natural Bridge).
The reading was amazing. Several of the Ackland Museum staff came. D and I both once worked there. It was truly wonderful to see three of the staff members there. TJ Anderson, I also met. Teresa was there and Louis. Rachel, an old friend from the school of ed, was able to come. Felecia from Touchstone days and more. And so many others. It was really a fantastic night, made even more so by seeing Kathryn again. She's such a bright spirit and so welcoming. Years ago, we met through my planning of a reading there for the Day of the Poet poets. It was the last year of the program and there were 10 poets in attendance, though only 5 read that night. It was just an amazing time. She allowed me to bring Touchstones there after it lost its home at the Stone Center due to summer recess. She has just been such a patroness of the arts and now she's in seminary school in Boston, working towards bringing her comfort and light to others as a chaplain. When she told me that, I just knew that if I were ever in a time of need, she would be the one to seek for comfort. She's that kind of warm.
Surrounded by so many friends, I just radiated love. I had only my third cake ever to have my name on it, provided by Market Street Bookstore, which was shared by all after a wonderful happy birthday song.
After that, D, Lenard, and I went over to Town Hall Grill with Rachel, Ben and Roy for dinner. It was a great time to catch up with old friends and fellow School of Ed kats. We left a little later with cake, fewer books, and a lot of great times. That's the way a reading should go, that's the way a birthday should go.
Tonight, it's Day 4. 7:30pm Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC with DeLana Dameron and Lenard D. Moore ... but first breakfast with D and Daniella. :)

Day 1 Complete and Now on to Day 2 Jet-lagged

Last night, DeLana and I arrived in State College at around 3pm. After checking in at the hotel and checking the email, we departed for the sushi restaurant, Say So, which was such a staple for me during my undergraduate years. Lots of tuna, salmon, and more. It was a fantastic meal in preparation for the reading at Webster's. There we arrived early. According to the conversation I had had with the events coordinator, the reading was to start at 6pm. Unfortunately, the publicity for the event - consisting of a few black on white posters - listed it at 7pm. I was then informed that there would be a musical event at 8pm.
There were no banners at my reception. Very little warmth. The lovely lady who sold me books introduced me - she was wonderful, incredibly dedicated to her work - mispronouncing Cave Canem (but everyone does as the Latin V is pronounced as a W, I learned) but still kind. A few students filtered by to hear a word or two, but the main listeners were DeLana, Aldon Nielsen and myself.
About the reading itself: rather than quiet, it seemed the louder I became, the louder the conversations became at the opening to the store. It seemed they did not realize that there was a reading going on or if they did, that they did not care. I felt rushed, too. The response of the students was minimal, though on occasion they looked up. Their eyes were not active, though. At least, it did not seem so to me.
I read the following poems:
Believe p. 46
Negro Bembon Daddy p. 49
Funktified Hail Mary p. 59
Assumption aubade p. 61
Ascend p. 63
And newer poems: Wolf Rock School, October 2006, GED, and Escape
Perhaps this reading was a preparation for what is to come ... or maybe the worst I have been given to get out of the way first.
I should not be so cruel, though as the experience did thrill me, especially to converse with Aldon again. It was also a good practice on how to choose poems to read, to read them for an audience again, and watch their reactions.
I hadn't seen Aldon in years, too, though he's on my dissertation committee. He's a walking compendium of knowledge, and I felt privileged to have access to his stories again for a moment. He was even kind enough to take pictures of the event and afterwards take DeLana and I out to dinner at India Pavilion (though, unfortunately I couldn't eat much because of the early snack and my crashing due to jet lag). It was a great meal, though, filled with my random connections as usual.
In 8 minutes, we leave to get out the road again. I have to take some aspirin for the headache I am having, but I'm really looking forward to tonight's reading AND the sushi restaurant on Franklin that is going to have me as a customer today. :)

Day 1 Book Tour

At 5am this morning, I awoke. It will take me several days to adjust to the change in time, but it is always easier going this way.

In about a half hour, I'll pick up DeLana at the Newark Penn Station and then we will be off to my first reading at Webster's Bookstore, 6pm, Allen Street, Penn State University-University Park/State College. I am thrilled to be doing this reading as I used to go to Webster's all the time, spending my refund checks and spare cash from work there, sometimes forgetting the food in favor of books. It was back then, as a college student, that I came to my love of sushi and books, preferably at the same time. By my last year at Penn State, the local sushi restaurants and Webster's saw much of my money. Webster's also allowed me to sell some of my first chapbooks there. I think that very few copies of those first books exist these days, but I think it is a lovely return for me to bring my first book of poetry there as well.

After the reading, I'm scheduled to meet up with friends from way back who stayed or Penn State or returned for graduate studies. I'm really looking forward to that exchange.

Also, one of the stops I really want to make is to the Penn State library. It's one of the settings of my novel and I'd like to get a more recent impression of it.

Should be a good day!

Book Tour Plan

Please join me in celebrating the poetry that Martin Espada called "explosions of pain and transcendence, jagged epiphanies, surreal, haunting, erotic and anguished by turns". This is the work that Aracelis Girmay noted as "... the work of a poet who possesses the graceful sensuality of dusk & the unflinching eye of the butcher ... In Leon, you have an Orpheic poet who dives into the underworld of every thing--& comes back with the news."

Come ready for an intense literary experience, on the road, all the way from Germany, coming straight to you!


April 5
6pm
Webster's Bookstore
www.webstersbookstorecafe.com
128 S Allen St
State College, PA 16801
(814) 234-9712

April 6
8pm
hosted by Dasan Ahanu
Mansion 462
www.mansion462.com
462 W Franklin St
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
(919) 967-7913

April 7 (My birthday)
7pm
Market Street Bookstore
www.marketstreetbooks.com
610 Market Street
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
(919) 933-5111
reading and book signing with DeLana Dameron and Lenard D. Moore

April 8
7:30pm
Quail Ridge Bookstore
quailridgebooks.booksense.com
3522 Wade Ave
Raleigh, NC 27607
(919) 828-1588
reading and book signing with DeLana Dameron and Lenard D. Moore

April 9
9pm
Busboys and Poets
http://www.busboysandpoets.com/
Busboys @ 14th & V.
2021 14th St, DC
reading and book signing with DeLana Dameron

April 10
4pm
Green Line Cafe
4239 Baltimore Avenue
Philadelphia PA 19104
Informal poetry discussion and coffee


BIO
Raina J. León, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in The Sixers Review, The Externalist, Minglewood, The Cherry Blossom Review, Natural Bridge, African American Review, OCHO, Spindle Magazine, Black Arts Quarterly, Poem.Memoir.Story, Womb, Boxcar Poetry Review, Salt Hill Journal, Xavier Review, MiPoesias, Torch, Poetic Voices without Borders, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, AntiMuse, Farmhouse Magazine, Furnace Review, Constellation Magazine and Tiger's Eye Journal among others. Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize (2006) and is now available through Wordtech Communications. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She headed the High School Literacy Project at the University of North Carolina and is currently teaching English and Spanish at an American high school in Germany. She is an alumna of Columbia University, Penn State and West Catholic High School. In addition to her work as a teacher, she is currently a doctoral candidate in education at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.