Cecily Nicholson

Short Range Poetic Device, 2010

Brian Ang

Short Range Poetic Device was a four episode radio show of discussions with and readings by poets, hosted by Stephen Collis and Roger Farr, as part of the alternative media resistance to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, February 12-28, 2010.

Short Range Poetic Device
Poetry and Poetics Streaming Against the Totality
Vivo Media Arts, Vancouver, British Columbia, February 16-17 and 23-24, 2010

#1, February 16, 2010:

Stephen Collis, “Tactical Propositions, or, Pwn the Odium”
Roger Farr, from “Secure Channels” (Surplus, 2006)
Donato Mancini, “If Violence (Hey You)” (Buffet World, 2011)

January 3, 2012

Poetry's spatial and aesthetic relationship to power

A conversation with Nicholas Perrin

Jules Boykoff & Kaia Sand

Olympics protest in Vancouver, February 2010

Jules Boykoff

Whenever I went to Vancouver in both the run-up to and the aftermath of the Olympics I always sought out Nicholas Perrin for thought-provoking analysis, deep thinking, and good cheer.

Nicholas deftly blends creativity with brass-tacks organizing in ways that forge solidarity and hope. He is an artist, poet, and cultural activist who studies and works in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. A former member of the Kootenay School of Writing, Nicholas currently curates a series titled Imminent Future with a collective of friends who began working together during the Olympics. He is also a member of the Lower Mainland Painting Co, a conceptual artwork and research initiative seeking to situate shifting forms of value and the modes of labor and negotiation through which artists work and dialogue amidst broader social forces and struggles.

As I mentioned in a previous post, he teamed up with Cecily Nicholson and Am Johal to create the “Safe Assembly Project” at the VIVO Media Arts Centre during the Olympic moment in 2010.

August 22, 2011

Poetry and activism

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada

Jules Boykoff & Kaia Sand

A much-photographed, controversial mural by artist Jesse Corcoran at the Crying Room Gallery in Vancouver

Jules Boykoff

As a youngster I had unequivocally positive feelings about the Olympics. In part this was because I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin where winter sports were bigger than Jesus. During the 1980 Winter Olympics, which took place in Lake Placid, New York, I cheered mightily for fellow Madisonian Eric Heiden as he won five gold medals in speed skating, yelping at the tv screen as he swirled elegantly around the rink. This brought the poet out of ABC’s Keith Jackson who later described him as “a spring breeze off the top of the Rockies.” My parents even got me a stylish Eric-Heiden-esque rainbow hat, which I wore with great pride. (Later I attended Madison West High School where Heiden also went). That same Olympics the US hockey team won the so-called “miracle on ice.” The moment the hockey team won the gold-medal game is etched in the chalk and bones of my then-10-year-old mind. I remember the unbridled exhilaration pumping through my little body.

July 18, 2011

Recently in Jacket2

The 8 best poet-on-poet profiles in Jacket's first 5 years

IMHO

Al Filreis

From left to right: Ann Waldman, Lytle Shaw, Rob Wilson, Marjorie Allen Seiffert

I took the pleasure recently of re-reading nearly everything published in the first 17 issues of Jacket magazine. Then I went back through quickly, identifying eight poet/critic-on-poet profiles that I found most impressive and memorable. Many of these I recalled from the first time I’d read them in the magazine. For what it's worth, here are — to me — the eight best essay-profiles published in the first five years of the magazine:

1. Eliot Weinberger on James Laughlin (#2; 1998)
2. Rob Wilson on Jack Spicer (#7; 1999)
3. Lytle Shaw on Frank O’Hara (#10; 1999)
4. Stephen Vincent on Joanne Kyger (#11; 2000)
5. Tom Orange on Clark Coolidge (#13; 2001)
6. Brian Kim Stefans on Ian Hamilton Finlay (#15, 2001)
7. Ann Waldman on Kenneth Koch (#15; 2001)
8. Catherine Daly on Marjorie Allen Seiffert (#17; 2002)

May 24, 2013

A conversation with Aaron Kunin

The poet's novel

Laynie Browne

Laynie Browne:

Recently a show at the Morgan Library in New York City celebrated the 1913 publication of the first of the seven volumes of Swan’s Way. Here one could see some of Proust’s original handwritten manuscripts and notebooks, some of which have never left Paris. In one notebook, considering his book in progress he writes: “Should it be a novel, a philosophical essay, am I a novelist?”

In your novel The Mandarin, the question is potently raised in various ways, who is a novelist? What is a novel? I wonder if you could comment on this. Do you think of yourself as a poet and novelist? Are the categories important or useful to you? When you set out to write The Mandarin, what were some of your initial impulses or inspirations for the project? Do you recall what turned you toward prose? Were you interested in questioning any conventional notions of the novel?

Aaron Kunin:

Isn't it strange that Proust, who is definitely a novelist, asks himself, "Am I a novelist?" If he doesn't know, how can anyone be sure?