Crg Hill's poetry scorecard

Call for Material: Direct Poetics

from Drew Kunz via Nico Vassilakis:

Hello all

Just a note to let you know that I'm planning on publishing a small mail-out
periodical called DIRECT POETICS

It's free but donations will not be turned down

No poetry, however, only essays, notes, reviews, etc presented in simple
format--photocopied sheets, staple-bound, half folded, and mailed out--

So if you'd like to submit, or join the mailing list, I set up an email
account at directpoetics@lycos.com or write me at 8630 Wardwell Rd,
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Hope all is well with you

Yrs, Drew

George's Squirrel Bait?

Didn't Laura check to see that George had been sufficiently zipped? Or was George just glad to see Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi?

"Outsider" Poets for the Carrboro Poetry Festival Needed

From Patrick Herron:

"Outsider" poets for the Carrboro Poetry Festival

The 2004 Carrboro Poetry Festival was a success beyond any anticipation, and so I am charged with the mission of organizing the 2005 Festival, to be held May 21 and 22 in downtown Carrboro, North Carolina.  The coming festival should ideally be of the same scale and feel--what I am aimimg to improve upon is our ability to subsidize travel and accomodations for out-of-town readers.  I am also working on developing the festival with respect to its independent status: the festival has no formal ties to any business or university--it is rooted in progressive community government.

Brian Blanchfield, Brian Henry, Carl Martin, Chris Murray, Daniel Wideman, Gerald Barrax, Joseph Donahue, Hassen, Jaki Shelton Green, K. Silem Mohammad, Lee Ann Brown, Linh Dinh, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Ravi Shankar, and Standard Schaefer were just some of the readers at the 2004 event.  Several accounts of the event as well as a complete audio archive are available at the festival website: http://www.carrboropoetryfestival.org

In order to further the mission of independence, I am looking for writers of spectacular poetry who have operated and continue to operate *outside* the twin pillars of poetry: slam and academia.  While I will feature slam and academic poets at the 2005 festival just as I did with the 2004 fest, I believe there is a sort of middle ground that I would like to be more strongly represented, a middle ground that is hard to identify.  Specifically, I am having a difficult time identifying poets who operate outside of the aforementioned two worlds that seem to dominate poetry.

That a poet has either participated in slams or published in academic-oriented publications does not preclude a poet from consideration.  What I am specifically looking for are names of poets who have *not* received university-level degrees (or are not currently pursuing such degrees) in creative writing/language arts/lit, and who do not teach literature or poetry at the university level.  While it is easy to find such "outsider" poets abroad, I find it increasingly hard to find poets in the US who are not somehow tied to university poetics or the American creative writing industry.

My aim is to represent a diverse poetics at the festival--it is not my intention to exclude academics or slammers.  I wish to represent the poetry of all three groups.

Send names, contact info, and especially poetry.

Patrick Herron
patrick@proximate.org

   Author of _The American Godwar Complex_ (BlazeVOX),
            now available @  http://proximate.org/tagc
                      Bio http://proximate.org/bio.htm
                  Works http://proximate.org/works.htm
             Close Quarterly http://closequarterly.org
Carrboro Poetry Fest http://carrboropoetryfestival.org

An Eye-Provoking Web on the Web

Check out the growing web of Spidertangle. If you haven't visited the book in a while, you'll be delighted by the many recent additions:

http://www.spidertangle.net/the_book/index.html

fluent

fluent

the fire

and be a

fire's

the cause

full of doubt

From the Nature

Share the universe with other forms

of intelligence. First follow him

as he catalogues conclusions

in order to leap with him

Perhaps out of a fear of sounding

as "a ramble" it embraces the sky

putting stars to flight

earth becomes a dreadful

milk-white eye that grows

A comet on a collision course

with frozen trouble

He sees "a turbulent streak"

when the dinosuars died out

while looking spiral away

like water down a drain

Parallel lines of faith and logic

snake together, brain evolved

in real world, full of break-your-bones

Or are we a means

by which to learn about the universe

An old poem (circa 90-92) that bespeaks for new undercurrents....

Call for Materials for Ferrum Wheel 6

Ferrum Wheel, a mixed media assembling focused on handmades and uniquities, is seeking  submissions consisting of absolutely anything, in absolutely any medium (objects welcomed).  Collage work, handwritten, paint, found, sewn, vispo, sound poetry, tar and feathered, all is welcome. The only restriction:  the contributor must provide 50 one-of-a-kind items - they may be similar in theme and construction, but they cannot be reproductions.

It is the responsibility/challenge/creative spark of the editor/assembler(Christopher Fritton) to find an appropriate vessel for contributions.  Please note that your work, once released to Ferrum Wheel, may fall victim to editorial
modification (in other words you may not recognize your piece as your piece when you get it back). 

To peruse previous issues of Ferrum Wheel, check out:

http://ferrumwheel.blogspot.com

Previous contributors include: 

Richard Kostelanetz, John M. Bennett, Mike Basinski, Alan Sondheim, Sheila Murphy, Ben Friedlander, ric royer, Karissa Cove, Lindsey Zier-Vogel, Shana MacDonald, Bill Howe, and many others.

All inquiries, samples of work, etc. should be sent to

ferrumwheel@gmail.com

All submissions (tentative deadline March 30, 2005) go to:

christopher fritton
284 french st.
bangor, ME 04401

Why I Just Might Vote for Many of the Teenagers I Know Over Their Elders

Robert F. Kennedy: "Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope… These ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." But one of fifty-four thought-provoking quotations chiseled into the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, tucked beautifully into the banks of the Boise River between Idaho’s capitol and Boise State University, Kennedy’s statement retains its relevancy.

I love this human rights memorial: so superbly designed that every time I’ve visited, the busy north-south traffic coursing the streets on both ends dissolves -- the site and content and enveloping context/s screen out the extraneous. Idaho has an underserved reputation for bigotry (one loud, now deceased – thanks be to Morris Dees – aryan nations compound); this memorial is a wave for the 99.9999999999% of Idahoans who despised Richard Butler and his two dozen errant knaves.

In Boise for a state-wide student council conference, I marked a site visit as one of the few mandatory events. We went on the third morning, students yammering, buzzing about how late they stayed up the night before, who snores, who half-woke to utter some eternal inanity. I left the bus without saying anything. I went to the far end of the memorial (having visited before, I knew I had to be alone, private in my despair, in my hope). Students followed, chattering, bantering, as is their wont. But the talk skittered to a stop as soon as they came into one of the two reading circles. Students read, reflected, despaired and hoped, virtually without a word for I don't know how long. Students, joined at the hip, individuated, observed the memorial at their own pace, in their own space, experiencing their world as they never had before. I had the impression that their world will never be the same.

Post 11-2, I’d vote for these teenagers, the thoughts, the feelings, that informed their facial expressions and postures (there were no do-it-my-way-or-else struts), that filled their silence with ripples that will grow into tides, into insights, into definitive actions, into ways of being, surging onto beaches we cannot conceive of.

Karl Rove & Joseph Goebbels: Sibling Rivalry

Karl Rove Joseph Goebbels

Karl Joseph Rove Goebbels

Joseph Karl Goebbels Rove

Joseph Goebbels Karl Rove

Gays Lesbians and Jews

Gays Lesbians and Jews

Karl Rove Joseph Goebbels

Karl Joseph Rove Goebbels

Joseph Karl Goebbels Rove

Joseph Goebbels Karl Rove

Gays Lesbians and Jews

Gays Lesbians and Jews

Gays Lesbians and Jews

Gays Lesbians and Jews

SAD & BAD

SAD = seasonal affective disorder. BAD = Bush affective disorder. I've got a mild case of the former, heavier as days grow shorter, growing lighter after the winter solstice as daylight pushes back some of the dark. I've got an overwhelming dose of the latter and I see no turning point, no astronomical marker, in the four year shadow looming over us.

I have one friend who has secured sponsorship for residency in Canada. "Not far enough away," most people tell him. This same friend also thinks Bush may not survive the anger, the hatred, he's inspired. This friend says he will not mourn such a loss.

One of my colleagues got an e-mail from his wife on Wednesday. "Come home soon. I'm getting drunk. Call AA in four years."

I have students considering what worlds to apply to rather than what colleges. I have seen outgoing Sarah K., one of the bravest students I've known (hospitalized for life-threatening illnesses more than once), one of the biggest go-getters, reduced to tears, wrestling with despair.

I grope for perspective, for courage in -- where else? -- words, the very medium Karl Rover used so effectively to galvanize fear. One straw to grasp from Terry Tempest Williams' The Open Space of Democracy, a W. H. Auden quotation: "And I know that what is popularly called politics is only part of what causes history to move." (The Prolific and the Devourer. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, reprint edition, 1996, p. 98.) I'm looking for the other causes.