Many thanks to River Urke, who invited me to visit her poetry interview series. It was a delight.
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Thanks to musician/composers Maura Bosch and Jeffrey Brooks, I've begun to curate the poetry for a monthly new music and poetry event, The Waves. Please join us any and every first Sunday at 5pm! Here is our brand new YouTube channel.  Genre Blenders
RESCHEDULED & VIRTUAL! Six 2-hour sessions, 10am-12pm central time January 15-February 19, 2021 Pay as you can: $120-$180 DM or contact me through my website! Start your new year by jumpstarting your writing practice! I run this private workshop for intermediate to advanced writers who are interested in blurred genres or in crossing genre (from poetry to prose or vice versa). We'll focus on writers who make it seem effortless: Claudia Rankine, Brian Blanchfield, Eleni Sikelianos, Bhanu Kapil, and Anne Carson, for example. For six 2-hour sessions, we'll read and discuss prose, poetry, and hybrid texts by one or two authors each week, I'll give a mini craft talk, and we'll generate writing based on prompts. You'll leave our time together with enough inspiration and supplemental prompts to keep you going long after the course ends. Labyrinth of the First Draft: A Virtual Workshop
6-8pm central time, Zoom November 21st, 2020 Pay as you can: $20-$30 Email here for registration instructions! Prepare for winter's inward journey. We will explore how to incorporate this tool of reflection and discovery into our writing practice by drawing labyrinths and using the tool to both generate new writing and to re-see stuck work. We'll play with labyrinth-inspired prompts. We will read a bit of mythology, contemporary poetry, consider archetype, engage the body, and examine other potential blocks in our paths. Participants will leave with some fresh writing and the ability to draw their own finger labyrinths, which pattern can be adapted to create full-size labyrinths with stones, chalk, sand, or snow in your yard or neighborhood park.  There are some spots left in this rescheduled workshop now that it has moved from my living room to Zoom. I would love to "see" you there. Email below to sign up!
In the Cards: A Generative Poetry/Tarot Workshop RESCHEDULED & VIRTUAL! SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24th, 5:45-8:00pm Central Pay as you can: $20-$30 Email here for registration instructions! Image, insight, archetype. Your Tarot deck may provide guidance, but how can you also use the deck to generate or revise your poems? I will give a brief introduction of Tarot for newcomers and provide examples of a couple spreads. We’ll read and discuss a few famously Tarot-inspired poems, and I'll describe the process I've been using the past couple years. After that, we’ll generate work using the cards. Please feel free to bring your own deck if you’ve got one! If not, that's okay, too! If you have resolved to focus on your writing this year, maybe I can help! Spring and Summer are my best, most energized seasons to dedicate to manuscript review and personalized writing project coaching. Please check out my services and be in touch here if you would like to talk about working together to forward your goals.
Also, the following small classes in Northeast Minneapolis are now open for registration: Sunday, April 19th, 10am-2pm In the Cards: A Generative Poetry/Tarot Workshop $30, Email here to reserve your spot! Image, insight, archetype. Your Tarot deck may provide guidance, but how can you use the deck to generate or revise your poems? I will give a brief introduction of Tarot for newcomers and provide examples of a couple spreads. We’ll read and discuss a few famously Tarot-inspired poems, and I'll describe the process I've been using the past couple years. After that, we’ll generate work using the cards. Please feel free to bring your own deck if you’ve got one! 6 Thursdays: July 9th-August 13th, 6:30-8:30pm Genre Blenders $180, Fills quickly! Contact me here to reserve your spot! I run this very small private workshop for intermediate to advanced writers who are interested in blurred genres or in crossing genre (from poetry to prose or vice versa). We'll focus on writers who make it seem effortless: Claudia Rankine, Brian Blanchfield, Eleni Sikelianos, Bhanu Kapil, and Anne Carson, for example. For six 2-hour sessions, we'll read and discuss prose, poetry, and hybrid texts by one or two authors each week, I'll give a mini craft talk, and we'll generate writing based on prompts. You'll go home with enough inspiration and supplemental prompts to keep you going long after the course ends. In a first attempt to blog at least monthly, I would like to share information about the League of Minnesota Poets Fall Conference, at which Jack and I will be presenting a multimedia exploration of solo and collaborative work. Our fellow presenters include See More Perspective, Lisa Marie Brimmer, John Medeiros, Sherrie Fernandez-Williams, Andrea Jenkins, and Downrange Telemetrics.  Many years ago in Minneapolis, I went on a date to The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. (I know. It’s gone now, but that it existed at all is one of the many things I love about this city.) The museum housed, among other gems, a phrenology machine, an electric permanent wave contraption, and an x-ray machine for shoe stores, so a salesman could show you how roomy your bones looked inside your brand new loafers.
There was also a working Strength Test Machine: a red box with two metal bars sticking up. After you deposited two dimes and wrapped one fist around each bar, an increasing electric current would begin to course up your arms. The machine timed how long you could endure, up to a minute. My date went first. He held on for nearly the whole time, shaking and purple-faced by the end. It seemed like some kind of record. Then I stepped up, popped my dimes in and held on. At the first tickle of electric buzz, I let go. Fuck that, I said. It was going to be a minute of senseless pain I didn't care about and could avoid. Why? Quitting in general has been on my mind. When is giving up abandonment and when is it liberation? Quitting broken systems and structures heals. I've quit some things too soon and some too late. I don't doubt--or I should say I no longer doubt--my own tenacity or dedication to what matters, but what about my tenacity or dedication to what doesn't? Why haven't I, historically, released the hurtful, the broken, the restricting, the outgrown? When do I still cling? I wish in the years that followed I had consistently held onto the clarity I experienced at the Strength Test Machine. I'd have had more of myself left for what's worth holding tight to and sometimes suffering through. Over the last few years, however, letting go has become a favorite activity, and it is largely what my collection of poems quitter is about. Days before the book was officially released, I came across this essay about quitting and raising kids to be quitters by Nora McInerny, and her writing here makes me feel like a human being. If you haven’t read it yet, you might like it a lot.  The last labyrinth of 2016, December 28th, just off Bee Caves Road in Austin, TX.
Plus a list of books read in 2016, which I would like to exceed in 2017. (Recommendations welcome.) January: Lisa Ciccarello, I Only Thought of the Farm Dean Young, 31 Poems James Grinwis, Exhibit of Forking Paths Anis Shivani, My Tranquil War Linda Bierds, The Ghost Trio (partial read) Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry (first part) Audiobook: Brene Brown: Rising Strong Bookshelf revisit: C.D. Wright, Steal Away " " Further Adventures with You Foucault: Discipline and Punish February: Lyn Hejinian: The Language of Inquiry (second part) C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed Pauline Boss: Ambiguous Loss Jennifer L. Knox: Days of Shame and Failure Necropastorals: Mary Austin Speaker Some Planet: Jamie Mortara Poets and Pints one year Anthology Verlyn Klinkenborg: Several Short Sentences About Writing Franny Choi: Floating, Brilliant, Gone Bookshelf revisit: Kazim Ali: Fasting for Ramadan Audiobook: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah March Lyn Hejinian: The Language of Inquiry (last part) Mary Karr: The Art of Memoir Steve Roggenbuck: Live my Lief Bookshelf Revisit: Nick Flynn: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City Upton Sinclair: The Jungle Audiobook: Roxanne Gay: Bad Feminist April Wendy Xu: You Are Not Dead Mary Karr: Lit Jennifer Tamayo: Red Missed Aches.... Henri Michaux transl. by Paige Taggart: I Am Writing to You from Another Country Juliet Patterson: Epilogue Brian Blanchfield: Proxies Audiobook: David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest (1/5th) May Hieu Minh Nguyen: This Way to the Sugar Lee Ann Brown: Polyverse Laura's unpublished manuscript Luke Pingel: Happy Apocalypse Day manuscript Gary McDowell: Mysteries in a World that Thinks there are None Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven Michael Robins: Ladies & Gentlemen Audiobook: Vincent Pedre: Happy Gut June Brett's manuscript Nicelle Davis: The Walled-Up Wife Franz Kafka: Aphorisms Ed Skoog: Rough Day Mary Biddinger: O Holy Insurgency Juan Felipe Herrera: Facegames Audiobook: Zadie Smith: White Teeth July Thomas Foster: How to Read Literature Like a Professor Cole Swensen: Ours Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Enigmas Hugh Behm-Steinberg: The Opposite of Work Dorothea Laskey: Black Life Leslie Adrienne Miller: Y Haley Lasche: Where it Leads Audiobook: Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me August Joni Tevis: the World is on Fire Francine Sterle: What Thread? Robin Coste Lewis: Voyage of the Sable Venus Sun Yung Shin, Ed: A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota Katie Rauk: Buried Choirs Diane Seuss: Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open Karen Babine: Water and What we Know Audiobook: Patti Smith: M Train September Lydia Yuknavich: the Chronology of Water (half) DJ Dolack: Whittling a New Face in the Dark Timothy Liu: Burnt Offerings Diane Seuss: Four Legged Girl Sarah Manguso: Ongoingness Bookshelf revisit: Brooklyn Copeland: Borrowed House Audiobook: Haruki Murakami: the wind-up Bird Chronicles October Ruth Ozeki: My Year of Meats Shane McCrae: In Canaan November Inger Christensen: Alphabet (reread) Sarah Manguso: Two Kinds of Decay Seamus Heaney trans. Sophocles: A Burial at Thebes (reread) December Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Dictee Inger Christensen: It MC Hyland: Mississippi Walk Poems Li-Young Lee: Behind my Eyes (reread) Lydia Yuknavivich: The Chronology of Water (half) |
About this:It's my second attempt at blogging; my first was here. And the blog archive for one of my former reading series, the Imaginary Press Reading Series, is here. Archives
October 2024
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