I loved this NY Times piece on Bettina Grossman - it reminded me of the documentary on the unlikely friendship between Linda Hattendorf and Jimmy Mirikitani.

Steve Bradbury has a terrific essay in Jacket on the indie avant-garde poetry scene in Taipei which revolves around filmmaker Hung Hung and poet-librettist Hsia Yu.

I'm thinking about doing some volunteer work with this organization over the summer, or perhaps next year when I'm into my methods coursework.

Contribute to a new artwork by Yoko Ono.

Entitled Secret Piece III, Ono invites people to add photos or messages to someone they love to a canvas in the Laing Art Gallery or on the Facebook event page.

Curator, Julie Milne explains:
'Visitors can bring along a photograph of a loved one, or a note which they can then stick onto a canvas. At the end of the exhibition, the canvas will be returned to Yoko Ono to form part of a new artwork. It is very exciting that the Laing's visitors have this opportunity to see this new artwork develop.'


LOVE
Love is in the air at the Laing Art Gallery, as flirtation, disappointment and intimacy are among the themes explored in a new exhibition.

Love is a new National Gallery touring exhibition, which looks at the ways artists have responded to the pains and pleasures of love over the centuries.

It features work by artists including Tracey Emin, David Hockney, Johannes Vermeer and Marc Chagall. The Laing's Marble Hall will also be home to Marc Quinn's spectacular sculpture, Kiss.

LOVE is set to be a spectacular exhibition, bringing together work by some of the world's most famous artists, both historical and contemporary.

A programme of free events at the Laing Art Gallery will run alongside the exhibition, including gallery talks and activities for families.

For more information, visit the Laing website at www.twmuseums.org.uk/laing.

A National Gallery Touring exhibition in partnership with Bristol’s Museums, Galleries & Archives Service and Tyne & Wear Museums. Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Northern Rock Foundation and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

19 April - 13 July 2008
Monday to Saturday 10am - 5pm
Sunday 2pm - 5pm
Closed: Xmas, Boxing Day & New Year.

"The difference between West and non-West must be constantly produced, through a process of disavowal, 'where the trace of what is disavowed is not repressed but repeated as something different - a mutation, a hybrid.' The hybrid forms of colonial modernity return to disrupt the West's claim to originality and authority, disturbing it with 'the ruse of recognition.'"

Haiku Not Bombs Pre-ordering

Preorders for Haiku Not Bombs are now being taken at the Booklyn website.

Hand-letterpressed covers, digitally printed and handbound by the talented staff of Booklyn

$9.00 per issue bookstores ordering more than 10 copies can be ordered directly through Booklyn

$15 per issue all other public/ individual buyers (does not include shipping) -- may be ordered through Booklyn online

After the headache of organizing the WOMPO reading at the Women's Center last month, I made a conscious choice to not organize any more poetry events unless it's

1) paid or
2) I am working with people I know and love.

Last week I was reminded of what a good decision this was: a bunch of SAIC grads from different class years decided to hop on the AWP bandwagon and organize a last-minute panel for submission, which meant something like 20 emails back and forth EVERYDAY for a 7-day period with nine different personalities hammering out the agenda of the panel, the participants, the content, etc. which boiled down to a tiny "statement of merit" of less than 500 words. Several of the negotiating voices have never been to an AWP or academic conference - which is not surprising, considering what the SAIC experience is actually about - but when it comes then to arriving at something like agreement or understanding - this becomes impossible because we are talking about different worlds of experience that do not easily interface or converge, at least without major anxiety and or suspicion on the part of some of those involved.

I sat back and watched the whole thing develop, watching at one point, an aggressive angry white feminist calling out the only male involved in the whole process, who also happened to be the only person stepping forward to volunteer a great deal of time to take the lead and organize the event and get the materials submitted and to be helpful. The feminist dropped out of the panel at one point, then reasserted herself into the conversation stating which kind of program she'd be willing to participate in, and then she threatened to drop out again after blowing off some steam. In the end, there were too many people for 1 panel which maxes out at 6, so there were 2 panels created, and then the group of more recent SAIC grads (not my generation), jettisoned the idea of their panel entirely to plan some more avant garde event at Links Hall/the Chicago MCA. I hate the expression, "Lead, or get out of the way" - but in this case, it felt very apropos.

If I was organizing a related event, which I'm definitely not, I would go against opinion and organize an open SAIC alumni marathon reading - given how many alums in their diversity are in the Chicago/Midwest. In some ways, I feel some conflict about the panel and MCA event not being representative, but being somewhat exclusionary.

And while I am imagining myself as organizational queen of the poetry world, if I were organizing a reading for a new anthology of Asian writing that is coming out, I would NOT have determined readers for an AWP panel by drawing five names among over a dozen out of a hat when having promised "first-come, first-serve." I would have planned an off-site event through the Center for Asian Arts & Media and secured external funding to pay folk and to help cover travel costs through applying to Poets & Writers.

But since I don't organize poetry events anymore... perhaps these ideas will be taken up by others.

I am very pleased to be included in a panel proposal will fellow La Alameda writer Lisa Gill, and ex-SAIC faculty Maureen Seaton.

Come June, I am switching jobs and working here and here. I've been training on Saturdays and feeling extremely strapped for time.

Suzzallo Library at UW is showing a great exhibition of children's book thru the end of May. My favorite pieces in this show - a circular vs. linear timeline constructed of concentric circles (each with a moment of history within) spiraling inwards, with the oldest ring of history on the outer ring of the circle, and the most current on the inside. The alphabet accordion books which resembled the artwork of Ryder tarot decks in my mind, the accordion form an ideal format perhaps for an illustrated abecedarian poem.

Save the Date: July 9

Haiku Not Bombs Book Release Party
Wednesday, July 9, 8 p.m.
Think Coffee
248 mercer street (between 3rd & 4th st)
New York, NY
sponsored by The Cup & Pen Reading Series and Booklyn

Featuring readings by Tom Gilroy, Jim McKay, Shin Yu Pai, Patrick So, Rick Roth and Alison Roth.

Anthro class this quarter is focusing on "modernity" as a keyword and looking at human rights, the notion of property, torture and the making of subjects, alongside the making of nations. I've been reading this week an essay on torture by Talal Asad and how new forms of torture and intolerable cruelty and suffering have emerged. The definition of torture as set out by the Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights leaves a lot of room for interpretation, contradiction and slippage. In thinking thru the issue, I was reminded of the "Ashley Treatment" which happened here in Seattle to a 6-year-old disabled girl who's parents opted to have her undergo surgery to stunt her growth - a double masectomy, the removal of her uterus, so that she should always stay miniature and child-like, a "pillow angel." Stories like Ashley's and the story of You Guoying, who's family abandoned her at a crematorium following a paralyzing stroke, have stuck in my imagination for a long time, and I feel like I am beginning to understand why these moments trouble me - how issues of "property" and the body, "torture" and human rights arise - I don't know how to suspend judgment in the way that Asad advocates for cross-cultural understanding, or rather, I see the contradiction but don't know how to make sense of it on the ground.

Revival

UTD has got its AIR program up and running again.

It was a busy weekend of poetry-related events. On Saturday, I read a poem for the Shoreline/Lake Forest National Poetry Month event and got to hear Peter Pereira, Anna Maria Hong and Sam Green read their work. Peter shared some of his anagram poems and some of his pieces about working as a medical doctor with Cambodian survivors of the Pol Pot regime. His anagram poems have a lot of playfulness and seem like a great exercise/experiment for school-aged poets. Both Peter and Anna Maria had poems constructed from the found titles of books in small library collections. Sam Green is the best poet I've heard read or present their work in ages. I could have listened to him read for hours. I'd heard of Sam's work with his wife in the context of their publishing imprint and letterpress work, for which they are known at Naropa. But Sam's poetry is quite unique - grounded in the local and highly attuned to human emotion and relationship. He read long-ish poems, the one which stayed with me most being a piece about his father being brutally beaten by his own father. As an advocate of poetry, Sam also read Ed Harkness' poem on a man stranded in snow who died of starvation and frostbite - apparently, the victim kept a journal of his slow death. It was an amazing piece.

Sunday at the Rem Koolhas library downtown, heard Cody Walker and friends. Cody is moving to Western MA for a residency in the fall. His community here appears to have largely been centered around UW - Jason Whitmarsh, Eric McHenry (who published one of my first poems in Bostonia), Catherine Wing, and another writer who's name escapes me right now. Cody is Seattle Poet Populist - sort of a local version of Poet Laureate, selected thru popular vote. He read a lot of humorous poems, limericks and occasional poems written in honor of his friends. I liked Eric's work quite a bit, and some of Jason Whitmarsh's work, but didn't really get into most of the readers. Weird thing about the Microsoft Auditorium at the Main Library - the main door to the space slides shut thru an electric mechanism which seals people inside the room. On the far side of the room opposite the podium, there is a small exit door, but very conspicuous to escape.