Also, if you missed it, please check out Craig Santos Perez’s blog yesterday on “Reading Across the Acronym:” ‘To me, “collaboration against Empire within the arts” is exactly what we need to build an APIA literary coalition to confront the continuous ravages of empire that are destroying our homelands and peoples and futures.’
This weekend, I’ll be back home in Massachusetts to attend the Massachusetts Poetry Festival with the Kundiman poets for:
Ritual & the Supernatural: the Aura of Poetry-Writing
Sat, April 21, 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Peabody Essex Museum, Bartlett Gallery
Featuring Tamiko Beyer, Ching-In Chen, Joseph O. Legaspi, Bushra Rehman, R.A. Villanueva
Walter Benjamin explains that “the earliest arts works originated in the service of a ritual—first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function.” A group of Kundiman poets will explore the “aura” of artworks by examining how they engage ritual and extend into the realms of mysticism and religion. With its witch trial and supernatural history, the town of Salem serves as a compelling source from which to investigate the relationship between art and ritual and, in particular, how rituals like art-making and poem-writing activate magic and the spirit. We will delve into the art collections at the Peabody Essex Museum, and consider how various works embody aspects of the mystical, mythical, and ceremonial. In particular, Asian American poets have historically mined the supernatural to ex plore otherness and invisibility. In our dynamic and creative reading of the museum’s artworks, we aim to create a dialogue between two divergent cultures of ghosts, marrying an Asian American voice to voices of Salem. Our exploration will thus culminate in the writing and presentation of ekphrasis, a poetic form that responds to and interacts with other art forms. Ekphrasis is often rooted in wonder, and we hope to interrogate wonder as it can be expressed in faith, culture, and superstition, and as it illuminates the parallels between art-making and human rituals.
This month, in honor of National Poetry Month, I’m participating in Couplets, a multi-author poetry blog tour organized by Joanne Merriam and Upper Rubber Boot Books. Earlier this week, fellow poet Mary Alexandra Agner hosted me for a guest blog on poetry of the queer, which you can read here: http://www.pantoum.org/entries/2012/04/11.shtml
Received the new issue of The New Sound, a Journal of Interdisciplinary Art & Literature, in the mail! Thanks to Randall Horton for including my Riverside Chinatown poems – “Chinese Workers at USDA Lab, 1904” and “Parable of the Shiny City” – in the issue.
“To Make Black Paper Sing” — a long series inspired by Mark Bradford’s work — is up in Revolutionesque, the 3rd issue of Esque, co-edited by Amy King & Ana Bozicevic! Happy to be amongst 108 other poets including friends & admired poets like Nikki Wallschlaeger, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Kimberly Alidio, Evie Shockley, Emily Kendal Frey & Cara Benson.
Just received my contributor’s copy of the Black Warrior ReviewSpring/Summer 2012 issue! Thanks to poetry editor & fellow Grinder AB Gorham for including “Gestations: Pathology, Or Prankster of Memory” & “Island Where These Things Happen”
Lastly, excited about Glitter Tongue, a collection of queer love poems that grew out of a collaborative writing effort among queer-poet-friends (Margaret Rhee, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Tamiko Beyer, Oliver Bendorf, Meg Day) & then expanded to community! It’s our anti-Hallmark version of queer love & will be revealed on V-day!
Welcome to 7107, a collaborative poetry project beginning January 2, 2012.
This project is inspired by Ching-In Chen’s Collaborative Manifesto Remix last summer, in which participants wrote poetry from shared generative prompts. I found the experience of writing in collaboration incredibly inspiring, and as the days went on, full of surprise and amazement at the works that were developing. As someone who has gained so much from the generosity of various communities, I’d like to take my turn, in this small way, by opening a space for collaboration and creative work to happen.
Every day from January 2-18, I’ll post a generative prompt or question. If you’d like to participate, please post your response and a prompt or question for the following day in the comments.
In Ching-In’s words:
You can answer in whichever way you are moved to — off-the-cuff, improvisationally, in deep meditation, whichever feels right to you. I’ll ask you within your writing response to braid the words of either another participant or writer/artist (other than yourself) in your writing in some way, to honor the collaborative intent of the project, and to credit that other writer/artist by name at the end of your writing (unless that person would rather remain anonymous).
My hope is for each person to bring a spark.
My hope is for each person to open a door or window for another.
Please feel free to invite anyone else who may be interested and direct them to this page. If you have limited internet access, or if the comment system is down, you can send your work and prompt to arkipelagirl [at] gmail.com, and I’ll post for you when the comments are fixed. Questions and concerns can also be sent via email or the Ask Box.
I look forward to what we can build together.
dear lovely ones,gratitude for your energies, your sharings, your
generosities, your uglies, your little and expansive bitters,
your writing through the nights, your browns, your
beauties, your afternoon slumbers, your bruises, your
breakfast mornings, your laughs, your solitudes and of
course, of course, your words. For those of you who
showed up every day, for those who were able to make it
for one day, and for those of us who occupy that sliding
space in-between, thank you. I'm leaving millay colony
this morning with you tucked in my backpocket. For this last post, I want to say, I hope this is not the last
time we write and create in the path together and I hope
to see your collaborations out in the world & in the street!As Bushra says, “and wouldn’t you feel lucky in all this magic?” Thank you. <3! *today, onlookers meant to write this poemwaking up to trumpet vine world.You can be proper body, even people who questionthe nation. I am sick, I don't wanttheir eyes heard, only trains platinumin their grammar. We every trickster peelupstream night that do not know shame. Leave me humid
born without the proper
name loved to night.
*
Promptings for your writings:
“I feel sad and dehumanized when viewed in terms of my
utility instead of who I truly am.” - Soyeon Cho*
Improv Everywhere:
*
…. And you,
who cannot keep still, who can never
look back, where will you go next?
How will I find you?
Can you feel the world pull
apart, the seams loosen?
What, tell me, will keep it whole,
if not you? if not me?
Send a postcard, picture, tell me
how you’ve been.
- Blas Falconer (who was born on this day), from “Dear Friend”
*
“The J. Paul Getty Museum’s iconic statue of Aphrodite
was quietly escorted back to Sicily by Italian police, ending
a decades-long dispute over an object whose craftsmanship,
importance, and controversial origins have been likened to
the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum.” ~ LA Times,
March 23 2011
(via Carol Gomez)
*
Two more prompts (I’m sad this is ending. Thank you again,
Ching-In and all who have participated!):
*Frida’s Corset:
*
Wasteland Documentary Trailer
(via Rachelle Cruz)
*
1) what are the sounds of respect / beauty / sharing?
2) is all writing collaborative writing…
(via Hari Malagayo Alluri)
*
and my prompt!
especially the last part which I’ve been living and loving. .
(via Bushra Rehman)
*
come morning walls melt – Clarissa Rojas
the drum:
(via Clarissa Rojas)
*
In honor of our sacred space here, my prompt today has to
do with spaces of art that face challenges and find ways to
survive. This is a trailer from the documentary,
“Unfinished Spaces,” on the National Schools of Art in Cuba.
8.23.11 what if we happen: collaborative generating #16
This is your teacher, concrete English,
together the way we became
onions, smothering the land. Who says no,
goodbye history of water, they left home
for a living. Eight night caretaker, I cut out first,
a lit in me can soak up oil.
One-armed architecture, a soft bed and she a fitting
room girl. The flesh cancer and chocolate, soon
unison, I would learn to speak as bird,
put hand in soil, rise
into this bearded world. To grow up steel,
I want to be a river.
(made from the words of Monica Hand, Rachelle Cruz, Hari Malagayo Alluri, Carol Gomez, Todd Wellman, Melissa Morrow, Serena W. Lin, Yael Villafranca, Evangeline Ganaden & Tamiko Beyer)
*
Promptings for your writings:
We must shift from a politic of desirability and beauty to a politic of ugly and magnificence. That moves us closer to bodies and movements that disrupt, dismantle, disturb. Bodies and movements ready to throw down and create a different way for all of us, not just some of us.
The magnificence of a body that shakes, spills out, takes up space, needs help, moseys, slinks, limps, drools, rocks, curls over on itself. The magnificence of a body that doesn’t get to choose when to go to the bathroom, let alone which bathroom to use. A body that doesn’t get to choose what to wear in the morning, what hairstyle to sport, how they’re going to move or stand, or what time they’re going to bed. The magnificence of bodies that have been coded, not just undesirable and ugly, but un-human. – Mia Mingus
2) T.J. Anderson\’s “Runaway, Runaways” – conceived as a companion to Donald Sur’s “Slavery Documents.” Drawing material from Loren Schweininger’s collection The Southern Debate Over Slavery, the composer asked himself, “Why would anyone want to write a composition about slavery at the beginning of the 21st century?”
*
Hari Kondabolu – Where are you from?
*
Versions of Tracie Morris’ “Project Princess”
*
What now? What now? What now? – Monica Hand
*
Cecilia Vicuna:
(via Rachelle Cruz)
*
“hear a calling, answer it.” – via a friend’s facebook post (via Hari Malagayo Alluri)
*
do i feed the squirrels alongside the birds? is that fair to the birds? – Carol Gomez
*
“DOT is currently studying the feasibility of adding a bike lane to the Hoan Bridge and expects to complete its study sometime this fall. This neighborhood meeting will be an excellent opportunity for you to learn more about the DOT bike lane study and to let state transportation officials know how you feel about adding a bike lane to the Hoan Bridge. I hope to see you there!” – Rep. Richards (via Todd Wellman)
*
(via Melissa Morrow)
*
From Insomnia by Cornelius Eady
“You’ll never sleep tonight.
Trains will betray you, cars confess
Their destinations,
Whether you like it
Or not.
They want more
Than to be in
Your dreams.
They want to tell you
A story.
——”
(via Serena W. Lin)
*
Prompt in two parts:
“Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot
and some men say an army of ships is the more beautiful thing
on the black earth. But I say it is
what you love.” —Sappho, translated by Anne Carson
and:
(via Yael Villafranca)
*
If you happen to have watched armed men
beat and drag your father
out the front door of your house
and into the back of an idling truck
before your mother jerked you from the threshold
and buried your face in her skirt folds,
try not to judge your mother too harshly.
Don’t ask her what she thought she was doing
turning a child’s eyes
away from history
and toward that place all human aching starts.
Li-Young Lee, “Self-Help for Fellow Refugees”
(via Evangeline Ganaden)
*
Torso Fetish
by Lisa Chen
I have a fetish for the torso.
The meat dead in the center.
The tragic hero in _Johnny Got His Gun_
The most innocent part the body because it is incapable of striking out.
p.s. off the collaborative path for another quick moment to say a thank you to a former teacher I hold dear, R. Erica Doyle, who ran the Tongues Afire Writing Workshop for queer women & non-gender-conforming writers of color at the Audre Lorde Project.
Grateful & humbled to be connected to be connected to the constellation & included in the community she has invoked this week at the Best American Poetry blog.
(composed from the words of Hari Malagayo Alluri, Monica Hand, Todd Wellman, Carol Gomez, Rachelle Cruz, Serena W. Lin & Melissa Morrow with guidance from Meiver de la Cruz)
Promptings for your writings:
You explain to the ambulance attendant that you had a momentary lapse of happily. The noun, happiness, is a static state of some Platonic ideal you know better than to pursue. Your modifying process had happily or unhappily experienced a momentary pause. This kind of thing happens, perhaps is still happening. He shrugs and in turn explains that you need to come quietly or he will have to restrain you. – Claudia Rankine
photographer John Coyne’s video to Blue Scholars – Lumiere:
forage/salvage: a conversation between rita wong & linda sormin
“the next one has to be completely unwieldy, untamed, unrelenting” – anonymous (via Hari Malagayo Alluri)
What would the journey towards filling the empty look like? – Monica Hand
“…it’s a blanket visa or something like that”
” oh, good enough to keep you warm with in Ohio winter ”
….aunty C & nephew J silly chatting on fb today (via Carol Gomez)
“It’s time to reinstate the rose
and return the world to poetry;
the language that governs the heart
at long last needs relearning.”-Roger Sedarat, “Reinstatement of the Rose” (via Rachelle Cruz)
“i never was pure…” suheir hammad (via Serena W. Lin)
(made from the words of Carol Gomez, Serena W. Lin, Hari Malagayo Alluri, Rachelle Cruz, Jai Arun Ravine, Todd Wellman, Melissa Morrow, Evangeline Ganaden & Tamiko Beyer)
When you consider your own “tradition,” do you think primarily of American poets?
No. My “tradition” (or psyche) is split [I prefer the expression "shattered"]. My “tradition” is a complex mishmosh of two basic traditions: 1) the best of Western Civilization, as taught in the Los Angeles school system of the 50s and 60s, Sappho and beyond. 2) the Afro-American blues/jazz musical tradition.
What is American about American Poetry?
The unique cauldron of Protestantism and Racism in which it is defined and from which it takes shape.
“How nice it would be to show just how male I am to someone else in this empty room tonight, but I’m much too busy shaking my head and muttering, “Wanda Coleman.” I should be pulling someone closer to me, but tonight I’m getting in my bed alone. Tomorrow, I’ll rise early and go to the gym where I bang my body against itself in a vain attempt to transform it into something someone wants to touch.”
(via Rachelle Cruz)
*
The strangeness of our insides
They will never know.
-Margaret Rhee, from the poem “The Flannery I Know” (via Jai Arun Ravine)
*
“We tumbled to the bath mat.” — Roger Weingarten (via Todd Wellman)
For almost a month I lived at this rhythm: the night prostrate and the day letting myself be carried across Vienna by sleep and the tramway. – Marjane Satrapi, “Persepolis” (via Evangeline Ganaden)
*
(via Tamiko Beyer)
*
& some extra prompts via Meiver de la Cruz (& the Carol she’s talking about is Carol Gomez –
Querida amiga,
…thinking about labor and the phrases below replay in my thoughts as I work, everyday. They’ve become inspiring meditations that remind me of Mo, Carol, Nisha and of you, Ching-In – as I work:
“La revolución es cultural”
-heard anew in July 2011 from the lips of “Slow” Miguel Martínez, of Colombia’s ChocQuibTown. A link worth enjoying:
“Process is dope”
-inspired by Carol and Monique’s amazing work.
“Dance is labor and love”
-inspired by the body’s reliable joy when dancing, even with aches and pains.
“Work dignifies you”
-Chile, 2003. Shared by a hard working musician, friend.
These phrases are all about the work we do, and help me through. I hope they encourage you too. Let’s work together again soon.
8.20. how to offer and repeat: lucky collaborating generating #13
on one page, a list of places
to send light/the ambush coming
the sting of bamboo/the metronome today
like all days your breath/did they try to threaten
any means of protection against my bare flesh
(nothing you can see is not fire)
in the rice fields is a body
a sky body rubbed chemical/without easy mirrors would you
history/rouse those endings
let go of that queer?
(made from the words of Hari Malagayo Alluri, Monica Hand, Rachelle Cruz, Todd Wellman, Melissa Morrow & Evangeline Ganaden)
Promptings for your writings:
Some gems from R. Erica Doyle’s Best American Poetry blog this week: “Today I will share with you the sky, because I can.” which includes write-ups on some of the visitors amongst us including Tamiko Beyer & Monica Hand:
Once a man offered me his heart and I said no. Not because I didn’t love him. Not because he was a beast or white—I couldn’t love him. Do you understand? In bed while we slept, our bodies inches apart, the dark between our flesh a wick. It was burning down. And he couldn’t feel it. – Eduardo C. Corral
(original Hari posted is blocked for copyright reasons so another version)
Does the grief for the loss of the mother (earth) ever heal? – Monica Hand
“In the family albums everyone
is always held by someone else,
in siesta or in fiesta.”
-Karen Llagas (via Rachelle Cruz)
(via Todd Wellman)
“Corinna” by Taj Mahal (via Melissa Morrow):
I’m traveling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
There’s comfort in melancholy
When there’s no need to explain
…
But you know I’m so glad to be on my own
Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know – no one’s going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone
– “Hejira” by Joni Mitchell, sung by Cassandra Wilson at the Hollywood Bowl, August 17, 2011 (via Evangeline Ganaden)
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