Better Late Than Never: On Delta Mouth

Okay, I'm a bad member of the local writers' scene-- I went to the Delta Mouth Festival last weekend and never even wrote a jot about it. It was simply an amazing time, never been dazzled by such a concentrated amount of excellent poetry performed right in front of my face. Dedicating my entire weekend to drowning in words (mixed with a healthy amount of liquors, of course) was definitely the right choice here. Quickest of all possible rundowns:

Thursday night at Baton Rouge Gallery:

Readers included Lonely Christopher and Christian Bök. Wasn't entirely clear on how Lonely Christopher's name was functioning--is Lonely an indispensable adjective? His first name? Is that the name is parents gave him? (Still somewhat puzzled, never heard anyone refer to him as "Lonely" the whole night or anything but I think that might in fact be his name at this point. I would definitely have that be the case if I were him, anyway.) Anyway, irrelevant. He read from his book The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse and had amazing fashion sense. 


Christian Bök read us some stuff from his (twelve year) work in progress, the Xenotext Experiment. He's encoded (translated) a very particular poem into a DNA sequence he's implanting in an extremophile bacterium that's so patently unkillable it could legitimately outlive the human race by a few billion years. No big deal. And also? The bacterium writes a "poem" (series of protiens that can be translated) in response to his poem. Well, it doesn't actually, yet. When he implanted the sequence into the bacterium's genome (this is very different from how I write poetry, by the way), it seemed pretty cool with it, but never went and produced the poetic protein in response. So, in his words, instead of producing the first microbial poet, he went and produced the "first microbial critic." Ha. Anyway, mind-blowing stuff. (UPDATE: Here's an interview on HTMLGiant with him.)


Also, the finger sandwiches provided were unspeakably amazing.

Friday:

Some sort of exclusive poetic luncheon for my Capstone class with Christian Bök and Douglas Kearney at the Faculty Club. Good conversation (and also tasty salad, always a plus. Arugula for the win, apparently); wish I would have made more of an effort to talk to Douglas Kearney, but I am generally averse to leaving my place for another table when there is my food in front of me. Ah well, still got my books signed. Also, learned that Canadians (and specifically Canadian writers, ala Christian Bök) actually do identify as a different group of people than Americans (and American writers). Who woulda thunk it?

Then later at the Black Box (what a strange space)! Kate Durbin, Lily Hoang, and Douglas Kearney! This was an incredible night of reading, possibly my favorite on sheer virtue of performance. Kate Durbin used audience participation (including bending of gender roles, exciting) to read from her work, an intense transcription of the life-denying reality TV show The Hills. Kate Durbin is an interesting character, and more than a little intimidating to me. Excellent outfits every time I've seen her, though (also in Chicago, there was a giant floor-length fur coat involved), and my friends are huge fangirls. 
Lily Hoang read an interesting fiction piece with a cringey ending. Don't know much about her, but good words.
Douglas Kearney stole the night though--seriously, I was nearly physically knocked out of my seat by his performance. Crazy energy and charisma, and a spot-on (and dark!) sense of humor that made dealing with the serious kinds of issues he talks about (specifically, race) simultaneously more and less comfortable. Mind-blowing performances, though. If anyone ever gives you the choice between a poem about blackface and a poem about 'no homo', pick both.
Afterwards: go out the Spanish Moon. Drink. Have more weird conversation with Christian Bök. Drink. Follow poets to Radiobar, but do not talk to them again, only watch them from across the porch area. Drink. Drink.

Saturday:

Skipped the St. Patty's Day parade, because 16 hours straight of drinking is a little much. Finally got up just in time to get ready to go the the final night of readings at Red Star. Drink. Saw Jennifer Tamayo and Chris Shipman read, always a great pleasure, along with Lilian Yvonne-Bertram again, yay! Such good words. Also, Paul Killebrew, of whom I had never heard but whose stuff I really quite enjoyed. Yay surprise good words! Stalked the poets post-reading again, this time to Hounddogs. There was a bedazzled bullhorn employed at some length. Drink. Drink again.

Sunday:

Ok, Delta Mouth had already finished by Sunday, but I did go to brunch with friends at the Chimes and then have an amazingly lazy Sunday involving Deep Blue Sea, cheap champagne, some new-fangled edition of the game LIFE apparently for post-modern children, (then leftover brunch) and The Last Unicorn, which is a truly amazing movie. A decidedly unpoetic day, but much needed.

All in all, an [enter some kind of positive superfluous adjective here, I've used to many in this post already] weekend. Somewhat like gorging on a nonstop buffet of decadent desserts all weekend, except the desserts are made of words and their filling is long nights of liquor. There have been worse weekends, by far.