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(l)egos & (online) community building, some personal reflections on a week at #digped @digpedlab & (un)belonging

or another essay in which I misuse tumblr

Before anything, I want to thank Adeline Koh & Anne Cong-Huyen for the work that they do through #dhpoco (post-colonial digital humanities), #transformDH, HASTAC, and FemTechNet in creating space for diverse voices and creative conversations in and around the (digital) humanities. And likewise to Hybrid Pedagogy, which welcomes voices from inside and outside academics to questions concerning (digital) pedagogy and (online) community building, and to the UW-Madison and the UW system statewide, which tries so hard to include all of us who live in Wisconsin in its mission of excellence and learning, in spite of everything. And especially the small group members who were invaluable to my learning and sense of belonging at the Digital Pedagogy Lab: Asako from Canada and Japan; Faron from Madison and Memphis; Allison from Pennsylvania and downstate Illinois; Lisa from Waukesha, WI, and the South; Fatma from River Falls, WI, and the Gaza Strip.

some notes to myself re (online) community building

we need to know who each other are & where we’re from

we need to be willing to spend time finding that out

we need to slow down & take the time we each need--we shouldn’t be afraid to ask others for that or expect them to know what we need

we can find things out online & we can talk to each other

we need to introduce ourselves & ask questions when we can

we shouldn’t blame people for not knowing who we are/what we do/what we need if we don’t tell them, but we will, we do, and we probably should try not to be hurt by that

we need to find ways to explore and to understand frustration, personal and communal, in constructive ways

we need to express gratitude silently and out loud

we need to take responsibility not only for our own satisfaction but also for listening and responding to group needs if we are interested in community building

we need to build in enough time and space to process our thinking

we need to act out of generosity

we need to recognize that our personal work/projects are important but they don’t = the Work

I may not be the best person to get the Work done, or I may not have yet found the most efficacious place for myself in the Work (by which I mean the work of building a more just community/society--that is what all this is about, isn’t it?)

I’m just going to admit it. I’m an academic tourist.

#outsideracademics #altac #community #digitalhumanities #digitalpedagogy #identity

Notes from the Republic of (Sub)verse(ive), or the Catholic Church, Making Middle-Aged Women Look Cool Since the Middle Ages

#poetry and prayer #catholic feminism #saint catherine of siena #catholicism #spirituality

dkpatter

‪#‎blackpoetsspeakout‬

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?

“[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)

#midwestpoetics #Cowfeatherpress #versewisconsin #performancepublishing #digiwrimo

Digital Book Launch for local ground(s)--midwest poetics 7-9 p.m. CST November 19. Digital confetti!

#midwestpoetics #versewisconsin poetry digiwrimo

Revisi(t)ing Two Lines: Some Notes on the Poetics of Activism

October 31, 2014, Madison

I wrote the following unpublished essay, "Two Lines in Madison," which started out as two essays, in 2012. One while standing in line at the City-County Building in Madison, Wisconsin, waiting to vote in the Recall election of Scott Walker. One waiting for President Obama to speak at Library Mall at UW–Madison a few months later. On the eve of yet another go at Scott Walker and an important national midterm election, I have to confess that my activism—if you would call it that—this fall has revolved around making sure my own three college-age children vote—this task not as simple as it sounds, though that’s another story—and volunteering as co-editor/webmaster/designer for the micro press Cowfeather and poetry magazine Verse Wisconsin in order to publish and preserve the work of vital and diverse voices, like those collected by Oscar Mireles in I Didn’t Know There Were Latinos in Wisconsin: Three Decades of Hispanic Writing. Voices that others can’t hear, refuse to listen to, and actively suppress—as is the case in so many states including Wisconsin—with restrictive Voter I.D. Laws and other methods aimed at traditionally progressive voters. But I have not been raising signs this election season. I have not made phone calls. I have not gone door-to-door to canvas.

I have been thinking for some time about activism and its aesthetics and poetics. Can I call myself an activist if I don’t volunteer to elect political candidates? If I don’t show up at the protest? Is donating my time to publishing other voices, politically poetic though they be, enough? Co-editing political work or an occasional project whose proceeds go to political or civic causes? Writing occasional essays and poems about protests? Was raising a family, being a stay-at-home-parent, a kind of activism? Is walking? Is not owning a car? Is writing this paragraph on the Friday morning before Election Day activism, or is it an excuse not to be out talking to strangers? Those are questions I don’t have answers to. What I do know is that right now I’m a little burned out from decades of leaping into volunteer work, and instead of political service, I have focused (when not busy with publishing and poetry service) on writing and rediscovering my love of visual art, prioritizing health, and spending more time with family. My daughter comes home for the weekend this afternoon on the Van Galder from Chicago, and as is the situation in one half of this piece, we will take a walk down to the City-County Building to vote before walking home. At least that’s my hope.

Two Lines in Madison

Spring & Fall 2012, Written in Plein Air for Conor, Greer & Brendan—may we each find & use our voices in our own ways & time, may we be heard by someone, may we keep trying & hoping

Surely there’s a poem here somewhere. Surely

St. Francis of Assisi Day and I lean against an oak tree on Bascom Hill. It’s 1:07. A jazz band plays “Work it out, work it out.” My husband stands to my right in a purple shirt, navy & purple tie, leather jacket that once belonged to my dad. He’s holding a book but hasn’t opened it. The oak tree on my left wears green, yellow & brown. We’ve been in line a long time and passed, with thousands of other cell phone wavers, through airport security. No food/ liquid allowed. No back packs/ large bags. No umbrellas or other sharp metal objects. It’s been a while since I was on a plane. Longer since I listened to a live jazz band. Which makes me wistful. Our youngest, 16, played trombone for a while in middle school after rejecting the cello, viola & piano that he played rather well. I was in band through college, jazz band, too, for one year. I wasn’t good at improvising or keeping up. It made me anxious, though I enjoyed the music & the people.

Earlier today I emailed the files for Verse Wisconsin’s Fall “It’s Political” issue to the printer after zipping/ changing/ rezipping them several times with last minute layout minutiae for an interview of Frank X Walker, Kentucky poet-activist-publisher (now Poet Laureate) and inventor of the term Affrilachia, which flips Appalachia, reminding people that Affrilachia is and always has been culturally diverse, never racially homogenous, blessed with Affrilachian poets/ writers/ artists like Walker, like Nikky Finney, like August Wilson, one of whose brilliant Century Cycle plays, Jitney, I have just seen in Chicago. It’s a play about a gypsy, or unauthorized, car service, operated by a black man in Pittsburg’s Hill Neighborhood, circa 1970. In a place where people are too poor to own cars, too poor to pay for standard cabs—if they would come when called, too unimportant by city standards to merit public transportation, a dependable, predictably priced car-for-hire is indeed a service. And the phone rings throughout the play, requiring each of its answerers, regardless of mood, availability, and condition, to respond, Car Service. Not always with cheer or alacrity. But regular. Predictable. Steady. From the solid owner of this jitney station, to a good-natured numbers’ runner who appears to take/ make his own calls, to an alcoholic driver who has, in his day, been a fine men’s tailor, to an elderly driver/ checker player who inserts himself into everyone’s business, to a somewhat hotheaded younger man back from Vietnam and trying to buy a house on the GI Bill for his partner and two-year-old, to a Korean War Vet whose story of stacking and clearing bodies off battlefields for nine months is a critical turning point for Youngblood, who realizes finally that a wounded man can heal, that he has, and can give, support. The resolution of the play involves this community embracing and absorbing its most marginalized member when his father cannot. Like all the best plays it’s about failure and forgiveness.

#Poetics of activism #poetry publishing #political poetry #editing of witness

"We are not the only ones implementing programs for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other cognitive and physical disabilities. Every year, as more theaters, movie theaters, museums and venues cater to this population, the more empathetic and understanding we grow as a culture. Not only content to watch—these young people want to make art. Doing so will make them more aware of themselves and the world around them. It makes for some profoundly amazing theater too."

Autism & Theater Techniques to Increase Social Skills

by Jordan Butterfield

Part of how we go about organizing is aligning ourselves with a consensus, non-hierarchical framework. We see many private and non-profit organizations out here in the community that bring about “change,” but these very organizations see themselves as separate from the community; they label themselves “organizer,” “director,” “community partner.” We don’t believe in creating a hierarchy amongst our people. We believe we, la gente, the people, have the solutions and ingenuity to transform our own comunidad and have the capability to create change as we see fit. As a collective, we are very much influenced by the Zapatistas in the way that we “lead by obeying” or “mandar obedeciendo” with our community. This is why we seek to remain grounded and humble, to be of and for our communities, to work with ourselves and share the power we all have.

STITCH-ing Milwaukee Together: A Conversation with Jeanette Martín

Notes Toward a Live (DIY) Poetry Journal, or Another Report from the Micro Republic (aka Beautiful Back Corner Neighborhood) of Verse, WI, or How the Wisconsin Protests of 2011 & Hip Hop Pedagogy Transformed the Practices of Two Poetry Editors, or How I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse

a paper given at the Popular Culture Association Meeting in Chicago, April, 2014, by Wendy Vardaman

I'm starting with a poem by Fabu that appeared in an anthology I co-edited, published in November, Echolocations, Poets Map Madison.

Macaja Revels Camped at a Stream of Water

In Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin

there is a notation that a Black man

Macaja Revels, born in 1800 on the Cherokee reservation

migrated to Dane county and camped at a stream of water

eighteen miles north of the village of Madison.

Macaja traveled on to buy land elsewhere.

There is no record of physical description; light, dark or medium

what he accomplished or who his parents were.

In 1800, a Black man was both an oddity and invisible

but the land welcomed him.

The land was cheap, fertile with plenty

there was schooling for children and protection for escaped slaves

so Macaja could rest briefly.

Who remembers Macaja Revels, Black settler in the 1800’s

Who camped at a refreshing stream

Eighteen miles north of the village of Madison

but moved on, maybe knowing there would be no welcome in Madison.

Who remembers that Black people came to Wisconsin

to be free?

—Fabu

from Echolocations, Poets Map Madison, Cowfeather Press, 2013

As an independent academic operating outside the university, I move among topics and among the roles of publisher, editor, poet, curator, activist, critic, teacher, administrator, designer, producer. I belong to creative communities & circles—not institutions—and have the freedom not only to move among roles, but also to invent and inhabit new creative contexts, inviting others to collaborate. I don’t get paid for most of the work I do, but flexibility, meaning, and freedom are also forms of compensation, as well as privilege. One of these creative communities, Verse Wisconsin, is a hybrid print-online poetry magazine that I co-edited, published, designed, and was the webmaster of for 5 years with another Madison poet, Sarah Busse. Our final issue came out this month, providing opportunity for reflection: What have we learned? What can we share with creatives, inside & outside universities, who are building their own artistic republics and neighborhoods? What happens out here in the community (as “Public Humanities” likes to call the vandals at its gates) that doesn’t occur inside the university or other large arts institutions? I offer the perspective of a failed—and I mean that in the best way—tiny arts organization: a print-online publisher of poetry and verse drama, spoken word and visual poetry, seeking performance-based, activist alternatives to publication; a pedagogy & editorial praxis informed by performance-poetry; and a Midwestern poetics/aesthetics informed by the present moment, not just the past: more barn razing than raising; more meth than myth; goth & gothic; informed by current political/economic/cultural realities; always, but also increasingly, urban and non-white; the human in the humanities besieged not just by external forces, but also by its own non-responsiveness to the immediate human, to local problems, concerns, resources and changing circumstances.

Tonight, over 40 protesters staged an intervention inside the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan during Saturday night's pay-what-you-wish admission hours.

youngist

Phillip Agnew: “This is my tome to 2013; my poem to the year of my dreams”

by Phillip Agnew

Phillip Agnew, Executive Director of the Dream Defenders, on bus bound for 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. – Photo by Trymaine Lee/MSNBC

For 364 days, at least, I found myself in a constant state of conflict. Almost daily my alarm clock awoke me at the corner of a crossroad: asking that I decide … And every day I oscillated away. I was readiness & unsteadiness, joy & sadness, deletion & depletion, Completion; I was cool confidence in a cracked case. I was the reluctant leader, the forlorn follower. I was a horrible mentor, a deplorable mentee. Always kept it together, rarely kept in touch. I was here, there, everywhere and no where. I longed for home and grew restless for the road. I moved too fast and proceeded with much caution. I served and rarely felt deserving. I was selfishly selfless. I spread love and squandered it. I sailed in the sure serenity of certainty & in the swaying seas of insecurity.

The launch for Echolocations, Poets Map Madison--includes poems & poetry collage created at the event.

#WriteYourMadison!

Launch event for the anthology, Echolocations, Poets Map Madison, with poems and poetry collage created at the launch by contributors and community members. Audio excerpts are from Echolocations' contributors and can be heard at http://cowfeatherpress.org/echolocations.html. More information about Echolocations and Write Your Madison/ #writeyourmadison is also at the website. A Google map of poem locations in the book is available at http://tinyurl.com/kw4paxp.

Google Map of poem locations in the anthology Echolocations, Poets Map Madison. Map data points include authors, poem titles & locations, and audio when available.

Watch Reggie Baylor of Baylor Studios & volunteers paint an intersection in a day.

#streetart milwaukee

Toward a Live Poetry Journal: Notes on Poetry & Performance from the Republic (aka the Beautiful Back Corner Neighborhood) of Verse Wisconsin

A version of this essay was delivered at the Midwestern Modern Language Association Annual Conference, 11/8/2013, by Wendy Vardaman

How many of you are sometime poets? Performance poets? Editors and/or other producers of poetic content? Teachers? More than one of these?

Razones en el Invierno

Para Erik, Flavio, Gustavo y Oracio Sosa Villavicencio

Escribo para que nuestra sangre hable con el río de la calle donde nadie sabe de nadie. Para que tú desde una esquina de la noche me consumas con la fuerza de un barco que se hunde. Escribo para que el aire respire aire. Escribo para que me piense el musgo del camino. Para que me descifre en la pradera el ganso y el búho. Escribo cuando tengo hambre, cuando estoy por cerrar la puerta de mi alma. Escribo para que ustedes me escriban, para que me consideren uno de los suyos, de los que reúnen semillas y se abrazan con las llamas, como si nada pasara y solo yo pasara. Escribo para que mis hijos un día sepan que tengo otra voz, no la voz del que indica a qué hora apagar o encender la mirada, sino la voz que ustedes también reconocen en los almendros, y en el movimiento de las nubes, voz que desde hace siglos me nace con cascabeles y plumas. Escribo para que ustedes se hallen ante mis palabras. Escribo por los que no escriben y se ríen solos, para los que aman y andan entre el polvo. Escribo entonces para nombrar las cosas que no tenemos, para inventarlas, para los que se deshacen de tristeza, para los que nos golpean y nos encierran, para los que yacen bajo las raíces de las aguas. Escribo para que juntos nos asombremos. Escribo para los que no pueden ver la luz y sostenerla en sus manos, como lo hacen nuestros hijos todas las mañanas. Escribo para que ustedes dispersen con su risa el ritmo, el canto.

Reasons in the Winter

For Erik, Flavio, Gustavo and Oracio Sosa Villavicencio

I write so our blood speaks with the river that is this street, here where no one knows about anyone so that from one corner of the night you consume me with the force of a drowning boat. I write so the air breathes air. I write so the moss on the path thinks about me, so that the goose and that owl on the prairie understand me. I write when I am hungry, when I am about to close the door of my soul. I write so you write me, so that you consider me one of yours, one of those who gathers seeds and embraces flames, as if nothing happened and only I happened. I write so my sons one day know that I have another voice not the voice that tells them when to turn on and off their eyes, but rather the voice that you also recognize in the almond trees, and in the movement of the clouds. A voice that was born many centuries ago with rattles and feathers. I write so that you find yourselves before my words. I write for those who don’t write and laugh alone, for those who love and walk among the dust. I write, then, to name the things that we don’t have, to invent them, for those who undo themselves from sorrow, for those who strike us and make us prisoners, for those below the water’s roots. I write so that together we are amazed. I write for those who cannot see light and hold it in their hands like our sons do every morning. I write so that with your laughter you disperse the rhythm, the song.

—Moisés Villavicencio Barras (Spanish & English versions, from Luz de Todos los Tiempo / Light of All Times, and Echolocations, Poets Map Madison, Cowfeather Press, 2013)

Although I have a PhD, I am not an academic: that means I don’t have to focus, publish, or cite sources for the sake of proving I know things. I can move among topics and among the roles of publisher, editor, poet, curator, activist, critic, teacher, administrator, designer, producer. I belong to creative communities & circles—not institutions and have freedom to move among, to invent and inhabit new creative contexts, inviting others to collaborate. I don’t get paid for most of the work I do, but flexibility/ meaning/ freedom are also forms of compensation, as well as privilege. One of these creative communities, Verse Wisconsin, is a hybrid print-online poetry magazine that I have co-edited, published, designed, and been the webmaster of for 5 years with another Madison poet, Sarah Busse. We’ll stop publishing VW next fall, providing opportunity for reflection: What have we learned? What can we share with creatives, inside & outside universities, who are building their own artistic republics and neighborhoods? What happens out here in the community (as “Public Humanities” likes to call the vandals at its gates) that doesn’t occur inside the university or other large arts institutions? I offer the perspective of a failed—and I mean that in the best way—tiny arts organization: a print-online publisher of poetry and verse drama seeking performance-based, activist alternatives to publication; a pedagogy & editorial praxis informed by performance-poetry; and a Midwestern poetics/aesthetics informed by the present moment not just the past: more barn razing than raising; more meth than myth; goth & gothic; informed by current political/economic/cultural realities; always, but also increasingly, urban and non-white; the human in the humanities besieged not just by external forces, but also by its own non-responsiveness to the immediate human, to local problems, concerns, resources and changing circumstances.

Cover of current online issue of Verse Wisconsin.

Art and creativity have been both an outcome and a necessary mechanism of resistance, as we’ve seen it in Wisconsin the last 2-½ years. In the case of the Solidarity Sing Along (SSA), the art is part of the protest, but protest is, itself, performance art, partly rehearsed, partly improvisational in nature. The ability of the event to respond to new circumstances infuses life into it, and Governor Scott Walker’s Capitol Police, acting on orders this summer to arrest singers — including ministers, retired veterans, older women of the “Raging Grannies,” teenagers as young as 14, an alderman, a firefighter in uniform, the journalist Matt Rothschild of The Progressive there to cover the story, a young African American man violently tackled while taking video — gave the Sing Along the fresh material it needed to stay lively “One Day Longer,” as singers say, than Walker’s reign.

Read more at HEArt. (by Wendy Vardaman, October 23, 2013)

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