J.L. Conrad

Oh wow.

Talk about amazing.

I just spent approximately 4 hours with an AMAZING poet. Her poetry leaves me in awe. And she is so completely down to earth and real. More real than any other visiting poet or anything that has ever visited here. Perhaps because she’s 29. Spent 4 years studying psychology. Loves looking at how we perceive things. How things are connected.

Dude. Can we say like, Kindred Spirit?????? And she has strawberry blonde hair. *swooons*

And. And I recorded her reading. So far it sounds like it’s coming out ok.

First, I went to the little “session” that the visiting poets usually do…an hour or so of question and answer, backstory. That kind of thing. Then, Dr T invited me, and a few other students, to dinner with them! So. I went to dinner with Conrad and Dr T and Dr…Beth (dunno her last name! But I find her really very…comforting?? She just has this way about her, that makes me think I’d really like her.) And with Dr S who is, I found out a year or so ago, a lesbian. And she lives at the end of the street where I used to live! Fun. She and her partner kind of….time shared the house that M lived in when she spent a year in the city. And who else…Oh. Conrad’s little brother! Who looked as old if not older than her. But he is 7 years her junior. 🙂 I talked to him quite a bit, as I was sitting next to him. And across from Dr T who cracks me the hell up. 🙂

After that, I went to the actual reading, which was awesome. There’s nothing quite like hearing a poet read her OWN work, hearing where she intended the pauses, the rushes, the ambiguity.

I….am thinking more now, about considering looking in to the whole publishing thing. Not like a book. But. Maybe trying to send stuff out to some magazines or something? I dunno. I don’t know how to go about it. (And by tomorrow I’ll remember that my stuff is crap again. Not total crap, but not altogether great enough to be published either) lah.

I need to probably lay down for a few hours before work.

Oh. Before the Q&A….Homie called me. *sigh* Her mum was in a car accident. Truck flipped a few times. Broken arm, lots of stitches. (She already had major back problems. :o/)

And. And she called, I guess, because….she’s gotten pretty heavy back in to her ED. She said she needed help. That she couldn’t afford IP, either financially or mentally or whatever. But that she needed treatment.

I’m so glad that she called me. That she knows that she can. She said she wasn’t going to tell her family.

She’s been thru this before. IP, even. I don’t know how to help.

But I’ll do all that I can.