Space and Light (part 1)

Something was off with AWP this year. I've been trying to put my finger on it, and it's not panels (there are always good and bad in terms of content, and I went to both), it's not the bookfair (didn't have to eat larvae lollipops for journal subscriptions, but played games, met editors, and made contacts), it's not the location (walking the ten or so blocks from Union Station was actually invigorating each morning). It was in fact the physical confines of the rooms.

The bookfair in New York took place, at least in part, in rooms above the lobby. Two of the bookfair rooms even had extra high ceilings. No matter how many people were bustling about, no matter how "conferency" the tables appeared, there was a hint of natural lighting and enough space above my head to feel open. The Chicago bookfair was in the basement. OK, it's not precisely the basement, but it's belowground, such that you have to go down stairs or an elevator and then go down stairs again - which produces an opposite effect to going up several stairs/elevators to reach the NYC tables. The lighting was adequate but totally florescent. It was largely subliminal, but it wasn't as comfortable being in the bookfair rooms this year.

The rooms in which panels took place were comparable to NYC's. Some rooms were better than others. But none of them were really designed to take advantage of multimedia (this is the same as last year, when an electronic literature panel found that its room had not been granted internet access). Once again the Afterhours Slam was provided with a podium, not a mic on a stand. Once again some rooms were oriented so that there was a pillar blocking line of site to the podium if you sat in the back-center of the room. Low lighting in the morning may be kind, but also lends itself to making us even sleepier at those 9am sessions.

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The Green Mill is a good space. You can understand a lot of the Green Mill's style, or any other regular venue's style, by examining from where people perform. The stage is raised, so a poet looks down on the audience. This doesn't necessarily equate to developing a "better-than-thou" approach, but it does lend itself to authority. It's harder to get up there, where you literally have to get up there, and then do self-effacing work. It's also difficult to be dramatic in terms of moving around. The stage isn't very large, and if the three-piece jazz band sets up behind you, you've got almost no room to move. Getting out into the audience is difficult, as one poet discovered by bending over, slamming his hand down on a table for emphasis, and knocking over someone's drink. The audience is not invisible (the spots aren't too bright), but individuals beyond the tables closest to the stage are hard to see. An anonymous mass develops the closer one gets to the bar, which not surprisingly is where most of the heckling begins. Again, this isn't a critique (meaning negative appraisal) of the Green Mill so much as it is a critique (examination of hows and whys) of the connection between the room and the type of poetry that is most at home there.

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Performing at IWU was difficult. I could say it's because the students have become more respectful since I graduated, trained to not react at poetry readings. But it had more to do with the Turfler Room. The lights cannot be trained on the reader/speaker. You've either got lots of light on everyone in the room or a little light on everyone in the room. The mic was set up far from a group of tables, making it look like the furniture was attending a junior high school dance. I went off-mic almost the entire time, standing as close as I could to the tables (moving among them at times) without sitting in someone's lap. The room has several entrances - the door to enter the room for the event was behind where I was supposed to use the mic, which would have been awkward had any latecomers interrupted a poem - and the other entrances were massive doors that led to the dining hall (even though they were closed, they dominate their space and pull attention to themselves). Even if you wanted to be raucous in that place, the room itself tries to get you to settle down.