A Few Book & Poetry Notes

Posted byKendall DunkelbergPosted inPublicity, WritingTags:, , , , , , , , ,

This is just a quick update on where things are with Tree Fall with Birdsong.

This morning, I got an email from Bookends in Pontotoc, Mississippi. We’ve landed on a date for an event with them: Sept. 27. Details about time and exactly what the event will look like are coming soon. I’m also talking with the Arts Council of Mitchell County about doing an event in Osage while we’re there in July, though we haven’t settled on a date yet. And the readings at Friendly City Books and Lemuria are all set. It’s great to start to get events like this on my calendar. Watch for more updates over the summer!

Also this morning, I did a search on the book to see where it is in bookstores. I always like to see what international stores might come up, and I’m thinking about the best way to send copies to friends overseas — it will still probably be best to mail them one, but with international postage what it is, I wanted to at least see. Nothing came up in the countries I would send to, but I did see bookstores in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand that list it, and eBay sellers in Germany and Australia. Do they actually have copies? I doubt it, but maybe they’re set up to order copies on demand.

Oh, and Amazon has it it France and Germany (I didn’t check other countries). Interestingly, I happened to notice that while Tree Fall with Birdsong comes up first in a search on the title at Amazon.de, the next several items it wants to sell me are bird traps. I’m guessing that’s because the German word for trap sounds like “fall.”

In other news, I wrote a poem, yesterday. Or you might say I wrote 5 haiku. It’s one I’ve been thinking about for awhile but hadn’t set down until a friend in town asked if I’d write a poem in the dedication in her book. No, I didn’t write it on the spot, but by the next day, I had something I was willing to write. Due to space limitations, she only got two of the haiku, plus my really long title. Now to let that one sit and ferment a bit before starting to send it out.

It’s been a super busy spring, so to write a poem while I’m also still in the throes of getting things ready for our Full Residency — that starts tomorrow! — seems like quite a victory. But I’m looking forward to summer, and then to sabbatical, when I’ll have more time to devote to writing.

And this was going to be a short update….

Published by Kendall Dunkelberg

I am a poet, translator, and professor of literature and creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, where I direct the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing, the undergraduate concentration in creative writing, and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. I am Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, and I have published four collections of poetry, Tree Fall with Birdsong, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, and the textbook A Writer's Craft: Multi-Genre Creative Writing. I was born and raised in Osage, Iowa, and have lived for over thirty years in Columbus, Mississippi, where my wife Kim and I let wildflowers grow in our yard to the delight of spring polinators and only some of our neighbors.

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