hey non-poets

ryan fitzpatrick wants to write you a poem. With content of your choice. And a form of your choice. The only thing he doesn't seem to promise is that it will be any good - a smart idea!

If I could play, I'd want a lipogrammatic English sonnet using no vowels, on the subject of eating dry toast. Just saying...

p.s. See you tonight?

a person speaking to persons

Poets don't need dream readers, they need real readers - readers who sometimes criticize what they cherish and cherish what they criticize. But we've forgotten who these people are. Instead we make ourselves giddy whipping up new art-organisms and poem-shapes - stuff that doesn't know who or what it's for. Getting a poem under someone's skin and lodging it there: does anyone give a fig about that anymore? The theory-speak idea of the "other" has, with its fetishizing of difference, killed any sense of obligation toward the collective experience, the shared sense of what it means to be human. As the late Stanley Kunitz once wrote, the true vocation of the poet is to be a generalist, "a person speaking to persons." And for me this is the challenge, to burn through the specialism of our art and touch some rock-bottom sense of the reader's lived experience. And it's the boredom of that reader, his indifference to any special pleading on behalf of the "originality" of our poems, that keeps our art honest... I've always liked the old-school idea of poetry as simply another kind of reading material that intellectually curious folks can take an interest in. It's an honorable notion worth preserving, and a welcome corrective to the avant-wankery of our era.

- Carmine Starnino, from a 2006 interview in Northern Poetry Review. You can read the whole thing here.

ogov ftw

I recently found out that Daniela Elza's poem "Savannah Rain, West Africa," which was originally published last year over at One Ghana, One Voice, was selected as a finalist for Sundress Publication's Best of the Net 2009 (the full list of finalists is here).

Though Daniela's poem wasn't selected as a winner, I'm still incredibly proud of her and OGOV. Daniela's poetry is excellent, so her inclusion isn't that surprising. OGOV's, however... well, whoda thunk a little website like ours, which only accepts writing by Africans and on Africa, would get a poem selected as a finalist among poems by Sherman Alexie, Dorianne Laux, Kim Addonizio, etc.?

I'm continually impressed by the poets at OGOV. It was very difficult for me to pick only five poems to nominate for Best of the Net 2009. Though just Daniela's poem made it to the final round of consideration, I like to think of the submission as a team effort - Daniela's poem being picked to represent them all. The five nominated poems:

Dry Season in Eremon by Edith Faalong
Ananse’s Grave by Kae Sun
Savannah Rain, West Africa by Daniela Elza
The Train by Prince Mensah
Odomankoma’s Drummer by Kwadwo Kwarteng

Thank you to OGOV's writers and readers for your continued interest and support, and to the people at Best of the Net 2009 for taking a look at our little site!

p.s. Daniela has blogged about this here.

some last may-nute readings

Worst post title yet? That was my goal...

Two more readings before the month is over, added both here and to the big list:

Spiritual Smorgasbord: An Evening of Poetry
Wednesday, May 26th, 7:00 PM
The Wired Monk
2610 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver
Featuring: Kate Braid, Ken Klosky, Susan McCaslin, Richard Osler and Sandy Shreve
$5


"Henry Chao and Other Stories" Launch
Saturday, May 29, 2:00 - 4:00 PM
CK Choi Building, Room 120
1855 West Mall, UBC
Featuring: Evelyn Lau, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Paul Yee and more!
Free!

Oh, and don't forget that I'm reading, along with Taryn Hubbard and others, this Friday at One Cool Word 's 4th Birthday Party. The details:

One Cool Word 4th Birthday Party
Friday, May 28th, 8:00 PM
Blim
115 E Pender St., Vancouver
Featuring: Trisha Cull, Taryn Hubbard, me, and more!
Free!

Hope to see you there!

2010 Pandora's Poetry Awards - Go Vote!

The finalists for the aforementioned Pandora's Poetry Awards (for community involvement) have been announced. There are four categories, five finalists for three of the categories, one selected by the Collective:

Organizer/Promoter

Steve Duncan
Heather Haley
Ariadne Sawyer
Fernanda Viveiros
RC Weslowski


BC Writing Mentor

Ivan Coyote
Brad Cran
Jen Currin
Eileen Kernaghan
Betsy Warland


Publisher

Warren Dean Fulton (Pooka Press)
Memewar Arts and Publishing Society (Memewar)
Paul Taylor (Downtown Eastside Newsletter)
Alan Twigg (BC Bookworld)
David Zieroth (Alfred Gustav Press)


Pandora's Collective Citizenship Award

Daniela Elza

Congrats to Daniela for her well-deserved recognition. And to the finalists for the other awards. It's refreshing to be reminded of all that's happening out there in Vancouver - and to think of how many more individuals and organizations could have been included among the finalists (a list many times longer than this one)!

Alright, now go vote for the winners!

poetry in transit contest

Win lots of free books from the BC incarnation of everyone's favorite poetry-where-poetry-should-not-be project. Yeah, Toronto Poetry Vendors, I said it. Good try, tho. You're top three for sure!

poetry + democracy + bourgeois comfort

Given the ability our poets have to write poems that penetrate differences and discover connection, and given poetry’s ancient predisposition for moral persuasion, surely America’s poets are uniquely qualified to speak openly in the public square among diverse or divisive communities. That’s why for an American poet to be something like a subversive today would mean not pushing further inward into the huddles of poetry, but the opposite. The poet who engages democratic dialogue and political life is the renegade, while the one who lives on the margins, settles into tenured existence, or remains committed to engaging only other like-minded types has aligned himself with something that in its best, purest, and most satisfying form is bourgeois comfort. What’s missing in our Republic’s public discourse is the poet’s mastery of reflection. The — I swore I wasn’t going to use this expression, but here goes — “unacknowledged legislators of the world” is one of poetry’s great, self-glorifying characterizations. But perhaps some acknowledged legislating on behalf of mankind wouldn’t be such a bad thing either — for poetry or for democracy.

- David Biespiel, from his article "This Land is Our Land" in the May 2010 issue of Poetry. You can read the whole thing here.

one (final) cool word

One Cool Word is having one last birthday party under its soon-to-be-former name, and they've invited me to tag along and read a poem or two. There will be readings and music and buttons!

Hope to see you there! The details are below, and on the big list:

One Cool Word 4th Birthday Party
Friday, May 28th, 8:00 PM
Blim
115 E Pender St., Vancouver
Featuring: Trisha Cull, Taryn Hubbard, me, and more!
Free (tho you should bring some money to blow on nifty things)

an answer

In answer to my question about the decline of my favourite poetry blog, Al Rempel passed on the link to the new plan for Harriet (Thanks, Al!). Apparently Facebook is where it's at now, which means I'm out of luck. No one tell the folks at the Poetry Foundation about this story:

Google Canada reports that the top online search related to "Facebook account" is "delete Facebook," while the fastest-rising related query is "deactivate Facebook account," up 40 per cent over the past 90 days. Worldwide, the search engine's results on Facebook account deletion ballooned from 15.9 million to 19.5 million between Tuesday and Thursday alone.

You thought you'd break us by taking our favourite poetry blog, didn't you Facebook? Ah, but this has only strengthened our resolve. Facebook resistors, unite! Our moment is at hand. Take it away, William:

Poetry Blogger: Blog? Against that? No! We will join. And we will network.

William Wallace: Aye, resist Facebook and ye may lose a few flaky readers. Join, and you'll network with them... at least a while. And sitting at your computer, many pokes from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days of networking, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell Mark Zuckerberg that he may take our readership, but he'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

All: BLOGA U BRÀTH! BLOGA U BRÀTH! BLOGA U BRÀTH!

a question

Can someone please tell me what happened to Harriet? It used to be my favourite poetry blog. Granted, last month's seemingly endless run of posts about a writers' convention made for lousy content, but at least it was content! Now it's just another news aggregator. If I wanted to read event listings and excerpts from other people's posts I'd read my own blog...

UPDATE: An answer!