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I’ve blogged a few times about The Dollhouse Reading Series and, as I have mentioned before, it is my very favorite reading series. Dolly Lemke‘s apartment. Drinks. Floor-sitting. Cats crawling. Poems. Essays (sometimes). Porch-smoking. Laughter. Clapping. It’s a really wonderful time for an attendee, and if I thought that was fun, being a reader at the event is even more exciting (and oh man, is it nerve-wrecking).

I spent Thursday evening, the night before the reading, sifting through all of my recent work and even older work, and I really just decided that I hated it all. I know, this is dramatic, but it is something that happens to me before I read in public (which, quite frankly, I don’t have a lot of experience doing). So I obsess and obsess about what the perfect thing to read is, and inevitably my decision for what to read at The Dollhouse was actually very simple. Dolly read a blog post that I wrote last semester about a project I was working on and asked me to read as a result of that blog post. So, when it came down to it, I already knew what I would be reading– but still, I obsess. When I’m reading something that hasn’t been published, something that only the people in my workshop have seen and a few people I go to school with have heard,  I have to fight the urge to revise and to re-envision what I’ve written. That is not to say that something published can’t be revised or tweaked for a reading (Wes Jamison knows a thing or two about this), but I really do have to resist the urge to obsess about every single line, because, quite frankly, it just adds to the stress of standing in front of a room full of people.

David Lazar once gave me advice, when I was doing a reading (with Dolly, actually) a few semesters ago. He said that it’s really exciting to read something brand new, something that you’ve never read in public and that I should just revel in that excitement. The piece I read for Dollhouse wasn’t a brand new piece, but the advice is still relevant. Revel in the excitement. It’s simple advice and advice that, for the better part of the week, worked to calm my nerves.

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Then, of course, it’s 7:00pm and I’m in Dolly’s kitchen and people are starting to arrive and the only thing that could calm my nerves is a beer (or maybe a few). The reading begins and Adam Fell is first, charismatic and funny, asking everyone to sing a few lines from Phil Collins’ “I Can Feel It Coming in the Air Tonight,” and then Rebecca Hazelton, a wildly funny poet goddess, reads. After Rebecca finishes, Dolly and Stephen begin to read my bio, and I immediately want to run for the door. But of course, I don’t. I walk up to the front (technically side) of Dolly’s living room and announce that I’m nervous, which is really self-serving, because clearly everyone knows that speaking in front of people causes nervousness, but for me, I just want everyone to know. Saying I’m nervous actually makes me less nervous.

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The crowd at the Dollhouse is simply spectacular. Being on the reader-side of the room is so very different than being on the floor listening. You can see everyone’s lovely faces and everyone’s knees are pressed up against each other. People are squeezed onto the couch and perched in the windowsills. The energy is intoxicating, really, and once I was through the first page, I was just fine and able to enjoyed being in the company of so many beautiful faces and brilliant minds.

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And there’s always a moment at The Dollhouse Reading Series that really captures the essence of the night and the series. For me, that moment was while I was reading, as I tossed pages of my essay to the floor and Dolly’s cat started sniffing the pages and then, in true-cat fashion, began to scratch and rub up against the pages of my essay. I wasn’t sure if it was to be used as a litter box or if perhaps it was more of a catnip toy kind of thing, but I couldn’t help but laugh and then everyone was laughing. That moment, for me, was what makes the Dollhouse such a special atmosphere for poetry. It isn’t stuffy, the energy is welcoming and supportive and, ya know, every once in awhile, a cat might use your work as a litter box. I can’t think of anything that makes me laugh more and enjoy being a part of this community than that very moment.

After me, it was Ryan Teitman and Marcus Wicker, both of whom have publications and fellowships and who captured the attention of the audience with their writing and charismatic personalities. It truly was a solid group of writers to read with and a really awesome poetry party with all of my favorite MFA peers and fellow writers.

Special thanks to Dolly Lemke and Stephen Danos and to the brilliant poetry of Adam Fell, Rebecca Hazelton, Ryan Teitman and Marcus Wicker. Kudos!

*Photo credits – Dolly Lemke, Stephen Danos & Aris Bordeaux