…is the annual set of literary events hosted by Indiana Review at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Yesterday, as a lead-up to tonight’s reading at The Bishop, I taught a workshop on how to do Poems While You Wait…

…and then the participants went out into four locations in the town, including the student union, Boxcar Books, the Pourhouse Coffee Shop and Soma Coffee……to poem while people waited, and even sometimes while they waited for emergency typewriter repair (such as that which Hannah Waltz is performing below) to be conducted.

All of the proceeds went to Midwest Pages to Prisoners. Thanks to everyone who came out to learn about and take a crack at Poems While You Wait. And thanks to everyone who commissioned a poem for a worthy cause. Also, thanks to event organizers Britt Ashley and Katie Moulton for booking the workshop in Ballantine Hall, a beautiful old building that smelled like mid-century knowledge and contained this enormous rotating globe which also featured a button that said PRESS BUTTON TO HESITATE REVOLUTION: 

They don’t make ’em like they used to.

See you tonight at Bishop’s at 8 pm for the reading itself, with Kiese Laymon! (And sadly not with Alissa Nutting who had to cancel owing to  unforeseen cancellations by US Airways.)