My Wednesday

I received my contributor's copy of Left Behind: A Journal of Shock Literature today. It is the magazine's fourth issue. It looks like it will be fun to read.

As usual, I taught the Wednesday level four choreography/ensemble class at the Kanopy School for Contemporary Dance and Choreography. I always look forward to teaching this class. The dancers in the class are as young as ten years old, but they produce a lot of dynamic work and give each other helpful feedback during discussions.

I waited in line for the Obama rally yesterday, but the viewing area reached full capacity before I could get in. I ended up hanging out with Jake Penner and we worked on some things for Back Porch Reading...

Approaching October

I found out on Friday that the editors of Blood Lotus are nominating my poem "Free Samples" for Best of the Net.

The poem was published in issue 16. You can check out Blood Lotus here.

The poetry editors of Blood Lotus are Stacia M. Fleegal and Teneice Durrant Delgado.

Ashly Cochran read "Free Samples" in Blood Lotus this summer and shortly after, shared my poem on her blog, so you can also read the poem here.

Back Porch Reading is coming up on October 16th. You can currently find out more information about Back Porch Reading here and here and here.

Here are some links to pieces by some of the readers:
My Odysseus by Zozie Beatrice
Aesop, Please by Christine Holm
Timber! by Meg Johnson
Girls by Amanda Viviani

I'll be performing (dancing) in Milwaukee in December and will be starting rehearsals soon.

My brother Alec has been sending me a lot of great music lately. There is a cover of a Dar Williams song that he recently sent me that I love. Listen to it here.

Back Porch Reading

Back Porch Reading: A Poetry and Fiction Reading and Party

Zozie Beatrice, Charlie Campbell, Christine Holm, Meg Johnson, Jake Penner, Amanda Viviani



"Don't get freaked out...but I drew you..."

Meg Johnson by Elizabeth Cavanaugh

Meg Johnson by Sean Woodbury

Ames in August

I'm back from Ames, Iowa. I was there for a few days visiting my parents. I hadn't been back since Christmas and had a great time. I'm happy that Ames is starting to get back to normal after all the flooding. I'm hoping I'll get the chance to see my brother Alec sometime this fall. He loves Madison, but I haven't been to Iowa City in ages so maybe I'll hang out there some weekend. Here are a few pictures of me on my parents' back porch on August 19th.

P is for...

My poem "Timber!" is in the August issue of Word Riot which just came out today.

Also, this afternoon my housemate Stacy and I were given a free piano. We didn't even have to move it ourselves. It fits quite well in our front living room. I haven't played the piano since I was a kid and Stacy never took piano lessons so mostly we've just been standing around it. But still. Who doesn't want a piano?

A Work in Progress (Some Choreography)

This is a video of some of the students at the dance intensive I've been teaching at this summer. I started working on this new piece of modern choreography recently and I've been setting it on the students in my rep class. The class was broken up into four groups/casts today and this is group one rehearsing what I've choreographed so far. I filmed group one twice today from two different angles. I think the first run is better visually (because of the corner I'm filming from), but the audio is messed up. The second time on this video the audio is much clearer, but I like the angle of the first run a bit more.