The advantage I had going into the conference this year was coming in already exhausted and a day and a half late. I’d spent the first 4/5 of the work-week, starting Sunday afternoon, traveling for work. It was a good trip, I met, in-person, my new teammates and many other new coworkers besides, but suffice to say most days I was up at 6:30a and the days were not over until, at earliest, 9p. So I was already exhausted.

(Naturally, my flight Thursday night was delayed, and there was a minor issue with the hotel reservation, and I did not get to sleep until maybe four in the morning, Friday.)

I slept in as long as I could. I walked along the main roads and took a leisurely breakfast at an iHOP between my hotel and the conference center. I got my registration, the ubiquitous tote bag, and entered the bookfair around 1p.

Prior AWPs were prepared for differently. When I went as an undergrad, I was working a booth, I was going to collect submission fliers and literary journals and to try to learn something from the panels and sessions, to try to suss out something of the MFA programs I would much later, maybe, apply to. Later, when I was in an MFA program (not one of those I had learned about earlier), I was going to hang out with friends in my cohort, see old friends, professors, from past lives, collect submissions fliers, attend panels and sessions and readings. The last time I went, post-grad, I was there to try and figure out how to sell a novel manuscript, meet small presses, attend readings.

This time, by the time I actually made it on the ground, I had absolutely no plans, intentions, at all.

I wandered around the bookfair row by row and would say hello on the off chance I saw someone I knew but was mostly gathering data; this trip — the work trip included — was, we said, mostly about gathering data. I talked to folks at tables, got fliers if they were thrust upon me, but said, over and again, that I was doing my shopping later. (This was true; I went back to the few folks I said I would and bought something on Saturday. This did mean that I missed a few volumes I was excited about.)

I tried attending a panel.

Because I did not do any preparation I picked the session I would go to based off the title alone; I made a bad guess about what it was about. The panel was fine, they were doing the thing, but it was not a topic I was interested in save at a higher-level, a sort of genre-of-work-level, and because it was instead about doing, or rather starting the thing, a thing that I’m kind of, philosophically, in opposition to, it wasn’t for me. I stayed longer than I really needed to, but: you try to be polite.

What I will say though was that it boiled down to what I had more or less taken away from the sessions I attended the last time I went: it’s a practice, it’s about relationships, it’s about simply starting.

If nothing else, to borrow the title of a book, I felt that I do know some things. It felt nice, or, at least: reaffirming.

The events ("off-sites") I went to Friday night were all haphazard and hand-sold to me by people I talked to or texted with. The first was really two readings. I had tried to get dinner at a vegan restaurant that had apparently permanently closed the week before and so went straight to the venue and ordered a drink. There was already a reading going on so I sat and listened. Missing my intended dinner would be a theme of the weekend. That first reading was good — I caught the last two readers, the last of whom has a new book I would like to buy (though they were well out of it by the time I went shopping Saturday), and then I spotted Bob, and Chris, by the bar, and went to introduce myself in person. It was very good to meet them! They’re both so lovely, so nice. I really like their podcast. It’s nice to transition from Internet to "IRL" friends.

And then I had to run off to another reading in another part of town.

This second one I learned about because I saw an Allston (MA) flag at a booth and so stopped. Was not aware that Nixes Mate existed or was local, and now I have another wonderful local thing for my radar. Michael and Anne and the woman from Lily Poetry whose name has escaped me were all super nice and welcoming at their booth, and so I wanted to their reading (I would have gone for local folks regardless, but it was a bonus that they were so nice and warm). Unfortunately I missed Anne’s reading because I arrived late, but heard a bunch of other good stuff and made another new local (Boston) poet friend whom I think I’ll be able to rope into reading at Two Page soon. I’ll speak of that whole thing in a moment.

Saturday I worked my work-exchange shift and did a little shopping and went back to the hotel to use their gym. This was a very wonderful thing; I felt very good afterward.

Then: three more readings, back-to-back-to-back. The first was put on by Post-Pop, but mostly I was there because the host, August Smith, is a fellow UMass-Boston alum, and I really liked him when I met him at a backyard reading a year or two ago for his book, which I also really liked. It was a good reading.

Then across town to see David read from a forthcoming book, and this was also an excellent, and super well run, reading. Plus I heard a new-to-me writer whom I really like and am excited about! She read a really interesting, one-off, in-progress piece (you know: my jam so far as what I like to hear at a reading), and the book of her’s I picked up has a really good title, too. I’m excited to read it when I’m done with Perfection.

Then down the road to the Game Over Books x Garden Party Collective reading, which was also very good — and I finally got to hear Bob read a poem from his book! — but I was a bit cooked by the end, if I am honest. I’d been in readings from about 3:30 to 9:00, and that’s a lot, even for a relatively extroverted, likes-to-go-to-readings person like myself.

I really enjoyed the readings. I’m still trying to figure out what, if anything, I’m taking away from them as an aggregate, as a lens on my work work, but that takes time anyway, and my brain is so fried. But they were the kinds of wonderful, moving, aesthetic experience I was looking for, so: wonderful.

In the end I met back up with David and some friends of his and had dinner at a bar and went to another bar and eventually I made it back to my hotel. It was lovely.

I did a lot of walking. I didn’t do — make, have, take time for — much exploring of Baltimore. I was interested in what I saw walking around. I didn’t spend too much money, I don’t think, although paying for Lyfts and so on always pains me a little (but I was not willing to try and figure out the buses, the trains, which app I needed to download to use one of the electric scooters littered around the city).

I did not do very much writing. I made some notes. I read, was read-to. I saw a few friends and acquaintances but didn’t really make a point of it. There were some people whom I had been excited to see but missed. I regret that I didn’t have the capacity to do more to make the meetings happen it but I didn’t have the capacity and feel at peace with that. There will be other trips.

I ate reasonably well, if late every night. I got to overhear a lot of chatter and felt old, listening to two younger poets have extraordinarily similar conversations to conversations I’d had with my writer friends years ago. I am not, of course, old. Still.

It was a fun game to guess who were the writers walking around the city; this was not in fact hard at all (even if they were not wearing their conference badges, if they did not have the conference tote bag hanging from a shoulder).

I’m glad I went. If nothing else, it was a kind of vacation. And now I’m looking forward to home, to getting back to the work.