Big news - I am moving. With Kort. Back to the Big D. Here . For this program.

Please check back for dates and venues for a potential reading tour in late September/early October as we make our way South!

There is a particularly racist post on the Buffalo Poetics List serve directed towards the Taiwanese (note spelling!) which has gone unchallenged for some time now and which I find particularly disgusting. It is significant to note that when the same person posted similar racist epithets directed towards Filipino women previously, there was rapid response. What's up with that?

LOCUS ARTS -- CALL FOR PERFORMANCE, MUSIC, LITERARY & FILM
THEME: TRANSLATION

Locus is seeking performance, music, literary and film pieces for an upcoming show about TRANSLATION, to be held in September 2004.

Maybe you saw the movie "Lost in Translation" and have your own take on the subject. Or maybe subtitles give you nightmares. Whether it's adapting an existing work from another language, deconstructing language conventions, or re-imagining the process of translation, Locus wants to hear about it!

Your work doesn't have to be in two different languages, although it should address the idea of translation across cultures, languages, or conceptual/literal borders. Heck, we might not even understand it completely, but send it in anyway, we're open to your interpretation.

GUIDELINES:
Music, literary readings and performances should be no more than 20 minutes.
5-10 minutes is preferable.

Films should be 20 min. max (edited excerpts from a longer piece are acceptable)

Detailed proposals for new work will be accepted only if accompanied by background
material of previous work.

DEADLINE:
Due Date: Friday, July 2, 2004
Entry Fee: None, it's free!

Drop off/mail submissions at Galeria de la Raza
*Please write "Attention: LOCUS ARTS" on your submission envelope
2857 24th Street at Bryant
San Francisco CA 94110

Include a self-addressed stamped envelope if you want your materials mailed back.
Otherwise you can retrieve your submissions at Galeria de la Raza.

Questions? Contact Locus at us@locusarts.org

About Locus:
Locus is an all-volunteer organization of Asian American artists and arts supporters dedicated to promoting community and consciousness through the arts. We are currently incorporated and under the fiscal sponsorship of Asian Improv aRts.

Locus Arts is a space that showcases the music, theatre, performing, literary and visual arts of the Asian Pacific American community. We believe in: pan APA artists and inclusive audiences, a community supporting artists and the artists supporting a community, a physical space for creative collaboration and face-to-face connection.

Locus Arts seeks to nurture and cultivate young emerging APA artists by providing a physical space to develop, rehearse, perform and display their works.

Visit us at http://www.locusarts.org.

here is a poem about Jean Claude Van Damme..

CELEBRITY IMPORTED HAM

This is a full muscle ham, shelf stable.
Gathering dust, shankless, shelved celluloid
chop-socky play in double impact.
Celebrity products purport a higher consistency
quality, color, and an uniform texture:
The muscles from Brussels, self-proclaimed
Fred Astaire of karate. In a dramatic film
you act in the action. If it’s a comedic film
you act in the action. If it’s a history film
you act in the action. If it’s an art film
subtitles communicate your action.
If it’s a romantic film, hopefully you’ll
get some action. If it’s an action film
you carve up your co-star and serve him
up on a platter like so much lunch meat.

words heard/used in workshop critique:

cantilevering
occlusion
locution
effacement
appositional
solicitation

in a blue sky
conversation
the bottom line

is just
the tip
of the iceberg

budget
hearing
on board

walk that gangplank
when you come to it
motion towards

dropping anchor
in a ship
yard

at glacial pace

listen

my father says
a smart rabbit
always has two
holes

soup to nuts:
the poem
is nothing
serious simple

mount a mule
and write until
you find your horse

Blogging from the village of Gambier, Ohio from the campus of Kenyon College. Simultaneous to the writer's conference there is also a gathering of "barbershoppers" - grandfatherly white haired men in suspenders who sing accapela music - they dominated the dining hall tonight at the dinner hour.

Ohio is a lot greener and more lush than I pictured. Beautiful weathered and ruined barns, corn fields, and weeping willows. Flew into Cleveland and than transferred in Columbus and took a shuttle van out here.

I am in a shared apartment suite with 2 fiction writers. So far I have only met prose writers here, all of them women. The poets have apparently a reputation for socializing and living it up, but I have yet to meet one.

There is supposed to be a beautiful new botanical garden that just opened in the area - with landscaped Chinese and Japanese gardens complete with Japanese tea house!

There are lots of strange and new smells here and I have been sneezing a lot.

Dropped by the university bookstore and picked up some good finds including:

William Fox's One Wave Standing published by La Alameda!
Edward Schieffelin's The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers (more on gift theory and ritual practices in Papua New Guinea)

New review of Equivalence over at

Sidereality.com

Going to Gambier, Ohio next week for a writer's conference. If anyone knows any good venues to do a reading in the area, please contact me. Muchas gracias..

Please come to the Carve Magazine release party on Saturday, June 12 at 8 p.m. at Gallery 108, 108 Beacon Street, Somerville, MA. Featuring Chris Rizzo, Aaron Tieger, Jess Mynes, and yours truly as hosted by Mark Lamoureux. There will be refreshments...!

I've had a busy week guest teaching at Lexington Senior High School in my friend's sophomore English class. Monday introduced the kids to ekphrastic poetry and talked about my work as a poet. Today put them to work writing their own poems. Crazy to see my friend in his professional environment - the 5 rules of Mr. Miller's classroom posted to the bulletin board alongside a class syllabus, and on a separate wall, a poster of Bob Dylan, the Shakespeare theater, and a map of London. It's been fun but whoa nelly I don't think I could ever do it full time, because realistically speaking, teaching high school is something of a 24-7 job with lesson plans and marking papers and such.

Hanging out with English teachers is good for my grammar, poetically speaking. I am, for instance, a perpetrator of the "comma splice". And it's "lie" not "lay" as in "people lie, chickens lay". Love that!

Grading poems all weekend and back to Lexington on Monday for a final session of poetry critique and presentations.

Last night's Ugly Duckling Presse anti-reading/happening at Gallery 108 was fabulous! Talking heads, torn bedsheets, and audience participation... Here's a fragment:

"burning up like a cigarette
in the face of a girl thirstily kissed
for the first time"

Next week at the gallery, Maudite Productions presents a reading release party for CARVE magazine:

Saturday, June 12 at 8 pm.
Gallery 108
108 Beacon St.
Somerville, MA

Appearing: Shin Yu Pai, Jess Mynes, Catherine Meng (as read by Mark Lamoureux),
Sean Cole, and Lori Lubeski (as read by Aaron Tieger).

Refreshments! Free and open to the public!

NOW CASTING for "Concave is the opposite of convex" for performance in SlamBoston at the Jimmy Tingle Off Broadway Theater in Somerville on June 29 - an evening of short 1 act plays. Sheriden Thomas, a local director who teaches acting and directing at Tufts, will be directing. We need to cast the play by June 10. There are 4 characters - I need 2 Asian actors and 2 other actors of pretty much any other ethnicity, and possibly 1 other for a narrator. This is a short 5 minute play written in the style of Gertrude Stein - a nonsense play with a narrative. If you are interested, email me pronto! Please pass on to any interested parties. Poets encouraged to audition. Time commitment negotiable.

The feng shui of my office space has not been working so I have relocated my writing station to the sun room where I have a view of the Tufts Health building which reminds me of the Landmark Center in Brookline (old Sears Building) which reminds me of when we first moved to Boston almost 3 years ago... this is more or less the quietest room in the house - furthest from street traffic and incidental noise. Pretty minimalist space - I have a yoga mat, CD player, extension cord, table, chair, and a fabulous view of the blue sky.

Now listening to David Byrne's new album "Grown Backwards" which includes an operatic duet, Au Fond du Temple Saint, with Rufus Wainwright.

the questionaire of marcel proust (1871 - 1922) ...................................................................................................................................................
(in age of fourteen proust was given an english album "confessions : an album to record thoughts, feelings". seven years later marcel proust published this questionnaire)
in the literary salons in nineteenth century paris, this parlour game was a popular amusement.
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

the main lineaments of my character.
-

a quality I desire in a man.
luminosity

a quality I desire in a woman.
generosity.

what I appreciate most among my friends.
heart.

my principal defect.
impatience.

my favourite occupation.
looking.

my dream of felicity.
one culture.

what would for me be the biggest misfortune.
to leave the path

whom I would like to be.
myself again, but better

where I would like to live.
New Zealand, Dharamsala, Kyoto, Paris.

the colour I prefer.
red.

the flower I love.
lilac.

the bird I prefer.
nightingale.

my favourite authors.
Gao Xingjian. Oscar Wilde.

my favourite poets.
Li Ching Chao. Izumi Shikibu. Ono no Komachi.


my heroes in fiction.
-

my heroines in fiction.


my favourite composers.
Maurice Jarre. Lalo Schifrin. Gao Ping.

my favourite artists
Wolfgang Laib. Felix Gonzales-Torres. Jospeh Cornell. Alfred Stieglitz. Hiroshige.

my heroes in real life.
my father

my heroines in history.
-

my favourite names.
Hiro. Hero.

what I hate most.
lies and deception.

the historic characters I dislike most.
-

the military enterprise I like the most.
-

the reformation I appreciate the most.
-

nature’s gift I would like to have.
the ability to fly

how I would like to die.
while listening to the Tibetan Book of the Dead

my soul's present condition.
raw.

the faults I can bear.
flatulence.

my motto.
a smart rabbit always has 2 holes.