Been a few months, eh? This is our first real post since we moved off Blogger and onto WordPress, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy. Unlike when Slash Pine was on blogger, our new use for the blog will be to bring up issues that we find interesting as a press/reading series and to also give special glimpses into existing or forthcoming events, books, or submission policies that a static web page doesn’t give.

One thing that is new this semester and that we are loving: our first batch of undergrad interns–16 of them to be exact. We’ve broken them into groups and let them decide what areas of our venture they’d like to throw their energy into. Some are making our new chapbook, The Saw Year Prophecies, and a book arts anthology for the 2010 Slash Pine Poetry Festival; some are learning first-hand about the labor-intensive practice of grant writing; some of them are preparing for our Fall hike event.

In that last paragraph, did I say they were the ones learning? Well, they are–but not as much as Patti White and myself (Joseph Wood) are learning from them. There are twenty-year old students tied into the regional arts community who know about arts promotion than I ever did. There are students throwing out truly innovative ideas about what a book cab be. There are other students showing us how to write code for this here website. And on and on.

I can not speak for the other overseer of this internship, but I can say, my knowledge about event planning and book production and technology has increased tenfold–because of my students. I can not believe how much they’ve offered in terms of energy and enthusiasm. Hell, six of them drove seven hundred miles and did this.

All I know is that things are happening down here in Alabama–a place, where most people think, the arts are rather dead. But they’re not at all–and their greatest catalysts are nineteen to twenty-one year olds with a balance of curiosity, energy, and excitement. What a pleasure to learn from them.