Thank you everyone who submited work to The Living Poetry Project–Bee-Winged Poems. The work of Dane Cardiel, Kit Kennedy, Lisken Van Pelt Dusand, and (my lovely English 101 student) Anna Marie Castillo created a buzz at Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper. One of the greatest gifts of this Living Poetry Project was a hug from Kit Kennedy!
The poems flew and continue to fly in Northern California. Word honey!
Great thanks to readers Tess Taylor, Brendan Constantine, Caleb Barber, who gave their word honey at Litquake; it is good to bring art to life with such amazing poets.
In addition to the amazing Litquake, my Trip to Oakland was a little like waking up from a cultural comma; I have the vivaciousness of the city and my brilliant friend Johnny Hernandez to thank for that. Johnny works for SPD and is my blood line to books. He shows me books, books, and more books. Books of all types and forms—books that question the book—books that break the book.
We watched the Kenneth Goldsmith documentary together; it took me a good hour before I was convinced it wasn’t a hoax.
Language is a flexible creature; a ghost we beg to haunt our houses. It rattles the glass, nails, and beams of our bodies. I live on the lyrical floor of Poetry-House. The lyric is so old that it makes other (more current) poetry forms feel incredibly new. I show up (metaphorically) to Poet Christian Bok’s lab, where he has encoded his verse into a strip of DNA and had it inserted into a common bacterium, E.coli, and feel amazed and in that amazement out of place.
As Kenneth Goldsmith points out, what I take for innovation has all been done before; Burning City: Poems of Metropolitan Modernity, confirms this idea. I hid the post card poems from this collection all over my train home.
It is good to be home. That word, home, is why I write. I’m always attempting to get home by way of the lyric; it is a gamble, but one I can’t help but make.
While I’ve been home, my poems have been traveling. This weekend Becoming Judas is at the Zebra Film Festival.
Dear Nicelle, you have to come to Portland, Oregon and play with your magic here. I want to meet you. Warmly, Penelope Schott
Reblogged this on Antelope Valley Arts.