blueprints

Finishing Tools for the Event Itself | 245
of course, acknowledge your generosity on all our materials. In addition, we promise
to give you a good dinner afterward.
• the event will help the poet reach an audience she cares about, whether
because its members are underserved or because its members can help
the poet in some way.
Unfortunately, we have a very small budget for the event and can’t provide an
honorarium (or are offering an honorarium we know is embarrassingly below
your usual fee). However, we are aware of your previous prison work; these incarcerated
kids have responded really well to the previous poets we’ve brought in,
and we think your work is perfectly tailored to the program.
• the event presents an opportunity for the poet to get needed exposure
(this most often figures if the poet is still essentially unknown or the event
involves an unusually prestigious venue, organization, or audience) or to
meet someone he might wish to meet.
We wish we could pay you, but we just don’t have the budget right now. However,
we can promise a good audience—we usually get close to a hundred people—
and you’ll be reading with Ms. More Famous Poet, whose new book just came out.
Of course, we’ll have a bookseller there, and afterward we’ll give you a good dinner—it
just happens that the director of the MacArthur Foundation will be joining
us.
• You can provide an experience that might appeal to the poet.
Unfortunately, we can’t yet pay honoraria, though we hope to be able to do so
soon. However, we heard that you’ve always wanted to try parasailing, and the
resort where we’re holding the event offered a free lesson and equipment for the
day after the event. (Don’t send your poets parasailing, skydiving, skiing, or
mountain climbing before events—wait until afterward.)
Even if there are no clear gains for the poet (already has access to this
audience, no cause to embrace, just been named a MacArthur fellow, has no
interest in bone-imperiling recreational activities, etc.), you may still ask her
or him to read for nothing or for less than the usual fee. Be clear and honest
that what you are asking for is a kind of charitable donation, even
though it is unfortunately not tax-deductible, and make sure to honor the
poet, both publicly and in making your request, for such generosity to your
organization. And provide that dinner, a good one.
Poets can be remarkably generous with their time. When Mark Strand
lived in Salt Lake City, Toolkit member (and his former student) Katharine
Coles was working as an assistant in the Utah Arts Council Literature Program
office. Strand had recently been named U.S. poet laureate, and he