Did you know that pre-orders are more important than ever for new books? For book publishers, pre-orders of an upcoming release foreshadow corresponding public interest, which in turn encourages greater publisher support both before and after the book’s release.
That’s why we’re inviting you to pre-order If You Love That Lady before its publication on July 14th. As a thank-you, we’re delighted to WAIVE THE TICKET PRICE for Maya’s brand-new Five Things I’ve Learned class. Simply pre-order the book, send us a copy of your purchase receipt, and join Maya live online on Saturday, July 25th at 1 PM ET—completely free.
Live, Saturday, July 25th at a special time: Maya C. Popa – poet, editor, and founder of Conscious Writers Collective – returns to Five Things I’ve Learned for a very special ninety-minute class to share the literature that has shaped her and that informs the poems in her wonderful new collection, If You Love That Lady, available everywhere, this coming Tuesday.Maya is the author of three collections of poetry. Her previous collection, Wound is the Origin of Wonder, was named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of Poetry. Her debut, American Faith, was runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong. She holds a PhD on the role of wonder in poetry from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly. She is also the founder of the Conscious Writers Collective, where she teaches and oversees all literary programming for poets and prose writers
Presented in partnership with the Conscious Writers Collective, Five Things I’ve Learned About Manuscript Mixtapes introduces many of the poetic touchstones that have shaped Maya’s voice and vision – her Tuesday’s new release, If You Love That Lady. In addition to talking specifically about her own work, Maya will illustrate the ways that poets everywhere often create what she calls “manuscript mixtapes” — setlists not of music but of other preceding poems with which their own work is in constant conversation.
Maya’s own mixtape includes work by Milton, Wordsworth, Eliot, Lowell, and Yeats. In addition to talking generally about the ways in which poets incorporate and extend the efforts of writers who matter to them most, she’ll share how each of these writers shaped the poems in her new collection; and how writers similarly incorporate their favorite precursors in their own writing; and how readers bring similar touchstones to their own experiences with their own favorite poems.
“I’ll share how I drew from these source texts while writing my own poems,” Maya writes in her personal invitation to this class. “Doing so will give us a chance to discuss how all poets converse, directly or indirectly, with the poets who preceded them. This does not mean we always agree with them, write like them, or even consider them outright influences.
“Along the way, we will also discuss the magical and idiosyncratic process of putting together a book of poems. Books are spiritual and spirited things, as any writer will tell you. Arranging a manuscript requires intention and discernment, as well as a willingness to give oneself over to intuition. Keeping close company with past writers—poets who reassure us that we are up to this numinous task and that the road ahead is not quite as lonely as it seems—has been essential to my own work.”
Please note the special time. This promises to be a wonderful session, and we hope you’ll join us.
The first — and we think the better deal — is to pre-order If You Love That Lady for just $27.99 anywhere the book is sold and receive a free ticket to the class. Simply pre-order the book before its release date on July 14th, and forward your receipt to pre.event@extendedsession.com. We’ll take care of the rest.
Prefer to skip the book for now? You’re welcome to purchase a ticket on its own for $60.00 by visiting the class page via the button below.
Either way, we hope to see you there, live on July 25th.
This Tuesday, Maya’s stunning third collection of poems If You Love That Lady hits bookstores everywhere. Drawing from nineteenth-century courtship letters, the poems in this new collection consider the rush of love and its aftermath, at the same time illustrating the private worlds shaped by the act of writing and the silences that follow.
Ocean Vuong calls If You Love That Lady “an immense book and a searing achievement,” and hails Maya herself as “one of (his) generation’s finest poets—a truly peerless voice.”
And we agree! That’s why we’re doing all we can to encourage pre-orders of this great collection.
“I wrote this book trying to get to the bottom of my own understanding of how time, place, and distance shape the stories we tell ourselves about desire,” Maya has written about this new collection. “If you’ve ever found yourself inventing a person on the page or discovering yourself through the page, this book is for you.”
As always, thanks for being part of Five Things I’ve Learned. Visit myfivethings.com.
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