Rachel Zolf PRESS Report Now on PRESS BLOG, Tangent Reading

This is really an IOU for a fuller report on 2 back-to-back events: Rachel Zolf reading at Evergreen for PRESS on October 15, and my reading with Rachel and Portland poet B.T. Shaw for Tangent in Portland the following evening. 

An IOU, as, due to the sudden death of my mother, I was unable to attend the reading we'd set up for Rachel in Olympia. Elizabeth and I were in Detroit. So THAT particular reading's report will be written out in full on our PRESS blog, along with the audio file of the reading and discussion. I know several were interested in our books that evening, so due to our not having them as promised, feel free to go to SPD and support our small presses by getting your hands on either Occultations, Neighbour Procedure, or both. For now, there's a brief summary of the feedback we got so far up at the PRESS blog.

--------------------TANGENT REPORT-----------------

One day after Zolf's PRESS reading/discussion, we headed down to Portland to give a reading for the Tangent Reading Series, co-curated by Kaia Sand, Jules Boykoff, and Rodney Koeneke. Joining us was Portland poet and The Oregonian editor B.T Shaw. I debated whether to participate in the reading given how terribly out of it I am, but we decided it'd be good for me, a respite of sorts, to go ahead with it, spend some time with some of the most beautiful souls we know. Kaia, Jules, Rodney, and all who came out, including David Abel, Maryrose Larkin, and other Spare Room Collective folks, Allison Cobb, Jen Coleman, Lionel Lints--the close-knit Portland poetry scene, basically--were so kind and generous. 

Having difficulty knowing whether my reading went well or not, things a strange blur at moment, but I did manage to wrangle fantastic poet James Yeary into doing an interactive piece of it, a distraction zone staging in which he's given earphones and a recording of me reading a re-mix of the Bybee torture memorandum, listens and writes what comes to him, while Elizabeth and I are reading the polyvocal section of Occultations that makes use of this document. James is asked to stop writing when the recording ends, stand, and interrupt our reading with his own. He was an excellent sport about it and did some excellent spot writing. When I ask participants to write in similar fashion, i.e., via distraction and in concert with live reading, the work that results then, by author's choice, either becomes part of the ongoing series / cycle "Your Nerve Center Taxonomy" - or it doesn't. James graciously said that I could do whatever I wanted with his writing, which means I get to share it with you here, and later in print form. Note that he was writing this in real-time while having to listen to not two, but three audio inputs. Not that I think the results are bad writing, not at all. But figured I should let you know that James' work is often quite different, often quite precise and sparser. Anyway, here's what he came up with and read aloud last night:

give as an inattention  Scotland
the inatten wash sweet dash
harom figures individual why keekee
inatten service to shock stereo
complicit stereo varies flame the
subject as a form of down the muscle
is indecent our form as a down
inatten using four distortions
two stresses on the plinth debt
debt throu excerpted inactivity
pharmacalogical debt cooperative
repeat space as a pronounced form
an distress an you would like to
less cooperate predisposed to debt plinth
which is a proximate of sewn [seven]

[-dance] 

So, many thanks to James for this. I felt good and cared for all night, got to laugh a bit and, of course, to hear Rachel and Shaw's amazing readings. Rachel's work I know well of course, having heard her read in New York years ago, that reading in fact one of those that helped decide for me to seriously write (by "seriously" I mean semi-consistently).  So, I got what I wanted: to hear her read again, as though Neighbour Procedure is perhaps my favorite book out this year (one of a handful anyhow), it's a different experience hearing her perform the work. Zolf read "Acknowledgment," which I would have requested had she closed out without it. Was just a real kick in the ass hearing the work. And B.T. Shaw's work, which I didn't know very well, having only read individual poems in journals, really drew itself into a complicated conversation with Zolf's work, with Occultations too--each new work responding in some way to the paradoxes and contradictions of art and the "docile body" taken up, used, spent, and otherwise weaponized by neo-liberalism/militarism. Shaw's manuscript in progress, investigating a military officer's murder of his wife, base life, military culture, all of it woven both lyrically and via the found, appropriated, and remixed, the performativity hence situating itself as related to the performativity of Occultations and Neighbour Procedure. For me a really happy discovery of a work! (Not to mention a lovely human being.)

Most importantly for me it was a night that allowed me to feel "in my body" for a moment, and so I thank Jules, Kaia, Rodney, B.T., Rachel,  those who came out, and the Open Space Cafe, for a truly necessary (for me) evening. As does Elizabeth who'd been nearly single-handedly taking care of me for the past few days.

PRESS 2009-10: Chris Mann this Evening/ Kaia Sand & Jules Boykoff last Thursday

As I get ready to meet up with Chris Mann, then hear him perform for our second PRESS event of the winter, I'm thinking about how amazing Kaia Sand and Jules Boykoff were last week, and how grateful I am that they're in the region and doing what they are doing: finding new, rather exhilarating ways to intersect and collide oft-thought-of "political" and "aesthetic" spheres. 

Jules read first, all work from his new Hegemonic Love Potion (Factory School), which included lines from his cycle "Das Greenspan," such as:

"The kind of guy who's not afraid to bring an inflatable candy cane to 

to a trans-national stag party"

and other gems, including one of my favorite poems in this hyper-sonic collection, this auctioneering of warped eternal present faux recollections born of the latest capitalism money can't buy, "Notes from the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment."  The poem begins: "I was all jacked up on freedom juice again."  And moves on from there, multidirectionally, trying to capture but necessarily failing to capture, one's own--our own--market driven madness.

In contrast to Jules' work, which--besides being often devastating in its critique of itself as necessarily a product of the culture industry (its critique of us)--often feels to me like being jabbed in the ribs by a friend acting out the persona of the joke-teller, Kaia's work is quieter, raging from the inside out, its lyricism being one central point on a literal map that is her new work, Remember to Wave, around which these life-structures in Portland turn.  So many habitations are mapped out, their sociopolitical, their social grid lines mapped out not just by Kaia, but by what Kaia's research unearthed as document, as letter form, as well as her tour group's often startling observations.  These habitations are often the most occulted in this one area's history, where, for example, Kaia concentrated her reading last week very much on the section of Remember to Wave that charts out the internment of Japanese people at the Portland convention center's storage lockers, the lockers turned into "living quarters," i.e., "prisons."  One work from which Kaia read involved giving "voice" to silent archive home movie footage from (I think?) the 1960s, again charting this area of the Portland Convention Center in a different way, this long lyrical poem incredibly captivating, the large screen footage dividing our attention between the seen and the heard in ways not unlike Laura Elrick's work, on which Sand has written recently (see posts below on both Remember to Wave and Laura Elrick's Stalk, which has been fleshed out and lengthened as an essay forthcoming).

The two combined for a deeply engaging contrast, and as the gracious, committed activists they are, offered several plugs for CA Conrad's arrival in March.  As, for those of you familiar with Boykoff, Conrad, and Sand, the three are engaged in similar political enactments thru language, and are, as Boykoff spoke about during the discussion after the reading, part of a larger phenomenon of site-specific and sociopolitical spatial practices / concerns at work in contemporary poetry, "witness" post-Oppen, not dissimilar to the site-specific arguments and engagements in visual arts last decade, continuing to evolve currently (and inform poetry & poetics).  

I'll try to dig up photos of the event as well as quotes/images from Kaia's Remember to Wave (both, at the moment of this writing, are being circulated among Evergreen students who could not make the reading itself).  In the meantime, take a look at some posts below, and go here for a snapshot of Kaia's map-making (from Wheelhouse PRESS Anthology 2009), and head over to Factory School and Tinfish Press website for further ordering information.

HOT PRESS ACTION COMING SOON: Jules Boykoff & Kaia Sand

Yesterday's PRESS event, Jules Boykoff & Kaia Sand reading (after a marathon day of workshopping with Arun Chandra & Elizabeth Williamson's class) was AWESOME.  Both read from their new work: Jules' Hegemonic Love Potion (Factory School) & Kaia's Remember to Wave (Tinfish)

I'll be blogging about this tomorrow, as at moment I'm gathering some images & quotes for the write-up, which will include some discussion on both of these new books.  But for now: a shout-out to Jules & Kaia, for their gracious participation and really amazing reading, & to the students & faculty who packed the house.   If you weren't there, too bad. 

Some Mediations for Untangling,

--Belladonna has a new web page on facebook (the blog is down now, but probably--guessing here--just for remodelling).  Anyhow, go here for news & notes (you need to log in to facebook), such as: 

--New from Belladonna is Carla Harryman's Open Box (Improvisations).  Laura Elrick's write-up:

From one of our most mind- and genre-bending of writers comes a poem. Don’t expect the poem however: “The page will not inflate / lungs do.” Carla Harryman’s startling new improvisations sound the edges between life and word, text and body, presence and a future (“in the hands of a shovel”). Notes that do not sing open the transfiguring “clink between / Thud and shine”… “Between us and a thing / Not yours, not mine / That owns us.” Thus an intense sort of music arises from the “wasting” gratitude of this Open Box. Syntactically figured through doubles and negatives, its “window window” beckons while it cloaks, reveals as it extends, as intimately as that rack of garments (the plush and the frayed) hanging from our mirrored backs.

--Laura Elrick

--From friend & political economy professor (one of the planners of EconVergence) Pete Bohmer regarding the sort of death that seems like a nail in the collective coffin, Howard Zinn (he was due to speak here later this week, for my class as well as others):

Howard Zinn contributed in so many important ways to creating an understanding of  U.S. history that put at the center the struggles of oppressed people for dignity, and for economic and social justice. His classic, A People’s History of the United States, has had a profound effect in this regard. It is my favorite book.   I have probably given away  30 copies as gifts over the last 25 years and used it in countless classes. Howard was a very wise and humane person who relentlessly criticized our unjust capitalist system while believing in and giving us historical examples of individuals and movements who in ways big and small worked and struggled against all injustice and for a just society.   In language and analysis that was simple but not simplistic, radical but accessible, Howard Zinn’s  anti-racism and anti-imperialism and his strong identification with working people stood out. So did his strong anti-war commitment and perspective.  He listened to and respected the non-elites, those usually omitted in the official histories.

While motivated in his writing by his values of the right to self-determination, of the centrality of ending poverty and all forms of oppression such as sexism and racism, and for peace and justice, Howard told the truth and did not exaggerate and omit facts that were uncomfortable to his beliefs. He also acted on them by participating in countless demonstrations and other forms of activism from the 1930’s until the present.

Based on Howard’s  profound  historical understanding of the U.S. history and his respect for people and his understanding of the obscene  inequality and militarism that marks the United States today, Howard Zinn continued to have hope and believed that we, the people, of the United States, could and would transform this society into some form of democratic socialism that lived in harmony with the rest of the world.    We can all learn from this truly outstanding thinker, historian and human being. Howard Zinn presente!

Sadly, Peter Bohmer

--And yet, there are those whose hope & tireless organizing / creative lather causes various little futures to open up here & there.  Such as Jules Boykoff.  And Kaia Sand.  They're reading tonight, discussing where to go from here tonight, so please do come if you are a STUDENT, FACULTY MEMBER, STAFF MEMBER, or OTHER PERSON LIVING IN OR AROUND OLYMPIA.  Both are always on.  

Born in large part out of Elizabeth Williamson's hard work: 

Winter's first  PRESS EVENT:

Join poet/activists Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand for a tour of their latest work

The Evergreen State College

        Where: Sem II C1105

    When: January 28,7:30pm 

Boykoff and Sand helped organize the recent Econvergence conference in Portland(http://www.econvergence.org/). They are the founders of the Tangent Press and reading series in Portland (http://www.thetangentpress.org/readings.html) and co-authored a new book on guerrilla poetry entitled Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry and Public Space (Palm Press 2008). 

 

Boykoff is the author, most recently, of Hegemonic Love Potion (Factory School, 2009) and Once Upon a Neoliberal Rocket Badge (Edge Books, 2006). He has also published and lectured widely on the suppression of dissent in the United States. He is a contributor to scholarly journals like Antipode, Social Movement Studies, andNew Political Science as well as popular publications like the Guardian, Common Dreams, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. He was an  invited speaker at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya (2006), where he presented research he carried out on U.S. media coverage of global warming.  

Sand is the author most recently of Remember to Wave, forthcoming this winter with Tinfish Press. This collection investigates political geography in Portland, Oregon, and contains a poetry walk she guides. Her  collection, interval (Edge Books 2004), was selected as a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year and she is also the author/designer of several chapbooks through the Dusie Kollektiv. She is a contributor to Jim Dine’s Hot Dreams series (Steidl Editions 2008) and recently performed poetry collaged entirely from the North American Free Trade Agreement at the Positions Colloquium of the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver, British Columbia. At present, she is at work on The Happy Valley Project, multi-media collaborations investigating housing foreclosures and finance.

Sponsored by: Performing Meaning, Translating Thought; Music and the Environment; The Writing Center; The Office of the Budget Dean 

```````````````````````````````````````````

--Last, on Feb 3 poet Yan Li will be at our Tacoma Campus, hosted by amazing poet (and person) Zhang Er.  From an email invite she sent (more later on this blog regarding the event):

You are Invited to Chinese Poet Yan Li's reading at

The Evergreen State College – Tacoma

1210 – 6<sup>th</sup> Ave, Tacoma WA 98405, Room 218

February 3, 2010, 2:00-4:00 pm

Yan Li is a well-known poet and painter based in Shanghai. He belonged to the loose organized young poets group active in China in the late 1970s to mid-1980s, which was labeled as the "misty" school. He is the founding editor in chief of the unofficial, yet influential poetry journal First Line since 1987. He exhibited his art works in a 1979 show by a group of avant-garde artists later known as The Stars. His one man show in 1984 at People’s Park in Shanghai was the first one-man Avant-garde art exhibition after 1949 in mainland China . He has held many exhibitions and published numerous books since the 1980s. In his poetry and fiction work, Yan Li pushes the boundary between vernacular and written, capricious and philosophical, transient and historical, private and public, realistic and imaginary, humorous and solemn, contemporary and canonical. He has maintained his intellectual and artistic integrity under the not so subtle inducement of commercialization or propaganda for the party. He has also been an unfailing supporter and magnet for generations of younger poets and artists who seek his advice and help. His poetry has been translated into many languages including English.

 

The reading is supported in part by the Cycle Makers and Cycle Breakers Program.

 

Book Received: Remember to Wave by Kaia Sand (Tinfish Press)

In the rush to finish a ton of things, including a spring course on public space, dissent and guerilla poetry, a reprieve: the beautiful Remember to Wave by Kaia Sand just came in the mail today. My very own copy.  I only had a  chance to glance at the work so far, thumbing thru the thing & stopping here & there, but it's hard hitting, transporting, & gorgeously designed - and beauty here takes on many forms, not least the "zine" feel to a lot of the adverts, and other found signage that Sand uses here to help re-map the not-so-beautiful understructures of Portland.  Wow, this is a cool book.  And just in time for me to include at least part of it in my syllabus for spring, and just in time for Kaia's and Jules Boykoff's PRESS Event talk/reading at Evergreen (post below) on Thursday @ 730.  More on this book soon.  For now, back to working on lecture for Wednesday: aptly, Ranciere, redistributon of the sensible, Nonsite Collective, & other autonomous / radical pedagogical models.   

PRESS 2009-2010: Jules Boykoff & Kaia Sand

Join poet/activists Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand for a tour of their latest work

                 

The Evergreen State College

Where: Sem II Building, Room C1105

    When: January 28, 7:30pm 

Boykoff and Sand helped organize the recent Econvergence conference in Portland (http://www.econvergence.org/). They are the founders of the Tangent Press and reading series in Portland (http://www.thetangentpress.org/readings.html) and co-authored a new book on guerrilla poetry entitled Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry and Public Space (Palm Press 2008). 

 

Boykoff is the author, most recently, of Hegemonic Love Potion (Factory School, 2009) and Once Upon a Neoliberal Rocket Badge (Edge Books, 2006). He has also published and lectured widely on the suppression of dissent in the United States. He is a contributor to scholarly journals like Antipode, Social Movement Studies, and New Political Science as well as popular publications like the Guardian, Common Dreams, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. He was an  invited speaker at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya (2006), where he presented research he carried out on U.S. media coverage of global warming.  

Sand is the author most recently of Remember to Wave, forthcoming this winter with Tinfish Press. This collection investigates political geography in Portland, Oregon, and contains a poetry walk she guides. Her  collection, interval (Edge Books 2004), was selected as a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year and she is also the author/designer of several chapbooks through the Dusie Kollektiv. She is a contributor to Jim Dine’s Hot Dreams series (Steidl Editions 2008) and recently performed poetry collaged entirely from the North American Free Trade Agreement at the Positions Colloquium of the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver, British Columbia. At present, she is at work on The Happy Valley Project, multi-media collaborations investigating housing foreclosures and finance.

           

Another Fuck the Holidays Special

How could we not include the always wonderful Tinfish in our list of small presses?  Especially when, available for pre-order, are new titles from Kaia Sand and Elizabeth Soto.  Soto's work is always good, so I imagine this book is a must.  And I'd read some of Sand's Remember to Wave, with Wheelhouse publishing a selection of the work for our PRESS Anthology--the work is awesome, daring, politically radicalizing and beautiful.

SCROLL DOWN for ordering details.

FROM TINFISH PRESS:

Tinfish Pre-Publication Sale (Please help us to cover print costs!)

We have two exciting books going to the printer this week:

Kaia Sand, REMEMBER TO WAVE, $16




Elizabeth Soto, EULOGIES, $14





Details here:

Pre-publication prices are $14 for Sand's book, $10 for Soto's, or $22 for both.

Please support our efforts to publish experimental poetry from the Pacific by pre-ordering these titles.

47-728 Hui Kelu Street #9
Kane`ohe, HI 96744

or via the "purchase" button on our website: http://tinfishpress.com

aloha, Susan M. Schultz
Editor & money-bags

Wheelhouse Contributor Notes: New PennSound Audio from Emergency Poetry Series: Thom Donovan/Julian Brolaski, etc etc!

Look out for an interview about Wheelhouse Magazine & Press in the next issue of Prick of the Spindle.  Poetry Editor Eric Weinstein and the editorial team were very kind in reviewing Wheelhouse's PRESS Anthology, which, as part of that, entailed interviewing me about the history of the journal and press.  

---------------

Just got an amazing short agit-prop from Tina Darragh, which will be featured in our upcoming issue of Wheelhouse. We're happy with how this issue is coming into relief, with contributions from Darragh, Rachel Zolf, Julian Brolaski, Barbara Jane Reyes, Ben Friedlander, Brenda Iijima, and several others--including some wonderful work from poets new to publishing their work.  The agit-prop by Darragh is close to my (enlarged) heart--it's a complex, nuanced but hard-hitting critique of our failing health(care) system, the work taking place and to take place (so to speak) in an E.R. ward.  The work has that sideways, dark humor that I love, and that I think is under-appreciated in Darragh's incredibly varied but always pretty awesome work.

-----------------------

We've received more submissions--several hundred--in this last round than we ever have, so this is slowing us down a bit, tho we plan on releasing this issue basically on time.  Again, if you haven't heard from us, and you submitted work in the last 3 months, give or take a week or so, we're still trying to decide on it and will get back to you soon.

As we do a last round of readings of work, keep in mind that if you're sending us anything now, it'll be considered for issues 10 and 11.  Submissions are, however, open as always.

------------------------

Phillip Metres has a nice review of the important and inspiring Landscapes of Dissent: Guerilla Poetry & Public Space by Kaia Sand & Jules Boykoff in Jacket.  Along with Laura Elrick's Stalk (see short review below), the book and this fairly comprehensive review, offer us here a good starting place for wider investigations of guerilla poetry and the new (plural) poetics of dissensus.  

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Wheelhouse friend Dorothea Lasky has a really good article on spatial/physical practices and museums as proproceptive learning in the latest issue of Urban Ed.  Check it out here.  

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From Thom Donovan's Blog (Wild Horses of Fire):

Here is audio from a reading I gave a couple weeks back with Julian Brolaski at Penn's Kelly Writers House. The reading is followed by aconversation in which Julian and I discuss our work in relation to community discourse, "New Brutalism," "composition by breath," biopolitics, and intertextuality.

The conversation is really worth checking out in addition to the awfully f-ing good poetry of Brolaski & Donovan.  

CALL TO AXTION: ECONVERGENCE POLITICAL POETRY EVENT

Please join us for an evening of poetic work.  Please spread the word. Free to the public.

(click on the image to enlarge & to email it / print it out)

This poetry event, coordinated by Kaia Sand and Jules Boykoff, will feature several poets, including David Buuck, Jen Benka, Evergreen alumnus Rob Halpern, Carol Mirakove, Frank Sherlock, CA Conrad, Jonathan Skinner, as well as a host of Portland-area writers.  Where: Sea Change Gallery, 625 NW Everett Street, Portland When: Friday, October 2, 2009 / 9:30pm

The artists at Econvergence are working within a long tradition that presupposes art to have use value beyond itself, as contiguous with, complementary to, and at times critical of, dominant forms of left political protest.

For a full schedule of events during Econvergence, please visit their website here.

http://www.econvergence.org/