fragments composed for the digital book launch of local ground(s)—midwest poetics, selected prose Verse Wisconsin 2009-2014, or imagining #MidwestPoetics
local ground(s)—midwest poetics
Who brought the cake? What about chocolate? Who takes home the leftover lemonade?
Digital Confetti! Digital poetry collage?
Rolling someone else’s cart off at the Monroe St. Trader Joe’s in Madison where I am buying my cake because I am daydreaming in digital launch post (would have never bought a cake at a store 6 years ago)
#Toasting Verse Wisconsin http://versewisconsin.org & Linda Aschbrenner, plus VW’s other advisors, and mainstay supporter, WFOP (Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets http://wfop.org), volunteer proofreaders, book reviewers, and guest editors
Controlled Burn
At one point VW secured an intern named Clover Hoofer to do Cowfeather’s publicity/marketing, but she disappeared in a cloud of cow wings before ever posting a word. She had the voice of an angel (the kind with fiery heads).
It takes a clover & a bee & reverie & a beer or two. The beer will do.
Juggling knives & china plates. Art project due. Trip to Illinois. House cleaning (because once/decade)
What is digital placemaking?
#Toasting the amazing poet-prose (and prose poet) contributors in local ground(s)—midwest poetics:
Antler Linda Aschbrenner Laurel Bastian C. Mehrl Bennett Kimberly Blaeser Gary Busha Sarah Busse Brenda Cárdenas Ching-In Chen Cathryn Cofell Philip Dacey David Daniel CX Dillhunt Drew Dillhunt Greer DuBois Martín Espada David Graham Adam Halbur Lane Hall Callen Harty Matthea Harvey Judith Harway Karla Huston Meg Kearney John Koethe Michael Kriesel LaMoine MacLaughlin Jeri McCormick Patricia Monaghan Jennifer Morales CJ Muchhala Jeff Poniewaz Doug Reed Harlan Richards Charlie Rossiter Margaret Rozga Shoshauna Shy Sifundo aka Be Manzini Thomas R. Smith Bianca Spriggs Sandy Stark Margaret Swedish Bruce Taylor Angela Trudell Vasquez Wendy Vardaman Lisa Vihos Moisés Villaviencio Barras Frank X Walker Phyllis Walsh Mary Wehner Greg Weiss Laura C. Wendorff Marilyn Zelke-Windau
What does it mean to make digital space? #digiwrimo http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/ @hybridped http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/author/wendy-vardaman/
Everyone/every organization has a pedagogical practice: What’s your pedagogy of liberation (thanks to Dawn Elise Fisher aka Dr. D.E.F. for this question)? #HipHopEd @Hybridped Because we’re stronger together than separate
Being in a social game/experiment at the Hip Hop Educator’s Institute with Margaret Rozga & Sarah Busse—the three of us randomly stuck together in the back corner of the room, unable to move in the game—no money/no transportation—making art with our time and trying to tell people what we were up to in the #BeautifulBackCornerNeighborhood
Barn raising or Barn razing?
What journals /orgs support “Midwest” arts & the identification/exploration of regitional identities and cultures?
Poetry Mooc ModPo: https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpoetry and https://www.facebook.com/groups/modpo/ and @ModPoPenn: Who wants to have a Midwest ModPo Meetup in 2015? Madison/Milwaukee/Chicago/….
What is Editing of Witness?
What is Performance Publishing?
What place would you most like to see/hear/experience a poem that you haven’t?
Back up to running about 10 miles/week now. Going for 15. (This is down from the 20 I did before VW but up from the 0 I’d gotten to before starting physical therapy this summer. Thank you physical therapy.)
Wisconsin. Winter.
VW published some amazing interviews with fantastic poets. A group conversation on blogging. But nothing beats Linda Aschbrenner interviewing herself, “I Ask Myself What It’s All About” http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue111/prose/aschbrenner.html
#Inspiration: The historical record (e.g., Jessica Nelson North, Lorine Niedecker). Projects that aren’t here any more (e.g., Primipara, Wisconsin Poetry Review). Performance projects (e.g., Lamentable Tragedie of Scott Walker by Doug Reed, Making of the Latina Monologues by Angela Trudell Vasquez)
#Inspiration: Sarah Busse’s #sexyvoterhaiku
#Inspiration: The Main Street Issue, “Poems About the Wisconsin Protests,” http://www.versewisconsin.org/mainstreet.html #elevatingthediscourse
“[Midwestern identity & literature] begins with a collective assertion of existence and the right to exist. With the members of a literary community writing themselves rather than being written. Where do we start if we don’t simply want to point backwards to monolithic figures in an idealized [& fictional] rural white farmscape? The vastness of contemporary Midwestern literature is bound up in contemporary Midwest culture and what it means to be Midwestern. It is concerned, as we have been, with the relation of art to daily life. With art in public space. With questions of community and diversity. With identifying and repairing differences that divide us along lines of class, race, age, gender, education, geography. With noticing people who are nearby and making a difference to each other. Sometimes in large ways, sometimes in very small ones. It documents events that happen here. It is playful. It produces creative political actions, as we witnessed during the Wisconsin protests of 2011. It is founded on a long-standing ecopoetry, poetry of place, and environmental awareness that includes many current examples and past luminaries, as well as living indigenous Midwestern cultures that inspire and shape present-day awareness of important issues like mining, water quality, and fracking. It is multicultural. It is urban. It is inclusive at its best, and we have come to think of the particular kind of Midwestern editing we practice as an Editing of Witness. We have also thought of it in terms of maximalism rather than minimalism. Of generosity rather than austerity. Of honesty, though we like our irony and work hard to maintain a sense of humor. (What’s not to laugh in a place where winter lasts nearly half the year?) Of relevance and connection. Of practical. Of multi-faceted. We say yes to experiment and yes to technology, as long as those things aren’t privileged. We say yes to plain speaking and accessible and formal, as long as those things aren’t privileged. We say yes to what is new and what is traditional, separately and in the same poem and poet. We have been about providing space for poetry in VW and in its projects and assert that that act, however small or large, is a kind of activism. We assume that good editing includes finding out what people are already doing and making. That it’s about creating new relationships with a diversity of makers, and that, too, is activism. We invite you to be activists by making more space for poetry in your daily life and in the lives of people and organizations you interact with, however large or small.”—from “Forewords & Backwards: Notes from the Cupcake Circus” (intro to local ground(s)—midwest poetics)
Greatest terror during VW: Chasing down Martín Espada from behind in a crowded room where he was the featured reader to ask him for an interview then HAVING TO TALK ON THE PHONE FOR TWO HOURS all the while knowing that I sounded like an idiot.
#Inspiration: Everything Margaret Rozga who used the term “poetics” in VW 110 to talk about/ bring together public poetry & political poetry, http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue110/prose/rozga.html
#Inspiration: Linda Aschbrenner, Overpass Light Brigade, Solidarity Sing Along, Still Waters Collective, Monsters of Poetry, the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery & Lynda Barry’s presence there as a writer-artist-thinker, the Young Shakespeare Players, Chicago’s performance/theatre scene from Jane Addams’ Hull House forward, Doug Reed’s brilliant Lamentable Tragedie of Scott Walker, http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue108/prose/reed.html, Burdock Magazine, Writers in Prison http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue103/prose103/bastian.html, First Wave and the Hip Hop Educators’ Institute http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue110/prose/hiphop/intro_note.html, Jane Carman & The Festival of Language, Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf, Affrilachian Poets, the Exquisite Uterus Project http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue112/prose/exquisiteUterus.html, Bonk!, Oscar Mireles’ series of books I Didn’t Know There Were Latinos in Wisconsin, so many groups/agencies (about 40) that VW/Cowfeather has partnered with and so many others that we haven’t
#Inspiration: my husband (who never complains about the messy house or diy arts) & our 3 creative-funny-intelligent children who grew up in this mess
#Inspiration: My essay “poetical economy/exchange….” and mini-manifesto “14 Theses Advancing the Currency of Meaning, Not Money” http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue109/prose/vardaman.html, began on the bus ride home from the Goodman Community Center the day I heard Mario Garcia Sierra, then director of Centro Hispano, school NEA chair Rocco Landsman on resource inequity among arts organization and the trickle-down granting system that is public arts funding in the US
#Inspiration: Greer DuBois—thinker, collaborator, colleague, writer, performer, daughter. Every single idea I’ve had about arts organization has been made better in conversation with her. Favorite VW memory: working together on a co-written piece, “Our Expanding Dramaverse,” wherein we try to map the totality of the contemporary dramaverse/verse drama, from Shakespeare to Hip Hop theatre & performance poetry
#Inspiration: Karin Wolf , Fabu & the City of Madison’s Poet Laureate program
#Inspiration: Everything Sarah Busse—extraordinary craftswoman-artist-editor-seeker-spellcaster-collaborator-friend
from local ground(s)—midwest poetics, 10 Ways to Hear Each Other Into Existence (from “(di)Verse Wisconsin—Community & Diversity” http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue113/prose/busse_vardaman.html)
1. Emphasize community and connection 2. Bring people together who might not ever get together otherwise 3. Give up ideas of prestige in favor of creativity 4. Have fun 5. Relinquish power 6. Invite new voices to contribute 7. Create space 8. Allow process to happen 9. Listen 10. Let go
from local ground(s)—midwest poetics, A Few of the Questions We Still Haven’t Answered (from “(di)Verse Wisconsin—Community & Diversity” http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue113/prose/busse_vardaman.html)
1. How can we better reach across basic divides (academic writers versus “community” writers; mothers v. non-mothers; various educational levels; gender and family choices; income/wealth disparities; geographical regions; aesthetic differences; etc.) in our daily practice?
2. How do we prove we are “serious” writers? Do we want to do this? What does the word “serious” imply?
3. Who determines which publications have prestige? Who decides what “counts” and what gives them that power?
4. Can we reimagine our work as connecting and interconnecting in webs of network? Looping? Weaving? Bumper cars? Roller derby?
5. How do we live meaningful lives, and how do we empower others, those who will never afford an MFA program, writers in prison, writers at the margins, how do we empower those writers to also write their way into ever deeper meaning?
What will Cowfeather be? We don’t know. It’s a process