Naava Smolash

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)

Poetry and activism

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada

Jules Boykoff and 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.

Recently in Jacket2

50 poets on 50 poems

A book to be published in 2020

Al Filreis

Anna Strong Safford & I are editing a book, to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2020, in which we present 50 poets writing 1,000 words each in response to 50 poems. Fred Wah on Creeley's "I Know a Man." Rachel Blau DuPlessis on H.D's "Sea Rose." Tyrone Williams on Baraka's "Incident." And also Mónica de la Torre on Erica Baum's "Déjà vu." Reproduced above is Baum's piece (from "Card Catalogues").

Ōoka Makoto: from 'What Is Poetry?'

In 'Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets: Selected Poems'

Jerome Rothenberg

Translation from Japanese by Janine Beichman

Bassam Hajjar: poetry, a reading of silence

Huda Fakhreddine

Magritte’s “Not to Be Reproduced” on the cover of Hajjar’s ‘You Shall Survive Me,’ 2001 (a collection of works).

The Lebanese Bassam Hajjar (1955–2009) is a poet and a translator of silence. His poetry reminds us of George Steiner’s famous statement, “when the poet’s word ceases, a great light begins.” Perhaps because he was a dedicated translator, he hesitated and listened well for the charged silence in what he wrote and what he translated.