It’s been a while, it seems. A year ago I took a full time academic position and moved across the country. Eighteen months before that finished my degree and moved to another town. The growth and adjustment curves from these new jobs and places made running this site challenging, so things have been streamlined, minimal, especially over the last year.
But I think things are changing for the better now, and I want to re-open the multiple lines of inquiry and poetic praxis that this site once had. There’s a lot I want to say by way of summing up and turning the corner, but I limit myself to the highlights:
This site remains one of the best things in my life. Even though the stress of a new job unexpectedly paralyzed my creative energy, and even though I briefly considered whether I was forced to ask myself whether it was time to close things down, I concluded there’s nothing that can take its place. So I’m re-committing myself to it, to finding time for it. I can and I will. (The key will be keeping it going after the summer--if you know the secret please share!)
Due to my lack of activity, submissions haver tapered off a bit, and fewer new poets are submitting. But discovering new poets is the best part of this project! So please consider submitting your weirdest, most transcendent work, so I can meet you. (And I pledge to keep my prompts and portfolio pages more updated, so frequent submitters are given the credit they deserve).
I’ve resumed research into surrealism. Writing my dissertation (while simultaneously running this site) from 2012-2015 was the happiest time of my life. Current activities include reading Polizzoti’s biography of Breton, more attentively studying the poetry of first generation surrealists, and building my collection of surrealist poetry (thanks in large part to Black Widow Press). I’m also working on a writing project that I hope will make surrealist poetry more accessible to students, poets, and the casual reader. (More on that another time.)
Exciting news! Some of my poems from this site are coming out in book form later this year. Announcement forthcoming.
I live in the Portland area now, and I am trying to make new friends and network with poets and surrealists. If you live in Oregon and would like to meet, or possibly connect for a reading or writing group, email me! ([email protected]).
Finally, let me throw some gas on the flames by saying that the surrealism’s objective to transform life remains as relevant and urgent as ever! Just because capitalism, superstition, fake news, cognitive bias, censorship, nationalism, loneliness, and despair seem to be gaining ground doesn’t diminish the vitality of poetry and the human spirit.
While surrealism is just one of many important forms of resistance and vehicles for liberation, it is a critical one because it goes to the root of human consciousness and addresses the human race’s collective failure of imagination. Without it, political and moral progress isn’t complete.
So continue the fight. Press on, organize, participate, in all the forms that takes given your individual abilities and resources, and your local and global contexts.
And when your friends make cynical comments or seem to be getting to comfortable or bored, ask them, Will You Join the Surrealist Revolution or Stay At Home Outraged At Everything?
