Pat Clifford & Tyrone Williams

Pat Clifford is the author of several chapbooks including The Embrace (2010) and Court and Spark (2016). He is co-author with Aryanil Mukherjee of two books of poetry: chaturangik/ SQUARES (CinnamonTeal, 2009) and The Memorandum/MOU (Kaurab, 2011). He is co-author with Tyrone Williams of Washpark (Delete Press, 2018). His poetry and critical work has appeared in Moria, Jacket, PennSound, The Sunday Indian and Kaurab and has been translated into Bengali. Pat received his MSSA from the Mandel School for Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.

Tyrone Williams teaches literature and theory at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. An experimental poet of a rare breed, Tyrone has authored four books of poetry, c.c. (Krupskaya Books, 2002) , On Spec (Omnidawn Publishing, 2008), The Hero Project of the Century (The Backwaters Press, 2009), Howell (Atelos, 2011) and a number of chapbooks including AAB (Slack Buddha Press, 2004), Futures, Elections (Dos Madres Press, 2004) and Musique Noir (Overhere Press, 2006). Williams is also the editor of African American Literature: Revised Edition (2008).

Project: WashPark

Neither forward, in any sense of the word, nor backward, in any sense of that word, these poems constitute a modest, delimited investigation, an interrogation into the presumption of “progress” underwriting the redevelopment of a public park (Washington Park) located between, as well as among, the business and residential districts in downtown Cincinnati Ohio. As collaborators on the poems vis-à-vis the “suspect”—the business model that supervenes all other spheres of human activity (legal, social, cultural, environmental, etc.) however much this model claims it is always constrained from running roughshod over, for example, actual human bodies----we both play the roles of good cop/bad cop. The crime this perp is suspecting of committing? “Progress.”.....

[   Project Wash Park  ]

kari edwards (1954–2006) was an experimental poet, artist and gender activist who wrote post/(pink) (2000), a diary of lies (2002), a day in the life of p (2002), iduna (2003), obedience (2005), and Bharat jiva (posthumously, Belladonna Books, 2009). kari received the Small Press Traffic’s book of the year award in 2004.

[  Letters from kari  ]

Adeena Karasick is a New York based Canadian poet, performer, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of eight books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha) etc. Her most recent book is Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017) and Checking In is forthcoming from Talonbooks, Vancouver, 2018. She teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute.

STATEMENT OF POETICS

Salomé: Woman of Valor began as the libretto for a spoken word opera commissioned by Grammy Award winning trumpeter and composer, Sir Frank London, and then grew into a book length project, translated into multiple languages and now a massive total art experience; a Spoken Word Opera groundbreaking in its interplay of poetry, music, and dance. Featuring original poetry, music, dance and film, it will have its World Debut in New York and at the Chutzpah! Festival, in Vancouver, Canada, March 2018.

Refuting Oscar Wilde’s misogynist and anti-Semitic interpretation, it translates the renowned story to one of female empowerment, socio-politic, erotic and aesthetic transgression. Through a cross pollination of genres styles aesthetics, voices, it questions traditional cultural, moral, and religious perspectives, and highlights a dystopian aesthetic of erotic and artistic subversion; re-inserting Salomé back into her rightful place in history as a powerful Jewish revolutionary.

After years of research, and realizing there was little basis to the popular myth, I wanted to create a text, that not only explored this conflictual space between histories and representation, but explored the frisson between narrative and abstract sound text, highlighting ways that text can be danced to.

Between the revealed and the concealed, hidden and manifest, homage and parricide, it playfully traverses through homophonic translations of the Oscar Wilde monologues, midrashic interpretations, references to the Yom Kippur liturgy, 13th Century Kabbalistic infusions, and features a re-working, of the Song of Songs (now called Song of Salomé). Through a variety of polyphonic textures, historical voices, and rhythmic wordplay, I wanted to highlight a sense of revolution -- exposing how poetry is itself a “dance” of the intellect”, and how all meaning and identity is enfolded in a constant flow of veiling and unveiling, values, valences; a voluminous e/volution of reveille (awakening). It explores ways in which borders can and should be crossed and as such, underscores how outdated and politically dangerous myths must be re-inscribed.

I wanted to explore how through both form and content; through a conflagration of aesthetic histories and genres, otherness, difference and diversity gets physically dramatized; highlighting new ways of seeing, and reminding us how there is never one story to be told, the need to counter misrepresentation, speak the unspoken, and open up a space where the unvoiced be celebrated and heard.

[  From SALOMÉ: WOMAN OF VALOR  ]

Scott Holzman is a writer, poet, and curator from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He is the executive director of Chase Public, a collaborative space for art and assembly focused on the prioritization of empathy and gift-giving in creative practice.

Working mostly on commissioned collaborative poetry projects for a nonprofit literary arts organization, Holzman and his fellow poets call their mission Short Order Poetry, which involves poetry writing upon public request. In Scott's own words, "We travel to assemblies, conferences, festivals, and gatherings with a small fleet of manual typewriters. We set up in a public area and ask passers by if they would like to have a poem written for them."

[  Two Poems : from a Short Order Poetry project  ]

Cristina Sánchez López is a sociologist and bilingual poet from Colombia. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, namely La Jiribilla, Diario Gráfico de Xalapa (Veracruz, Mexico), Urcunina literary magazines (Colombia), Los Escribas (Mexico), Kabisammelan (India) and Kaurab (Kolkata, India). Anthology appearances include A Mar Abierto (To Open Sea, SEPIA Edi-ciones, Mexico, 2014) and latin american poetry anthology Esta ternura y estas manos libres (This tenderness and these free hands, Editorial Touchstone, Colombia, 2015). She is working on three poetry manuscripts - "Archaeology of Autumn", "Songs for fall", "Symphony of abandonment". Cristina is also involved in several collaborative poetry projects.

[  Archaelogy of Autumn : A bilingual manuscript in progress  ]

  Update IV

  Pat Clifford &
  Tyrone Williams

   kari edwards

   Adeena Karasick

   Scott Holzman

   Cristina Sánchez López