Wildlife

Last weekend, at the invitation of Joseph Woods and Patti White, UGA Poetry Bus headed down to Tuscaloosa for the Slashpine Poetry Hike and a reading in the Cahaba Wildlife refuge. UGA sent Lily Brown, Jessie Eisenmann, Laura Leidner, Claire Paffenhofer, John Stovall, Drew Wright, and myself for some am maze singing Outdoor Poetry Experience Nutrition (OPEN) [my spill ye acronym].

The first OPEN was a filming of poetry offerings, organized by Patti White and Joseph Wood at the Cahaba Wildlife Refuge. All aglimmer and noon a purple glow gleam glam film fish flesh nests friends winds lush shush and stir whirr land's word. Sod tomes whirr bade wide all. We shared the air with many fine multitudes. Gratitudes.

Co-labor elation

From right to left, bloggerissmo, you're beholding Claire Paffenhoffer, John Stovall, Lily Brown, and Laura Leidner,--half the Co-labor-elators heading to Tuscaloosa for the Slash Pine Press Poetry Hike and the first dish of the student-exchange between UGA and UofA. With the help of the Amazemint Jordana Rich and the support of the Wanderfull CWP program and English dept, we scored a van--aka UGA Poetry Bus. Thanks!

all codes lead to roam

Tribute poem to Leslie Scalapino over at Delirious Hem.

I composed this tribute piece by using 'Deep Sea Plumes' 'Loop Current' and 'Spill' to
read through an excerpt of Scalapino's poem 'that they were at the beach'.

Infusing her poem with these words of such high currency at the time of her passing enacts for me the meaning unfolding in the contemporary experience of reading all 'water' and most especially 'beach.' What a fright these words bare as the ocean becomes a site of wide-scale biotic trauma and systemic collapse--as the creatures 'whale' 'shark' 'porpoise' 'marlin' become 'mere-myth'...

In analogue to this decline in bio-verse-entity, our psychologies (the logics of our psyches) endure many deployments of profit-motivated poesis-cides. Daily, we try to be deeply in the invisible toxic deep sea plumes of modern commerce. We are caught in loop currents of manufactured associations, closing our I's and falling into our undreams. Hour flights of fancy and imagination seam gunked unto junk.

Yet, Scalapino she rows us now's tune sea. Thank you to Scalapino for the text ample of attention and active engagement in the me-ing May-sing, am's mazing, meaning making, thy aching springs.

co-labor at

We're 5 poets in two deployments from Athens, GA to Tuscaloosa, AL next Friday for Slash Pine Press Poetry Hike Weekend...which includes the U of Alabama/U of Georgia undergrad poet student exchange. I met with the participating students tonight for cafe and collab. They wrote an a maze singing poem calm's leap with marshmallows, fierce hippos, and "serious serious serious serious serious pillows." They've been collaborating weekly over the last three months in preparation for the event and have developed a reliable ability to improvise with one another--to listen, to respond, to find the edge and make it thrum. We're going on a reel poetry re: treat. Hop to see you there bloggerissimo! If nay, no worries. Pics and vids swoon to full 'lo!