blueprints

124 | thomas lux
Sometimes I feel like Mickey Rooney or those kids in a ’30s movie
saying, “Let’s put on a show!” Poof, a whole stage, set, costumes, props are
there! It doesn’t happen that way. There’s a huge amount to do: book venues
and flights for poets, advertise—regular flyers, thousands of e-mails, etc.,
etc. and always, always, the Kafkaesque university bureaucracy and red tape,
cruelly redundant. To help me sign forms I have to sign, kind people attach
little “sign here” stickers in consideration of my . . . attention span, or lack
thereof, for certain things. (I can think real hard about things I want to
think hard about.) I thought that without Ginger Murchison, Poetry@
Tech would be screwed.
i believe the need for poetry is not much
different from the need for bread or air. if one has
a chance to deliver a little bread or air or poetry
somewhere, one should do so as best one can.
No way could Ginger be replaced. But Poetry@Tech got lucky again.
We hired Travis Denton, whom I’d gotten to know in Atlanta. He’s a talented
young poet who just published his first book, loves poetry deeply, and is
super competent. He’s now the associate director of Poetry@Tech and for
the past few years has served a stint as one of the McEver Chair holders. Ginger
will hold the Chair in 2011. They’ve both done a splendid job.
As I’ve said, it’s a lot of work, and it also takes people skills. You have to
be kind to the people you work with at a university, such as the people who
take care of cutting the checks for the poets! It takes bargaining skills—
both Ginger and Travis are brilliant at making deals on things such as catering,
printing, photos, videos, hotels, travel, etc. In these times of tight budgets,
saving a hundred there, fifty here means a little more wiggle room on
how many poets we can bring to read and/or teach and how much we can
pay them. With the current recession, our endowment monies, like everyone’s,
took a serious kick in the ass. Like most who survived, we are going
forward. Since 2002, the associate director has been paid. I should say underpaid.
Only my summer salary comes out of endowment money—the rest
of the Bourne and McEver proceeds go toward bringing poets to read and
teach, to continue our outreach to community classes and school visits.