2014...

Admittedly, 2014 started with a whimper and ended with a thud (sick cats, food poisoning in the summer, this damn pinched nerve the last month and a half). But there was lots of goodness in there too.  I went back to my natural haircolor (well a slightly better version of it).  I traveled to Seattle by train and had an amazing time at AWP.  Saw parts of the country too beautiful for words(Montana and oy, The Cascades). Prattled away at a new art zine project each month (well fell behind and am still prattling on with some of them, but it was productive year compared to any before.)

dgp turned 10 this year and published a whole slew of amazing titles (with more to come this next year, plus another trip to AWP/Minneapolis in April)  Black Lawrence released my 4th book, girl show. I co-curated the Aesthetics of Research series at the library (which has even better things in store for 2015). Ate lots of mexican food and margaritas and various other cocktail goodness.  Bid adieu to some romantic loose ends and got some closure. There were lots of shiny pretty things like vintage brooches and paper and dresses and new shoes. New kittens, new friends, watercolors, and a mild, coolish summer that was lovely and not too humid .  And though the year ended with a limp, I also managed to finish up the salvage manuscript and send it off.  Did a handful of readings, had some poems appear in very good places. Am right this minute awaiting the impending release of major characters in minor films. Am very close to also finishing up the poems for the apocalypse mss and working away at the hotel poems, plus another couple of smaller series.

As for resolutions and such nonsense, They are pretty much the same every year, and some years I am more successful than others. I would still like to blog more, read more novels, take more pictures.  Write more, as always.  Go on more walks.  Go to the beach more.

So tonight, celebrating with pizza and raspberry hot chocolate and writing I say clear out 2014, and may the next year be more of the good stuff and far less of the bad...

now available for pre-order

"In Kristy Bowen’s major characters in minor films, language moves like a camera, cutting from image to image, leaving impressions that form intriguing fragmented narratives of love, intrigue, mystery and damage. Populated with both the familiar and the strange, with rabbits and birds as well as whiskey and fire, the journey through the scenes these poems create is a wild and rich ride."
-Donna Vorreyer, author of A House of Many Windows

"Get ready: Kristy Bowen’s major characters in minor films casts our favorite muse du jour in a ‘white-hot, white dress.’ Through poems that are lyrical, irreverent, and a little bit naughty, we discover the swanky, labyrinthine interior of her straight-to-DVD universe: remember, she tells us in ‘movie of the week,’ ‘Everybody loves a victim, especially the blonde, pretty kind.’ Through scathing missives to James Franco and sensual harangues directed at the moon, our wine-stained diva tempts us through vivacious non sequiturs to the ‘poem within a movie within a girl-shaped world’ in all of us."
-Sara Henning, author of A Sweeter Water

"I want to be best friends with the ‘I’ of this book. She’s hilarious. She’s heartbreaking. She’s more than a little bit dangerous. Whether she’s writing about crying on the bus or hiding a knife under the sink, she deals out her words like a card shark—fast, sure, sly. What’s not to love about such a deft performance of wit, skill, and heart?"
-Sara Biggs Chaney, author of Ann Coulter’s Letter to the Young Poets 

"In this stunning full-length collection, Kristy Bowen speaks to us of love and desperate longing, of loss of mothers and lovers, of health and identity, of the disguises we don, the structures we enforce, the strategies we adopt for putting ourselves back together after being torn apart. With fresh, inventive language, both lush and compact, every line with a new surprise, but never forced, never false, Bowen leads us on a sensually arousing of the psyche. These poems beg to be read and re-read, burning white hot, always singeing, always singing."
-Michael Albright

https://squareup.com/market/sundress-publications/major-characters-in-minor-films-by-kristy-bowen

So, first there was November and poetry business and readings at the Poetry Center and awesome features as part of the American Acad. of Poets Poem-of-the-Day series.  There were chapbook orders and releases and all sorts of general good busy-ness. But then there was cold weather and pushing on through to Thanksgiving and this weird bad-boot-wearing (not the boots in my earlier "awesome boots" post , but alas) sort of related pain and then suddenly I was bedridden for a couple weeks with pinched nerve issues. I've spent the past two weeks in survival mode and catch-up mode, and omg..just hang on til Christmas break mode, at which I arrive today, moving pretty slowly and only able to walk short distances, but WALKING, which is the important thing. I don't handle pain well.  I don't handle immobility well.  For the two weeks I basically couldn't leave the house (first my parents, then my own) I had to fight the creeping sense of panic and depression that threatened to overturn me.  And I'm still not moving as swiftly or productively as I would like, but I guess I'm moving, which I should be grateful for.  I will have almost an entire week after the holiday to right the ship that was once my rather ordered life, so there's that to look forward to.  There is also the impending release of major characters in minor films, which I've gotten a look at the cover design for and looks to be a beautiful thing.  December was a lost month and has royally kicked my ass, but January I'm a-comin' for you...