on the plane from London I read

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

It yanked me right in - even offered stiff competition to the views of Greenland's ice-fields and snowscapes, which no other book has ever done. The first thought in my mind when my time-zone-confused body woke me at 3am this morning, was: How does she do it so well? Write the complexities of human beings into the landscape of a nation's growing pains with all five senses?

I'm home

in Oakland, body totally confused about what time zone it's in. And parts of me still in Bellusco, Bristol, Vienna....so many wonderful people and experiences packed into the last 16 days.

Thank you everyone in Bellusco, for giving me and my work an incredibly warm welcome. It was one of the most moving experiences I've had as a poet, to have an audience respond with such depth when many of them couldn't understand the words. And to read and hear my poems translated - and feel them draw me in like unfamiliar gardens.

Egon Schiele and me

side by side on a wall in Neufstiftgasse, in Vienna. I'm the small headshot in the bottom right-hand corner of the magenta poster for Her Position In Transition.

My tiny moment of fame in Vienna was when I walked into the Depot coffee house and the girl behind the bar said: Is it you on the poster?