a case for political poetry

case. cover, not surprisingly, by my lovely Petra. just in case you want some politically inclined poetry. case in point. William Allegrezza has started a new imprint under moria books. locofo chaps for chapbooks of political poetry. he aims to publish 100 of them. a copy of each will be sent to the white house. could i resist trying to be part of that? are you serious? poetry may have any number of uses or be as ”useless” as you like. over the years my scribbles have been used for feeding the world, rebuilding haiti & now to make this or that statement on things like place, rabbits, borders, parliaments. i did, you could too. mr Allegrezza would like that. not sure what the current president thinks, if he does at all

a holiday for poets

today is world poetry day. & it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that it coincides with spring equinox. after a long prosaic winter poetry comes out of its hibernation. there may not be many of us celebrating this day, but probably a few more than celebrate a day like world towel day whenever that is. so how might one celebrate world poetry day? the easiest way would be to read a few poems & if you’re one of those people, maybe even write one or 2. if you like & have the time for performances, you might go to a poetry reading. or why not, spend some time thinking careful poetic thoughts. maybe support one of your local, or favourite, poets. enough now of this. now to celebrate by writing a poem & maybe go to a reading later

my 100 poems

time has come for swirl editions to morph from an e-chap to a printed book press. hence my 100 poems appeared yesterday. why that one first? there are several reasons for that. so much of my scribbles are either out of print (most of them having appeared in print runs of 40-60), or never even in print, being e-chaps. it gave me the chance to experiment & make most of the beginner’s mistakes with a book of my own. it gave me complete control over the form & content of my first selected poems & when to publish it. i wanted it out close to the 10^th anniversary of my first chapbook. & it brings some kind of closure to this decade of fairly active scribbling & publishing. & where

selecting these 100 poems wasn’t easy. i had to kill a whole lot of darlings in the process

enough of this blathering. it’s published. the first of swirl editions new era of print books. more to come in a not too distant future

10 years of mindlessness

so today it’s 10 years to the day since mindfulness was published by Bill Allegrezza‘s now mighty, then more or less newborn, moria . the little book was conceived & born in a 2 day rush. it came out of a post & a long stream of comments on silliman’s blog in the summer of 2005 on poetry, buddhism & attention more or less. the form i mostly nicked from a book i’d read a year or so before. the only thing i added was the tiny variation in each poem. for the title, no i hadn’t yet come across the new-age psycho term, i took the title of a then rather recent book, Wakefulness, by John Ashbery & did a minor substitution. then it was just the small matter of the first poem which i decided needed to have 20 lines. mindfulness was written & published in a different time by a somewhat different person. yet reading it now i’m still happy with it. & so was Chris Rizzo in his review, possibly the most carefully thought one anyone has yet bestowed upon my scribbles

& today when i fired up my laptop i had an acceptance from Underground Books for a new chapbook, to be published first as an e-book & then for the poetry festival in New York in july as a print edition

yeah

slightly late new years post

2015. what to say? activity. poetry, (chap)books finished & published. travel, including for readings in Stocjholm & Paris (where Petra also had her 3^rd solo exhibition of photos). not a lot of blogging, being more active on facebook though in 2016 i will blog a bit more & somewhat more ambitiously. teaching, working on the book shop. thinking about taking up short prose again. taking swirl editions into print (on demand) shortly. there are after all too few books in the world. trying to keep to my 2 poems a day thing a little more consistently than last year. be a better husband. what else? ah, let 2016 show its hand

today is a good day

to quote a song & album title by New Model Army. Nicanor Parra turns 101 years young & gradient books published all hat, no cattle being a selection of 8 years of hay(na)ku. it’s one of these books you could potentially never finish as there’s always new pieces to add &, as i settled for 72 poems plus the long (144 stanzas) one at the end, remove. but then came the point where i thought no more poems could be removed so then i decided to try to send it out into the world. & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen was quick to accept it. for which i’m very happy. & not surprisingly the cover image is by my lovely Petra. & you can get a copy for next to nothing

weekend in Berlin

on friday morning me & Petra got on the bus to Berlin & arrived at zentrale omnibusbahnhof in Kaiserdamm in the afternoon. to celebrate our arrival we bought 3-day tickets for public transport & berliner kindl & got on the strassenbahn to Landsberger Allee & Generator, our hostel to check in & leave our bags before heading for Friedrichshain & what’s left of town for an ancient punk & anarchist & an old electromusic fan. our first stop which we found after some confusion was still around but closed due to illness so we headed to this squat bar before the tram back for a somewhat early night. long busrides tend to drain you of energy

saturday morning. breakfast. went to say hello to Karl & Friedrich. some shopping. Petra got a pair of shoes & i finally got a good pair of shorts & more importantly new sandals. so i put them on, stuffed the old ones in the box & we find a dumpster in the middle of Alexanderplatz for a proper burial ceremony. as documented by Petra that done we head for the akademie der künste for the last day of the international poetry festival & lyrikmarkt where i put some of my poems-for-all & the last of the greying ghost pamphlets on an information table (they were gone within minutes) before hitting the book tables. 2 hour or so later we left with new books by Adrian Kasnitz (the first volume of a projected long sequence called kaledarium), Titus Meyer, an issue of Sand, the anglophone journal in town, the new Stacy Szymaszek from nightboat books hart island, the new Donna Stonecipher model city from shearsman books & 2 lovely ugly duckling chaps leaving leaving behind behind by Inger Wold Lund &, of course Petra found one of the very few non-poetry books, a small anthology of 15-second plays curated by The Debate Society, all for the poetry library. for the book shop i made some new contacts. so a great couple of hours. back to the east side we rambled a bit, had some fine vietnamese almost fast food, saw the cops harass some people outside a squat they’re probably going to raid soon if they haven’t already, watched some u-21 football & headed to an anarchist bar in Rigaer Strasse where we had some beer & met a slightly confused self-publishing writer going by the name of Sven, we had a long talk about writing, publishers, the usefulness of the internet (& in particular email) as he’s completely analogue reachable only by phone & returned to the hostel

sunday. i had breakfast, Petra slept in. then we headed into tourist area for some coffee & things, she an odd cheesecake & i something called leipziger marzipan. & as neither of us had been to Volksbühne we went to check if they had some cool play on. they did have one called Revolution Now which sounded good enough to get tickets for before heading off to the historical museum & a huge exhibition on the german history of homosexuality, an afternoon well spent as it turned out. by then we were hungry so we went to Prenzlauerberg, the part of town Petra lived in the first time around & finally found a brilliant argentinian restaurant on a shady side street. all of this made us 20 minutes late for the revolution which was no big deal. i shall not describe the play except to say only in Berlin & if you have the chance, go be part of it. you’ll not regret, or ever forget, it. then off to Jessner Strasse & Supamolly, a classic squat bar & punk venue & around midnight on the way back to the hostel, döner kebab as art

monday. ludicrously early checkout & the return. in a black t-shirt

& nobody in between

yesterday the Red Ceilings Press published my new ebook, & nobody in between. it collects 5 years of poems dedicated to poets & artists, dead & living. it brings me great pleasure to once again return to the ceilings not least because Mark is such a good editor to work with. & not surprisingly the beautiful cover image was done by Petra

(+ POIESIS) call for mail art

this in the email recently

{+ P O I E S I S}

Call for Mail Art

……………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Convocatory / Call

 

The Cultural Institute Tchello d’Barros (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) invites poets and visual artists of any nationality to participate in the exhibition {+ POIESIS} International Mail Art Exhibition to be held at the XXV Brazilian Poetry Congress, 05-10 October 2015 in the city of Bento Gonçalves (RS), Brazil, a realization of the Proyecto Cultural Sur.

 

BASES

 

– Registration:

Only 01 Visual Poem per participant, in Postcard format, the size 10 X 15 cm. Wright on backside your name, address and e-mail, and if necessary, title, year, signature etc.

 

– Schedule

Submission of works by physical mail: posting until August 31, 2015

Release with selected names: September 15, 2015 by e-mail.

Opening of physical exposure: 05 October 2015

Visitation: until 10 October 2015

Virtual show: 25 October 2015

 

– Theme: VISUAL POETRY

Could the Mail Art (Arte Correo, Arte Postal) be a vehicle for contemporary Visual Poetry? Yes! Send your Visual Poem any technique and subject, with free creations or experimental typography, lettrism, extemporaneous concretisms, assemics writting, typewriting, textual images, imagistic texts, inaugural alphabets, quantum language, calligraphic encryptions, semiotic experimentation and aesthetic dialogues with the tradition of Visual Poetry. Or +!

 

– Exhibition

The Postcards will be presented on exhibition at the Foundation House of Arts (Fundação Casa das Artes), in Bento Gonçalves city on the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Non-competitive exhibition, without awards, no management fees, no jury, no sales, no refund of the Postcards. Will not be exposed images offensive, violent, racial or discriminatory. There will be nominal digital certificate to be sent to the e-mail that included the back of the Postcard. There will be a photographic report on the site of the show, virtual version of the exhibition and the possibility of present at another cultural centers in Brazil and abroad. The simple act of sending the Postcard indicates the authorization disclosure of your name and image of the work (both sides) by all medias and acceptance of the conditions of this project.

 

– Contact

Tchello d’Barros (curator) tchellodbarros@gmail.com

Info: https://www.facebook.com/poiesiscuradoria

 

 

– Address to send the Postcard:

Tchello d’Barros

Largo Wanda de Oliveira, 400 Apt. 203-B

Cidade Universitária – CEP 21941-903

Rio de Janeiro, RJ – Brasil

maybe so, but

nobody said poetry was a fast business. ten years ago i submitted a poem to poems-for-all & it was quickly accepted for publication. now it appears on my hall floor along with copies of 10 other pamphlets. yeah. & yesterday 10 books by Eileen Tabios for the book shop i’m in the process of starting. good mail days indeed