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If you’re not too tired out from last week’s nonstop festivities, we’re closing our spring season at InKY with a free reading by three poets on Friday, May 9. This free event starts at 7 p.m. with an open stage, followed by music by John Mann at 7:30 and featured readings at 8 p.m. We’ll start monthly readings back up in August, because we’ve all earned a summer vacation.

Pamela Garvey is the author of Fear, a new chapbook of poems published by Finishing Line Press, which was a finalist for their New Women’s Voices competition. Garvey has published poetry in many literary journals including The North American Review, Sonora Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Pleiades, Cimarron Review and others. She has been a semi-finalist for the “Discovery”/The Nation Poetry Award. In 2004 she co-founded Words on Purpose, a St. Louis based committee of socially concerned writers who organize benefit readings. An assistant professor of English at St. Louis Community College-Meramec, Garvey lives in the city of St. Louis with her husband and son.

Ellen Birkett Morris is a writer and poet from Louisville, Kentucky. Her fiction has been published in Mindprints, A Literary Journal, Pedestal Magazine and Alimentum. Her story, “The Cycle of Life and Other Incidentals,” was selected as a finalist in the Glimmer Train Press Family Matters short story competition. Her poetry has appeared in RHYME and REASON, Mindprints, The Centrifugal Eye, The Heartland Review, The Rambler, The Binnacle, The Pedestal Magazine Political Anthology and is forthcoming in Alimentum.

Angela Jackson-Brown is a student at Spalding University in the MFA in Creative Writing program. She is currently hard at work writing a novel entitled Drinking from a Bitter Cup, a collection of short stories set during the mid-1800s, and an autobiographical poetry collection. Angela resides in Louisville.

Our musical guest John Mann has veered both near and far from his native western Kentucky in his 28 years. After going to college in Lexington, Mann moved for a brief period to San Diego, before returning to Kentucky and making the move to Louisville two years ago. With an interesting musical heritage (Mann’s cousin is former Sun Records artist Carl Mann, who had a hit in the fifties with an up-tempo reworking of the pop standard, Mona Lisa), Mann has tried to keep his music planted in the present with an always-keen eye to the past. In December of 2004, John released his second album called Hands in the Pavement, which was in regular rotation for a year on WFPK 91.9 in Louisville, Ky.

My sweet man has been at Coachella since last week, and boy, have I missed him. I’m staying up late to pick him up from the airport, because I believe every flight home should end with a hug and a kiss from someone you love. Even after midnight. If you’ll forgive me a second of gloopiness, Reader, I can’t wait to rest my forehead in that space between his shoulder and chest. Now if I can only stay awake until his plane lands …

The new book, Death-Defying Acts, otherwise known as “the circus book,” will, gawd willing and the creek don’t rise, come out in 2009.

I drove up to the Poetry Factory on Friday to spend a relaxing weekend on the Third Coast, playing board games with my editor Marci and poet/superstar Jonathan and wandering around the summer towns still sleepy this early in the season. I decided to spare Nigel the miles and rent a car, and that turned out to be a fortunate decision.

To get to that part of Michigan, you have to drive through hundreds of miles of the Indiana wilderness, like Mellencamp country with a smidge of Amish thrown in for extra culture. Mostly you see a lot of corn. But sometimes, a deer gets spooked and decides to take its chances across lanes of interstate traffic to take cover on the other side. I saw the doe crossing from the right and I knew I wouldn’t miss her. If I had braked, I would have caused a big accident, probably injuring myself and others. If I had swerved, I would have gone off the steep shoulder, or I might have over-corrected and crossed lanes — again, creating a bigger accident. I kept going, and she and I locked eyes for a split second before she ran right into the passenger side of the car.

It took the state trooper a long time to come after I called 911. My insurance company didn’t need a police report, but part of the doe, I’m guessing a leg, was caught between two body panels of the car. I wasn’t going to bring that with me to Michigan. When the middle of Indiana gets dark, it gets spooky. When state troopers need to remove part of a deer from a dented car, they use their giant Indiana state trooper knives.

I made it to Michigan and all the way back today without incident. The reading was fun! And back at the house, Marci won our Boggle game, Jonathan won Scrabble, and I successfully defended my title, as I am the reigning Poetry Factory I Love the ’80s Board Game champion. All is right with the world, except it’s missing one beautiful deer. I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop.

It’s April again, which means a whole month dedicated to celebrating poetry! An entire month! Whatever will we do with thirty whole days?! InKY has a helluva show for you this Friday. If you’re around Louisville and want to hear some great poems, do come see:

Tom C. Hunley is the author of The Tongue; Still, There’s a Glimmer; and My Life as a Minor Character. His new book of poems, Octopus, won the Holland Prize and will be published by Logan House Press later this year. Poems from the book have been published in TriQuarterly, The New York Quarterly, Connecticut Review, and others. My favorite Tom poem is “God in the Cheese,” and you can read it here. Tell me you’re not utterly charmed!

Ben Lesousky is the author of It So Happens, a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press. In 2006, he was awarded a fellowship from The English-Speaking Union to study modernism at Cambridge University in England. His poems have appeared in The Sycamore Review and The Chaffin Journal and he served as an intern at Sarabande Books in 2007. Ben is a Bellarmine boy and a total prodigy.

Ellyn Lichvar, a native Louisvillian, recently received her MFA in creative writing from Spalding University. Her poems have appeared in Poem, The Furnace Review, BloodLotus, LEO, Silenced Press and others. Currently, she is shopping around a chapbook and enjoying spending her free time with her husband Jeremy and her dogs, Woody and Jovie. You can read one of her poems here. Her husband, Jeremy, will be the one going WHOOOOOO! in the crowd. You should join him, we like to get rowdy at InKY.

Musical guest Justin Lewis is a 20-year-old singer/songwriter looking for a change — not only a change in mixing musical genres, but also the world. Justin will be heading to Guatemala this July to work with impoverished children and their families, and will be doing so solely through his music. All of Justin’s musical proceeds will be funding his 15-day trip, including airfare and supplies. Directly after Guatemala, Justin will be gearing up for his first full length album. What’s not to love about this kid? Saving up tip jar money to go to Guatemala? That’s adorable. Come help him out!

As always, the show is free, starts at 7 with a brief open mic (come sign up!), music at 7:30, featured readers at 8. We’re at the Rudyard Kipling in Old Louisville. You can read more about InKY here. Come say hi, I’ve been working hard all week and need to see friendly faces!

These days, my weeks are kinda busy with a mix of just hanging out with friends and getting stuff done, working during the day (of course) and often at night (I bring it on myself). But weekends have been full of action lately:

Easter Weekend: up to Cincinnati for my first Bruce Springsteen concert, followed by an overnight and a morning visit from the Easter Bethlet, who dropped off a little basket I made for Zipp (now someone has an oyster knife!). First visit to Trader Joe’s (smaller than expected. good prices on cheese.) and first holiday meal with Zipp’s extended family.

Wedding Weekend: in Northern California for the wedding of the century, starring MLE and Dan. So much fun and joy and cake! Wine tasting in the Russian River Valley, treats in North Beach and Chinatown, ladyboys and 80s night, a lovely wedding and predictably awesome parties in Geyserville. Whew. Arrived home exhausted but happy.

Last weekend: Friday night, I gave a reading downtown at St. Johns Renaissance Theatre to help kick off Thousand Poets, a festival celebrating National Poetry Month. It was cold and rainy out, so that might have kept some folks away from the Gallery Hop, but it didn’t keep Lauren and Zipp from fetching me wine from the Red Tree Gallery next door (thanks!!). Didn’t sell any books as the space wasn’t very conducive to commerce, but sometimes you have to take one for the team. Then on Saturday, Zipp and I headed back up to Cincinnati for a MusicNOW Festival event - Andrew Bird, also known as My Other Boyfriend. I wrote a bit about it here. Watching Andrew Bird makes me wish I could play the violin, but I’m not allowing myself to claim to be learning any more musical instruments until I actually for real start to learn to play that guitar I have sitting in the corner. Oh, Andrew, at least I can whistle, though not as nicely as you. On the drive up to the Nati, Zipp and I whined a bit about how it’s too bad we can’t just pull off at a winery whenever we feel like it because we’re not in Sonoma County anymore, and then we saw the sign for Smith-Berry, so we decided to take a detour and check it out. Now, Kentucky is not exactly known for wine, and for good reasons, I think. Many Kentucky (and Indiana) wines I’ve tried have been so supersweet, and I don’t really dig on the sweet wines unless they’re specifically for dessert. But I was pleasantly surprised at the dry offerings at Smith-Berry, and I bought a bottle of the Brother John, I liked it so much. If you’re in the neighborhood, definitely stop in. Nice people, pretty land, a lovely little family farm operation. Zipp and I stayed up in Cincinnati, and the next morning we walked up to Findlay Market for a soul food brunch and some exotic meats browsing, then hit the new IKEA before heading home. I needed a something for my kitchen so my awesome pots and pans don’t have to live in cardboard boxes under my kitchen table (so savage!) and I found just the right little system in eleventy-billion pieces that we then put together using only a screwdriver, a tiny disposable wrench and the powers of our intellect. Plus a beer. Oh, but the drive back home was lovely - we took Highway 42, which runs alongside the interstate but closer to the Ohio River, so we could see all the tiny towns between here and Cincinnati and marvel at how high the water is, momma.

Speaking of momma, the Moms is coming to visit this coming weekend. We also have the National Poetry Month celebration at InKY (more to come on this fantastic event, srsly, you won’t want to miss it) on Friday. My apartment desperately needs to be cleaned and I have papers to grade for school, but the weather is so nice and there’s an NCAA championship party going down at Dominique’s. So, this is the story for my weeks: wanting to be out having more fun, instead inside getting stuff done. But there’s always the weekend - it comes every Friday.

Hey, folks! Some of you have read my book. If you have a few spare seconds, could you maybe submit an Amazon review? My wonder publisher says it’s good for visibility and such.

In return, I will write you your very own haiku - the poetic equivalent of one of those little personalized bicycle license plates. Let me know in comments and I will get to work on it!

“This is my dog, …

… Hot Wheels.”

… Otto Von Underbite.”

… Buford.”

… La Dee Dah Nail Salon (DeeDee for short).”

I kinda want a dog.

I always considered myself more of a cat person, and to tell the truth, I do like cats more than dogs. This is not to say I’ve abandoned the idea of bringing home a weird little feline named Nora Charles who will keep my feet warm at night and my corners free of daddy longlegs spiders. A house feels weird without a cat. But since I am barely keeping my jade plant alive these days, I don’t want to adopt a feral kitten for fear it will stay that way, only indoors, neglected emotionally and left to grow weirder and weirder until she surpasses even Sonoma and Jasper (two very dear cat friends of mine) in uncorrected personality traits. Plus, if the cat becomes my family she will certainly take on some passive aggressive behavior, and I don’t have the budget to replace the pee’d-upon shoes that would bear the brunt of Nora Charles’ misplaced rage at being left home alone all the time with nobody to scratch her behind the ears or hand-feed her bits of sashimi, two luxuries she will learn quickly she cannot live without. Like person, like kitty.

So yes, at some point when my life slows down a bit I will go rescue a scaredy cat and bring her home into an apartment filled with sunshine and organized closets and wild salmon canapés. And after that, when things are really stable for me and I have a routine that involves being in the same place every morning and evening, I will also find myself a dog. This is a shock to me. I never wanted a dog before. But I can see how much fun they are, if you get a small one that is also sort of like a cat except you handfeed it bacon or Omaha Steaks or whatever it is dogs eat from your hands, and you can dress it up and take funny photos of it to amuse your flickr contacts and maybe even teach it to skateboard even though I don’t know how to skateboard so that last bit might be a challenge. Something small and loyal and unlikely to care much about running, like a pug or a french bulldog. Something not too much bigger than my aforementioned, and as yet imaginary, high-strung cat.

I realize that my ultimate personal goal of settling down enough to make a nice home for a very small dog is kind of absurd. Other people plan for babies, but if I am a little aghast at how much responsibility a dog is and how I’m sort of reluctant to change my life to accommodate one, I think it’s obvious how my 30s are going to turn out. In the meantime, I like to peruse Petfinder and daydream about the certain hijinks and hilarity that would ensue if I brought home a barely domesticated Irish Wolfhound named Buffy Sainte-Marie. I don’t think Nora Charles would approve.

I’m cross-posting with my Velocity blog because sometimes I forget to tell you guys when I have events coming up, and I always like to see my friends but am very bad about the evite or mass email or whathaveyou. So. You guys all know I write poems. Sometimes, I read them aloud in public. It’s not as weird as it sounds.

Come see my floor show this Friday at St. John’s Renaissance Theater (637 East Market Street). I’ll be reading with fellow writer Adam Day, and there’s music, too. Brett Eugene Ralph’s Kentucky Chrome Revue will feature a bonus Peter Searcy (we love Pete!) on cello, plus The Big Time Band will perform. The event, which costs $5 (and I am worth at least half that, Reader), is a National Poetry Month event sponsored by Thousand Poets.

Maybe you’ve never been to a poetry reading before. Maybe you think it’s all fingersnapping non sequiturs delivered by beatniks in that weird “poetry” cadence:

Sometimes it is. But this show will not be like that. Sometimes I write poems about Louisville and sometimes I write poems about my friends. Maybe you’re in one. Maybe you’re not, but if you want to impress your date by saying, “say, that poem is about me,” I will play along.

I am a good sport.

The Kentucky Chrome Revue is a limited-time offer. Brett Ralph is a raging Kentucky badass. I am neither, but I’ll do my best for you.