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wellesleyunderground · 4 years ago

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Wellesley Writes It: Conversation with Sumita Chakraborty '08 (@notsumatra), author of ARROW

Sumita Chakraborty is a poet, essayist, scholar, and a graduate of Wellesley College, class of 2008. Her debut collection of poetry, Arrow, was released in September 2020 with Alice James Books in the United States and Carcanet Press in the United Kingdom, and has received coverage in The New York Times, NPR, and The Guardian. Her first scholarly book, tentatively titled Grave Dangers: Death, Ethics, and Poetics in the Anthropocene, is in progress. She is Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Poetry at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, where she teaches in literary studies and creative writing.

Sumita’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2019, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. Her essays most recently appear in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her scholarship appears or is forthcoming in Cultural Critique, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (ISLE), Modernism/modernity, College Literature, and elsewhere. Previously, she was Visiting Assistant Professor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, at Emory University.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10, had the chance to chat with Sumita about publishing, reading, and writing. E.B. is grateful to Sumita for willing to be part of the Wellesley Writes It series in the middle of her book debut!

EB: Thank you so much for being part of the Wellesley Writes It series, Sumita! I’m excited to get to talk to you about writing in general, but especially your debut collection Arrow. Can you start off speaking a bit about how this book came about?

SC: Thank YOU so much! This is such a joy.

The book that’s now Arrow went through about seven prior full versions.

EB: Oh my gosh! Wow.

SC: While there’s a lot going on in there, the most fundamental story I wanted to tell was that of the experience of living in the aftermath of severe domestic violence, other entangled forms of assault, and grief (in my case, particularly for my sister, who died in 2014 at the age of 24). The word “aftermath” is a tricky one, because there is no neat and tidy “after” violence or grief, particularly when one considers the varying scales on which various devastations and mournings take place. One of the main narrative arcs of the collection, though, is that of becoming someone who can embrace love and joy and care and kinship even when those concepts have been weaponized or altogether foreclosed for all of one’s childhood and adolescence. And that’s a narrative that requires a sense of an “after” that I am deeply fortunate to have personally experienced. That’s the main tightrope the collection is invested in walking, which forms the through-line around which and with which its other preoccupations and obsessions orbit and collide.

EB: Wow, thank you so much for sharing all that, Sumita. I especially like what you said about the lack of a “neat and tidy” ending -- isn’t that always the case when it comes to writing about things from our own lives? We want real-life closure but sometimes have to settle for just narrative closure instead.

I meant to say also congratulations on the publication of your collection not only in the US but in the UK as well! What was it like to put that version together? The same? Different?

SC: I was wildly lucky in this regard. Some years ago, I published the poem “Dear, beloved” in Poetry, before it was in Arrow—and in fact before this version of Arrow even existed. At that point, the editor of Carcanet reached out to me to say that the press would be interested in bringing out my collection in the UK. I kind of panicked!

EB: I totally would have, too!

SC: As I mentioned, there was no Arrow yet. I was on a much earlier version that was “complete,” but when I looked at it, I knew: This ain’t it. And querying US presses was therefore not something I was prepared to do at that time; UK publication was even less within the realm of my imagination. I essentially told them the manuscript was in progress and asked if I could reach back out when it was ready and if I had secured a US publisher. Some years later, the collection was picked up by Alice James in the States and I reached back out to Carcanet to see if they were still interested, and they were! Alice James and Carcanet worked together during the production process, so while there were certainly some differences in approaches across either side of the pond, much of it was really streamlined, and that is all thanks to the outstanding and immense labor of the extraordinary editors and staffs at both publishers.

EB: How did you begin writing poetry in the first place? What was your path to becoming a writer?

SC: I didn’t come into much of a sense that I was interested in poetry and in literature until college. When I got there, I didn’t have a sense of really any passions and skills that I had, and that’s not imposter syndrome speaking—it’s because I had a terrible record in high school and found nothing inspirational there, and I was also pretty busy attempting to survive the violence I was experiencing at home and working toward moving out, which I did before college. In my first year and my sophomore fall at Wellesley, I took a really broad smattering of courses, including (with wild, and probably inappropriate, disregard for prerequisites in both cases) Advanced Shakespeare with William Cain and Advanced Poetry Writing with Frank Bidart. I was very much not good enough for both of those courses! But even as I was flailing around in them, something in my mind clicked: this was something I was willing to be terrible at until I started to understand it a bit better. These were puzzles that I liked, questions I liked, problems I cared about dwelling with. It was pretty much “love at first confusion.”

EB: I love that idea: “this was something I was willing to be terrible at.” That 100% nails how I feel about writing, too.

So, obviously, as you just said, Wellesley was very important in your trajectory as a poet -- the title of your book is a reference to a Frank Bidart poem! Which other faculty, staff, fellow students have influenced or inspired you? Are there any professors or classes you would tell young Wellesley writers that they 100% have to take?

SC: Following “love at first confusion,” I essentially made a second home of the first floor of Founders, so my answer to who at Wellesley influenced or inspired me could fill multiple pages!

EB: I love Founders. I miss Founders.

SC: I will invariably accidentally leave someone out and feel guilty, so I offer my mea culpas in advance. In addition to Bill Cain and Frank Bidart, I am beyond grateful to Dan Chiasson, with whom I worked on both my literary studies (including my thesis) and my poetry, and who graciously offered me more mentorship than I’d ever experienced in my life before that point; to Kate Brogan, from whom I got the bug for twentieth-century poetics, which remains the focus of my literary studies research; to Yoon Sun Lee, who taught the theory class when I took it, and planted a hugely important seed that I didn’t even know had been planted until much later simply by being a brilliant Asian American literary scholar (not a role I had ever before seen filled by someone of this subject position); to Larry Rosenwald, who was the first person I had ever met in a literary context who both knew that English was not my heritage language and, in his infinite and genuine passion for multilingualism, viewed that fact as a strength.

I wish I’d had more of a chance to get to know my peers while actually at Wellesley—my life circumstances while I was in college differed from the typical Wellesley experience in ways that made doing so challenging (for one, I worked multiple jobs the entire way through), but I’ve gotten to better know many people I knew at Wellesley more in the years since and that’s been a wonderful experience.

EB: I’ve also made a lot of Wellesley friends post-Wellesley. The Wellesley experience never ends, in that way.

SC: Since I’ve already spoken to the coursework that inspired me, I’m going to zig a bit where your last question zags: there isn’t a single course I would tell young Wellesley writers or literary enthusiasts that they 100% have to take. I don’t think one could go wrong with anyone I’ve named here (and I’ve been really excited to learn about the new additions to the English department: I would have loved to have learned from Cord Whitaker and Octavio González, and have heard wonderful things about both!). But I think that what made the Wellesley experience truly influential for me was that I had the opportunity, like Whitman’s “Noiseless Patient Spider” (though, um, not very noiselessly or patiently), to “launch’d forth filament, filament, filament,” and really listen to what spoke to me. I came in with no preconceptions, no expectations, no firm career plan (or even career plan). Knowing what undergraduates at environments like Wellesley frequently pressure themselves or feel pressured to do (or achieve or produce or attain), I don’t want to offer advice along the lines of a “must-do.” Rather, try things out and truly listen to yourself. What’s your “love at first confusion”?

EB: I know from personal experience that writing can be a really lonely practice. Who did you rely on for support during those really frustrating writing moments? Other writers? Your spouse? Friends? Fellow Wellesley grads? What does your writing/artistic community look like?

SC: All of the above! The thing is, for me, I don’t think writing is a lonely practice. When I feel most energized about writing, it is because I feel like I am in a conversation—or, to put a finer point on it, when I’m in a conversation that is nestled within hundreds of thousands of other conversations that have happened for millennia, are currently happening all around me, and will continue to happen after I’m a hunk of dirt. Tapping into that is often what brings me to the page in the first place.

EB: That’s such a good point.

SC: So when students, for example, feel really isolated or alone in their writing life, my first recommendation is to remind themselves of their beloveds. These may be actual living ride-or-die humans in their lives; these may be ghosts of writers and artists past that are important to them; they might be their most frequently bustling group text or their favorite TV show. Honestly, if one’s thinking of this question as broadly as I recommend, those beloveds probably belong to all of the above categories, to some degree. When you write, even if none of these beloveds are your subject or your audience or anything quite that easily analogous to the process, they are with you, and they have formed who you are before you’ve even picked up a pen or turned your computer on, so they are with you when you are writing, too.

EB: What is it like to now be teaching poetry to undergrads? Are you channeling your inner Dan Chiasson?

SC: Ha! Thank you for that—I just got a visual of myself trying to go as Dan for Halloween and I cracked myself up. (Dan, if you’re reading this: sorry!) I teach undergraduates and graduate students at Michigan, both in literary studies and in creative writing, and I love it very, very much. My students of all levels are brilliant, thoughtful, curious, and wildly imaginative people who often help bolster my faith in the ongoing importance of literary work. Honestly, particularly during this year, I have frequently been in awe of my students and have felt overwhelmingly lucky to be able to work with them.

EB: I know that you are also currently working on your first scholarly book, Grave Dangers: Death, Ethics, and Poetics in the Anthropocene. How do you approach writing poetry vs. writing an academic work? How is your creative process similar or different?

SC: For me the two have been inseparable since Wellesley. I essentially ask similar questions and have similar preoccupations no matter what genre I write; in terms of deciding which thought belongs to which genre, or which project a particular moment is better suited to, that’s often a matter of thinking carefully of what shapes that I want the questions to take, and what kinds of “answers”—in quotation marks because I don’t strive at certainty or mastery in either genre, or in anything for that matter—for which I imagine reaching or searching. For me, the processes for writing both are very, very similar: I draft wildly and edit painstakingly. It’s more a matter of closely listening to my patterns of thinking on any given subject or day in order to find out if the rhetorical patterns of academic prose would better suit them or if the rhetorical patterns of poetry would better suit them.

EB: What are you currently reading, and/or what have you read recently that you’ve really enjoyed? What would you recommend to read while we (are continuing to) lay low during this pandemic?

SC: 2020 was such an incredible year for books! Which feels somewhat perverse to say, considering everything else was dismal and it was hardly an easy year to put out a book, either. In terms of new poetry releases—and this is not a comprehensive list, so my mea culpas here too to the many that I have loved and will end up accidentally leaving off—I have this year read and loved: Taylor Johnson’s Inheritance, francine j. harris’s Here is the Sweet Hand, Craig Santos Perez’s Habitat Threshold, Jihyun Yun’s Some Are Always Hungry, Eduardo Corral’s Guillotine, Rick Barot’s The Galleons, Jericho Brown’s The Tradition, Shane McCrae’s Sometimes I Never Suffered, Victoria Chang’s Obit, Danez Smith’s Homie, Aricka Foreman’s Salt Body Shimmer, and Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem. Two prior-to-2020 poetry collections that I reread every year are Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s Song and Lucille Clifton’s The Book of Light. I’m currently reading Claudia Rankine’s Just Us and Alice Oswald’s Nobody.

EB: Also what about Lucie Brock-Broido? I know she was a teacher of yours at one time, and she was a professor in my MFA program. I had the pleasure of once sitting in on her lecture, and it was life-changing. Are there any particular poems of hers you would suggest?

SC: I joined Lucie’s summer workshop held at her home in Cambridge, MA the summer after my sophomore year at Wellesley, and I stayed in it until I moved to Atlanta for graduate school in 2012. “Life-changing” is right—in fact, it feels a little too modest. She was transformative. A cosmos-realigner. A hilarious, brilliant, extraordinarily kind meteor. A fox with wings. A unicorn. I could go on, and on. For a reader new to her work, I’d recommend starting with her posthumously published “Giraffe” in The New Yorker. I think “A Girl Ago” and “You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World” from Stay, Illusion (2015) are also remarkable entry points. After that, I would probably recommend reading her collections in this order: first Stay, Illusion; then A Hunger (1988); then The Master Letters (1997); and finally Trouble in Mind (2005). The sequencing here isn’t intended as a ranking in the least—my own personal favorites toggle back and forth depending on where my own “trouble in mind” lives, and each collection is dazzlingly strong and has its own raison d’être—but rather because I think the story those collections tell in that order would let a new reader have a full sense of Lucie’s poetics outside of the story that mere chronology can tell.

EB: Any advice for aspiring young poets?

SC: Filament, filament, filament. Let your writing life be as huge and wild and disparate as the whole person you are—don’t feel like there’s only a part of you that’s “worthy of poetry,” and don’t let anyone else tell you what kind of writer you should or shouldn’t be.

EB: Thank you, Sumita! That was wonderful.

#wellesley writes it #wellesleywritesit #wellesley #wellesley underground #wellesleyunderground #sumita chakraborty #eb bartels #e.b. bartels #class of 2008 #class of 2010 #poet #poetry #writer #writers

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limejuicer1862 · 5 years ago

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Peter Bakowski

Melbourne-based poet, Peter Bakowski, fell in love with the map of the world at the age of six. In 1983 he wrote his first poem while staying at a friend’s farmhouse in Waco, Texas, in response to receiving a “Dear John” letter from a Melbourne girl. As a result of that fateful letter, Peter ended up travelling for seven years, caught a freight train across Montana, lived in a cave on a Mexican island and ate gazelle cooked in stale blood with road builders in the Central Africa Republic. Peter has been writer-in-residence in Rome, Paris, Macau, Suzhou (China), Battery Point, Tasmania; Greenmount, Western Australia and at the Broken Hill Writers Festival. His poems continue to appear in literary magazines worldwide and have been translated into Arabic, Bahasa-Indonesian, Bengali, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and Polish. In February 2015, Editions Doucey of Paris, published a bilingual edition of his Selected Poems, entitled “Le cœur à trois heures du matin.” Peter’s aim as a poet is to write as clearly as possible and no matter how many books he writes in his lifetime, they’ll all be about what it’s like to be a human being.

http://bakowskipoetrynews.blogspot.com/

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

I wrote my first poem in 1983 at a record collector friend’s farmhouse in Waco, Texas, after receiving a Dear John letter from a Melbourne girl. At the time I thought I’d be away from Australia for six weeks but ended up travelling for 7 years.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

I sniffed around for plain-speaking poets. It was the poetry of Charles Bukowski which showed me you could write about the urban, the domestic, your city, your neighbourhood, your blues in plain, direct, conversational language.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

I gravitated to 20th century poets. Any earlier I found too romantic, not down-to-earth and gritty enough.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

Part of gathering material for regular poems is daily “nourishment” – daily reading, daily walking, observing and daily thinking about people, life, identity and imagining characters and scenarios, pivotal moments in a real or fictitious life.

5. What motivates you to write?

I’m trying to express myself, to reveal the individual, real or fictitious, in the camera frame of a poem. I’m also very interested in the refreshing image and wordplay.

6. What is your work ethic?

I feel that being a creative person is a 24 hours a day activity – observing, pondering, experiencing, digesting, filtering, sculpting and painting for the mind’s eye of the reader and listener. I constantly tour Australia and present my poetry in Europe annually.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

Charles Bukowski, Ted Kooser and Raymond Carver and Billy Collins are my plain-speaking poetry heroes. Clarity is my big thing. I’m trying to communicate and reveal in each poem.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

I continue to admire Ted Kooser, Charles Simic and Billy Collins because they continue, they have persevered, remained curious about life, death, dogs and cats and imagined lives in houses and apartments they walk by in their real and imaginative strolling.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

Writing is my means of expression, my camera, my camera, the arena in which I reveal the overlooked or what otherwise may pass out of memory.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

By daily reading, by spending thousands of hours testing and trialling words on paper, saying them out loud, sculpting them into pieces of writing where no word is superfluous, then send your writing to reputable magazines – that’s the reality test, to see if your writing has meaning to others beyond your computer screen or notepad.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I’m working on my eighth poetry collection which will largely comprise of portrait poems of real and imagined individuals.

12. What inspired “Wardrobe of Selves”?

I’ve always had a strong interest in writing portrait poems of real and imagined people. In “Wardrobe of Selves” there are researched portrait poems of Man Ray and also Willem de Kooning. There are also portrait poems of fictitious musicians. Via a variety of portraits of individuals I wish to reveal a spectrum of responses to pivotal moments in a person’s life – love, betrayal, anger, creativity, loss, grief, the philosophical shrug. I’ve titled my seventh poetry collection, “Wardrobe of Selves” – to address via poems the different costume one may wear or remove when moving through public and private situations. I feel each of us can draw upon more than one self as a form of defence, self-protection or even self-delusion. I read an interview with Bob Dylan in which he stated “Each morning when I get up I don’t know what self I’m going to be.”

13. You use a lot of second person narratives as opposed to first person. How deliberate is this?

I have a long and continuing interest in writing portrait poems of real and fictitious individuals. The second person narrative allows me to reveal perhaps the self-delusion in a portrayed individual, allows me to reveal the individual in most cases without judgement as if the reader is watching and listening to a character in a play. I remain wary of the first person “I,I,I, me, me, me” poem which can invite self-pity. Of course I sometimes write a poem in the first person if I want the individual portrayed to reveal some honest self-examination. Ultimately I’m writing about what it’s like to be a human being so I want any “voice” or portrayal to be credible, for the individual portrayed to resonate with the reader/listener.

14. In “At my Craft” you say “illuminate the overlooked” when arranging poems for a collection. As this collection is a gathering of portraits could this refer to the people portrayed?

I present two types of portrait poems. Researched poems of real individuals. Then I also create portrait poems of fictitious individuals. In all my portraiture poems I am illuminating THE INDIVIDUAL and a variety of individuals to show a spectrum of responses to pivotal moments in a life. I’m also trying to illuminate the secret self. As with painterly creators of portraits I’m seeking to reveal the essence of an individual – what makes them tick. Portrait poems of individuals are way I continue to address my life’s work as a poet -to write about what it’s like to be a human being.

15. You like to play with aphorisms in your poetry that is not portraiture.

An avid, daily reader since age 8, I’m a collector of aphorisms, epigrams, maxims and proverbs and as a poet dabbling in humour, surrealism, the philosophical, I try and come up with my own aphorisms and proverbs for the 21st century. I remain attracted to honing/refining world views and moments. Being concise makes sense to me in this modern world, where realistically some people’s attention span is as long as a tweet.

16.

Some selves are secret, take themselves to the grave—their Existence exposed in a diary, a bundle of letters—angers and Loves, visions and regrets—not torn in half, not rewritten. Versions of ourselves, face half in shadow under a hat brim, Elude conclusive portraiture. Brush the lint from your cautious Shoulders. Your true self may be in the vicinity awaiting your arrival.

From the poem “A Wardrobe of Selves”

This clever mnemonic poem acts as an introduction to the whole collection, balancing light and dark, hidden and revealed.

Peter: All my writing life I’ve undertaken portrait poems wherein I explore duality, for example the creative and destructive within an individual, the tug-of-war our thoughts and emotions engage in, beneath our skin. Our modern age is arguably obsessed with identity, the me generation, the selfie, the cult of celebrity and gender fluidity. We read that so and so has “reinvented” themselves, David Bowie, was an astounding example. In an interview I read, Bob Dylan said, “When I wake up, I don’t know what self I’m going to be that day.” Sometimes a friend may say to us “You’re not yourself today.” One ultimately hopes the self can be supple rather than inflexible. “Our true self” is arguably a self we like or feel comfortable in owning. I continue, via portrait poems, to try and reveal, like a painter, the essence of the individual portrayed.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Peter Bakowski Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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micaramel · 5 years ago

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Artists: Meris Angioletti, Tarek Lakhrissi, Candice Lin, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Liv Schulman, Marnie Slater, Patrick Staff, Lena Vandrey

Venue: CRAC Alsace, Altkirch

Exhibition Title: Le couteau sans lame et dépourvu de manche (The Knife Without a Blade That Lacks a Handle)

Curated By: Elfi Turpin

Date: October 13, 2019 – January 12, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of the artists and CRAC Alsace, Altkirch. Photos by A. Mole.

Press Release:

Dear Catalina,

Summer has ended, and so has the exhibition Le jour des esprits est notre nuit.[1] It was then that we began a conversation around divination. You told me you became interested in divination as an interrogation of the invisible, inasmuch as it constitutes what you called «a means of communication with invisible, often sacred, entities—like in the Ifa religion—and works very much like diagnosis in Western medicine, except that in this case the force of the invisible and the unknown supersedes what can be seen, measured and seized». If we take divinatory healing systems for example, I would add that these interrogations displace a focus on ill bodies towards the objects that are connected with the invisible, from an interest in the individual towards an interest in the collective. In order to heal, we interrogate sand, seashells, relationships with the living and the dead, among other things, so as to make tangible and thinkable that which is hidden. Divination is practical, it’s a good mediation technique, not all that far-removed from the act of creation, which we’ll continue to experiment with in the upcoming exhibition.

This summer I re-read Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig. As you know, Wittig—who was born in 1935 in a town just a few kilometres from CRAC Alsace and passed away in 2003 in Tucson, Arizona—is part of the political and affective territory of the art centre, so much so that we set out to read the entirety of her work two years ago, to see how it would affect our programmes. In this way, in the spring of 2018, the exhibition IL PLEUT, TULIPE brought together artists who focus on «minor» beings—rain, plants, animals, images or signs which interact as subjectivities within the world—, artists haunted by potentialities whose voices are unheard or minoritised, with which they converse or join forces. Monique Wittig’s voice emerged one Sunday afternoon during a collective reading of The Straight Mind[2] in Altkirch, her voice embodied by twenty or so people who, one by one, read the texts gathered in this volume and discovered Wittig’s thought on their own, her critique of a supposedly natural heterosexuality, which is neither natural nor a given, but a political construct. If Wittig urges that we surpass the normative categories of «men, women» by putting an end to an essentialism of sexes, genders, and races, then this project is not only political but also literary at its core. Because a critique of the dominant social structure cannot be separated from a critique of the language (grammar and syntax) that upholds it.

Other readings and projects followed, books passed from hand to hand: Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary, L’Opoponax, The Lesbian Body, Paris-la-politique,… Les Guérillères joined the top of the pile more recently, becoming our primary reference for the upcoming exhibition. Published in 1969, Wittig starts writing the text in 1967, before May 68, in a political context ripe with decolonial struggles and women’s liberation movements. Appropriating the literary canon, she constructs a long epic poem describing a mythical and colourful march to overthrow, guerilla-style, both the patriarchy and the language upon which it’s established. It’s a war of pronouns: They appears [in French: Elles, third person feminine, plural], a collective entity and main character engaged in a bloody struggle against the patriarchal regime. The book is divided into three sections separated by circles, while a poem composed of a list of names cuts through the length of the narrative, every five pages. The final section is the one Wittig first wrote, the part where They win and where, heavily armed, They thrash this regime. Then «They say, If I take over the world, let it be to dispossess myself of it immediately, let it be to forge new links between myself and the world.»[3] The first two sections take place after the last section, in the future, one where no class shall take power over another. A future where we invent and decontaminate language. A future where we create new ontologies. The exhibition Le couteau sans lame et dépourvu de manche is part of this reading experience. It gathers artists whose work explores the transformative power of language in a process of de-categorisation, dis-identification of bodies and relations, and/where speculative works take place after Les Guérillères.

To conclude, let me share a riddle that I’d like to propose for divination: «Daniela Nervi, while digging foundations, has unearthed a painting representing a young girl. She is all flat and white lying on one side. She has no clothes. Her breasts are barely visible on her torso. One of her legs, crossed over the other, raises her thigh, so concealing the pubis and vulva. Her long hair hides part of her shoulders. She is smiling. Her eyes are closed. She half leans on one elbow. The other arm is crooked over her head, the hand holding a bunch of black grapes to her mouth. The women laugh at this. They say that Daniela Nervi has not yet dug up the knife without a blade that lacks a handle.»[4]

What buried stories will we unearth?

See you soon,

Elfi

[1] Le jour des esprits est notre nuit, with Meris Angioletti, Minia Biabiany, Oier Etxeberria, Tamar Guimarães & Kasper Akhøj, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Candice Lin, Sean Lynch, Lázara Rosell Albear & Sammy Baloji, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, curated by Catalina Lozano & Elfi Turpin, CRAC Alsace, exhibition from June 13 to September 15, 2019.

[2] Monique Wittig, The straight mind and other essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).

[3] Wittig, trans. David Le Vay. Les Guérillères (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 66.

[4] Ibidem, 14.

Link: Group Show at CRAC Alsace

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from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2to0lpb

#micaramel

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ucflibrary · 7 years ago

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“If you are a dreamer, come in, If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer… If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in!” -Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Welcome to National Poetry Month!

The Academy of American Poets, inspired by the success of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, created National Poetry Month in 1996. It is the largest literary celebration in the world and UCF Libraries are proud to do their part.

UCF Libraries have gathered suggestions for 20 books of poetry that are currently in the UCF collection. These works represent a wide range of favorite poetry books of our faculty and staff. These, and additional titles, are also on the Featured Bookshelf display on the second (main) floor next to the bank of two elevators.

Click on the Keep Reading link below to see the full descriptions and catalog links.

A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti Includes 29 poems revolving around the title selections written for oral readings with jazz accompaniment and 13 previously published poems The title of this book is taken from Henry Miller s Into the Night Life and expresses the way Lawrence Ferlinghetti felt about these poems when he wrote them during a short period in the 1950 s as if they were taken together a kind of Coney Island of the mind a kind of circus of the soul The title of this book is taken from Henry Miller s and expresses the way Lawrence Ferlinghetti felt about these poems when he wrote them during a short period in the 1950s as if they were taken together a kind of Coney Island of the mind a kind of circus of the soul. Suggested by Brian Calhoun, Research & Information Services

And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou Maya Angelou’s third book of verse. These poems are powerful, distinctive, and fresh—and, as always, full of the lifting rhythms of love and remembering. And Still I Rise is written from the heart, a celebration of life as only Maya Angelou has discovered it. Suggested by Missy Murphey, Research & Information Services

Bicycles: love poems by Nikki Giovanni With Bicycles, she's collected poems that serve as a companion to her 1997 Love Poems. An instant classic, that book-romantic, bold, and erotic-expressed notions of love in ways that were delightful unexpected. In the years that followed, Giovanni experienced losses both public and private. Collected poems that serve as a companion to Giovanni's 1997 Love Poems. That book--romantic, bold, and erotic--expressed notions of love in ways that were delightfully unexpected. Giovanni rediscovered love--what she calls the antidote. Here romantic love--and all its manifestations, the physical touch, the emotional pull, the hungry heart--is distilled as never before by one of our most talented poets. Suggested by Missy Murphey, Research & Information Services

Book of Twilight by Pablo Neruda; William O'Daly (Translator) When Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda was a teenager, he pawned a family heirloom to fund the publication of his first book, Book of Twilight, which―until now―has never been published in its entirety in the United States. Presenting the highly romantic style refined and empowered in his later books, Neruda's debut introduces a bold poet unafraid to take risks, push boundaries, and write towards an unapologetic romanticism. Everything we know about Neruda―all his gestures, hyperbole, and effusiveness―appears vividly and for the first time in these poems. William O'Daly's superb English translations are presented with the original Spanish en face. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. Suggested by Brian Calhoun, Research & Information Services

Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Edna St. Vincent Millay More than 180 sonnets selected from Millay's books of poems -- including 20 sonnets from Mine the Harvest not contained in previous editions of her Collected Sonnets -- are brought together in this new, expanded edition. Suggested by Larry Cooperman, Research & Information Services

Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E.E. Cummings Combining Thoreau’s controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited bohemian, E. E. Cummings, together with Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, helped bring about the twentieth-century revolution in literary expression. Today Cummings is recognized as the author of some of the most sensuous lyric poems in the English language, as well as one of the most inventive American poets of his time. Formally fractured and yet gleefully alive and whole, at once cubistic and figurative, Cummings’s work expanded the boundaries of what language is and can do. It includes 36 poems that were first collected in the 1991 edition and 164 unpublished poems issued in 1983 under the title Etcetera. It spans his earliest creations, his vivacious linguistic acrobatics, up through his last valedictory sonnets. Suggested by Seth Dwyer, Circulation

Dancing in Dissent: poetry for activism by Jim Moreno Dancing in Dissent is an artivist¡¯s (artist and activist) collection of poetry resonating with the legacy of, speaking out against injustice and oppression. As you read this book as a community of peaceful dissent from a poet among poets “know that corporate amerikkka is not pleased." Suggested by Sheila Green, Research & Information Services

Dear Anne Frank: poems by Marjorie Agosín Poems in English and Spanish pay tribute to Anne Frank, noting her courage, love for life, and individuality in the face of painful experiences. Suggested by Schuyler Kerby, Rosen Library

Environmental Studies by Maureen Duffy Centered on environments – human, insect and animal – some experienced personally, some observed, some imagined. Though strictly contemporary in her concerns, she reaches back in her poetry to childhood, and beyond that in her imagination to cultural figures of the past – John Donne, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, bringing them lucidly and vividly to life. There is a strong sense of compassion and fair play in her poems, reflecting Duffy’s lifelong support for progressive social and political movements, and a beautiful lyricism and technical skill derived from her love of the classical world and Old and Mediaeval English. As so often in her work, London past and present provides the backdrop to her real and imagined life stories: of love and loss, forebears and friends, the humorous and sometimes painful experiences of old age. Suggested by Christina Wray, Teaching & Engagement

Even This Page is White by Vivek Shraya Vivek Shraya's debut collection of poetry is a bold and timely interrogation of skin—its origins, functions, and limitations. Poems that range in style from starkly concrete to limber break down the barriers that prevent understanding of what it means to be racialized. Shraya paints the face of everyday racism with words, rendering it visible, tangible and undeniable. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Hallowed: new and selected poems by Patricia Fargnoli Featuring selections from Patricia Fargnoli's four previous books along with twenty-four new poems, here is a celebration of poetic endurance, filled with quietly distinctive cadences and images closely seen, now freshly understood. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

I’m So Fine: a list of famous men and what I had on by Khadijah Queen Part 1980s and 1990s nostalgia, part exuberant storytelling, I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On turns a sharply humorous magnifying glass onto gendered interactions in daily life, framed primarily by random celebrity encounters in Los Angeles. Far from a narrative of fame-chasing or conceit, however, I'm So Fine breathlessly addresses what it means for a woman to fight for dignity and survival in an often hostile environment, to come into her own power as she decides what she wants for herself '& mostly gets its every fineness. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Motherland, Fatherland, Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood A breathtaking new collection from one of today's boldest and most adventurous poets; Colloquial and incantatory, the poems in Patricia Lockwood's second collection address the most urgent questions of our time, like: what if a deer did porn? Is America going down on Canada? What happens when Niagara Falls gets drunk at a wedding? Is it legal to marry a stuffed owl exhibit? What would Walt Whitman's tit-pics look like? Why isn't anyone named Gary anymore? Did the Hatfield and McCoy babies ever fall in love? The steep tilt of Lockwood's lines sends the reader snowballing downhill, accumulating pieces of the scenery with every turn. The poems' subject is the natural world, but their images would never occur in nature. This book is serious and funny at the same time, like a big grave with a clown lying in it. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong Ocean Vuong's first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial "big"—and very human—subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the fiercest hungers. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It is the basis for the musical Cats. Suggested by Becky Hammond, Special Collections & University Archives

Satyr by Susan Hartman Chapbook of poems. A chapbook is a type of popular literature printed in early modern Europe. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered booklets, usually printed on a single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages. Suggested by Brian Calhoun, Research & Information Services

The Old Philosopher by Vi Khi Nao The Old Philosopher is enigmatic, sexual, biblical, anachronistic, political, and personal all at once. These quiet, implosive poems inhabit a nonlinear temporality in which Vi Khi Nao brings biblical time and political time together in the same poetic space, allowing current affairs to converse with a more ancient and historical reality. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot The text of Eliot's 1922 masterpiece is accompanied by thorough explanatory annotations as well as by Eliot's own knotty notes, some of which require annotation themselves. Suggested by Athena Hoeppner, Acquisition & Collections/Research & Information Services

Together Still: follow by perambulans in Noctem by Yves Bonnefoy The international community of letters mourned the recent death of Yves Bonnefoy, universally acclaimed as one of France’s greatest poets of the last half century. A prolific author, he was often considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize and published a dozen major collections of poetry in verse and prose, several books of dream-like tales, and numerous studies of literature and art. His oeuvre has been translated into scores of languages, and he himself was a celebrated translator of Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, and Leopardi. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

#ucf library #ucf libraries bookshelf #national poetry month #poems #book suggestions

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bettinajudd · 7 years ago

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Reading with t’ai freedom ford, Bettina Judd & Imani Sims

We're so excited to be hosting these three tremendous poets! Don't miss your chance to hear original work by t’ai freedom ford, Bettina Judd, and Imani Sims. *Please note that the start time is earlier than usual (at 5:00 pm). Bios: t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher, Cave Canem Fellow and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in No, Dear, The African American Review, Gulf Coast, Vinyl, Muzzle, RHINO, Poetry and others. Her work has also been featured in several anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. In 2012 and 2013, she completed two multi-city tours as a part of a queer women of color literary salon, The Revival. In 2014, she was the winner of The Feminist Wire’s inaugural poetry contest judged by Evie Shocklee. She was a 2015 Center for Fiction Fellow and the Poetry Project’s 2016 Emerge-Surface-Be Poetry fellow. Winner of the 2015 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, her first poetry collection, how to get over is available from Red Hen Press. t’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn, but hangs out digitally at: shesaidword.com Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop Black feminist thought. Her collection ofpoems on the history of medical experimentation on Black women titled Patient won the 2013 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize. She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Imani Sims is a fine wine and bourbon loving Seattle native who spun her first performance poem at the age of fourteen. She believes in the healing power of words and the transformational nuance of the human story. Imani works to empower youth and adults through various writing courses and interdisciplinary shows all over the nation. Her book (A)live Heart is available on Sibling Rivalry Press

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lesfemmesfollesbooks · 8 years ago

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BARED contributor news & updates

MANDEM - We received a grant for our disability poetics painting series "Hypermobility" here.

Susan Jamison - I will be having a solo exhibition at Chroma Projects in Charlottesville, VA in April, 2017.

Maryann Corbett - My fourth book, Street View, will be published by Able Muse Press in the summer of 2017.

Jehanne Dubrow - My sixth book, Dots & Dashes, won the Crab Orchard Review Open Competition Poetry Prize and will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in August 2017.

Sally Bliumis-Dunn - My poem, "Heart" will be read by Stuart Kestenbaum, Maine's Poe Laureate on Maine public radio's program called, "Poems from Here."

Chuka Susan Chesney - Three of my poems have been accepted into two zines and an event in Michigan. My poem "Marilyn's Pose" and a painting I created of Marilyn Monroe will be published together in Issue #4 of Inklette zine. My poem "My Last Meal" and my painting "Cake at the Wake" will be published in the upcoming "Buried"-themed issue of Claudius Speaks. My poem "California Jane and Mr. Rochester" will be included in the Poetry Leaves Outdoor Poetry Exhibition in Waterford, Michigan.

Judy Kronenfeld - My fourth collection of poetry, BIRD FLYING through the BANQUET, comes out from FutureCycle Press by March 20th, 2017.

Catherine Arra - My third chapbook, Tales of Intrigue & Plumage was accepted for publication by FutureCycle Press on December 25, 2016. Fall release expected.

Susan Rich - I've published poems in all 50 states and 1 district

Margo Taft Stever - CavanKerry Press has accepted my second full length collection, CRACKED PIANO, for publication in 2019.

Shirley J. Brewer - My third book of poetry, Bistro in Another Realm, is forthcoming in late spring, early summer, 2017, from Main Street Rag Press.

ALICIA OSTRIKER - New collection of poems next February: WAITING FOR THE LIGHT, University of Pittsburgh Press. Includes a suite of poems on New York City, my original hometown, where I now am again at last a citizen.

Alexis Rhone Fancher - My poem, "When I turned fourteen, my mother's sister took me to lunch and said:" was published in The Best American Poetry 2016.

Amy Small-McKinney - My second full-length book of poems, Walking Toward Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize 2016 and is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. It is due to be released end of January- beginning of February, 2017.

Lorene Delany-Ullman - In coloration with Jody Servon, our photography and prose poem project, Saved: Objects of the Dead, will be exhibited at Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill, NC in 2017.

Rebecca Foust - My short story, "Something Blue," won the 2015 American Literary Review fiction prize and was nominated for a Pushcart in 2016. Jane Hirshfeld chose "Iconostasis" for the 2015 Jame Hearst Poetry Prize and nominated it for a pushcart in 2016. New poems are in Arroyo Review, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and 32 Poems. I'm teaching the Sonnet workshop at West Chester Poetry Conference in 2017.

Diane Lockward - My book The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop was published in Sept 2016. In October 2016 I started Terrapin Books, a small press for poetry books.

bonnie stufflebeam - My novelette "The Orangery" just appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Trish Hopkinson - I have a chapbook entitled "Footnote" forthcoming from Lithic Press in 2017.

Julie Danho - In 2016, I received a $25,000 MacColl Johnson Fellowship to support the completion of my book manuscript:

Lana Hechtman Ayers - My poem the The Moon's Answer was published as a handmade, illustrated book by Anita K. Boyle of Egress Studio Press.

Ann Bracken - My second collection of poems, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom, was published by New Academia Publishing, Scarith Imprint, in January, 2017.

Natalie Voelker - I'm collaborating with Reyes Padilla on a large scale mural installation titled "La Joya 2017" for the Harwood Art Center that goes up the first week in March. Composed of 6 24 foot panels, the piece explores the lives of women and girls that attended the Harwood Girls School in the 1930s.

mary beth smith - I won the Peter Honegger Best One-Act Play award for KEEP A-BREAST, a play that offers insight to my bizarre experiences surviving breast cancer. KEEP A-BREAST was performed in The Firehouse Center for the Arts 2014 New Works Festival in Newburyport, MA, during which I received the Honegger award.

Sarah Ann Winn - My first book won the Barrow Street Book Prize, and will be published by Barrow Street Press in October 2017.

Erin M. Bertram - I have three chapbooks forthcoming: "from The Vanishing of Camille Claudel" (Seven Kitchens Press); "Relief Map" (C&R Press, a winner of the 2016 Summer Tide Pool Chapbook Competition); and "Gender/Genre" (Red Bird Chapbooks). I also have a poem forthcoming in "Tupelo Quarterly" entitled "There Is a Wilderness, There Will Always Be." And I have an upcoming artist residency at The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences in March 2017.

Carine Topal - "Tattooed," my poetry collection about the Holocaust, written in the voices of the victims, perpetrators, and the survivors, was chosen by Kelly Cherry, and won the 2015 Palettes & Quills 4th Annual Poetry Contest.

Jane Otto - I recently joined Poetry Society of America as a Board member

Joy Ladin - My eighth collection, Fireworks in the Graveyard, is due out this year from Headmistress Press.

Sue Ellen Thompson - My fifth book, THEY, is out and available on Amazon.com.

Melissa Balmain - Light (the journal of light verse I edit) has a wonderful new issue coming out in early Feb. '17 (and another due in early Aug. '17)

Francesca Bell - Red Hen Press will publish my first book in early 2019.

Meg Eden - My debut novel "Post-High School Reality Quest" is coming out in June!

Barbara Rockman - Askew Journal recently nominated my poem, "Ladder of Bone Rungs," for a Pushcart Prize. My second collection of poetry, "Cleave and Splinter" is forthcoming form University of New Mexico Press.

Sarah A. Chavez - I have work in the recently released anthology, IMANIMAN Anthology: A Call to Poets to Reflect on Gloria Anzaldúa and Transformative/Transgressive Borders.

Andrea Potos - I was just awarded the William Stafford Prize for Poetry from Rosebud Magazine.

Anne Harding Woodworth - See the animation of poems from my chapbook, The Last Gun.

Becky Breed - Our book "Writing tin Community: Say Goodbye to Writer's Block and Transform Your Life" is available for sale

Tara Betts - Just released my second poetry collection BREAK THE HABIT and co-edited THE BEIGING OF AMERICA, which will be released in Spring 2017.

Julie Brooks Barbour - My second full-length collection, Haunted City, is now available from Kelsay Books

Alyse Knorr - My new book Mega-City Redux, which contains the poems featured in BARED, launches at AWP 2017.

Lesléa Newman - My newest poetry collection, I CARRY MY MOTHER (Headmistress Press) which explores a daughter's journey through her mother's illness and death and how she carries on without her received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award ("Goldie") and was named a "Must Read" title by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Jackie Fox - My most recent news is having two of my poems accepted in Yellow Chair Review's pop culture issue.

Janet Ruth Heller - My poem "Flamboyance" was published by the online literary journal Persimmon Tree (Winter 2017).

Laura E. Davis - I'm starting a new interview series on my blog Dear Outer Space about the intersection of art and activism. I'm actively seeking people to participate!

KC Trommer - I'll be reading at three events in NYC in April.

Cathy Sarkowsky - Please see my website

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