Take Down the Clouds

[takedowntheclouds]

Alice Notley | March 1, 2016

1. Where are you now?

I am in my two-room apartment in Paris, France, where I have lived for the last 21 years. In the 10th arrondissment, on the border of the 9th, near the Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est, and near the sites of the Charlie Hebdo and November 13th terrorist attacks of last year. Being forever an American, I am still puzzled that this is my neighborhood, but it is my neighborhood, and I’m very fond of the people who live here.  

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

I am working on a rather enormous project tentatively called The Speak Angel Series. The series has turned out to be a series of books, of which there are now six, and I think that might be it, but it adds up to about 450 manuscript pages at the moment. It’s all rough and disorganized, so I don’t know what I’ll say about it a few months from now. There are different poetic forms involved, but the overall thrust is discourse with the dead and a remaking of the universe.

I have recently published a book called Benediction with Letter Machine Editions, but I now have a book coming out called Certain Magical Acts, to be published by Penguin in early June.  

3. Where do you write?

I write in one of these two rooms – the so-called living room, though there’s no door between the « living » room and the « bed » room. I alternate between desk and chair, writing poetry or typing it up. I did write a number of books entirely at my desk, on the computer, all the longest ones: Reason and Other Women, Benediction, Alma, or the Dead Women. But in 2003 I had to do a year-long cure for hepatitis C, and I moved into a large brown chair that I seemed literally to live in. I’ve written all my books from In the Pines on by hand in notebooks sitting in the chair; the finished books have become a little shorter. But I’m about to get a new chair – it’s being delivered soon, and last week I suddenly started composing at the computer again.  It’s harder physically, but on the other hand you don’t have the task of typing up the handwritten version.  

4. What's the last best thing you've read?

I don’t know. I read all the time, it’s a large part of what I do existing, and I don’t do it with the goal of finishing a book. I’m always reading everything. I’ve recently been interested in the subject of oratory and memory, so I’ve read some books on memory but also parts of the really fascinating work of Cicero and Quintillian. Fascinating because it’s such another way of thinking. Cicero actually says that good orators are harder to come by than good poets. But then I read a book by a Renaissance writer named Peter Ramus, Arguments in Rhetoric Against Quintillian, that would demolish much of what Cicero and Quintillian said. I was stopped dead in my tracks and haven’t been able to read about oratory since then. So I guess the Peter Ramus is the last best thing I’ve read though I sort of hate it, hate him for doing this to me.

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

I’m not sure I’ve discovered anything; the journals seem to be largely online. My friend, the artist Seton Smith, reads Hyperallergic a lot so I’ve started to look at it.  I’ve got sitting next to me a new chapbook from Jess Mynes’ Fewer & Further Press, a book by my son Edmund Berrigan called We’ll All Go Together. The book is an extremely satisfying object with a beautiful cover by K.B. Jones. I also have here a book by my son Anselm Berrigan, Primitive State, from Edge Books, which still continues after quite a long time, and I salute the proprietor of Edge, Rod Smith. I have another chapbook, Take It Personal, by Jess Fiorini, from Lame House Press, again with a socko cover by K.B. Jones. I have Or, The Ambiguities by Karen Weiser from Ugly Duckling Presse. Which is a collective, no ? Another collective being SubPress – their latest, Wherewithal by Adam DeGraff. And I have just received a stack of books from another collective Belladonna, though my overladen bookshelves seem to have eaten them right up and I can’t find them, but then here’s one,TwERK by Latasha N. Nevada Diggs. Small presses are doing fine, as always.

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

All I do is what I’ve already described to you. I sometimes go to the theater, but that would be another speech. I’ve been reading and attending the plays of Racine and have been immensely pleased to discover for myself such a great writer. It’s good to have some writers left to find out about when you’re older.  

7. What are you looking forward to?

Nothing special. I do the same things every day. I went jogging in the Buttes-Chaumont this morning, and I had the thought as I was rounding the lake at a particular place that there was an exact sensation that corresponded to making the  turn, that I always looked forward to turning at that exact formation of trees and water and rocks, and that I had cultivated this kind of sensation, which has to do with being in process, all of my life. I am looking forward to turning that curve again.  

[takedowntheclouds]

Renee Angle | January 2016

1. Where are you now?

In my bedroom. Between emergencies.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

My first book, WoO, will be published by Letter Machine Editions this spring. It is a hagiography written under the spiritual guide of a heretic. Or another way of saying it might be that it is a creative translation of the first 116 pages of The Book of Mormon that were lost and never recovered. While Joseph Smith’s own processes in translating the word of God involved using “peepstones,” I use found texts, fragmented, disruptive syntax, to unchurch and unmoor an American religion that operates within violent, racist and misogynistic context. Mormonism is no longer the fringe or fundamentalist culture society has come to expect, yet it is the “mongrel” status of the book that I continue to reckon with as a descendent of Mormon pioneers and a former Mormon. Adam Gopnik notes: “that the Mormons had a book of their own counted for almost as much as what the Book of Mormon said.” Something in me sympathizes with the self-taught, half-literate Smith who created a singular and strange relationship with language. He pied the type of a printing press, buried another, copied Egyptian papyri, and studied Hebrew. I am fascinated by his processes—his technique of pastiche—not by his results. My recovered WoO attempts to harness those same techniques for, hopefully, greater good.

I am working on another book length manuscript that takes the 1980s cartoon series Jem and the Holograms as muse. Or, really, I’m trying to use it as a contact zone in which to explore the desires of both teens and adults. I’m using various fan-based platforms to generate writing and collage work—and the writing I’ve done thus far is beginning to shift into two wholly separate projects: 1) a series of essays meditating on parenting with television 2) a hybrid piece about the smother mother, other mother. Still waiting to see what happens, a bit.

3. Where do you write?

I have a studio in my backyard, which is really a one-car garage with a lot of extra electrical outlets. A ceramicist and glass artist used it before me. She used the outlets for her kilns. I use them for a printer, a baby monitor, a room heater, a hot glue gun, and a radio.

4. What's the last best thing you've read?

The done stack on my nightstand is: The One Before, Juan Jose Saer; Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, Barbara Comyns; My Documents by Alejandro Zambra; A Little Lumpen Novelita by Roberto Bolano; Drift by Carolyn Bergvall; Event Factory, Renee Gladman; New Organism: Essais, Andrea Rexilius. The whole stack was KILLER. Lucky me.

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

Some presses/journals that I’ve ended up reading quite a bit of lately are: Open Letter, Dorothy A Publishing Project, Tammy, Siglio.

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

I’m mostly distracted by the 2, 4, and 14 year old girls that I share a house with. I also took a dive into the Twilight series and some other young adult fiction: Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin, The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt, The Marvels by Brian Selznik.

And Donuts by J Dilla Jay Dee has been playing at my house, off and on, thanks to my love. It’s pretty AMAZING. My children request it. I think they think they’re eating donuts when they listen, which I guess they sort of are.

7. What are you looking forward to?

The Collages of Helen Adam from Further Other Book Works. Rocky Point, a train ride, anywhere in Texas, laying in bed all day with a pile of books and some bon-bons, having a conversation with my husband/mother/sister without having a child interrupt, health and wellness, finishing, finishing, finishing it all.

[takedowntheclouds]

John Yau | December 1, 2015

Photo by Cerise Yau.

1. Where are you now?

I am sitting at my desk in my apartment in Manhattan, near Penn Station. A few days ago, I was in South Bend, Indiana, where I gave a poetry reading, answered the students’ questions in Johannes Göransson’s grad class, and met Joyelle McSweeney and Stephen Fredman, who took me to the Notre Dame library to see two artist books by Robert Creeley–one he did with Ron Kitaj and the other with Robert Indiana. I flew home the next day so I could teach the following day.

Now, I am about to fly to Detroit, where there is a large survey exhibition of paintings and drawings by Brenda Goodman at the College of Creative Studies, dating back to the time that she was a student there. Michelle Perron organized the exhibition and I wrote an essay for the brochure. In the evening there is a panel that I am on with Anselm Berrigan, Andrei Codrescu and Lynn Crawford. Rebecca Mazzei will be the moderator.

While these commitments may suggest that I travel a lot, I actually haven’t gone more than a few blocks from where I live for a long time, because I needed three operations between September 2014 and May 2015. I was housebound during that time, and was only able to go to galleries with help from my friends. In answering your question, I am reminded of where I am in a literal sense, and of what I physically had trouble doing, as well as couldn’t and could do, over the past few years.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

I am working on three books at the moment. Please Wait by the Coatroom: Essays in Art, Race and Culture is a selection of essays that I have written over the past thirty years. I am currently in the process of putting it together. The second book is Painting Is Not Doomed To Repeat Itself. It is the title of an exhibition that I recently organized for Hollis Taggart Gallery. Again, I am gathering together essays and reviews that I have written – mostly during the past decade – having to do with painting. The third book is a collection of poems, which is nearly finished, but, as of now, is untitled. There are other gatherings in the works and various projects that I have started, but I don’t want to say anything about them at this time.

I also write a review for the Sunday edition of Hyperallergic Weekend, an online magazine that comes out every Saturday and Sunday. While I write mostly about art, I have reviewed books by Cathy Park Hong, Susan Wheeler, Ron Padgett, Lee Harwood, Christopher Middleton and Nicholas Moore, among others. Tom Micchelli, Albert Mobilio and I started working with Hrag Vartanian and Hyperallergic in January of 2012, and we post five to seven reviews every weekend. I am happy to be part of this wonderful group of writers and thinkers.

I am the publisher of Black Square Editions, and I have two people who are my Assistant Editors, Ronna Lebo and Boni Joi. Recently, the press published Trembling Hand Equilibrium by Barry Schwabsky, Form/Force by the Swedish poet Karl Larsson, translated by Jennifer Hayashida, and Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt by Matvei Yankelevich. Two books are currently in production: Shankus and Kitto by Lynn Crawford and Air on Air: Selected Poems by Juan Sánchez Peláez, a Venezuelan modernist whose work has been translated by Guillermo Parra. After that, I will publish Games and Stunts by Albert Mobilio and Le Chants des Morts by Pierre Reverdy, translated by Dan Bellm. I have already published two books by Reverdy, a book of prose poems translated by Ron Padgett and a novella translated by John Ashbery. Ideally, I will publish a fourth, which is a long essay.

I have a monograph, Catherine Murphy (Rizzoli, 2016). It is the first monograph on Murphy, whose paintings and drawings I began writing about in the 1980s. I have also contributed an essay to the monograph Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (Black Dog Press, 2016).

3. Where do you write?

I write at my desk, which is in one corner of the apartment where I live with my wife, Eve; daughter, Cerise; and wire-haired dachshund, Charley. The apartment is filled with books, which I often need, especially when I am writing art reviews or catalog essays. I write on a desktop computer when I am at home, and on a laptop, in a notebook or on scraps of paper when I am traveling, walking around, going to museums and galleries.

4. What's the last best thing you've read?

As usual, I have a pile of books on my desk, which I am making my way through in no set order. These are just some of the ones I can see from where I am sitting: The Little Edges by Fred Moten; Supplication: Selected Poems by John Wieners; Benediction by Alice Notley; Dark Church by Joseph Donahue; Contextual Practice: Assemblage and the Erotic in Postwar Poetry and Art by Stephen Fredman; The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector, edited by Benjamin Moser, who wrote a biography of Lispector that anyone who is a fan of hers should read; Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism by Emily Braun. She wrote an illuminating essay for the catalog of the Alberto Burri show at the Guggenheim that inspired me to want to read everything of hers that I can get my hands on. Her writing is thorough, informative, lucid and brilliant, a rare combination. I also highly recommend A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin.

I am rereading Thierry de Duve’s Kant after Duchamp for my graduate seminar, and enjoying every minute of it.

I often go back to books. The last few days I have been rereading poems by Ed Roberson and film reviews by James Agee because of something I am working on.  

There is also a pile of detective novels on my desk that I haven’t started. I might bring one to read on the plane when I fly to Detroit.

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

In addition to The Volta, I regularly read Volt, Jubilat, Lana Turner, Denver Quarterly and the Boston Review. Lately, I check out what has been posted by Adam Fitzgerald on LitHub and the online magazine Lute and Drum put together by Ken Taylor. I subscribe to Ugly Duckling Presse and periodically find out what has been published by Action Books, Archipelago Books, Les Figues, Letter Machine Editions, Octopus Books, Omnidawn and Wakefield Press.  I also check out the art books published by Karma and the photography books done by TIS books. There are many small presses and magazines doing interesting things. The list of writers that I am reading goes on and on, as it should. I feel like I find out about a new writer nearly every day. One book that I recently discovered is The Pen is the Sister of the Brush: Diaries 1943 – 1997 by the great artist Maria Lassnig. I like reading books by artists and about them. The biography of Agnes Martin by Nancy Princenthal beckons.

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

Detective novels are my primary diversion. I have been reading the Department Q novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen the past couple of years, and I am looking forward to starting French Concession by Xiao Bai.

A few years ago, I used to go fishing with a friend in Oakland–we would get up around dawn and go on a charter boat. Nothing fancy. Twenty-five people standing around the railing of a boat with their lines in the water.

I also watch a couple of TV shows with my daughter, who is fourteen and in the ninth grade. She likes Blacklist, House M.D., Bones, Elementary and Sherlock. She says that she likes shows where the main character is highly intelligent, coldly logical, and anti-social. I would not have known about these shows if it weren’t for her. She has a lot of homework and watching these shows is a diversion we share.

7. What are you looking forward to?

I am looking forward to two poetry books: Monica Youn’s Blackacre, which will be published by Graywolf, and Tim Yu’s 100 Chinese Silences for which I just wrote a blurb. It is being published by Les Figues, which also published The Ants by Sawako Nakayasu, one of my favorite writers. I am also looking forward to finishing the manuscripts I am working on. Finally, my wife Eve Aschheim will have a new painting that I haven’t seen in a group show at her gallery, Lori Bookstein. I am really looking forward to that. I try to stay alert to what is going on because I am very fortunate to know a lot of interesting people–poets and artists, for the most part–doing amazing things.

[takedowntheclouds]

Cathy Park Hong | November 1, 2015

1. Where are you now?

In San Francisco, in a fancy café, in the techified Mission district.  I am going to do a reading in a few hours at the Kearny Streets workshop with the music journalist/hip hop scholar, Oliver Wang, whose reviews I used to factcheck at Source Magazine a long long time ago.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

Personal essays on race and aesthetics; it’s a kind of a manifesto resurrected from the hollowed ruins of an autobiographical novel.

3. Where do you write?

Home, at the Brooklyn Writers Space, in various libraries.

4. What's the last best thing you've read?

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

Rescue Press is phenomenal and they’re putting out a fantastic collection by Sara Deniz Akant.  I was just the judge for this year’s prize and chose Adrienne Raphel who writes poetry like nobody’s business. Also, Apogee—a journal that focuses on writers of color—is doing really fabulous work.

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

Cake Wrecks  http://www.cakewrecks.com/

7. What are you looking forward to?

Halloween.  My husband, my 1 year old daughter and I are all going as Wonder Women.

[takedowntheclouds]

Ada Limón | October 1, 2015

1.     Where are you now?

Right now, I'm on a plane heading to the West Coast. I have 7 different readings out there over the next three weeks, so it'll be part poetry work and part deeply-needed play. I borrow a little apartment on Moon Mountain in Sonoma and it's a good place to write and recover and breathe.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

Well, Bright Dead Things was released on September 15th and since its arrival my main goal is to share it, and read it as much as I can. I'm focused on giving it a good life, giving readings, visiting classrooms, and so forth. I always think that we owe that to our books once they are alive and breathing in the world. We spend so much time writing alone, but there is also the time to offer it up to anyone who's listening. At the same time, I'm working on a young adult novel tentatively called, "The Woods." Poems are coming as well, but they come slowly for me these days. I have a new poetic project I'm working on now, but it's a bit too early to talk about in any sort of meaningful way.

3. Where do you write?

I have an office in our house in Lexington, Kentucky where I do most of my writing. I also have a little apartment that's been leant to me by dear friends in Sonoma, CA. I write in the kitchen there. The kitchen is bright and pumpkin colored and the apartment is small and cozy and shaded by dozens of ancient oak trees. But I can write on planes and trains, too. Thankfully.

4. What's the last best thing you've read?

I just finished reading Lauren Groff's new novel Fates & Furies. Wow, I thought it was stunning. I also just finished quite a few new poetry books that just blew me away. Dawn Lundy Martin's Life in a Box is a Pretty Life, and Rickey Laurentiis's Boy with Thorn are just so so good. And, Cate Marvin's Oracle, Greg Pardlo's Digest, and the soon-to-be-released, Days of Shame & Failure by Jennifer L. Knox.

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

I love the work being done by Newfound Press in Texas. They're running the Anzaldua Poetry Prize. I think Waxwing is just doing a fabulous job as a new exciting journal publishing strong work. There are so many writers who I just adore. New discoveries include, poet Phillip B. Williams, novelist Tiphanie Yanique, fiction writer, Manuel Gonzales. There are so many thrilling voices right now. I'm constantly overwhelmed with how much I want to read.

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

Oh sure. I love distractions. I love old movies and great television shows. We just finished Bloodline (I blame Marcus Wicker for that obsession). And I'm a sucker for Miss Fisher when I need to really zone out and look at fancy clothes and see awesome lady detective adventures. I've been reading a lot of young adult novels lately...The Fault of Our Starswas brutal and smart. I listen to audio books when I run or hike. I've been getting back into cooking a lot more lately as well. It's just another way to create something that doesn't require computer time. Oh and songs, I've been writing some songs again. Have you heard the artist, Amythyst Kiah?Amazing.

7. What are you looking forward to?

I'm really looking forward to Robin Coste Lewis's book, and Jason Schneiderman's new book of poems. On a personal note, I'm also looking forward to being home in California. I hate being away from my man and my dog and I love where I live, but there's nothing like being in the Sonoma Valley for me. Going home always feels like a reset button. It's only been two months since I was last there, but still that feels too long. And, I just found out that for El Dia de Los Muertos I've been approved to put together an altar in a local graveyard for all the poets we've lost recently. I'm nervous about pulling it off, but very thrilled to be getting a chance to honor them on that day.

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John Keene | September 1, 2015

1. Where are you now? Jersey City, New Jersey

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out? In late May New Directions published my new collection of stories and novellas, Counternarratives, and I hope to have a collaborative project with the photographer Nicholas Muellner in print soon (knocking on wood). I am working on many things, as always rather slowly, and that's probably the most I should say for now.

3. Where do you write? In my head, and then in notebooks and on my laptop, at home, at the public library, at a local cafe, wherever I can.

4. What's the last best thing you've read? If I had to name one standout it would be Tonya Foster’s new collection of poems A Swarm of Bees in High Court. But I’ve read so many great things this spring and summer.

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately? If we’re talking solely about goodies I’ve recently come across, I am enjoying work Button Press’s projects, which include a new chapbook by Danez Smith, black movie, and publications by Mahogany L. Browne, Nate Marshall and others. Also, The Operating System has put out some delightful little books, including J. P. Howard’s Say/Mirror and Joseph Cuillier III’s The Sensitive Boy Slumber Party Manifesto, which I found at CUNY’s Chapbook Festival. At AWP I met Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, bought his book Amorcita Maricón, and learned about his scrumptious Kórima Press. Lastly, I cheer every time I come across poems by Morgan Parker, dg okpik, Justin Phillip Reed, Jenny Zhang, Tanaya Winder, and Krystal Languell, to name just a few of the talented poets whose work I’m only just now getting to know. There are many more, too!

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions? Hamilton is one the most remarkable stage performances I’ve seen in a while. Anyone near NYC should go see it as soon as possible. The last best new movie I saw was Girlhood, a French film. I could watch it over and over, and wish that we had more films in the US along these lines. In terms of music, I have been obsessing over Madvillain, a collaboration from about 10 years ago; Ibeyi; Shabazz Palaces; Beak>; electronic music by Pierre Henry; and dembow videos on YouTube. For a while I was drawing imaginary maps on my phone, guides to places other than this difficult, often dangerous world—at least for some of us. Imagining utopias is never a bad idea.

  7. What are you looking forward to? Autumn, the school year, good health, a little reading tour, making books, new work by a wide array of writers I admire, and a country and world in which black lives matter, and where there truly is peace.

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Phillip B. Williams | August 2015

1. Where are you now? I am currently in Decatur, GA, patiently waiting for my fellowship at Emory to activate, meaning I am waiting to begin teaching undergraduate poetry workshop. I'm also in a mental space of needing change, of needing something about my work or in my work to change. For that reason, I have not written much of anything new. I'm not quite ready yet. 2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out? I am working on getting my mind in some sort of position where I can free myself from the rules of poetry in order to write the poem. I've been writing poems that act like poems are expected to act. I want to move past that, wherever that is for me. What I have coming out is my debut collection Thief in the Interior. Alice James Books is doing an incredible job designing the book and it is scheduled for release Jan 12, 2016. 3. Where do you write? I write in my mind for a little bit then either in a notebook or directly onto the laptop. It depend on my mood, what's around, the shape the poem needs to take and my ability to render it in either format. I write in my room, on the floor or in bed. I do not have a desk. When I did, I sometimes wrote there but my bed has seen a lot of poems. 4. What's the last best thing you've read? The last best thing I read...I can tell you the last best thing I listened to, which is Hiatus Kaiyote's album Choose Your Weapon. I've never heard anything like it before. I actually got emotional (teared up real hard) on track 5, "Borderline with my Atoms." I didn't think I would make it but I did. Fantastic album! 5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately? I've always known about Guernica but have recently gotten back into reading them from a strange hiatus I took for no reason at all. Sometimes, we just fall off of a thing and return to it when we must. I am loving writer-wise the work of Aziza Barnes. It would be foolish for someone to have her manuscript in front of them and not accept it, absolutely unwise and hateful in a way for which I have no words. As far as presses are concerned, I am taking a closer look at Dancing Girl Press/Dulcet. Beautiful chapbooks.   6. Care to share any distractions / diversions? There are several tower defense games on my phone. Several. I mean, they take the edge off when there is too much happening and I need to calm my nerves. I frequently have minor anxiety episodes and need to retreat from all the energy around me. When I am nervous before I a reading, I wander off and pace in a small area playing Bloons 5 or Kingdom Rush Origins (the entire series is really good). I also have a game called Marvel Puzzle Quest which kills a lot of time, sometimes too much. Instagram (IG) is also a great distraction. Looking at what other people have eaten during their day or what country they visited (only to do the same things they could've done here in America but that's neither here nor there) makes me feel like one day I too could travel and do those things (well, not THOSE things but SOME thing). I like to find fitness videos on IG that I may never use but could use one day. 7. What are you looking forward to? I'm looking forward to people realizing that there is space for all of us. No one is trying to take over the country and this country does not "belong" to any one type of person. How maniacal. I'm looking forward to the paranoia that is the collective of -isms and -phobias to pass. I can never wonder enough how people hold on to such hatred, such negative energy, as though somehow they can survive on that. You cannot. You cannot survive on hatred, on fear that you are constantly being attacked by people different than you, being erased. Surely, our imaginations are capable of more than constant fear of identity theft, of not being seen by the very people we disdain and who abuse us (and who we secretly or open wish to become), of dying out as a "breed", as though anything that happens after we die is within our control. It's not. I'm looking forward to that level of insecurity in people's idea of "I exist" to exhaust itself. I'm looking forward to the time when people stop asking "Why is it always about politics? Why can't we just have a time where we don't have to hear about such and such? Why are those people's poems so political all the time?" Because that would be the time when people either find empathy or the need for that specific kind of empathy has ended.   I'm looking forward to the many many first books coming out between now and 2017: Derrick Austin - Trouble the Water Ocean Vuong - Night Sky With Exit Wounds Rickey Laurentiis - Boy With Thorn Solmaz Sharif - LOOK Camille Rankine - Incorrect Merciful Impulses Jonterri Gadson - Blues Triumphant Nate Marshall - Wild Hundreds Richie Hofmann - Second Empire Nathan McClain - Scale Aichlee Bushnell Njoroge - Objects of Attention T'ai Freedom Ford - How to Get Over Vincent Toro - Stereo.Island.Mosaic Jay Deshpande - Love the Stranger Lindsay Tigue - Systems of Ghosts Jane Wong - Overpour Keith Leonard - Ramshackle Ode Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib - The Crown Ain't Worth Much J. Scott Brownlee - Requiem for Used Ignition Cap Carolina Ebeid - You Ask Me To Talk About the Interior Lisa Fay Coutley - Errata Sass Brown - USA-1000 Carey McHugh - American Gramophone Margaret Ross - A Timeshare Gregory Kimbrell - The Primitive Observatory Angela Palm - Riverine Nancy Reddy - Double Jinx Cam Awkward-Rich - Sympathetic Little Monster Rajiv Mohabir - The Taxidermist's Cut Margaret Rhee - Radio Hearts Janine Joseph - Driving Without a License Yesenia Montilla - The Pink Box

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Emily Hunt | July 1, 2015

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Natalie Scenters-Zapico | June 1, 2015

Bajando Las Nubes—Natalie Scenters-Zapico

1. Where are you right now?  On my sofa in a house that has a basement and weather proof windows, things I’ve never known until 2013 when I moved to Salt Lake City. Right now I’m surrounded by all my saints, milagros, and virgin apparitions. They tell me they don’t belong in Salt Lake City, but then again I wonder if I belong here all the time.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

My book The Verging Cities just came out in April through the Center For Literary Publishing as part of their Mountain West Poetry Series. It’s about where I’m from, the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, U.S.A. and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, México. I write about being in love with an undocumented man, and how we are surrounded, traumatized, and longing for violence everywhere we go. It’s also about art and the ways it can respond in moments of violence. I wonder throughout the book, can we capture all that communal pain? We probably can’t, but I’m still writing because I’m tired of being hushed up. I write because I am alive in the body my mother gave

me—so here is where they cut me, hombre, look at the scar. Currently, I’m working on new poems that deal with the U.S. as a neo-colonial empire. I’m interested in the ways that we spread empire through transnational companies like Walmart, and how those companies affect the domestic sphere. I also have a set of poems about border security technologies, biometrics, code, and drones. How we conceive of them as a body outside of our body and use them to track people’s bodies.

3. Where do you write?

I steal time anywhere I can to write, so I write everywhere. I write in stranger’s half-filled childhood journals, in the corners of books, and on swap meet flyers. I write on receipts, business cards, produce ads, electric bills, and Cosmo magazines. I write using pens I find abandoned in parking lots and pens I buy with half my paycheck. I write falling from the edge of a fence that I forget I could just jump from any time I want.

4. What’s the last best thing you’ve read?

In poetry: I’m really enjoying Orlando White’s new book LETTERRS, which lives in this surreal lyric space. In it letters are violent against thought, while at the same time helping to express thought. He also plays with white space in a way that I find very fresh in conjunction with his exploration of letters as strings of symbols.

In prose: Bonsái by Alejandro Zambra, which I think is now available in English. Zambra captures different levels of intimacy between two people so well—it aches my soul.

In criticism: I’m currently deep in the collaborative book 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1));  : GOTO 10, which explores the ways in which code is a mode of self expression and an art form similar to poetry. It also points to our fascination with basic code and retro forms of technology.

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

I always keep up with what’s being published by my girls Tanaya Winder and Casandra Lopez over at the literary journal As/Us. They’ve created this beautiful community for women from all over the world to empower each other through writing.  It’s also become a space for conversations that I don’t know would be had anywhere else. It’s complicated in all the right ways. I highly recommend their “Decolonial Love” issue.

6. Care to share any distractions/diversions?

Lately, music is a diversion for me: The Smiths, The Mars Volta, Bosnian Rainbows, Selena, Julieta Venegas, Natalia LaFourcade. I’m obsessed with Jeanette right now. She was a Spanish singer from the late 60s-early 70s whose father was English and mother was Spanish. She was born in the states, but moved back to Spain as a teenager to start her singing career. She became famous for singing with a slight American accent and for her sentimental sound. We share a lot of biographical traits and I like that she has songs about being in love with a boy who has sad eyes and the heart of a poet.

I also distract myself by making handmade books featuring text messages previewed on other people’s phones, want ads for women’s souls, and erasures made from discarded forms retrieved from the floor of Mexican consulates. I could engage in making books by hand all day if I’m not careful. I love making something from what you have lying around your community.

7. What are you looking forward to?

The future—a form of stability that doesn’t involve such a battle to create my art. A job where part of my identity will be to sit, think, and write every day. I look forward to having a house with an avocado tree and a wrought iron gate. A house where all my saints, milagros, and virgin apparitions feel at home. A place where I can run to the corner grocer and buy a San Judas candle to thank him for listening to me all these times when I was praying for desperate causes.

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Dot Devota | May 1, 2015

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Amy Lawless | April 1, 2015

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Harmony Holiday | March 1, 2015

#1: Where are you?

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Joshua Clover | February 1, 2015

1. Where are you now? 

I am in a cafe trying to decide whether Robert Plant or Ann Wilson is the greatest rock singer, and whether to get another coffee, which is a terrible idea.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

A lot of press stuff. I'm trying to make notes on Juliana's manuscript, which should be out maybe in September. I'm doing proofing for my own book, Red Epic, which is coming out in spring (the third of Commune Edition's books, Jasper's, will be out this year as well). I'm trying to read broadly as I prepare my book about the historical development of riots (2016) but I keep being drawn into reading about the transitional period of 1805-1835, when riot yields to strike in England and France: the Luddites, Captain Swing, and in there the Peterloo Massacre, occasion for Shelley's incomparable "Masque of Anarchy." Trying to help with organizing work; looking forward to the noise demo on New Year's Eve in solidarity with political prisoners, which under the present dispensation, is all prisoners. I'm also trying to figure out whether this three page collection of notes in front of me wants to become one long poem or spin off a few shorter ones. My friend Sianne is studying German in Berlin (I miss her and our reading group tragically); in conversation with her I realized that the noun "contemporary" in German turns out to be the compound "time-comrade." My notes begin there, and also with this heading, "poetry is not a force for good." I can't remember when I wrote that down, or what I was responding to, but I feel pretty certain.

3. Where do you write?

Scholarly writing at home, journalistic writing on trains (I commute to and from work, 80 minutes each way), poetry in public spaces: cafes, markets, and the like, always with headphones on. I tried writing in Ikea, it's near my house and has dollar cones of frozen yogurt, but it didn't work. I do like the feeling of life agitating around me. It's sad that I experience commerce as "life." 

4. What's the last best thing you've read?

I've been reading riot poems. I mentioned "Masque of Anarchy." Gwendolyn Brooks' "Riot." Phil Levine's "They Feed They Lion." Baraka's "Black People." Just started a new history of the Panthers, Black Against Empire; total pageturner. Also finally reading Nanni Balestrini's The Unseen, about the struggles in Italy in the seventies, which makes an orbit with "The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community," by Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, an essay I go back to over and over. Chris Nealon's Heteronomy is definitely my favorite poetry book of 2014.

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

I feel like I've recently encountered a series of young poets who are figuring out interesting things: Oki Sogumi, Wendy Trevino, Sarah Rupp, Cassandra Gillig, Amy De'Ath. I'm grateful for a series of local presses in the Bay Area: Compline, Omnidawn, Krupskaya, Mess Editions, others have really been keeping stride with the intensely complicated and energetic scene here. But then there are also older discoveries. I finally spent some careful time with Leslie Kaplan's Excess—The Factory, a french book of poetry following the factory occupations of 1968; it's been kicking around since the eighties and is finally being translated by Julie Carr (of Counterpath) and Jennifer Pap. And Ida Börjel, a Swedish poet; we just put out a chapbook of hers from a longer work with an elaborate title. I usually just call it Sabotage Manual.

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

Foggy bike rides out onto the new path along the Bay Bridge out over the water, Taylor Swift, vicodin, etc.

7. What are you looking forward to?

Inherent Vice opens on January 9th.

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Sueyeun Juliette Lee | January 1, 2015

1. Where are you now? 

I’m laying on my tummy in my bed, at home in Philadelphia. My bunny buddy, Joseph, is nestled next to me. I can hear him grinding his teeth together. That’s the way bunnies purr, by the way. Oh wait--he just jumped onto the backs of my legs.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

I’m working on a few things--some are poetry related and others are taking me into some new territory. For the non-poetry things, I’ve got two on-going projects that I’m very eager to complete this next year. RACFSV is a novella about Kim Jong-Il trying to make a movie. He’s stymied by the fact that he doesn’t realize he’s dead. The title is an acronym, based on some North Korea propaganda I came across--“revolutionary ardor and creativity with faith in sure victory.” It’s kind of funny and gross and sad all at once. I have an ethical quandary with how to conclude it, but I’m trying not to think too hard about that. Right now, I just want to finish it. I’m also developing a play/screenplay. I won’t go into too much detail about that one, but I can say that it’s a tragedy set on a spaceship and requires some epic, Milton-esque prosody out of me. 

As for poetry...aside from the occasional very personal and messy Facebook poem, I’ve been writing a series of works related to light. It’s a big excursion. This Dutch sculptor, Hans, who heard me talking about this new work told me I wasn’t writing poems; I was on an odyssey. Maybe he’s right. I basically want to be able to speak with light through my body. I’m trying to arrive at language that will help me accomplish this. Or at least create language that can help trace my efforts. My next book, Solar Maximum, is coming out with Futurepoem next spring, and it’s my first real foray into this query...the first steps in my big odyssey. 

Solar Maximum is definitely what I would call speculative poetics. For the most part, that book tries to imagine human consciousness just before the sun swallows the earth. It’s a little monstrous, perhaps, but also potentially really beautiful and just... something else. I hope, at least. That’s always my hope. 

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipvfwPqh3V4#t=135]

Lastly, I have a big essay on Mei Mei Berssenbrugge coming out in this collection Timothy Yu edited for Kelsey Street press on the Asian American women they’ve  published over the years. It’s a salvaged section from my dissertation (I quit my PhD program), and I think it’s actually saying something kinda significant. I’m excited to see the other essays in the book when it’s out!

3. Where do you write?

On my laptop. In a little journal. On my phone. 

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Dara Cerv | December 1, 2014

1. Where are you now? 

It's the day after the weird pull of the November full moon and I'm on a train, the ocean to my left. Remembering last time I was on the train, when parts of a woman in the seat next to me appeared in the window when the light was right: 

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

I'm circling poems about an absentee parent. I'm also writing a midterm paper, but avoiding it by simultaneously writing a chapbook review. Coincidentally, the topic for my paper linked up in this intricate way with the poems I'm looking at. The topic I'm exploring is entrainment, which in general refers to the ways in which things in the world sync up. One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is somatic in nature, but entertains the notion that psychological factors come into play if we add other entities to a single entity and stir: "Fireflies blinking on and off entrain with each other...Muscle cells from the heart, when they move closer together, suddenly shift in their rhythm and start pulsing together..."  

 Sixth Finch is publishing my first chapbook in 2015. 

3. Where do you write?

On the train, when possible. Ideas and lines usually come when I'm out in the world (especially when I'm at a museum, lately), so I jot them down (electronically). Mostly I write in bed. I should get a desk. I'd like to have an office or studio. I hope to make these fantasies converge and do some sort of residency over the summer. 

4. What's the last best thing you've read?

I've been reading mostly poetry, so I'll assume this question points to that, and I'll take liberties and name several things. A year or so after I got my hands on it, the last best thing is still YOU GOOD THING by Dara Wier. I also keep returning to this poem by Lauren Hunter. More recently, this poem by Nicole Steinberg.

Oh, and the last best poem I've heard. 

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

BOAAT. Go to their site this minute. The poets shimmer, the graphics are mesmerizing, and they have some wonderful people on board.

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

7. What are you looking forward to?

Reading on staff for Sixth Finch. The first winter storm. Starting field work in my grad program. Finally having time in December to watch these birthday gifts:

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Jane Wong | November 1, 2014

1.     1. Where are you now?

I ran away to Vashon island, close to Seattle. There’s this seagull staring at a fake seagull on the dock. 

Also, there’s this pancake that goes over the plate (!). This is what I imagine the surface of the moon to be like.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

  I finished my first full-length manuscript, Overpour this April. My friend Bill Carty drew this crying man on my copy.

Some of the poems in the book are here in The Volta! It opens with a Donne line, “Let me pour forth.” Some things in the book: raccoons, the mall, the Cultural Revolution, mushrooms, my little brother, gluttony, aphorisms, punching, failure, a Jersey pastoral. I’m also working on a longer series called “Ceremony;” some of these poems are in the summer issue of Sixth Finch. I don't usually write love poems, but "Ceremony" is one big love/heartbreak poem. I have a very recent poem up at Tupelo Quarterly, "The Act of Killing." I was/am convinced my father was a gangster growing up. 

  I’m also finishing up my Ph.D. at UW and have been working on my dissertation which looks at haunting as a poetics. I focus primarily on Asian American poets. My goal is to turn passive associations of haunting (in which systems of power make themselves known) into that which is fraught with potential and transformative power. Rather than s a return of the repressed, I'm defining haunting in terms of invocation: a deliberate and provocative move toward haunted places (“going to the ghosts”)! I’m looking at poets like Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Cathy Park Hong, Myung Mi Kim, Sawako Nakayasu, Srikanth Reddy, and Barbara Janes Reyes!

  3. Where do you write?

  Almost always in my bed. There's a pile of books on one side of the bed, i.e. my partners. 

4. What's the last best thing you've read?

I just got a copy of Wong May's first book, A Bad Girl's Book of Animals (1969) which is sadly out of print. Thank you Interlibrary Loan! I'm arrested by the certainty of her voice, her ferocity, her way of seeing the world in all its terror and glory:

From "History":

"... The lie then

I've got a mother

I've committed murder

I've recovered

I couldn't have wakened 

to a finer world."

And from "Half Asleep":

"Eat everything. I

fight like penicillin.

Keep me, Keep

me, I'm almost 

Well."

Mina Loy talks about poet-brain connections, "leaning brow to brow      communicative." I feel that brow connection with Wong May.  

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

I just started reading Brandon Som's The Tribute Horse which is a total discovery for me. I've never read his work before; I'm a fan! I like Poor Claudia's Ten Sources lyric essay feature. After reading Ally Harris's Her Twin Was After Me, I'm definitely going to check out more chapbooks from Slim Princess Holdings. I'm a fan of the AAWW's journal, The Margins.

  6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

Top Chef, Chopped, Cutthroat Kitchen, Mind of a Chef. Basically eating frozen pizza and watching cooking shows. 

  7. What are you looking forward to?

Tomorrow night, I'm going to this huge lechon pork dinner. I haven't had a full roasted pig in a long time. I'm looking forward to teaching Nella Larsen's Passing in class tomorrow. Also wearing boots everyday. I'm part of this poetry collective in Seattle, Margin Shift, and I'm excited about curating readings for the next season at the Hedreen Gallery. Mostly, I'm looking forward to staring over all over again.

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Brian Foley | October 1, 2014

1.Where are you now? 

  My brother’s house in Aurora, Colorado. It’s a suburb inside an oil spill of strip malls outside Denver. I’m new here and he’s helping me.

  2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

  My first book just came out in March. Reading and being it over and over has made me attempt to reckon out what it is I was doing, or moreso, what to leave behind to live with next. I’ve recently spread myself into notebooks, letterpoems, an broken up essay on calling, (as in, a directive to create art or perform an occupation as voiced by a higher power. I think its baloney). I’m looking around to see what’s out there, but basically just twitching along until the poem comes.

  Other than that, a chapbook will be out from Black Cake Records in February.

  3. Where do you write?

  Often away from the line I just wrote, hardly outside the door I’m borrowing, smoking in someone else’s yard.

  4. What's the last best thing you've read?

  Hannah Brooks-Motl’s The New Years I’d nominate for the first award that mattered. Geoffrey G O’brien’s People on Sunday took me over.

  5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

  Kilarney Cleary’s Who Whispered Near Me which was recently reissued by Tavern Books out of Portland, a wonderful press that preserves books that have fallen. The collection was released in 1989 and was her 2nd. Her sentences are incredibly voiced, dynamic and vulnerable

  Adam Phillips, and currently The Beast in the Nursery: Curiosity and Other Appetites –“ If to speak is to speak of what one wants, of what matters most, then to speak is to always run the risk of humiliation.”

  Other than that, Richard Hugo. I grew up in New England and they don’t teach Richard Hugo. At least I wasn’t. This summer I took a stay in a friend’s apartment. One day I was dragging my finger across his bookcase while farting out a thought when my finger stopped upon What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American. I was taken, impressed with his exposure and especially his rhythm and music. I have a willful blind spot for anything I receive as “important”. I naturally start with  the weirder fringes, often appreciating the position of the frame more than the picture it holds. I’d dismissed Hugo, but dismissed him without even knowing how he was. This summer I read all his work to embrace that how and found it authentic and helpful.

  6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

  Nicholas Cage has been in 77 movies.

    7. What are you looking forward to?

  Autumn.  Nothing’s better than when your breath begins to see your breath again.