dumbfoundry

A discussion followed in which I no longer took notes – my arm was hurting terribly at this point. General impressions: Kiriu is egotistical but in a very interesting way, in a grand tradition of literary egoists. I didn’t find her to be like that one-on-one at all, but on stage, she spoke first and always spoke longest, she managed to tell us that she had seven different pen names, that she was a science-fiction writer as well as a poet, that she has won prestigious prizes, and that she came from a suburb of Tokyo whose aspiration, when she was growing up, was to be utterly interchangeable with any other suburb, like the one in “Bewitched,” and that she therefore considers herself to have come from a kind of factory. With her severe “literary” bob and kakko-ii men’s suit, I was really interested in how she was playing the role of herselves and also how she was breaking the rule of modesty for Japanese women in her discourse style. She certainly fits a kind of market niche of a new hipster perception of what’s cool about Japan – sort of a woman-poet version of Takashi Murakami but with serious gender smarts and a helluva lotta moxie.

Month-long residential summer fellowships are available to New York State-resident visual and literary artists working in the categories of poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction, painting, sculpture, photography, or other visual arts...

Deadline: January 15, 2007

I love bad poetry. What it lacks in aesthetic appeal it more than makes up for in amusement value. Until this month, the best places to find bad poetry were the New Yorker and poetry.com's real-time poetry contest entry feed. Now we have Allen Ginsberg's The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems, 1937–1952.

It's fitting that Ginsberg's juvenilia should serve as a beacon in the night of bad poetry—after all, his influence is responsible for roughly 60 percent of bad American poetry written today. The poems collected here anticipate the million adolescent wails that followed Howl—they consist of fruitless imitations of other poets, strident cliché, and forehead-slapping sentimentality. Ginsberg remained a bad poet until the end, and his later work isn't nearly as fun to read. It falls in the New Yorker category of bad poetry (albeit with more drugs and pederasty, fewer barns and grandfathers): well-wrought garbage for people with different taste than mine. [...]

The English translation of a compilation of Urdu poetry titled, “Marsiya-e-Marge-Zameer” which could be roughly translated to, “Death of Conscience; an elegy” by Feza Aazmi sounds wonderful. The images make the long elegy unique and modern.

Farzana Ahmad, wife of the veteran poet, has done a great job by translating the works into English from Urdu. The poet himself says, “This book would not have been possible without the warm-hearted cooperation of Farzana Ahmad, my wife, who went out of her way to offer to translate the original Urdu poem, ‘Marsiya-e-Marg-e-Zameer’.” [...]

The system may be flawed, but few would abolish it. Frank Moorhouse, recipient of many past grants, argues writers should be well paid, not for unwritten books but when their work is borrowed, copied or quoted. As books go out of copyright 50 years after their authors' death, it would be useful to keep paying a 'social royalty' into a fund, he suggests. Then dead writers could support the living. The catch is that someone would still have to decide who gets the money.

This particular box of books could be all yours for a low low price of $50 plus $5 shipping (book rate). That's $55 for a bunch of books that are worth more than $100. (The new issue of the Chicago Review alone will cost you $22 retail.)

How great of a bargain is it? If we didn't already own this box of books, we'd be buying this box of books.

Why do we sell our books so cheap? Because our apartment is being swallowed up by books. Please take these books off our hands!

A standing ovation greeted the veteran Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer at this year's South Bank Poetry International. More than 50 years since his first collection appeared, he is now disabled by a stroke and unable to read his work, so this new selection was read by the Swedish actor Krister Henriksson.

A drunken poet heard shouting "burn down the mosques" in a town centre was set free yesterday after magistrates accepted that he had been composing. [...]

'Kavita Trust’ which promotes and promulgates Konkani poets and their works and Mandd Sobhann (R) in association with Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Akademi are organising a mega poetry event. This two-day programme will attract people related to poetry from Konkani speaking places mainly from Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra Kerala and the Gulf. This grand event called 'Kavita Fest' will be held on January 6 and 7 at Mangalore's Kalaangann. [...]

Brownsburg -- Brownsburg library officials aren't expecting a revival of the Beat Generation, but they hope that naming the town's first poet laureate spurs interest in the arts and literature. [...]

Evans' first act will be to recite a poem at the dedication of the town's new government center today. The poem, written this week, is "Our Brownsburg. [...]

While bedridden this summer after foot surgery, Evans read the works of three poets who had battled mental illness -- Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton.

"I was a little down and I thought it might cheer me up to compare my situation to suicidal poets," she said. [...]

As part of its continued growth beyond the original (print & electronic) magazine & associated chapbooks, Otoliths is pleased to announce the publication of two new books.

DREDGING FOR ATLANTIS by Eileen Tabios
http://www.lulu.com/content/470167

EILEEN TABIOS' publications include 14 poetry collections, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, and a short story book. DREDGING FOR ATLANTIS, her 11th print poetry collection, extends a body of work unique for melding ekphrasis with a transcolonial perspective. Here, she introduces her translation of the painterly technique of scumbling to create poems from other poets' words. From other writers' texts, she also extracts sequences of the hay(na)ku, a poetic form she inaugurated on June 12, 2003 to mark the 105th Anniversary of Philippines' Independence Day from Spain.

the allegrezza ficcione by Mark Young
http://www.lulu.com/content/437263


MARK YOUNG's the allegrezza ficcione is a speculative novella about journeys — the contemporary journey of Umberto Allegrezza as he seeks to discover the truth about a legendary journey East from Europe made by an ancestor decades before before Marco Polo. Other journeys are intertwined; the journey made before Tripitaka to bring back the Buddhist sutras to China, the relocation of the Library of Alexandria, the continued existence of the followers of Hassan-i-Sabah. First serialized on the author's blog and now available for the first time in its entirety, the allegrezza ficcione blurs the line between fiction and fact.

Both books are available through the respective link above for $10 plus postage.

The Otoliths' Storefront can be found at http://www.lulu.com/l_m_young

I am often coupled with Frank O’Hara these days, because of our poems about the movies and movie stars, considered to be a genre we pioneered. But before all that, when we had our brief affair in 1955, I’d come to a dead end in my poetry, and I’d just walked out of my group analysis that had shredded my already-shaky ego. I felt burned out, so when Frank invited me up to his place after we met at the Egan Gallery, I was willing to try anything. [...]

In honor of O’Hara’s 80th birthday, the Poet’s House, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, and MoMA are hosting the Frank O’Hara Festival from Nov. 28-30. For information on specific events, visit http://poetshouse.org/progcoming.htm.

[...] Ted was a great storyteller: for example, his version of the day he received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In the morning he and Carol, his second wife, met Sir John Betjeman at a hotel near Buckingham Palace. They drank quite a lot of vodka and tonics before setting off for Buckingham Palace in a cab. At the Palace, they drove into the inner courtyard – where there was an awning and a red carpet. Betjeman at that time was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and had drunk a fair bit. He emerged from the cab on his hands and knees and, playing it for laughs, began to crawl up the red carpet, hooting with laughter. Carol was stopped by an equerry from taking photographs. Inside the palace, they drank sherry because everything was behind schedule. The Queen was delayed, having sherry with a Commonwealth Prime Minister. More sherry was pressed on Ted and Sir John. Finally, more than a little tipsy, they left Carol behind and ascended in a small golden lift to Her Majesty’s chambers. Betjeman comically scratched the gold of the lift and wondered if it was twenty-four-carat. Then the double doors opened on the Queen. She too was merry by this time. She was also very small. Ted: “You know she’s small, but this was like meeting Alice in Wonderland. She’s this big” – and he measured an inch between his finger and thumb. [...]

For Fiona Wood, the challenge was imposing her own deadlines when she switched from writing commissioned scripts for television to writing a novel and a fi lm script. 'This place gives me structure,' she says. 'I love the working vibe,' says John Reeves, who is working on a draft of a film script. He agrees with his studio neighbour, poet Mal McKimmie, that 'you can work here late at night without a worry in the world, because all the ghosts are friendly'.

Glenfern is not short of ghosts. The painter Arthur Merric Boyd lived here — the home was bought by his father, Captain John Boyd in 1876 — and his wife Emma Minnie Boyd used the bay window setting in the drawing room for the well-known painting Afternoon Tea. Arthur Merric Boyd's grandson, the novelist Martin Boyd, wrote about Glenfern in 1952 in his book The Cardboard Crown.

While the studios have been renovated in minimalist style and painted white, the house's two large reception rooms have been restored in high Victorian style, using Emma Minnie Boyd's painting as a guide. The makers of the film Ned Kelly did the work in exchange for use of the rooms for filming.

'But they left the cracks in the ceiling,' says Victorian Writers' Centre director Joel Becker. 'They said, ‘Oh, we're not shooting up there.' 'The drawing room will be used for public literary events such as a series of Sunday afternoon conversations: in fine weather, visitors will spread out into the gardens. 'We will create a cultural life, but we also won't forget that people are here for quiet times and quiet space,' Becker says.

From January, Australia's first national poetry centre, the Poetry Australia Foundation, will start up business in a large upstairs space. With initial funding of $140,800 from Copyright Agency Limited, the centre will offer offices, a library and a series of programs including tours, workshops and promotional activities. The foundation's director, Ron Pretty, says there is already a strong interest and energy in Australian poetry. The centre will focus and co-ordinate that energy to stimulate further growth and interest, in Australia and overseas.

Mzi Mahola was born on 12 February 1949 as Mzikayise Winston Mahola. Mzi Mahola is his nom de plume. He started writing while he was at school. The Special Branch confiscated his first poetry manuscript in 1976 [...]

The Poetry Writers' Yearbook is in its first edition, and is part of the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook series. They are calling for submissions for poems of up to 30 lines on the theme of winter. The poetry competition is open to all ages, professions and nationalities.

Prizes include £300 in cash, or £500 of A & C Black books and publication of the poem on the A&C Black website.

Entries are only accepted by email once the entrant has registered their details on the A&C Black website. Only one entry per person will be accepted. There is no entry fee.

Dear Poetry Reviewer,

If you would like to review a poetry publication for GALATEA RESURRECTS (A POETRY ENGAGEMENT), you can choose what to review from your sources or from list of review copies sent to us. All reviewing styles are acceptable; in general, I suggest that you excerpt from poems to exemplify whatever points you make in your review.

Eileen Tabios

[...] No doubt Howl will continue to be recognized as an essential twentieth-century poem, but if we aspire this year to recognize the anniversary of a Ginsberg poem that still seems relevant and challenging, we should fast-forward ten years to 1966, when the iconic Beat poet penned "Wichita Vortex Sutra"--an antiwar lament that carries an observational honesty not present in the MTV din of Howl. [...]

I love you. You love me. I want to sleep with you. I hate you. You betrayed me. I betrayed you. Such are the simple propositions of romantic lyrics. But how much more complicated do they become if, as is the case with many of our most celebrated poems, the poet is addressing a lover of the same sex, asks James Fenton [...]

[...] Some who were there dispute MacSweeney's version of events. On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Festival of Sparty Lea, it remains a hot topic on message boards and poetry websites. One thing at least is beyond dispute: after the Cambridge Marxist-obscurantist poet Jeremy Prynne told the Newcastle poet Tom Pickard to keep his young son quiet during a reading, Pickard went outside and smashed his Land Rover into Prynne's half- timbered Morris Oxford saloon. [...]

"Ron Silliman just sent an email to the Buffalo Poetics list to alert everyone that apparently, Bill O'Reilly is going to attack Bruce Andrews in his editorial on tonight's O'Reilly factor because Andrews assigned the book 'The Top 5 Lies Bush Told About Iraq' to one of his classes."

"The VCCA is pleased to offer workshops for writers at our beautiful new facility in Auvillar, a tiny unspoiled village in the south of France located between Toulouse and Bordeaux, three hours north of Barcelona taking place on June 21-27, 2007. Led by award-winning writers, these workshops are geared toward all levels of writers, will feature much individual attention, and will draw upon the charm and beauty of this quaint village.

"This intensive workshop provides both group and individual sessions and a combination of discussion, writing prompts and workshop.

"The cost of the workshop is $2195 and includes accommodations at a charming local hotel, all meals, introductions to the region and walking tours of Auvillar."

"I started this page for two reasons. To give people thinking of submitting their work somewhere an idea of how long that outlet will take to respond (because they usually take longer than they say, or don't say at all), and also encourage places that don't respond at all, to start doing so. No writer likes waiting for a response that will never arrive. This was inspired by Critters.org, who do the same thing with fiction outlets. Dates are written in the U.K. way. These are guidelines, not definitive: Response times vary according to the number of pieces in a submission, and whether or not an outlet is thinking of accepting that submission. Also, there are always unforseen events that lengthen response times; one such example that i know of is a wedding. The most accurate figures here are the ones based on two or more submissions. Another inaccuracy: If queries were sent, this might quicken response; however, if no response was received to the submission or query, then you know that outlet is doubly rude."

"First time. There's a first time for everything. The obvious: first kiss, first love, first sex. The first day of school. Less obvious: first time around the block, first poem, first loss, first Christmas you remember. This first time for everything theme is wide open, so we don't want to limit you with our suggestions. Surprise us!

We are looking for memoir and essay, for poetry, fiction, photography, artwork."

The Louvre is inviting slam poets into its gilded galleries to rap about paintings. If that seems unusual, it is.

With Toni Morrison as guest curator this month, the museum is dreaming up new ways to look at art.

"It's been over three years since I concocted the hay(na)ku, a poetic form that involves a tercet whose first line is one word, second line two words, and third line three words. Since Philippine Independence Day, June 12, in 2003 when the form was announced to the public, numerous poets from around the world have written hay(na)ku."