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What is the Blue Turn?

Photo by Adam Rubinstein

Photo by Adam Rubinstein

WHAT IS THE BLUE TURN

Hi! My name is Mike Young. I hope you are doing well! Your hair looks exciting! In 2019, I went on a two month poetry and music tour called The Blue Turn. It was great! I went to 30 states and did 33 shows.

Now The Blue Turn is a home for future tours and projects that all fall under the umbrella of touring and connecting friends-who-don’t-get-to-see-each-other-enough (whether because of distance or the fact they don’t know each other yet) through poetry and music.


WHO IS THIS PERSON

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I’m the author of two poetry collections: 2014’s Sprezzatura (nice nods in VICE, BOMB, Harriet, and others) and 2010’s We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough, which was selected by readers of The Believer as one of the Top 20 Poetry Books of 2010. I also wrote a book of stories, 2010’s Look! Look! Feathers, that Publishers Weekly called “relevant, wise, and immensely enjoyable.”

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Since 2007, I’ve run a small press called Magic Helicopter, which puts out chapbooks and full length books and interactive art. MHP stuff has received nice nods from the New York Times, Nylon, The Rumpus, American Book Review, and so on.

When I play music by myself, I sound like a train conductor who wears Christmas lights instead of a jacket even when it's very cold. Here is a sample of this idea from Denver:

Here is what I look like when I sing songs with other people (like my friend Ceci):

And here is what I look like when I do poems:

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I've played music and done poetry all over the country at bars, bookstores, breweries, creeks, laundromats, universities, silos, and more. Some places I’ve been a guest writer and featured performer include: Treefort, Brown, Cal Poly, Emory, the Center for Fiction in NYC, and more.

The Santa Fe Reporter called my band’s music "lyric-driven boogie that shimmers with haunted grit.” The Portland Mercury said “intimate country-tinged garage pop.” One morning, after a show in front of a creek, someone texted: “I was drunk last night, but I meant it when I said your songs are still with me.”

In 2020, my band, Clementine Was Right, released our first album: Lightning & Regret.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN POETRY AND MUSIC AND WOES AND TREASURES

In Santa Fe, NM, there is a thing called Zozobra, which is a giant puppet people stuff full of their woes and then burn. In 2019, I drove around in a blue car and collected everyone’s woes in a pie tin I got in Omaha, NE. Then, in Wemberly, TX, I burned everyone’s woes with my friend Haydyn. It felt wild! This is what it looked like:

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On that tour, I also had a treasure chest for trading: people could put in a lucky charm or a book or CD or zine of theirs and take out something that someone else had put in.

So people in one city traded for the books/music/art/charms of people from somewhere else. This was also wild and very sweet!

SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW

Good question. In May 2020, I was supposed to go on a tour with my friend Ppoacher Ppoacher, and I was very excited about that, because we were going to have a way for people to deliver messages and gifts to each other along our route.

Hopefully we will still do that! Please stay tuned.

SO THIS IS JUST YOUR TOURS AND STUFF

Sort of! This will also be the future home for a few other cool projects that involve many more people than just me! Please stay tuned for this as well! Thanks for stopping by!

 How is the Blue Turn Going?