---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: Cobbing's Writers Forum and Chile
From: "Kent Johnson" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, October 9, 2011 17:18
To: "Lawrence Upton" <[log in to unmask]>
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Dear Poets (a circular letter):
A couple days ago, at the arraignment hearing in Chicago for Stephanie
Dunn, the poet and artist arrested at behest of Poetry Foundation a few
weeks back for a performance-based protest at the PF Wine and Cheese
Gala, an official representative of the Poetry Foundation called on the
judge to send Dunn to jail until her trial nine days from now. The judge
was about to do this (he said as much to the defendant), but a public
defender who is otherwise unrelated to the case intervened and convinced
the judge to let Dunn go until her trial date-- on condition that a
guilty plea be entered. The terrified Stephanie agreed.
Three days after Raul Zurita's reading at the Poetry Foundation, where
six or seven activists of the Croatoan Poetic Cell peacefully hung
banners (one of them praising Zurita and his old activist group CADA)
and passed out leaflets calling for the charges against Dunn to be
dropped (the cops were also called by the PF on these poets--they
scampered away), the Chicago Police Department carried out a raid during
a musical event on the warehouse where most of the members of the
Croatoan Poetic Cell live. Property was confiscated and three people
detained. Minutes after the police left, a car parked outside, belonging
to a friend of those involved, burst into flames. I state the bizarre
sequence of these events without making any claim of connections between
them, for I have no solid proof. But that is the anecdotal record.
A statement by members of the Croatoan Poetic Cell will be released in
the next days, I understand. It is time for poets to stand publicly
against this outrageous overreaction by the Poetry Foundation against
young writers and artists guilty of nothing except peaceful, conceptual
acts of poetic insurgency-- of which there is, to be sure, a long and
venerable tradition in our field.
Kent
>>> "Lawrence Upton" <[log in to unmask]> 4/20/2011 1:39 PM >>>
Yep
Martin Gubbins was the boyo who made that happen. I'm in the middle of
an
interview with him. Quite a light one really, just trying to put him on
a
few maps
WF has published a book of his
I'm going to be tipped out by security any minute, but when I get back
from Calvary I'll put the details here (again? maybe not!)
Anyway, Martin was here and then went back early in the first decade
of
the century and founded fde
he sends me their messages sometimes, assuring me spanish is easy -
his
english is superb, and I go all great expectations - there's a j and
there's an o
Though I did spot _cholera_ in a poem by Alfonso Grez the other day.
It
stuck out for me as he read, I *think, because I am used to Poles
exclaiming with the word - or they tell me that's what they're doing.
Maybe it's a Polish joke
Alfonso is here and will be for some months and he comes to the
workshop.
He's writing what seems to be an amazing poem, the one he read which I
offered to help translate into english. He seemed surprised and I
haven't
got the time; but I may offer again. It was a joy just to listen to
Gregorio is *here. I was going to see him perform recently but dropped
out
at the last minute because I'd been burning the candle at more than 2
ends
and needed to sleep. You're right. He is a pretty fabulous musician.
It wasn't just that they got a good idea from us. We got them. They
come
and go; but there's been a sort of Chilean presence at wf workshops
for
around 10 years now; and it is so enjoyable
I recall them getting Padin over - Martin wrote to me about it - and
how
jealous I was because when I met him we couldn't say much to each
other;
and I was jealous, envious, cross that others whom I know and like
could
rattle away and say something more than how nice it was to meet!
Lawrence
On Wed, April 20, 2011 19:12, Kent Johnson wrote:
> Was just reading something fascinating about the Writers Forum
group:
> that its activities inspired the formation of the Foro de Escritores
> workshop in Santiago, Chile, a group at the very heart of the Andean
> avant-garde. Amazingly (for us, anyway), a few years ago, Forrest
Gander
> and I stumbled into a bar in Santiago one night, *by absolute
chance*, to
> find ourselves in midst of a packed house attending a
poetry/music/video
> performance by... members of the Foro de Escritores, about whose
existence
> we were totally ignorant. And the featured performer was the
visiting
> great Uruguayan Clemente Padin, one of the world's most famous
visual
> poets, who went on to give a talk on the role of poetry in the
resistance
> during the years of dictatorship. The incredible thing for me about
this
> is that some years before I'd had a fairly extensive correspondence
with
> Padin, though we'd later lost
> touch. In any case, it was quite bizarre to sit and talk with Padin
under
> these spookily chance circumstances. Since then, Forrest and I have
been
> in touch a bit with a couple of the young folks from Foro de
Escritores,
> including Gregorio Fontens, incredible artist-musician-poet, who I
believe
> is now in the States. Somewhere here I have a large anthology of work
the
> group sent me, asking if I might want to translate it. Alas... I need
to
> hunt that down.
>
> If this sounds weird, it is. But feel free to ask Forrest! UK to
Chile.
> The Writers Forum International... Bravo Cobbingites!
>
>
>>>> Richard Owens <[log in to unmask]> 4/20/2011 12:47 PM >>>
>>>>
> In addition to the Rejection Group book Kent announced, David
Hadbawnik
> has published several other titles recently; and blurbs for his own
Field
> Work (BlazeVOX 2011) just below those.
>
>
> habenicht press is pleased to announce the publication of five new
> chapbooks:
>
>
> 5 Works by The Rejection Group ($7, with choice of b/w cover)
>
>
> Triptych by Sarah Jeanne Peters ($3)
>
>
> Houses Don't Float by JodiAnn Stevenson ($3)
>
>
> Five Windows Light the Cavern'd Man by Brooks Johnson ($3)
>
>
> Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by David Hadbawnik ($3)
>
>
> all with unique, letterpress covers, with images by Carrie Kaser.
>
> Very limited number of all five available for $15 total -- visit my
> blog
>
> http://habenichtpress.com/
>
>
> for ordering details.
>
>
>
> David Hadbawnik Field Work -- Notes, Songs, Poems, 1997-2010 out
from
> BlazeVOX.
>
>
>
>
> Field Work page at
>
Blazevox<http://www.blazevox.org/index.php/Shop/Poetry/field-work-notes-so
> ngs-poems-1997-2010-by-david-hadbawnik-228/>
>
> from the back cover:
>
>
> In San Francisco, Austin and Buffalo a *chiel*’s among ye taking
notes.
> David Hadbawnik like James Boswell has a knack for capturing all
the
> things we wish we had said, as well as the street talk which shows up
our
> culture as indescribably banal and fertile. On his way to developing
a
> unique poetic, Hadbawnik kept writing it down; these twelve years of
> *flâneur*ing perform a voyage of their own, a powerful and
mysterious
> walk towards unknowing.
>
> —Kevin Killian
>
> The notebooks of Kafka and the late meditations of Wittgenstein echo
> deep inside David Hadbawnik’s marvelous *Field Work*, whose
> investigations collect into something like a scrolling *wunderkammer*
of
> anecdotal revelation. Or into a tour-de-force *ostranenie* of the
> quotidian, one might say... Which is to say, and more plainly, I
suppose,
> that in these quasi-aphoristic sallies, daily moments are never quite
what
> they first seem, always infolding much more than what we all almost
always
> assume them to hold. So Hadbawnik looks carefully and insistently.
And he
> does so again and again. And the mundane unfolds its mysteries.
“One
> minute in the life of the world is going by. Paint it as it is,â€
said
> Cezanne. That is the writer’s ethic here, and the result is
> nothing less than a strange, serial, and many-chambered gift. We
haven’t
> had a truly great “poet’s daybook†for quite some
time, one
that
> enacts a poetics. Here you are.
>
> —Kent Johnson
>
-----
collaborative visual work:-
http://www.poetrybeyondtext.org/upton-begbie.html
http://www.poetrybeyondtext.org/begbie-upton.html
----
Lawrence Upton
AHRC Creative Research Fellow
Dept of Music
Goldsmiths, University of London
-----
UNFRAMED GRAPHICS by Lawrence Upton
42 pages; A5 paperback; colour cover
Writers Forum 978 1 84254 277 4
wfuk.org.uk/blog
----
Lawrence Upton
Dept of Music
Goldsmiths, University of London
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