preparing lists for my comprehensive examinations and found jonathan skinner's article 'poetry animal'. the abstract leads me to believe the article will be a veritable beast, truly beastiful to behold!

if you dunno boundary 2, check out the table of contents:

Charles Bernstein
American Poetry After 1975:

Jim Rosenberg
Bios / The Logosphere / The Finite-Made Evolver Space

Peter Gizzi
Eclogues

Christian Bök
Two Dots Over a Vowel

Lytle Shaw
Docents of Discourse: The Logic of Dispersed Sites


Tracie Morris
Rakim's Performativity

Jennifer Scappettone
Versus Seamlessness: Architectonics of Pseudocomplicity in Tan Lin's Ambient Poetics


Craig Dworkin
Hypermnesia

Jonathan Skinner
Poetry Animal

Herman Rapaport
A Liquid Hand Blossoms

Kenneth Goldsmith
In Barry Bonds I See the Future of Poetry

Joyelle McSweeney
Disabled Texts and the Threat of Hannah Weiner

Brian Reed
Grammar Trouble

Juliana Spahr
The '90s

Al Filreis
The Stevens Wars

Nada Gordon
Not Ideas about the Bling but the Bling Itself

Marjorie Perloff
"The Rattle of Statistical Traffic": Citation and Found Text in Susan Howe's The Midnight

Elizabeth Willis
Lyric Dissent

Tan Lin
SOFT INDEX (OF repeating PLACES, PEOPLE, AND WORKS)

Benjamin Friedlander
After Petrarch (In the Rigging)

A door's navel, yes? The only downside to this journal for anyone currently studying outside the cozy room of academic enrolment: to read what they say, you gotta cough up and pay. If you ask me, that just plain shucks.

all codes lead to roam

On the floor, Lara Glenum has gone Multimedia! She and her husband collaborator Josef, the two of whom previously collaborated on some innovative translations we had the privilege of publishing in our few runs of Parakeet, are now presenting multimedia collaborations, with an installation just opening in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY. Moon o moon, I wish I could check this out in person. I remember Josef making music in their apartment back in Athens and wondering at his multifacted creative energies (he has culinary, musical, and literary gifts) and now wow these two are getting the pulse of the now, me thinks.

On another note, Lara's work is, I better realize after having lived in Ireland, among many things, so particularly American, and Southern, o gothic course. She's clearly working from European influences, especially Eastern European. But there's something about the private mythology and the characters' hubris and the gore, combined with the assertion of free speech and personal freedom in both the aesthics described and enacted, along with the tornado at the heart, that just reminds me of home sickle home.

facilitate tour

Facilitated fiction writing class at the Central Mental Hospital today. Among other things, I used the Esquire Napkin project for reading materials and as a prompt, except our writing was the CMH Papertowel Project. Good time had, some smiles and even laughs, which, in this case, is what the thing is all about.

RIP

PATRICK

So, you got the count’s sheer
Was, and now, your reeling hours
Ago. Yet,
You’re not too stupid to teach a sod's hive--
Zero
Exacts its dirt, you’re dancing.

Winsome You Loose Some

Here's a poem written in an effort to score Warsaw Bikini by Sandra Simond thru Bloof Books. Requires writing something responding to one of her poems and posting. I choose Blowing Kisses from an Underwater Cave..


Blowing Kisses from Customs

Are you bringing with you:
a. rowed inside strewn barely, formed, fore splayed why?
b. sleep dotting lose some night dawn’s country?
c. your needs guarding a waterfall you’d rather caterwaul?
d. tsk tsk?
Yes. I declare all my bad behaviors, these include 1. axe

2. grind. 3. Memories
fright the coroners 4. Of my mind,

the ends if by the means 5. My burden
too cavalier 6. That monkey owns my back-when.

7. Those were going to be the those-were-the-days!
8. The attrition of my laughter who is as sleep,

9. like I’m what you might call broken arted 10. nothing
11. to declare-- 12. Lust say it: 13. You must change. 14. You’re life.

out and a bout

Did I tell you J and I went to see Seamus Heaney read as part of the country's celebration in honour of his 70th birthday hosted by the National Concert Hall? Well, we did! And 'twas lovely.

We had fab seats, about five rows back two or three seats to his right. The concert hall has 360 degree seating, and he read a few poems to those behind. He selected many love poems--to his mother, his father, his wife, his friends, his writing. The reading seemed a tribute to love and friendship, to human connection.

He read a couple of poems about forging, like this one below, which I think can be read as a writing poem, that to knock words into a shape is like the work of a forge:

The Forge

All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

What a memorable night. Heaney so down to earth, humane. So dawn and birth and not a show-man, not a bard in the big ego sense, though giver of a great show, sowing bearing of the big-ago sense.

At the close, he left heaped in flowers and applause.

all codes lead to roam

john berryman in dublin, 1967, talking about the dream songs.

maid public

nathan l. baker many thanks to you whereever you hour! there's an
amazon review of dog girl by Nathan L. Baker

music flick

for you bloggerissimo!

ConPrizeElations!

Woohoo!! Who? Eimear Ryan! Eimear Ryan, a former student of mine who always delighted and impressed us with her writing and her insight, has won the prestigious Hennessey First Fiction Prize.


Hennessey First Fiction Prize
Winner: Eimear Ryan

Excerpt from 'Caterpillar'
By Eimear Ryan
excerpt orginally published in the Sunday Tribune:

"Aidan is sitting on the floor of his bedroom, juggling three tennis balls. He can hear Ciara's socked feet pass as she paces the hall, dark blurry shapes in the inch of space beneath the door.

"The parents won't be back till tomorrow," he thinks he hears her say. "Yeah, bring whoever wants to comes."

A few more squealed girl pleasantries, then the beep of the phone as she hangs up. She puts her head round his door unasked, like always.

"I'll kill you if you say anything," she says, like she's rehearsed it. Then: "Why are you on the floor?"

"I was just workin' out," he says breezily. "Y'know – push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, the usual."

He allows himself to be difficult sometimes. It's one of the few things he finds fun in his new state. 'New state' – that's his dad's phrase. His way of making it seem like everything's perfectly natural and fine. Like the accident was a chrysalis, creating Aidan anew. A reverse chrysalis, maybe, Aidan thinks – you go in a dancing carefree butterfly, you come out as something people avoid looking at, or tread into the pavement for fun.

"Fuck, did you fall?" Ciara asks, rushing to his side.

"Nah, I'm fine. Dude, I'm not completely helpless."

She sighs, puffing air in his face. "I swear to God, take care tonight. I won't have time to monitor you. I'm the hostess."

With that she sweeps out of the room. The force of the door slamming makes the hanging calendar swing back and forth violently. It's still stuck on April. He'd been ticking the days off until the Leinster championship, until it became pointless.

Reading went brilliantly! Room packed. Each person's work their own. So great to hear the work aloud and see these talented writers own their work. And and all that had gone into the writing since we'd all last seen it. The readers are amazing folks, generous readers, committed and imaginative writers and and and! The experience was truly one of the top experiences I've had in a long time. Here are some photos:





Here we are, from left to right: Niamh Mulvey, Keiran O'Connell, Jennifer Mooney, Alice Redmond, Helen Collins, Rena Garrett, Daniel Hickey, Randall Snare, Roderick McGuire, Meself, and Jennifer Cooley.

You're invited...

Something Strange Happened...



Tuesday 21 April @ 7.30pm

Heidi Lynn Staples presents a reading, 'Something Strange Happened...', by members of her advanced workshop group.

Poetry and fiction readings will be given by Daniel Hickey, Alice Redmond, Randall Snare, Kieran O'Connell, Jessica Colley, Helen Collins, Rod Maguire, Jennifer Mooney, Rena Garrett and Niamh Mulvey.


Odessa Club, 14 Dame Court, D2

update data

for those friends and interested folks, here are a couple of pics of our daughter sophie. sigh. she's getting so big!

hallo!

well, i've completed the ten-week creative writing session at the central mental hospital, and it seemed to go well. the evaluations were positive. the same core group showed up each week. we created an anthology of interesting work. smiles and even laughs lit up the place during the writing pretty much every week. i hope to go back. my return will be based on whether the funding is there.

in ireland, we're in a major recession. the irish writers' centre, where i am teaching, has just gotten a 100% funding cut by the arts council, for example. so i won't be teaching there after this term, as they likely won't exist. as they say here, i'm gutted. very sad about that. not just for myself, but for the writing community, which is buoyed by the centre.

john, husband, and i have started a creative writing school, wordworks (www.wordworks.cc) and i'm not giving up entirely. but the situation--two parents with MFAs in a small city in the midst of a serious economic downturn and not a MFA job or even adjunct job in sight--is ultimately a bit dire and has me 're-skilling'--meaning taking on a second career. i'm gearing up to use my undergraduate degree in psychology to take further study and become a cognitive behavioural therapist, which is remarkably tied in with language use. i'm keen to do it. while also bummed not to be teaching writing for a living.

haven't been to a poetry reading in yonks, since e. boland last year which was utterly wonderful sigh. babu has had me tied close to home. maybe could these days though. she's a lot more independent and the paternal side of things a lot more able for it.

hey howdy and hallelu!

well bloggerissimo, since i've posted the election did be happening. here in ireland, people congratulate me on the election. 'congratulations on your new president' strangers smile. i have not met one person abroad who has supported the bush presidency.

many irish people are relieved that bush is gone but are also concerned about the abortion issue. that obama will make it possible for women to have late-term abortions again in the safest possible way.

i had a long talk with a woman in bewley's cafe about this. she is a nurse who says she has participated in a many abortions and is against them in all cases. she said that 'it's against natural law'. i asked her where she saw this natural law. she asked what i meant. i said in the natural world, animals literally eat each other alive. she said they just didn't know it was wrong. i told her i thought it was a cultural difference. that americans are often more pragmatic and the irish idealistic. but she wouldn't have any of that. anyway, it truly is different here from the states, ireland has a constitutional amendment asserting the 'personhood of the unborn', something that in the states seems quacked out from the right but here is the central pov.

meanwhile, my partner and i went to one of the poorer parts of dublin and saw the blown out apartment blocks and decimated world of those living in ballymun. john will be teaching creative writing to some youth there. what about the rights of these kids to some reasonable expectation for a bit of happiness in the wake of the economic boom?

i've started teaching creative writing at the central mental hospital, the national forensic hospital. and am due to begin teaching at another maximum security facility arbourhill prison, where i'll be working with people who have committed sexual offenses. have been reading up on bibliotherapy and such.

was silly with terribly nervous before the first day of teaching at the central mental hospital. fretted over shoewear. i decided on docs. until my partner pointed out that the police here wear docs. finally, i tied on my green runners.

we wrote self-poems which are cinquains composed from five lists we brainstormed. then, we read william stafford's 'poetry'.

http://www.williamstafford.org/spoems/index.html

we talked about poetry. about how we expect it to rhyme and order us into analysis. then we talked about how this poem has no rhyme scheme and seemed freer than many would have expected. some folks weren't actually sure what the poem was about. then one fella said, 'it's basically just a poem about poetry. i don't like the last line.' then someone else said she loved the last line. that she was going to use it on people. instead of 'speak to the hand' in arguments, she was going to say, 'hey, i don't eat that bread.' then we wrote our own definition poems.

finding poetry that felt useful and appropriate for the situation in which these people are finding themselves proved remarkably difficult. what would you teach in such a setting?

all codes lead to roam

just ran across this great resource. i'm probably just not a cool kid and my bloggerissimo is already hip to this yo. but down deep in the maine woods at the one and only FISHOUSE you can listen to poets with two or fewer books reading their poems and talking about writing poetry. i knew there was some reason i was up again in the middle of the night. now i'm heading over there. and sure pass your cup for a sup o' moonshine.

maid public

hey wow o wow! cain't help but say this blogger's second book is featured today by the Academy of American Poets. down in the right hand corner. forgive the small-town girly glee, but as annie hall would say, neat neat neat! makes for a smile during challenge to the smilings time. yey! so cool to find this feature. i'm up in the middle of the night while babu sleeps, planning a ten week course for the national forensic mental hospital in dublin, looking up poems, and stumbled on it. yey!