It's been a New York weekend - or, as I billed it recently, it was my reunion with New York: I went up for the weekend, and stayed at the same hostel I stayed at in 2003. I came by bus on Friday morning - quite a cramped affair, with free wi-fi that worked some of the time. I got up to New York and it was raining (as it was in DC... I nearly fell down the steps of the local bus that took me to Dupont to catch the New York bus). I'm sure all this would have been fine, but I woke up Friday morning to find I had a cold - sore throat, exhaustion, aches... usual, miserable affair. I thanked god for the dissolvable aspirins that mum had mailed over last year. (They don't have dissolvable aspirin here. But I thought they have everything? I hear you ask. You heard it here first.) So for the last 48 hours I've been dosing myself, and sleeping as much as possible (on one of those super-skinny, squeaky hostel dorm beds...) and, during those moments in between, I caught up with Ivy Alvarez, wandered around the city, and crashed into the AWP conference.

I came up specifically for Ivy: it's been a few years since we have seen each other, and she's definitely gone on to bigger and better things with the publication of her first full-length book, Mortal. It's that book that brought her to New York, from Cardiff where she's been living for the past few years. Her publisher, Red Morning Press, participated in the AWP conference, and so Ivy came to town to support her publisher, promote her book and give a reading. I got the invitation to the reading a few months ago and determined that, since I hadn't previously made it to New York since I've been in DC (nor anywhere else, except Tennessee - and yes, that counts as somewhere) I would absolutely make it up to see the reading. Last time I was in New York, I saw Richard Howard and Maxine Kumin read as part of a series by the Dia Center for the Arts.

This was not that. This reading was East Village post-grunge at the 11th Street Bar. Yes, all the poets reading had published books - but not many of them should have them, based on the poems they read last night. Seriously - there are only so many sensitive, bearded, converse-wearing, thick-rimmed glasses spokesmen and their female counterparts (complete with batwing eyeliner) I can take. Ivy was great - she was succinct, well-presented and she chose work that both makes an impact in a single reading, and invites rereading. There were one or two other moments that I was pleased with, but somehow the whole evening had the feeling of an open-mike night. I may just have become a curmudgeonly old lady right then and there. Oh well. I suppose it was going to happen some time.

There was one author, Nickole Brown, who I've been thinking about a bit since the reading - I have a feeling her book Sister would be worth a proper look - and maybe sometime, in amidst the pile of other things I've got going on - I'll find some time to give her work some proper attention.

The AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference was something else. I really didn't have much idea about it (this is where being an Australian writer, not an American one, gives me perhaps a little reason for my ignorance...) but it was huge. Publishers and writing programs had tables, and as I was rushing through during their last few hours, a lot of people had reduced book prices even further than the already-discounted AWP prices. There ended up being a few things I couldn't say no to (an anthology of Polish poems, Ilya Kaminsky's book Dancing in Odessa) and a few more things I ended up getting free, so I came back to DC with a small stash of things to keep me busy, when classes aren't already threatening to take over my life. I'm hoping that reviews and other bits and pieces - including a small interview with Ivy will be forthcoming soon. Stay tuned.

Speaking of classes, the flu wiped out a lot of my planned study for the weekend, so now that I'm home I have a lot of Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl to read. I've promised myself a treat if I can get through three quarters of it in four hours. On your marks. Get set. Etc.