(Ed note: We're almost at the point where it's too late to say "Happy New Year" but I couldn't resist asking Cara Benson for permission to post her favorite memories of 2012, which originally appeared on facebook. I was struck by her generosity and her warmth toward her community. Thanks, Cara! — sdh)
*Working with Anne Waldman and her feminist epic IOVIS for a Belladonna*
polyvocal/group reading from the text at Poets House in NYC featuring
Anne, Ambrose Bye, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Ana Božičević, Amy King, Julie
Patton, and Stacy Szymaszek. A modern production? Someone mentioned
denial of catharsis, but I was sweating gleefully.
*The UCSC
conference on Emergent Communities curated by Andrea Quaid and Juliana
Leslie. A thinking/talking through of becomingness by individuals
together. Starring language. Supporting cast: somatics.
*Wrapping yellow Occupy tape around the Christopher Columbus statue at
Columbus Circle in NYC with Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs after seeing
the show. I took my partner Jon Lathrop for his birthday. We had
excellent Turkish food at a restaurant on 57th St. where our waitress
read our futures through the coffee grounds in our cups. It’s bearing
out, sorta.
*Exploring poetry, politics, place, higher
education, and capital with Marcella Durand and Pattie McCarthy at Kelly
Writers House. Curated by Genji Amino. Attendees included the amazing
Emily Abendroth, Asher Lewis, Hassen, Sarah Dowling, and Jessica
Lowenthal, so you know the conversations were pertinent and fraught. On
one of the Philly visits, the also amazing CA Conrad housed me and
recorded a reading for his
*Jupiter 88 ongoing online archive
of contemporary poetry. I love the generous nature of CA’s attention to
poetry community and the ACTUAL POETRY! It’s all there! Live! Performed
and recorded live! Not to be believed!
*Buying Hannah Weiner’s Open House at Flying Object in Massachusetts at a Laura Goldstein reading.
*Decoding deciphering absorbing Frances Richard’s The Phonemes. (More on this to come in the form of a review.)
*Hearing of a fellow poet’s ms. acceptance! Julie Joosten’s deft work
will be published by BookThug in 2013. I know the working title, but as
it’s working, I won’t share it here.
*Ditto to hearing that Tim Trace Peterson via Fran Blau has more kari edwards work to release into the world. Can. Not. Wait.
*Seeing the unfolding line-up of faculty/workshops/happenings for
Naropa Summer Writing Program for 2013. Very excited to be included –
Jen Karmin and I co-teaching Language As Communal Action, but everything
offered looks enticing.
*Observing the poetry/writing
cluster/hubs geo-happening. Flying Object again and Karen Randall’s
press is nearby in Western Massachusetts. The scene in Toronto that is
BookThug, the recently relocated Hoa Nguyen, the Avant-Garden series by
Liz Howard and Shannon Maguire. Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, run
by tc tolbert and Kristen Nelson. Michigan with Gina Myers, JodiAnn
Stevenson and Jeremy Benson only recently left. Of course Philly is
thriving. NY/Bklyn, Bay Area, Chicago. LA with Amina Cain’s Empty Globe
reading series and the Les Figues orbit. Here in my area, though I’m so
often traveling when a lot of the good stuff happens, we’ve got the Yes!
Reading series curated by James Belflower and Matt Klane (founders in
emeritus: Douglas Rothschild and Colie Collen). Fence is here, and the
SUNY program attracts poets like Anna Elena Eyre. Dan Wilcox does a
Third Thursday, and Dan Nestor runs Frequency North. Of course a
tremendous amount of important-to-me community is online; I need to continue actively to stoke and value the physical/actual. Even the terra
temporal by design, such as the UCSC cluster of us (see also Wendy S.
Walters’ work). Along these lines, I cannot enough mention the
Belladonna* Collaborative.
