Before I tell you about my recent book launch event for Bloodstream, let me tell you why I wanted to have one.
My book launch “why” has to do with carving out my own traditions, and with a commitment to celebrating personal milestones. It has to do with overcoming a bit of stage fright when it comes to reading and talking about my work.
It has to do with witnessing to the joy moments of my life, and savoring those moments with friends who have supported me throughout my poetry journey. It also has to do with building relationships with new friends who have welcomed me into their communities: members of my book club, poetry students I met through our local bookstore, and area writers who recognize the importance of showing up for one another.
Because I don’t just want my friends & fellow poetry lovers to show up for me; I want to give them something of myself that matters. I want that something— my poems—to “matter back” to the people who read them.
While I tend to think of my writing as a selfish act, the truth is bigger than that. The truth is, I want to believe that work from my own lived experience will resonate with the truths of the people who read it. I believe sharing the poems I’ve poured my heart and soul into honors the subjects of these poems—the people, places and things I keep returning to in my life. In Bloodstream, those subjects include my parents, my ancestors, and beloved pets who were a part of my family stories and left their paw prints on my psyche.
I also derive enormous pleasure from bringing people together that I care about.
I’ve now had four in-person launch events for the books I’ve published. The first was in 2016 at Paddiwhack Gallery to celebrate my first chapbook, The Heart Contracts. I was 58 at the time, and had been publishing poems slowly and intermittently before then. That chapbook, published by Finishing Line Press, represented a turning point for me as a writer. I finally started prioritizing poetry in my life in a more intentional way, determined to hone my practice and seek out others in the poetry community. I’ll never forget the thrill of that celebration, and how it felt to have a little book I could call my own. I’ll never forget seeing my name various places, written as “author.”
My second launch party, at the same gallery, helped me welcome my second chapbook, Accommodations, into the world. That book had received the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award, and I’d begun working on it after my father’s death. In a sense, the book was a way of mourning him. About a dozen people came to that event, and I was as happy as if there had been 100.
When Saint Julian Press published my debut full-length, The Grief Committee Minutes, in 2024, I knew I had to celebrate that in a public way as well; a full-length collection represented an achievement I had long aspired to. I held this launch event in a new venue, the Matheson History Museum, and made a bigger deal of it than the others, sending postcard invitations and having a book cake, which somehow I’d heard was a thing. About 40 people attended, and I didn’t think my heart could ever be more full.
No one was more surprised than me when my second full-length collection, Bloodstream, was accepted for publication by Mercer University Press later that year. This book came together more quickly than my previous books, but the special connection I had to the press alone was enough to make me want to celebrate it.
I’ve talked in previous posts about that connection, but the short version of it is that Mercer published several of my late father’s scholarly works, which I had no knowledge of when the press first came on my radar. Not only that: the very first book MUP ever published was one written by my dad. So here we are, 46 years later, and Mercer has now published my second book of poems, and it feels like something has come full circle, or perhaps a new circle has begun to form. Guess what? I wanted, no—I needed—to mark this milestone. With a launch. With fanfare. With every good intention. So I did.
Book launch No.4, held just over a week ago on March 28, was everything I’d hoped it would be. I can never express enough gratitude to my village of supporters and friends who helped make it so. Will there be another in-person book launch in my future? Will there even be another book? Who knows. Creating a book is exhausting, not to mention the business of marketing the finished product, if one is lucky enough to find publication.
Holding a book launch is not for every writer. Planning an event takes lots of time, energy, and resources, including a support network I’ve been fortunate to have but not everyone does. I have more time now that I’ve retired, but I somehow managed to pull off these events when I was still working full-time, and remember how draining it all was. Top-level rewarding in the end, yes—but draining. A book launch is also a gamble: You never know who will show up, and it can be difficult to manage your own expectations.
I’ve seen each of my book launches as opportunities to inaugurate and burnish each new publication into my life’s timeline. Each decision to hold an event has come down to believing in each book and wanting to share its story, including the poems that comprise the work. One never knows what’s ahead, (other than death is certain, as is disappointment in all aspects of life, and time doesn’t stop.) Celebrating the joy moments, therefore, for me at least, is critical.
Here are some photos from the Bloodstream event and a short reel capturing some of the key moments. Enjoy! I sure did.
