For Kim Dower, known in the book world as Kim-from-L.A., this is an "exhilarating and strange" time, as she put it. That's because Dower, a hard-working, astute, funny book publicist and media advisor for many years, has just published her first book of poetry, Air Kissing on Mars, with Red Hen Press.
With this collection, only now are many people are learning that there is another side to Dower, that she is a thoughtful, impassioned poet, too. While she had told some friends in the business about her poetry and even though "there are so many of us who are also writers or aspire to be writers," she said, "to have a book of poems published feels different and makes it real and makes me feel a little shy. For many people it's been surprising."
Although she had kept poetry and her work as Kim-from-L.A. separate, she is proud of both careers, saying, "Poetry adds to my work as a publicist in many ways, ways one couldn't imagine."
It's a strange time in another way. "I have control over my work as a literary publicist," she said. "I try to control what gets out there and when. Now I have some control, but it's not the same."
Dower's work as a publicist is coming in handy. "Kim-from-L.A. and Kim the poet are meeting and are doing for a book of poems something that is rarely done: I'm trying to get publicity for it." She is also, she said, "forcing myself to do what I tell my authors and clients to do: that is, be able to talk about many different things of interest, be flexible, and eventually what you really want to talk about--the book--will come out." For example, she booked herself onto the Ronn Owens Show on KGO in the Bay Area. "He's a big talk radio guy who obviously doesn't want to talk to a poet. Instead he wants to talk with Kim-from-L.A. about the business and how to get a book out there. I'm happy to talk about that because eventually I'll talk about my book. I'll get poetry into the conversation."
Dower also has some more straightforward stops on her tour. Sunday night she had her first bookstore appearance, at Book Soup in West Hollywood, where 60 people attended, Dower read and 55 copies of Air Kissing on Mars were sold. Today she goes to Portland, Ore., for the Wordstock Festival and will appear at Powell's. A few days later she will be in the Bay Area, where she will read at the Books Inc. shop in Berkeley and Book Passage in Corte Madera. She also will appear at the Beat Museum with mystery author Stephen Jay Schwartz, who is in town for Bouchercon.
Other appearances this fall include local spots Vroman's, Skylight Books, the Borders in Westwood and the UC Irvine Bookstore. In some ways, her biggest event will November 22 at the Barnes & Noble on Broadway and 82nd Street in New York City, just a few blocks from where Dower grew up. Her 80-year-old aunt and her piano teacher from years ago will be there, as well as many friends from the publishing world.
"I'm surprised and grateful about how many people are receptive to having me in their stores and on their shows," Dower said. She's also happy to hear from many people that "they are moved by so many of the poems in Air Kissing on Mars," she said. "I was afraid to read because I worried that the people who knew me as Kim-from-L.A. wouldn't like them. But they are liking them." This just adds to the exhilaration of the experience of having her poetry published: only recently has she realized, she said, that "having people read my poetry is my goal."
Dower studied creative writing at Emerson College in Boston and taught creative writing there for two years after graduation. (In the first class she taught, one student was Dennis Leary. "I thought he was an amazingly talented 18-year-old poet," she said.) She soon moved to Los Angeles and worked for Jeremy Tarcher, where she learned, she said, "everything from writing catalogue copy to pitching very difficult books on the phone." She went on her own as Kim-from-L.A. in 1985.
Although she didn't write poetry for two decades, she wrote other things, including several screenplays, a few books as a ghost writer and, as a co-writer, Life Is a Series of Presentations: Eight Ways to Inspire, Inform, and Influence Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime. During that time, she said, "poetry was always just tucked inside me, waiting, listening, getting ready to be ready." Then four years ago, when her son went away to college, "a dam burst" and poetry came back "suddenly and ferociously," she said. "Before all my time was filled." With her trademark laugh, she added: "Try writing a poem instead of packing a lunch."
Dower showed some of her work to poet Thomas Lux, who had taught her at Emerson. He counseled her to "get back to the craft and immerse herself in it." As a result, over the past four years, she has been a busy poet: she takes a workshop every Saturday morning in Los Angeles, attended the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in Del Ray Beach three times, and she participated in the Sarah Lawrence College summer writing workshop twice.
The happy ending--or beginning--is Air Kissing on Mars.--John Mutter