April's Et Al. Poetry Reading - Yowzah (!) + Upcoming (me) reading, Et Al. Reading...

Last night's April Et Al. Poetry Reading was beyond my hope for a raucous good time. David Bersell embraced the each of us in with his non-fiction/poetry. Maggie Nelson. David Foster Wallace. Richard Harper sailed to soothing grounds then slipped in a hearty rendition of sorts of "Night Moves" deafly singing "Night Moves" while Harper read from "Night Moves," a collection of comments and dialogue-admissions on Youtube's comment section for the video "Night Moves." Then Billy Cancel was magical and thrilled to the space and volume and hurtled at us.

All set off to the tune of the pieces set as context by local Nashville artist Ellie Caudill.

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Been reading everything lately, but not sure if retaining is happening. All sorts of magazines from the waiting room. Reading Ocean V., CA Conrad, Douglas Piccinnini, A. Brenza, E. Benick...


It's a wee bit downtrodden these days to do all the submitting and sending of poems, or even to work on poems really, than I'd like to, but the summer shall be writ in sweat toward those ends, and also a split in job multiplicity down to one should do a good trick at that.


I've got *COP lights my cigarette. UlyssesSGrant. Eater, of mouths. All sort of finishing ( *COP needs to ferment into a state that assumes agency more complete and seeing outside me enough, not just satisfying my things ). And, eternal, See, they return.






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Next month's May Et Al. Poetry Reading is gonna be complete domination of the rackets - award-winning Chris Hosea, award-winning Douglas Piccinnini, amazing Santa Cruz transplant (!) & Vanderbilt lecturer Keegan Cook Finberg. All coupled to the exhaustingly amazing visual work of Daniel Holland. All at the & among the Wedgewood/Houston Art Crawl ( Tail end - temporally and spatially ). Shit yeah: You are invited.

Also shall be doing poems ( the last me reading was in January ) a few days subsequent the May Et Al. at the next sequential address up from Sauvage Galerie, DRKMTTR, for Eric Benick's "Life is Boring" series that just started. Add to which a band that plays after the four readers do their things.




More on all when & when.








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First Spring 2016 Et Al. Reading, March (delayed response)

Got the event posters back from Printers today, high gloss broadsides, saturated reds and blues, real psych-stuff. The printman asked ‘Is the image supposed to be - what are those? Motorcycles? - Is the image supposed to be like this?’ Yah. 

The first reading was absolutely phenomenal. Casey Pierce set a projector to the ceiling to lay above the readers his video piece. It was the seed and focal point of conversation more than once.

Sean Patrick Hill read with expertise, whose texture conjured the landmarks embedded in his poetry, slipping in and out of subtle oratory modes that flipped on themselves and turned overwhelming: autobiographical-confession, naturalist, cartographer, meteorologist, son, father. He said as much before his reading. 

Meagen Crawford owned space and time with a mesmeric, almost otherworldly reading of “Non-Earthly Participant” (several of which are hand stitched and printed and await readers, perhaps she’ll throw in a copy for a special backer or two?

Dara Wier, poet of the night, traveler of the most miles to be with us for the first Spring Et Al. Reading of 2016, was stunning  (and she brought Nashville legend, renowned hermit, former Silver Jews frontman, poet of some talent, David Berman with her!) As the headliner, Dara chose to stay put and read to us in the exact same spot from which she had enjoyed the other readers, sitting just at the outskirt, against a wall, with the rest of the sitting, crouching, standing audience! Dara got completely houseshow rad by reading face-to-face to the entire room while we reveled, clapping when we remembered to, in the approach and manner of her reading. I, to say easily, could’ve listened to Dara Wier read for hours. 

She admitted that her poems may not make any sense, which is to say that I botched an introduction that attempted to say that Dara, in utilizing frequently used and common, even boring, language, was able to recompose a narrative, the networks of syntax, extended metaphor, and the fervor of her approach and use of the components in her poems.

Then she sneak show escaped away and out while everyone was re-constituting themselves after the reading! Each reader was spectacular, sublime.


Check the Et Al. Facebook page for event photos and other peripherals...

Et Al. 2016 Kickstarter Running 29 days left / Do it to it

The Kickstarter for Et Al. Poetry Readings ( to compensate visiting poets for traveling all the way to Nashville ) is all launched up and willing if you've got the pocket change, we got the sprocket bang.





Give, if.






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Absolutely lately -






Better mac? 

Lyrical Brew Reading / Atrocity Exhibition poems out / Dismantling White Supremacy should require I also dismantle the intuition toward/my notion of identity/self/class preservation/power

Held some space in the reading this past Friday at Ciona Rouse's Lyrical Brew, read alongside her, and Christine Hall (the hosts of Lyrical Brew, Poetry in the Brew, respectively) as Walker Bass got his host on and got into us with a stretch of questions that I fumbled around with until docile like kittens in a can? 

A video of me reading a section of "Still, Detritivore" ( which just got put out in #3 of the sensation feelings, and will have been from some future chap for which I intend the title 'Eater, of mouths' ).

Christine Hall read with sermons pouring on sunset steps ownership from her the grips in her lungs with vulnerabilities, admissions, sorrows, sheer delights, obscure wonderments. There was a point at which I understood her to be almost being read through by her own poems, a fantastic mesmerizing shared. Ciona let her delight with world remain entirely unobscured, the optimism, the nuance and serene sense that, in her quietude all such saying is for us to share and have as if she gives it out for us.

It's nice to read more frequently, work with the writings to loosen them ( I need to incorporate it into my eternal revisions process, I need a pencil when I read ), and say and become my own projective and reconcile the words with the air with the body. Thanks to Ciona, Walker, Christine.





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Poems are out now at Atrocity Exhibition ( 2 from that 'Eater, of mouths' booklet that does not exist, that is an intention ). They constantly update their new poetry, so enter that house many times, cross that river more than once, they're going strong with it.

A couple weeks on those concis poems ( 'Hospital' 1+2 ), proofs and all that, in the meantime I got some pay cash moneys ($) from concis for the poems that I re-routed toward the Room To Read charity, whose aim is gender equality and literacy in a bunch of south African countries, south Asia countries. In the meantime and enduringly, because we are enduringly blanketed off the penance warm:



...


The equals, the dialogues, the hurt, the represented, the not mentioned - Check out poet/editor Joyelle McSweeney's Facebook post and get into those remarks/comments/replies to see some of the finer mechanics of reaction, intuitions, inclusivity/exclusivity, intention, unintention, even the VIDA attempts at partially entire, quantitative sketch, siphons in on the citizens, dramas...

Hey ViDA, very hurt to not see Action Books included in your list of woman-run presses. This press was co-founded by...
Posted by Joyelle McSweeney on Thursday, January 21, 2016

Another article ( most of the articles I've been seeing on Hyperallergic are the depth full ones, be known ) on 'Dismantling White Supremacy' ( + again the comments section are cringe full )...







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Been way much into this walking music lately, post-DMV liberations almost exactly :

"…Is it / loose suns / tilt / buildings / to / caves..." / Poems soon: Atrocity Exhibition & Concis, *COP lights my cigarette chap + reading

Called it done at one point - abandoned into a product of disquiet - so Neal Halper, Chelsea Velaga, and Meagen Crawford all did visual versions of *COP lights my cigarette.

Then read them*COP at the ol' Stone Fox via The Regenerates January reading alongside Ben Burr, and Jesse Mathison. Fun drink more inside the poems themselves as a fluid thing as they came out anyways, so I keep saying honest, un-pretensed. //



Chelsea's:

Neal's:

 

Meagen's:

 

 

*Get at me for 1 of the 2 ( or both)  copies of Neal's version - hemouthsmewrong@gmail.com

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Got back word from the deep lands outside in snowpack wire banked against biting the curb people out there that my twin poems "Hospital" ( & "Hospital") are due out towards the rear of this Jan month over at Concis. 

They feature a poem on their front page and, after its had its say, scoot it to 'The Stream' so be on the lookout in either sector for these to peaches.

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Three minutes later get back word also from the grand Atrocity Exhibition ( they like Joy Division + listen to flowers, & have hearts ) that they shall be forwarding two also pieces of the ol' poems I've leapt around for a while now, pouncing my chest off about: 

"Town, of year" ( that Marie Claire likes ) & ( the light heavyweight champion of one of the poems I haven't shown, my personal champ in endurance ) "Alligators" -

both from a sequence of chomp chapters ( like 9 or 10 ) called "Eater, of mouths" finished when it's finished.

Apparently their website (AE) is so horrendous the security blockers of the Vanderbilt connection upon whose bosom I suckle for wifi at the moment won't even get me there, but get at the contributions of Emily O'Neill, and Dalton Day therein.

What busy January held to me dear.

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Lit drama, again again.


More unthought from people that do not attempt to get behind what they are behind when they talk about what they are behind to people who are maybe not behind it or differently, at least open that dialogue up, baby. Also sort of unwieldy response too ( both sides are hurt slight, slight hurt )



T h i s then t h i s then t h i s



** A not entirely unrelated perspective I read.







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Cole Swenson's two on Wordsworth (!) over at Boston Review.

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And shall have another time to read this month, on the 29th (FRI) over @ Barnes & Noble ( off West End, Vanderbilt related ) w Lyrical Brew, alongside the establishers or umbrellas of the poetries that get out upon/for y'all Nashvillers - Ciona Rouse, Chuck Beard, & Christine Hall.


Be there, watch me be the sourpuss of the crew.

"…Spoke no // drained / brackets…" / poems at The Sensation Feelings / + Jan 11 Regenerates Reading Nashpo @ Stone Fox + A. Palisano Poem + Poet Selfies

Jan. Regenerates Reading ( poetry, art ) set for Jan. 11th, Ben Burr, Jesse Mathison, I + Visuals of AC Carter, KB, +Erin Alise Borzak. Come on: 2 for 1's, free admin, stuff for sale, mingle and yell, or isolate and mute, I don't care, just show up eh.

I have no idea what to expect but a singular, pushing event of positive, spear in your face rawness. Creek Space Collective member Jesse Mathison is in on it, so maybe the smeary arts culture will show too.

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The new The Sensation Feelings, issue # 3, is out and fabulously folding on y'all, I is here with two poem pieces for your bethlehem perusals y'all. A strip of my Inpatient Press chap o n e


( in which I repent Charles Olson, disagree, to however minute a degree, and say what is different now than then with our entanglements of human degree, matter and social... also what seems like an intuitive, half gargled reference to Mikhail poem 'you're old man' (!) - 'BACK INTO SWAMP, SWAMP CREATURE' )


( XII ) is in there, as is a poem when first I started likening a return of the body to things other than what it does without my knowledge or say so - 'Still, detritivore' ( a rad piece that feels rad that I consider one rad I do … )…




"… to've broken upon color

no
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sill breathes glass or its absence is physically anything / no

intermediary 
given strange 
                       translates otherwise …"





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Poets deal with the selfie ( in exposed format, openness aside from just doing that activity for itself or themself, self love self ):

 

 




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Aldo vs. McGregor! Came and went faster than a double-click. Watch the corners react, such diminishing reactions, polarized affect, what their next days must have been like - The Irish, The Brazilians.

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Dang, dang: Lithub is doing some aright peripheral poetry stuff, critical stuff, I may have to begin checking them on the regular as in a matured, benefits-earning. less erratic HTMLGiant?

Reading, though somewhat more fascinated and enamored with the fervor and aheadedness and directness and eccentricity of the person ( as in, ah, Frank O'Hara - socio-intellectual creatures that draw people behind them like an adoring cape ), James Baldwin of late.

White Debt / addressed well and honestly, and honestly well : "I erased 'complacence' and wrote 'complicity.' I erased it. 'Debt,' I wrote. Then, 'forgotten debt.'



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The Demands (!).



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Antonina Palisano's one over at Swarm - To Not My Own


"...until asking grows/ planetary/ wider/ & seething/ what’s owed

to the same walk/ at different times of day/ the changing air/ the imperative air

& if I love/ is love response/ to panic/ its possible loss/ & how to walk

with this loss/ I cannot love/ without conceiving of it/ endless presage

the falling bird/ the black core of the apple/ disbelieving/ a certain dream/ cold

in flesh & manner/ I have let you die/ but also disdain/ & want another

if I lack language/ is it care/ or sublimation

what self is here/ ..."

A Preface to Note on Tundra soon free by online at Bombay Gin, misc

Pre-hibernations, seeming organic because not to sleep. These are what I've missed, the things I remember missing anyway, those to whom this apology floats out to meet:

-Missed reading, East Side Story with Rita B.
-Missed reading, Vanderbilt Visiting Writers, TR Hummer
-Band of Poets, Bobby's Idle Hour, with Ciona Rouse, Luke Wiget, others
-Poetry Book Release for Trinity Lane, The Stone Fox, with Whit Smith, Daniel Pujol, others




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Got one of the Note on Tundra prefaces "( Architectures )" over to Bombay Gin's (Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University) online features section, with a video trailer (!) chunk done by Fields of Black Sand heart Meagen Crawford, and The Atari Hairdo himself, ol Computer Lungs Todd Michael Rogers.

That video trailer plus another done by ninja secret refuge citizens will be unfurled as when the proper time settles down.




Not sure when this front of Note is out, but it'll be externalized just you wait, pretty rad having a piece with a place that I've deep ideas of as being aligned somehow with Jack Kerouac, the sort of phenomenology and epistemological creative routes that have a finesse and nobility (however self-visible, and therefore not precisely sainthood earning)...

Don't let the day pass where you might, both of us, snatch a handmade copy of my music immersive lineage of poems Note on Tundra ( for which I think the entire sound blanket of nashville caldwell bongo beef oven house shows bring it back ) + not 1, but the 2 prefaces, out when when when from DoubleCross Press y'all.

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Plus - recently found Lylas=Beach Boys=Elliott Smith=Acetone=Jason Molina=Yo La Tengo=esque Cass Mccombs:

















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A lot of happenings nationally, if you aren't upset, or polarized, you aren't paying attention. KNow thyself I guess, or do the other thing, abolish the self, both go well, toward alleviating everyone else. I've been post it noting my way toward articulating what it is that I think, what it is that I think I feel, that I understand about my leanings, my validity, volumes, space (if I have it, want it need it, rescind it, impose it, detract, deserve). Thick as traffic.


Here's something to read

And here









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Jaqueline Winter Thomas weighs in well on the oral aspect of poetry, on its being read, in the poetry readings, as they are tend to be held - "...as shared acts of silence." (!) And, further, "Sometimes a violation of this silence is justifiable, but, oftentimes, it is not."





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And Chuck Beard has your guide to everything literary at all y'all with his Decemberist's lit planner: Beard on Books.