a curatorial content blog of modern and contemporary poetry, poetics, photography, philosophy, permaculture, and the arts

the next big thing: a meme about new books

James Finnegan of ursprache and Lori Desrosiers, The Philosopher’s Daughter (Salmon Poetry, 2013), tagged me to participate in this interview / Internet meme.

What is the working title of the book?

Songliness is the name, a bit of a riff off Bruce Chatwin’s classic book, Songlines.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Chatwin’s book crosses genres in its subject matter of trans-specie primordial dream and primitive song transepting into human language, by tracing the Aborigines’ ways of oneness with the earth.

In this decade of the ecocidal 2010 BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico and The Great 2011 Tokyo Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown, in which manmade interminable radiation exposure has proved deadliest, we seem unable to recognize what contemporary philosopher Tim Morton calls “ecology without nature”, or that nature we have known which no longer exists; that we now live on “Eaarth”, to borrow Bill McKibben’s naming. I want to continue acute listening to what is there with the writing of poems, an instrument for finding the next, the next, and the next, staying open.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry, because poetry ceaselessly invents language, imprints bird sub- and crystal songs. Poetry because it guided, guides will guide us, as it did Dante, as we exile and nomad from homeland Eaarth to ExileEaarth, to step, by tripped up step, detour, discovery, record-ing and song how and where to dielive. Poetry interrupts the present, is the future.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

German Fluxus artist Joseph Beuys, Melissa Leo, Anna Magnani, Luca Zingaretti, Tim Roth, Charlize Theron, Maxim Munzuk, Woody Allen, Thandie Newton, Ray Winstone, Ben Whishaw, Helen Mirren, Tang Wei, and Luigi Lo Cascio.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

one word   — walking

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript ?

not counting

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

ea(a)rthly delights, stains, mistakes, processes, bodily functions, dirt between my toes, the alphabet, feminism, lesbiantransqueerdom, childhood – its wonder and torment, dream, books, Internet, friends, mother, loss, maternal grandparents, dying, poetry, writing, pleasure, fun, journalism, learning, love, to find the next and next and next

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest ?

The range of forms is atypical: from a 16pp lyric narrative over twenty years in the making through shorter open forms, as well as haibun, tanka, sequences, the shortest form of all, the haiku, mostly experimental and nontraditional, and finally, those mongrels.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

by a publisher or not at all

Alan Summers at Area 17, be tagged! Meme’s the word.