Sawako Nakayasu, Donato Mancini, and Gabriel Ojeda-Sague joined Al Filreis to talk about two poems by Sueyuen Juliette Lee. The poems were published in a chapbook titled Perfect Villagers (2006) and later collected in That Gorgeous Feeling (2008). “Dear Margaret Cho” (actually one of two poems of that title) and “Daniel Dae Kim” were among the pieces from the “perfect villagers” series performed by Lee in a reading she gave at the Kelly Writers House in January of 2007. The recording can be found at Lee’s PennSound page.
I have decided to take the “First Reading” framework literally, as “First Hearing.” I’ll take advantage of my ability to pause the MP3 as I go along to type notes about what I’m hearing, in real time.
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
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.
Donato Mancini folds musicality and time into his visual textual work, a work that is gestural, visually stimulating, performative, and participatory.
Mancini’s writing (and here I include his visual poetry which I insist is writing) aggregates, building out of recognizable typographical signs and symbols new structures on the page, structures which seem to move, which seem to speak. How am I asked to see? How am I asked to read? How am I asked to voice?
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.
First reading of Cecil Taylor's '#6.56' (5)
Donato Mancini
I have decided to take the “First Reading” framework literally, as “First Hearing.” I’ll take advantage of my ability to pause the MP3 as I go along to type notes about what I’m hearing, in real time.