Lisa Robertson, Jeff Derksen, and Bob Perelman joined Al Filreis to talk about a poem in a sixteen-poem series by Fred Wah going under the title “Discount Me In.” That series and several others were brought together in a book called Is a Door. Our poem, “Race, to go,” is the first — a proem of sorts — in the “Discount Me In” group, and we have occasion during our discussion to talk about the several valences of discounting. I don't count. The census misses me because I fall between the cracks in racial categories. The neo-liberal moment has cheapened me. Both positively and negatively racially charged language around food, freely punned and intensely oral, turns casual by-talk into rebarbative backhand (creating an effect distinctly pleasurable) and brings into the poem the entire story of official Canadian multiculturalism.
In my last post, I referred to an at-homeness the “eco” implies (after the Green root oikos), and to alienated/naturalized binaries, that the errant poetics of Will Alexander might help us rethink. Indeed, the “household” trope is a timeworn frame for ecopoetics, promoted in my own rationale for the journal of the same name:
“ ‘Eco’ here signals—no more, no less—the house we share with several million other species, our planet Earth. ‘Poetics’ is used as poesis or making, not necessarily to emphasize the critical over the creative act (nor vice versa). Thus: ecopoetics, a house making.”
When I asked poet Robert Hass where he thought “ecopoetics” got started, he cited Gary Snyder’s Earth House Hold and Wendell Berry’s The Long-Legged House (both published in 1969) as the first notable titles in this area. I don’t know who coined the phrase “household Earth,” but I’m sure Stewart Brand, and his Whole Earth Catalog, had something to do with it—and/or Buckminster Fuller, and/or Gary Snyder, and/or that famous photograph of the Earth from space (1968/ ’72), with astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s comment: “It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.”
Cecily Nicholson reads at the Rhizome Café in Vancouver
Jules Boykoff
Recently I had the good fortune of conversing with the amazing Cecily Nicholson about her poetry and activism.
Her first poetry book, Triage, was published by Talonbooks in April 2011. Triage is a thick, engaging, formally innovative book that does a whole lot at once: it slides between worlds, engages in critique, challenges the self-appointed arbiter role of the mass media, celebrates solidarity. All the while it thrums with the political, exploding the all-too-common dichotomy of activism and aesthetics.
Cecily has worked with women of the downtown eastside community of Vancouver, Canada since 2000 and is currently a coordinator of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre. She participates in the VIVO Media Arts Centre as an organizer with their Safe Assembly project, 2010 and the Imminent Future series, 2011. As a writer and poet Cecily works in collaboration with the Press Release Poetry Collective, formed in anticipation of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. This summer she is teaching at the Purple Thistle community centre’s Summer Institute and collaborating on the upcoming AK Press publication: A Radical Handbook for Youth.
This post presents recordings inspired by the life and work of the musician and composer Arthur Russell. A limited edition collaborative chapbook written by CAConrad and Thom Donovan called Arthur Echo (Scary Topiary Press, 2011) addresses Russell’s haunting and beautiful recording World of Echo. In this excerpt from the co-written introductory statement, the authors describe their process: “While house sitting for friends in Philadelphia we collaborated on the following (Soma)tic exercise, playing Arthur Russell’s CD World of Echo on repeat on all five floors of the house. We moved from floor to floor from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., taking scheduled breaks for food, conversation, and checking in for further fine tuning of the (Soma)tic maneuvers.” Conrad and Donovan read the entirety of their chapbook (with the exception of the two introductory statements) on February 8th, 2011 at the Zebulon Cafe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Since the proliferation of internet magazines it seems there has been a corresponding proliferation of visual poetry. I'm not sure why. That colour reproduction isn't a money issue is perhaps one, and that we have stopped seeing the visual aspect of text in print. The internet wants to be a movie. One aspect of reading visual poems online is that of movement and perspective.
On the other side of the tracks (PoemTalk #44)
Fred Wah, "Race, to go"
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Lisa Robertson, Jeff Derksen, and Bob Perelman joined Al Filreis to talk about a poem in a sixteen-poem series by Fred Wah going under the title “Discount Me In.” That series and several others were brought together in a book called Is a Door. Our poem, “Race, to go,” is the first — a proem of sorts — in the “Discount Me In” group, and we have occasion during our discussion to talk about the several valences of discounting. I don't count. The census misses me because I fall between the cracks in racial categories. The neo-liberal moment has cheapened me. Both positively and negatively racially charged language around food, freely punned and intensely oral, turns casual by-talk into rebarbative backhand (creating an effect distinctly pleasurable) and brings into the poem the entire story of official Canadian multiculturalism.
Yard work
Collom, Nguyen, and the domestic
In my last post, I referred to an at-homeness the “eco” implies (after the Green root oikos), and to alienated/naturalized binaries, that the errant poetics of Will Alexander might help us rethink. Indeed, the “household” trope is a timeworn frame for ecopoetics, promoted in my own rationale for the journal of the same name:
“ ‘Eco’ here signals—no more, no less—the house we share with several million other species, our planet Earth. ‘Poetics’ is used as poesis or making, not necessarily to emphasize the critical over the creative act (nor vice versa). Thus: ecopoetics, a house making.”
When I asked poet Robert Hass where he thought “ecopoetics” got started, he cited Gary Snyder’s Earth House Hold and Wendell Berry’s The Long-Legged House (both published in 1969) as the first notable titles in this area. I don’t know who coined the phrase “household Earth,” but I’m sure Stewart Brand, and his Whole Earth Catalog, had something to do with it—and/or Buckminster Fuller, and/or Gary Snyder, and/or that famous photograph of the Earth from space (1968/ ’72), with astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s comment: “It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.”
'Active solidarity with directly impacted communities'
A conversation with Cecily Nicholson
Jules Boykoff
Recently I had the good fortune of conversing with the amazing Cecily Nicholson about her poetry and activism.
Her first poetry book, Triage, was published by Talonbooks in April 2011. Triage is a thick, engaging, formally innovative book that does a whole lot at once: it slides between worlds, engages in critique, challenges the self-appointed arbiter role of the mass media, celebrates solidarity. All the while it thrums with the political, exploding the all-too-common dichotomy of activism and aesthetics.
Cecily has worked with women of the downtown eastside community of Vancouver, Canada since 2000 and is currently a coordinator of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre. She participates in the VIVO Media Arts Centre as an organizer with their Safe Assembly project, 2010 and the Imminent Future series, 2011. As a writer and poet Cecily works in collaboration with the Press Release Poetry Collective, formed in anticipation of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. This summer she is teaching at the Purple Thistle community centre’s Summer Institute and collaborating on the upcoming AK Press publication: A Radical Handbook for Youth.
'Arthur Echoes'
This post presents recordings inspired by the life and work of the musician and composer Arthur Russell. A limited edition collaborative chapbook written by CAConrad and Thom Donovan called Arthur Echo (Scary Topiary Press, 2011) addresses Russell’s haunting and beautiful recording World of Echo. In this excerpt from the co-written introductory statement, the authors describe their process: “While house sitting for friends in Philadelphia we collaborated on the following (Soma)tic exercise, playing Arthur Russell’s CD World of Echo on repeat on all five floors of the house. We moved from floor to floor from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., taking scheduled breaks for food, conversation, and checking in for further fine tuning of the (Soma)tic maneuvers.” Conrad and Donovan read the entirety of their chapbook (with the exception of the two introductory statements) on February 8th, 2011 at the Zebulon Cafe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Magazines #2
More cordite 35: Oz-Ko
Since the proliferation of internet magazines it seems there has been a corresponding proliferation of visual poetry. I'm not sure why. That colour reproduction isn't a money issue is perhaps one, and that we have stopped seeing the visual aspect of text in print. The internet wants to be a movie. One aspect of reading visual poems online is that of movement and perspective.