We got an underwriter!!!!

Thank you to Green Apple Books for underwriting us!!!

Green Apple Books is a generalist bookstore serving the Bay Area since 1967. On Clement Street in the lively inner Richmond, Green Apple sells new and used books in all subject areas, poetry included, of course. They also sell magazines, journals, LPs, CDs, DVDs, and more. Top-rated on Yelp and a perennial winner of Best of the Bay awards, Green Apple is paradise for booklovers. 

September 29, 2013 Nico Peck Live!!!!

This Sunday the great Nico Peck joined us at Lightrail studios to discuss their chapbooks The Pyrrhaiad (Trafficker Press 2012) and Welter (Queer City, 2012). In Pyrrhaiad they are presenting a "Queer Iliad;" the title character emerged when they read Ulysses in which the characters ponder what Achilles's name was when he lived as a girl. This question led them to Robert Graves who answered this question by naming Pyrrha. This "re-membering" of the classics is part of Nico's own "gender journey" in which the page can be a mirror of that journey. While writing off of the very gendered text of mythology, they employ transgender pronouns. The work includes varied forms, and the chapbook, since it is published by Trafficker Press, includes an interview with Nico at that end. After the break, we talked about the separation of subject and object and how troubling that dichotomy may allow one to move past the world of thought, where we separate ourselves from the world, and into a space where oppression of the other is no longer possible. Towards the end of the interview we discussed Welter, a beautiful chap which is typed in courier font and has old maps as its end sheets. This work tackles etymology as well as Nico's activist spirit as it recounts reading at Occupy Oakland and entering/leaving "temporary utopian zones." They are also involoved in the Bay Area Public School, which is a free school where anyone can teach or take a class. Check it out at bayareapublicschool.org. You can email Nico if you are interested in their chapbooks, through queercity.org.
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September 15, 2013 Hazel White Live!!!

Last week we had Hazel White live in the studio, discussing her book Peril As Architectural Enrichment (Kelsey Street Press 2011). This is her first book of poetry, following her 12 books on gardening and landscape design. We started off talking about peril in landscape and language. She discussed meeting the 'resistance of language' when attempting to write about landscape. Her book grapples with the experience of being in gardens, in landscapes that are created and inhabited by people. Hazel told us about the 'de-centering' that can happen when interacting with the garden and in the potential discomfort of reading poetry.  We learn from our discomfort and de-centering. Hazel transitioned from prose to poetry while attending CCA, when she discovered that one can write about landscape architecture in poetry.
Later in the show, Hazel talked about her collaborative project with Denise Newman, "Botanica Recognita: Signage to Facilitate a Greeting," at UC Botanical Garden's show, "Natural Discourse: Artists, Architects Scientists and Poets in the Garden." In this exhibit, Hazel and Denise created 25 plant signs that re-imagined the content one encounters when learning about plants in a garden. We also learned about her "Site Sonnets," which were presented at the Eco-poetics Conference at UC Berkeley.
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September 8, 2013 - Roundtable Discussion #6- ERROR!

On September 8th, in lieu of a guest, we had our sixth roundtable discussion about error in writing. We started out with a rather apropos error while attempting to negotiate the phone system. We hope to one day be able to interview writers by phone, but sadly, we have yet to master this skill. For those of you who would like to avoid listening to us fumble with the button pushing, you can skip the first nine minutes of this show.
Once we got talking, we spent the remainder of the time tossing around the concept of mistakes.... or perhaps happy accidents. A mistake could be on the spelling or grammar level or on the language or content level. One might see these errors as just an opportunity to get out of the way of the writing, letting the language do its thing without being obstructed by our own overdetermination. On the other hand, sometimes the error is a lack of generatively or productivity. What are the different ways we can inhabit our errors so they serve our poetry? How can we, as Kathleen Fraser says, 'dismantle seductive writing practices?' What examples and parallels can we find in other types of art? In the end, perhaps error is just the beautiful aliens talking through us and onto our page. And if this is the case, there are different ways we can see ourselves as the conduit for these foreign voices. Let us all revel in our awesome accidents!!!!
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August 18, 2013 Elizabeth Robinson Live!

Today we welcomed Elizabeth Robinson into the studio. We primarily discussed her book Counterpart (Ahsahta Press, 2012). The conversation began with a consideration of 'the uncanny' in writing and the investigation of the double, the doppelganger. Robinson's poems grapple with what happens when we meet our counterpart, how we interact with, criticize, investigate the copy of ourselves. How does the poet act as 'other'? The book contains quotes by other writers who similarly interrogated the 'other;' these quotes act as part of this conversation. Like Robinson's other work, Counterpart contains the religious and spiritual, including a 'study' of Hell. In the second half of the interview we discussed the uncanny in writing from the point of view of the writer and the reader. Elizabeth shared with us perhaps the best analogy of poetry ever, as compared to the Invisible Man. A large section of the book, 'The Golem,' was inspired by the novel of the same name by Gustav Meyrink. Towards the end of our time together, Elizabeth was kind enough to share poems from her newer books, Blue Heron and On Ghosts. We talked about how her work, and her form, have transformed over time.
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August 4, 2013 Susan Gevirtz live!

Today we interviewed Susan Gevirtz live in the studio, discussing two of her books. First, we engaged with her book of poetic essays, Coming Events (Collected Writings) (Nightboat Books, 2013).  This book is divided into three sections and includes work spanning 21 years. Since she is so present in Susan's essays, we had an introduction to Dorothy Richardson, who was the first to write in stream of consciousness. Susan is interested in ethnography as a writing practice and through this lens, was able to analyze Richard's work as a illustration of what it was like to be a turn-of-the-century woman in London. Throughout this half of the interview we tackled 'feminist poetics.'
After the top of the hour we moved into discussing her book of poetry, Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street Press 2010). The physical book is quite large, giving space to the text which is often spread out on the page. The work deals with the skies and air travel, including the language of air traffic controllers. There is also a healthy helping of mythology which demonstrated an understanding of how planets and stars work. In modern day, different countries own different parts of the sky and this influences the way we negotiate being in the air. We were lucky enough to hear a number of pieces from both Susan's books.
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July 21, 2013 Hugh and Mary Behm-Steinberg live!

We had the great pleasure to welcome Hugh and Mary Behm-Steinberg in the studio to discuss their beautiful book The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press 2013). The book is very formally interesting; the poetry was provided by Hugh and the illustrations by Mary. The poems occupy the odd numbered pages and the pictures the even numbered pages. The illustrations (which were created based on a poem that is not in the book) comprise a flip book; these visuals create a narrative of a serpent that becomes a tree with a knot and a child running up a staircase. There are also lovers and a winged woman. The visuals are dreamlike and gorgeous and need to be seen. The poems deal with spirituality and love. They are arranged in a way that slows the reader down; they are centered on the page and the lines are spaced so that they are not read with the breath. The content deals with both the fantastic and surreal and the mundane. Hugh discussed his 'mosiac I' and how different sources and registers find way into the poetic content. There is a mystical tradition that informs this work, mapping experience through language. There is also a political element as some of the pieces were written during our war with Iraq. Throughout our talk we witnessed Mary and Hugh's loving relationship made manifest on the page.
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