Bush on Dad, me on workshop

George W. Bush told an interviewer this morning, "I'm more concerned about [my father] than I've ever been in my life, because he's been paying too much attention to the news."

Hell, American news doesn't tell you anything anyway. I've been gradually weaning myself off the evil of CNN, and the arrival of a channel devoted to the BBC World News has really driven home to me just how vapid the Yanks' mainstream news is. This past weekend, the BBC station had an hourlong town-hall debate over whether a new dictator should be installed in Iraq to assert order. There were actual Iraqis on the panel, plus a pro-resolution former CIA guy who called the Bush admin incompetent. Perhaps most exciting was George Galloway, the British politician who is about as radical as they get.

Meanwhile, the Dixie Chicks blew their chance to say smart things when they won all those Grammies.

But what I've been meaning to say is that my workshop Get Your Hands On My Poem! starts this Thursday, so there's still some time to sign up. Details are over to the right of this frame. I've been avoiding this kind of critiquing workshop, but there was a real call for it in my Boot Camps. And my experience this past year of editing books by a wide range of poets has dissipated any impostor syndrome I've felt. In the end, I figured it's better that I'm doing this than some goof who thinks Lorna Crozier, Billy Collins, and Don Paterson are the tickets to poetic genius.

I'm that other kind of goof.

Over and out.