on AWP, poetry, and punk rock

This year’s AWP Conference was in L.A. (or Hell-LA as I used to call it). I haven’t been to LA in some years and I’m decidedly less gainfully employed (yet much more educated) than I was then. I don’t like LA despite the good people I know who live there). I don’t like a city where I can’t walk to/from everything I need. I don’t like a city without significant public transit. I don’t like a city with no heart/no center – I always feel like “there’s no there there” when I’m in LA. This trip was spent mainly behind a table selling books, talking about books, and hearing about books at the Black Lawrence Press booth. While it’s always inspiring to see so many people (14,000 ?) who love books, AWP is always an endurance test. Because of my various limitations, my post-accident AWP experiences are definitely anxiety-driven. I opt to sit behind a table at the Book Fair not only because I feel it’s the best use of my talents on BLP’s behalf but also because it feels relatively safe.  Once I’m out there walking around the Book Fair, the noise, the bright lights, the volume of information, the general sensory overload can prove too much for my already-challenged brain. In coping with PTSD on a daily basis, there are certain triggers: lights, noise, crowds. But sitting behind a table, I feel at ease and fully able to talk about and sell books. I feel useful. And that’s incredibly important to me right now – feeling useful. One of the panels at AWP this year focused on “Imposter Syndrome” – while I didn’t attend the panel, I did find myself considering whether or not I feel like an “imposter” when I’m surrounded by writers. I don’t have the same kind of self-confidence I had when I was last in LA – I’m not running a successful Music PR firm nor do I have an easily definable “career.”  I felt a twinge of “imposter-itis” when I gave a copy of my latest poetry chapbook (w/Mary Ellen Sanger) to a favorite poet of mine – she’s published with more than one reputable press, I’m not.  I also felt the same “imposter-itis” when meeting with former colleagues (now friends) in LA: am I still the punk rocker they knew or am I just another pseudo-punk rock/academic?  I’ve been thinking about “punk rock” a lot – both in connection with a current fiction project and for  a large research project for my Ph.D. focused on the structuring of female image in punk rock. Leaving the novel aside for now, or this paper, I’ve had to read volumes of academic work on punk, women in rock, and pop culture. Most of it either misses the point (written by outsiders) or lacks academic rigor (written by insiders).  I’m struggling with definitions of “punk rock” – what do people mean when they use the term and what do I mean? Questions I never would have asked “back in the day” when I helmed my own PR firm and proudly called myself “Punk Rock Bitch.” Am I still punk rock now? Can one be punk rock without the outward trappings? Can one be a writer without a book out? Can one be a poet if one isn’t published on a major press? What makes an “imposter” (or to use the old punk rock term “a poser/poseur”)? And why does any of this matter when there are books to read, words to write, and LOUD guitars?

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