I am exhausted at the end of my first day proper of being a Poet Laureate, but I really enjoyed it.
The E.T.A. Hoffmann panel could have gone for twice the time, even before questions from the audience; it bloomed at the end into a kind of twenty-questions game of "Hoffmannesque or not?" which was a lot of fun, especially after L.C. von Hessen made a passing observation about Psycho (1960) that caused me to rethink it suddenly in terms of "Der Sandmann." I asked Sean Moreland if he thought there was any causal link between the collaboration of Coppelius and Spalanzani on Olimpia and the collaboration of Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius on the Bride and he couldn't prove it but felt confident saying that James Whale was entirely capable of queering up any Romantic literature that crossed his path. I turn out to have strong opinions about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004). I feel extremely gratified that people came up to me for the rest of the day to mention that they had known Hoffmann was a German Romantic, but no one had ever before given them reason to think of him as batshit. I stand by my statement that Princess Tutu (2002) is metaphysically the closest I am ever going to get to a completion of Kater Murr (1821).
The Tanith Lee panel could also have gone for twice the time, ditto. We concluded that we could furnish an entire sequel panel from writers who count Lee among their major influences, because it would manifest differently in each of them; we agreed readily on common features of her writing—liminal, syncretic, highly flexible, frequently funny, and occasionally preposterous when summarized—but we had not all responded most strongly to the same elements. Paul di Filippo had brought three randomly selected DAW paperbacks and read out excerpts in support of observations. I never knew Lee personally, so I really enjoyed Allison Rich's stories of her, especially her first drafts written in passages like automatic writing. From discussing the queer content of her fiction and its equal-opportunity objectification, Craig Laurance Gidney and I were asked afterward for recommendations for queer weird fiction (and managed to come up with a creditable list from which I cannot believe we forgot Clive Barker). I really do love The Gods Are Thirsty (1996); it must be the closest she got to a straight historical novel and it is still technically, like a song of Orpheus, narrated by a severed head. We never even got around to discussing her work on Blake's 7 (1978–81).
The weird poetry reading was sadly minus two poets who I hope will rejoin us for the weird poetry panel tomorrow; in the meantime I read by turns with Frank Coffman and Maxwell Ian Gold. We had nothing like similar styles and it was a really nice time.
The Guest of Honor panel was a communal interview conducted by s.j. bagley among Victor LaValle, Peter Cannon, Kenneth Hite, Dempow Torishima via translator whose name I did not catch, Molly Tanzer, Paul Tremblay, and me and it was great, even if I had to think about questions like whether I thought poetry was a mode of writing especially well suited to the weird (yes, because it's full of so much space and suggestion) or whether I consider my poetry a visual art (no, because I think of it more in terms of sound and weight and three-dimensional structure). We were asked at the end for recommendations of anything we had been reading recently that really took our breath away, so I shouted out for Gemma Files' Invocabulary (2018), Barbara Comyns' Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1954), and Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus (1939), all of which I feel should be of interest to aficionados of the weird or people who like reading.
Dinner was conducted at the second-floor restaurant of the Omni with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rushthatspeaks, handful_ofdust and Steve, and ashnistrike. I had a really satisfying burger, making this the shocking second night in a row that I have managed to eat real food at a convention. I could only manage about an hour at the GoH reception before I ran dead out of social capacity, but I managed to get invited to a lunch tomorrow, so I think I may have succesfully, albeit accidentally, networked.
There are copies of both Forget the Sleepless Shores (2018) and Ghost Signs (2015) in the dealer's room and I am informed they are selling. I have not yet had a chance to browse myself, which has not stopped me from ending the day with copies of Ruthanna Emrys' Imperfect Commentaries (2019) and Sarah Tolmie's The Little Animals (2019).
And I had nice conversations all round, from films to marionettes to dead languages to stories in progress;selkie will probably yell at me if I do not admit that a lot of different people said a lot of very complimentary things to me, including several instances of my reputation preceding me and then not being disappointed, which I hope Tiny Wittgenstein has stuck around enough to notice. Rush-That-Speaks is here for the night. We are in mutually disastrous health but still stayed up until two in the morning talking, which is a good sign if not the world's greatest sleep practice.
I abjure the elevator at the Graduate and all its works.
The E.T.A. Hoffmann panel could have gone for twice the time, even before questions from the audience; it bloomed at the end into a kind of twenty-questions game of "Hoffmannesque or not?" which was a lot of fun, especially after L.C. von Hessen made a passing observation about Psycho (1960) that caused me to rethink it suddenly in terms of "Der Sandmann." I asked Sean Moreland if he thought there was any causal link between the collaboration of Coppelius and Spalanzani on Olimpia and the collaboration of Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius on the Bride and he couldn't prove it but felt confident saying that James Whale was entirely capable of queering up any Romantic literature that crossed his path. I turn out to have strong opinions about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004). I feel extremely gratified that people came up to me for the rest of the day to mention that they had known Hoffmann was a German Romantic, but no one had ever before given them reason to think of him as batshit. I stand by my statement that Princess Tutu (2002) is metaphysically the closest I am ever going to get to a completion of Kater Murr (1821).
The Tanith Lee panel could also have gone for twice the time, ditto. We concluded that we could furnish an entire sequel panel from writers who count Lee among their major influences, because it would manifest differently in each of them; we agreed readily on common features of her writing—liminal, syncretic, highly flexible, frequently funny, and occasionally preposterous when summarized—but we had not all responded most strongly to the same elements. Paul di Filippo had brought three randomly selected DAW paperbacks and read out excerpts in support of observations. I never knew Lee personally, so I really enjoyed Allison Rich's stories of her, especially her first drafts written in passages like automatic writing. From discussing the queer content of her fiction and its equal-opportunity objectification, Craig Laurance Gidney and I were asked afterward for recommendations for queer weird fiction (and managed to come up with a creditable list from which I cannot believe we forgot Clive Barker). I really do love The Gods Are Thirsty (1996); it must be the closest she got to a straight historical novel and it is still technically, like a song of Orpheus, narrated by a severed head. We never even got around to discussing her work on Blake's 7 (1978–81).
The weird poetry reading was sadly minus two poets who I hope will rejoin us for the weird poetry panel tomorrow; in the meantime I read by turns with Frank Coffman and Maxwell Ian Gold. We had nothing like similar styles and it was a really nice time.
The Guest of Honor panel was a communal interview conducted by s.j. bagley among Victor LaValle, Peter Cannon, Kenneth Hite, Dempow Torishima via translator whose name I did not catch, Molly Tanzer, Paul Tremblay, and me and it was great, even if I had to think about questions like whether I thought poetry was a mode of writing especially well suited to the weird (yes, because it's full of so much space and suggestion) or whether I consider my poetry a visual art (no, because I think of it more in terms of sound and weight and three-dimensional structure). We were asked at the end for recommendations of anything we had been reading recently that really took our breath away, so I shouted out for Gemma Files' Invocabulary (2018), Barbara Comyns' Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1954), and Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus (1939), all of which I feel should be of interest to aficionados of the weird or people who like reading.
Dinner was conducted at the second-floor restaurant of the Omni with
rushthatspeaks, handful_ofdust and Steve, and ashnistrike. I had a really satisfying burger, making this the shocking second night in a row that I have managed to eat real food at a convention. I could only manage about an hour at the GoH reception before I ran dead out of social capacity, but I managed to get invited to a lunch tomorrow, so I think I may have succesfully, albeit accidentally, networked.There are copies of both Forget the Sleepless Shores (2018) and Ghost Signs (2015) in the dealer's room and I am informed they are selling. I have not yet had a chance to browse myself, which has not stopped me from ending the day with copies of Ruthanna Emrys' Imperfect Commentaries (2019) and Sarah Tolmie's The Little Animals (2019).
And I had nice conversations all round, from films to marionettes to dead languages to stories in progress;
selkie will probably yell at me if I do not admit that a lot of different people said a lot of very complimentary things to me, including several instances of my reputation preceding me and then not being disappointed, which I hope Tiny Wittgenstein has stuck around enough to notice. Rush-That-Speaks is here for the night. We are in mutually disastrous health but still stayed up until two in the morning talking, which is a good sign if not the world's greatest sleep practice.I abjure the elevator at the Graduate and all its works.
