The Hermit Poet

Listed as “photographer wanted for TFP”

I have two cute little blond boys of 3 and 1 and am looking for a photographer who is willing to shoot them. might be nice to add to your portfolio.

Rough day Mom?

I’m pleased to announce that Poetry Southeast has just notified me that they would like to reprint “After Neruda” in their Spring 2007 issue.  (Poetry Southeast not only gets a gold star for turnaround time — 8 days!! — but kudos as well for generously accepting previously published work).

And this, my friends, is definitely better than BBQ sauce!

Strange things learned in the depths of bachelor life:

Sweet Chlli Sauce + Ketchup + Burger = Very Tasty!

Try it — it’s actually quite good.

When I called Nissan USA today I evidently found the nice Nissan people.  The CSR got everything straightened out and faxed to the dealer in under 5 minutes.  I was impressed.  I have no idea who I was talking to yesterday, but today’s rep wins a Gold Star in my books.  She was even funny!

Still waiting to hear back from the dealer as to how long they expect it will take to track down the parts.

More repatriation — I turned in my California driver’s license today and got my temporary BC one.  I feel slightly more Canadian.  The photo was ok — not terrible, but not great.  I think I’m cursed (like most people) with bad driver’s license mojo.

Wow! Just arrived in the afternoon email — Portland Review has accepted two of my poems: “What I Know About Abstraction” and “In the Country I Call Home” — I’m excited! Both of these are from the first manuscript, The Lost Country of Sight. Hopefully that bodes well for everyone else out there — here’s hoping for happy news from your favorite journal.

Just a random thought — one those that hit you when you’ve been up long past your bedtime, scratching your head for things to do to make a living in a new city.

POETRY + RESTAURANT = POEATERY

POEATERY = a place where you eat good food while listening to great poetry (slam and otherwise). Fun environment. Intelligent conversations. Bad hair. Funky glasses. Your Daily Specials would be performed at your table. Broadsides and and work from local artists would decorate the walls. Menus feature excerpts from poems and items would be named after famous poets (actually saw this at Fred 62 in Hollywood — the Bukowski Ham & Cheese).

Interesting? Maybe. Viable? Probably not. Unless you’re in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco where there’s a huge poetry crowd. An existing restaurant might try it for a month as a promotion and then decide if they want to keep the model.

The last few days have brought a small crop of rejections.  Two from manuscript contests and one from Failbetter.  The editors at Failbetter.com were actually quite supportive and wrote a very kind email to let me know that two of my poems (again from the Babbage’s Dream manuscript) were highly considered and almost made the cut.  Which is great to know and certainly made my day.

On the other hand, I wasted the better part of the day on the phone dealing with Nissan USA, Nissan Canada, and  my local Nissan dealer trying to figure out who actually was authorized to do the recall work on my car.  The dealer originally forwarded me to Nissan USA (the car was bought in the US), but they (Nissan USA) then told me that I shouldn’t have been able to bring the car across the border without having had the recalls done first and that they would not authorize any recall work done in Canada.  After talking to a few levels of management, they finally suggested I talk to Nissan Canada.  Nissan Canada then informed me that yes it was possible to have the work done at the Canadian dealer.  The Canadian dealer then told me that he needed the paperwork from Nissan USA before he could do the work and that there hadn’t been a problem in the past.  When we reviewed the list of recalls for the car (1.  windshield wiper link;  2. auto transmission switch button), we discovered that only the first one was on the list of Canadian recalls.  Added to that is the potential problem of finding recall parts for a 1996 Nissan Sentra GXE in Canada — Nissan typically only produces a number of parts equal to the number of cars in Canada.  After the recall date, it becomes increasingly difficult to find the parts.  At this point my prepaid cell phone was about out of minutes, so now I have to wait till tomorrow to continue my efforts.  I hope I can find a more understanding ear tomorrow at Nissan USA — today’s set of CSR and management  had told me I had to drive back to the US to do the recall work.  Which is just plain silly.

I’ve made some changes and additions to www.neil-aitken.com

1. New author photo in the About section.

2. Replaced “Events” with Services — hanging my shingle out there as a writer-for-hire

3. Added a nice little blurb from Chris Abani to the front page.