Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Twelve of my 13 students gave an end of the semester poetry reading last night at Paperbacks Plus. As I welcomed the audience and introduced the event, I looked at my students and saw nervousness and excitement in their eyes. They gave great readings and I think they were glad that they did it. Some got flustered and forgot to introduce the reader after them in their focus to get thru it, but everyone read at least one striking poem and the room was full - friends and family, Kort had to bring in extra chairs to get everyone to fit. A few students took risks by reading new poems, and several students read pieces that had been revised in new and wonderful ways that really solidified the poems. One student sang a piece. Our slam poet performed three pieces, preceded by a sparkling and unexpected intro by one of our more serious, philosophical authors that surprised and delighted everyone. Afterwards, about half the group went over to the Tipp for burgers and beer and goofing around - it was a nice opportunity to get to know the students as human beings with rich and complex lives and to feel proud of their accomplishments and growth this past semester.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Site is now launched. Kindly visit. Not sure about how the portfolio section has come together structurally. Leave me comments below.
Friday, November 25, 2005
And we are moving to.... (drumroll)... Plano.
Yeah, we are leaving the city and moving North off of the transit line. Put down a deposit on a Lincoln Properties two bedroom. The apartment is right off of the red line and a straight shot to Walnut Hill where my advertising job awaits me when I return in March. There is a small park across the street from the apartment complex, it's near an authentic Austrian restaurant/bier garten, Film Depot, several antique shops and a Farmer's Market. The space itself is small (1100 square feet), but bright and modern, enough space for a working office for me. Total burbs. Well, not like Brookline and Watertown weren't. Kort's job interview on Monday with a massage therapy clinic seeking to expand its oeuvre. Once again, I have successfully evaded driving. Kort said today that my dearest friends know and accept this personality quirk/lifestyle choice about me, knowing that "the roads are safer without me on them." When I was in the car with Kort's grandparents yesterday, they interrogated me on my diet and driving habits. I gratuitiously threw in that I don't own/watch television, might as well be Amish. Not sure how they took that. That my personality quirks aren't *cultural* so much as socialized.
I will miss about the city Kaladchandji's, Priya Yoga, Paperbacks Plus (too bad Lakewood isn't off a DART line) and the museums, but should I decide to continue teaching, I will finally be conveniently located. A 13-month lease seems like an eternity, but perhaps it will go quickly and I will actually like Plano. On the way back to the car, spying young punkrockers in mohawk and dyed hair crossing the car park.
Yeah, we are leaving the city and moving North off of the transit line. Put down a deposit on a Lincoln Properties two bedroom. The apartment is right off of the red line and a straight shot to Walnut Hill where my advertising job awaits me when I return in March. There is a small park across the street from the apartment complex, it's near an authentic Austrian restaurant/bier garten, Film Depot, several antique shops and a Farmer's Market. The space itself is small (1100 square feet), but bright and modern, enough space for a working office for me. Total burbs. Well, not like Brookline and Watertown weren't. Kort's job interview on Monday with a massage therapy clinic seeking to expand its oeuvre. Once again, I have successfully evaded driving. Kort said today that my dearest friends know and accept this personality quirk/lifestyle choice about me, knowing that "the roads are safer without me on them." When I was in the car with Kort's grandparents yesterday, they interrogated me on my diet and driving habits. I gratuitiously threw in that I don't own/watch television, might as well be Amish. Not sure how they took that. That my personality quirks aren't *cultural* so much as socialized.
I will miss about the city Kaladchandji's, Priya Yoga, Paperbacks Plus (too bad Lakewood isn't off a DART line) and the museums, but should I decide to continue teaching, I will finally be conveniently located. A 13-month lease seems like an eternity, but perhaps it will go quickly and I will actually like Plano. On the way back to the car, spying young punkrockers in mohawk and dyed hair crossing the car park.
After 2 days of not being able to reach my parents in California, a dead cell phone number, and an absentee answering machine, I called up my older brother in NoCal to say, hey, any idea where our parents may have disappeared to? Half an hour after leaving a message, I get a call from my Dad at my brother's number - he decided to drive up to Monterey with my Mom to check out the language school where he's interviewing in Monterey and didn't bother to email or let me know of their plans. He also unplugged the fax machine - their only answering machine because the fax's memory has been misfiring and printing out pages of transmissions. To their credit, they did let one person know of their plans - my brother. Having 4 years ago fallen from the roof of their house and cut his face open severely on a lawn mower to the extent that he landed in the ER with major bleeding and 16 stitches, I think it's understandable that I am cautious about my parents' well-being. On that same weekend, the phone rang interminably and they could not be reached. The language school could at this very moment be calling to say come back for a 2nd interview. A filial and fretful daughter could be calling to say happing holidays and where hell are you. Parents. Got to love 'em.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Sunday, November 20, 2005
The Farewell to Dallas reading was good fun. Renee Rossi opened with a poem on motherhood, a poem on contemplating cutting open a cadaver while in medical school, and a third piece on the hole in the ozone and her young son. Simone Roberts followed with a beautiful requiem to her grandmother and a few other wonderfully lyric pieces. Karen X went on next with a performance piece on the goddess which began with her dramatically drawing her fingers across her face which were apparently smudged with eye shadow, creating a mask-like effect for the performer during her yogic piece. Tim Cloward arrived mid-way thru Karen's piece and followed with several serious pieces, very different in tone to his Dadaist performance pieces. He closed with reading a tender Rilke poem for his lover. Our MC, Karen was about to break up the group for a 5 minute respite when Bob Trammell asked if he was going to read - as he had been asked. Karen said, I just want to wash my face right now and eat cake - it was just precious. But then she gave Bob a gracious introduction and he read from his Birds chapbook which we had talked about on other occasions and which I absolutely love. Broke for about 15 minutes, Karen introduced me, and before I read, my student Jonathan Stovall from SMU got up and read 2 well-received poems and said some very sweet and tender things to which I responded, "just read your poems!" (but inside I was mush) I read the Love Hotel poems, followed by a few dozen haiku from the haiku project, and ended with the poems from Equivalence on traveling to Taiwan - a type of fish, how to eat sugarcane, transience, dog story, etc. Afterwards, Bob Trammell put me on the spot - the question was first when are you coming back which became why do you come back - a warrior exam, if you will to which I responded, well my husband's family is here - but then I gave a heartfelt answer - Dallas IS a hard place to live, and in other ways extremely easy, BUT having lived in Chicago, Boston, Boulder, it is very nice to be off the radar in a small community where genuine and meaningful connections can and do happen. I've had wonderful support for my work here - the whole crew of WordSpace - Bob, Simone, Tim and Karen, and the crew at Writer's Garrett - Thea and Jack who helped connect me with Renee. It can be hard to see people and get together, but there is such a deep respect I have for the writers here and their work, individual projects and concerns. Some good friends made here.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Homelands: Women's Journeys Toward Meanings of Home (tentative title)
Edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera
To be published by Seal Press, Winter 2007
For as long as people have left their homes and returned, there have been stories written about journeying to the homeland. Yet, what does this journey look like when a homeland no longer exists? When its borders are policed by government-enforced laws and restrictions? When the memory of a physical place is too far removed, or possibly forgotten?
Throughout history, the phrase "homeland" has conjured up evocative metaphors and literal definitions of home. For those who have immigrated to new lands or who have been exiled to foreign countries, it often stirs up feelings of nostalgia, sentimentality, and longing. For some, "homeland" can also evoke feelings of displacement and utter loss. Displacement caused by war, natural disasters, occupation, genocide, political struggles, and colonization affects our relationship to our homelands, and oftentimes impacts whether we are able to physically return "home." Homeland invokes contradictory feelings and ideas: rootedness and departure, stability and insecurity, reality and imagination. Whether national or international, domestic or foreign, "at home" or "abroad," the idea of homeland has been branded on our psyches, especially with the establishment of the United States Department of Homeland Security after 9/11. In the United States and the rest of the world, the shifting borders of "homeland" have become blurred, and new meanings of home are continually being traversed upon, reconstructed, and re-imagined.
This anthology will explore women's journeys to their "homeland(s)"—specific geographic locations, an imagined community, part of one's identity/ body, or a memory. The editors are looking for personal essays written in first-person that investigate the complexities of how women experience, remember, or imagine journeys to their homelands. The essays will be told from the perspective of a journey. Essays from emerging as well as established writers will be accepted. We are not looking for submissions on travel adventures abroad. Rather, we are looking for unique, well-crafted personal essays from women of all races, classes, ethnicities, abilities, sexualities, religions, and nationalities, who have been transformed by their journeys—physical, spiritual, political, or imagined—to their homeland(s). We are interested in essays that challenge current and conventional notions of homeland. We welcome and consider new ideas other than the topics suggested below.
Possible topics include:
* The estranged homeland: the experience of living in exile
* The grass is greener on the other side: stories of immigration
* Back to my roots: stories by American-born women traveling back to the land of their ancestors
* Pilgrimages: spiritual journeys to the homeland
* In search of safety: stories of refugee journeys
* The border crossed us: women's lives in and across borderlands
* Not another Starbucks: homelands affected by globalization
* Fragments of home: journeys to homelands affected by war or natural disasters
* Off the map: journeys to a homeland that no longer exists
* This land is my land: struggles over land and sovereignty (including, but not limited to: Guam, Hawai'i, Native Americans,
the Caribbean, indigenous people, etc.)
* Ancestral amnesia: memories that are far removed from the homeland (i.e. African Americans who don't have memories
of Africa, and 2nd/3rd generation daughters of immigrants)
* Fallen walls: journeys to homelands that were once divided by walls (i.e. Germany, China) and
how the destruction of these walls changed the notion of homeland and community
* Divided lands: journeys to homelands that are currently divided territories (i.e. North and South Korea)
* Making a living in a foreign land: stories of women migrating to other countries for work
* Stepping outside the gender box: transgender and gender variant women's journeys
Editors: Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera are Filipina American lesbian writers, activists, and performers who live in Oakland, CA. Their essays are in the Seal Press anthology Waking Up American: Growing Up Biculturally and Patricia's work has appeared in Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism, and Hyphen Magazine, a magazine dedicated to Asian American issues and pop culture.
Publisher: Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, publishes
groundbreaking books by and for women in a variety of topics.
Deadline: April 1, 2006
Length: 3,000–6,000 words
Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address, and a short bio on the last page. No simultaneous submissions. Previously published essays will be considered. Essays will not be returned.
Submitting: Electronic submissions are preferred. Send essay electronically as a Word or Rich Text Format file (with .doc or .rtf extension) to Jenesha de Rivera and Patricia Tumang at homelandanthology@gmail.com. Put "Homeland Anthology" in the subject line. If email is not possible, mail the essay to Jenesha de Rivera and Patricia Tumang at:
Seal Press
c/o Brooke Warner
1400 65th Street, Suite 250
Emeryville, CA 94608.
Please direct any inquiries to homelandanthology@gmail.com.
Payment: $50-$100 plus two books
Reply: Please allow until September 1 for a response. If you haven't received a response by then, please assume your essay has not been selected. It is not possible to reply to every submission personally.
Homelands: Women's Journeys Toward Meanings of Home (tentative title)
Edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera
To be published by Seal Press, Winter 2007
For as long as people have left their homes and returned, there have been stories written about journeying to the homeland. Yet, what does this journey look like when a homeland no longer exists? When its borders are policed by government-enforced laws and restrictions? When the memory of a physical place is too far removed, or possibly forgotten?
Throughout history, the phrase "homeland" has conjured up evocative metaphors and literal definitions of home. For those who have immigrated to new lands or who have been exiled to foreign countries, it often stirs up feelings of nostalgia, sentimentality, and longing. For some, "homeland" can also evoke feelings of displacement and utter loss. Displacement caused by war, natural disasters, occupation, genocide, political struggles, and colonization affects our relationship to our homelands, and oftentimes impacts whether we are able to physically return "home." Homeland invokes contradictory feelings and ideas: rootedness and departure, stability and insecurity, reality and imagination. Whether national or international, domestic or foreign, "at home" or "abroad," the idea of homeland has been branded on our psyches, especially with the establishment of the United States Department of Homeland Security after 9/11. In the United States and the rest of the world, the shifting borders of "homeland" have become blurred, and new meanings of home are continually being traversed upon, reconstructed, and re-imagined.
This anthology will explore women's journeys to their "homeland(s)"—specific geographic locations, an imagined community, part of one's identity/ body, or a memory. The editors are looking for personal essays written in first-person that investigate the complexities of how women experience, remember, or imagine journeys to their homelands. The essays will be told from the perspective of a journey. Essays from emerging as well as established writers will be accepted. We are not looking for submissions on travel adventures abroad. Rather, we are looking for unique, well-crafted personal essays from women of all races, classes, ethnicities, abilities, sexualities, religions, and nationalities, who have been transformed by their journeys—physical, spiritual, political, or imagined—to their homeland(s). We are interested in essays that challenge current and conventional notions of homeland. We welcome and consider new ideas other than the topics suggested below.
Possible topics include:
* The estranged homeland: the experience of living in exile
* The grass is greener on the other side: stories of immigration
* Back to my roots: stories by American-born women traveling back to the land of their ancestors
* Pilgrimages: spiritual journeys to the homeland
* In search of safety: stories of refugee journeys
* The border crossed us: women's lives in and across borderlands
* Not another Starbucks: homelands affected by globalization
* Fragments of home: journeys to homelands affected by war or natural disasters
* Off the map: journeys to a homeland that no longer exists
* This land is my land: struggles over land and sovereignty (including, but not limited to: Guam, Hawai'i, Native Americans,
the Caribbean, indigenous people, etc.)
* Ancestral amnesia: memories that are far removed from the homeland (i.e. African Americans who don't have memories
of Africa, and 2nd/3rd generation daughters of immigrants)
* Fallen walls: journeys to homelands that were once divided by walls (i.e. Germany, China) and
how the destruction of these walls changed the notion of homeland and community
* Divided lands: journeys to homelands that are currently divided territories (i.e. North and South Korea)
* Making a living in a foreign land: stories of women migrating to other countries for work
* Stepping outside the gender box: transgender and gender variant women's journeys
Editors: Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera are Filipina American lesbian writers, activists, and performers who live in Oakland, CA. Their essays are in the Seal Press anthology Waking Up American: Growing Up Biculturally and Patricia's work has appeared in Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism, and Hyphen Magazine, a magazine dedicated to Asian American issues and pop culture.
Publisher: Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, publishes
groundbreaking books by and for women in a variety of topics.
Deadline: April 1, 2006
Length: 3,000–6,000 words
Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address, and a short bio on the last page. No simultaneous submissions. Previously published essays will be considered. Essays will not be returned.
Submitting: Electronic submissions are preferred. Send essay electronically as a Word or Rich Text Format file (with .doc or .rtf extension) to Jenesha de Rivera and Patricia Tumang at homelandanthology@gmail.com. Put "Homeland Anthology" in the subject line. If email is not possible, mail the essay to Jenesha de Rivera and Patricia Tumang at:
Seal Press
c/o Brooke Warner
1400 65th Street, Suite 250
Emeryville, CA 94608.
Please direct any inquiries to homelandanthology@gmail.com.
Payment: $50-$100 plus two books
Reply: Please allow until September 1 for a response. If you haven't received a response by then, please assume your essay has not been selected. It is not possible to reply to every submission personally.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
I took my students this morning to the SMU Bridwell collection which has a livres d'artistes selection that included Henri Matisse's Jazz and La Maigre (the waif) by Pablo Picasso. Arion Press in SF is also well-represented in the Bridwell collections, and works here included a delightful collection of SHAPED POEMS and a special edition of John Ashberry's "Portrait in a Convex Mirror" housed inside a large metallic, embossed film cannister. This last piece had sections of the poem printed on circular sheets of paper, interspersed with portraits of the author rendered by artists including Jim Dine, Larry Rivers, and Jane Freilicher. Amazing. It was exciting too to see Matisse's Jazz, only 350 copies were produced, one of which was owned by Stanley Marcus, a generous donor to the book arts collection at Bridwell. But he did not donate this particular edition of Jazz that we were looking at it, because the version he owned, he kept in his bathroom and had *LAMINATED*. Other great works represented in the collection included Jim Dine's Portrait of Dorian Gray and a collection on shape and color by Sonia Delaunay. I could see my French speaking students growing excited, getting all sorts of ideas for translation projects. Another student who's put up something of a fuss most of the semester re: visual/textual may have I think, "got it" - he very publicly announced at the end of the session that while he didn't personally prefer/connect to this variety of work, he could see it inciting and inspiring the group and I think this gave him some newfound respect though he was full of wisecracks this morning. It's kind of like announcing, I don't like Scott Turow but I love Michael Ondaatje. Personal aesthetics. Whateva. I told him he needed to get over Humument.
The big farewell reading is Sunday. Friends, students and colleagues, not all of whom have heard me read before, will be in attendance. I had planned on reading just the love hotel poems and haiku from the yearlong project which reflect on my life here in Dallas and the region. But now I am having a hard time deciding as some of these people have never heard me read before and I want to read work that shows a range of sensibilities. What to read, what to read. Any suggestions or votes/requests for favorite works, please send them my way before Sunday morning.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Reviewing resumes for my stand-in has been interesting. I forwarded the freelance post to the administrator at school with a special request to forward to faculty and adjuncts. Apparently, she forwarded it to her graduate student list - subsequently, I have received a flood of emails and resumes from candidates who don't have a matching skill set - theater majors, drypoint teachers and one guy who titled the subject of his email to me "proof read help." I am at least somewhat uncomfortable with MY students knowing my plans to vacate and where I work when I'm NOT at the uni, which is frankly, private. I tend to be open, but have realized a strong tendency towards protecting my interests in the last year. But it looks like reliable help is lined up and will work on coordinating a meeting with these folks, administering a proofing test, and commencing with scheduling for those who perform well.
Booked my air ticket to Chiang-Kai Shek airport this weekend. My travel dates are December 27-March 10. Back in SoCal in early March, then back to Texas. Been leafing thru the Taiwan guidebooks and discovered that the residency on Bei Ping Road is about 2 blocks away from the new museum of paper art, where workshops are given and exhibitions are rotated. The district is the old city center, Da'an, which appears to be fairly close (walking distance?) to Chiang-Kai Shek Plaza and Taiwan Normal University (the Harvard of Taiwan).
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Please read this article if you are a MacDowell alum and send a letter to the town council expressing your concerns.
Tax man goes after art colony, MacDowell fights town's effort to yank exemption....
Tax man goes after art colony, MacDowell fights town's effort to yank exemption....
Friday, November 11, 2005
Talented and esteemed photographer Pedro Meyer had his offer to exhibit work in the Korean Triennial of Photography rescinded. Please visit his site (click on left hand corner of editorial page) to learn more and to show your support by submitting the on-line petition. Pedro Meyer is the author of I Photograph to Remember and many other wonderful, ground-breaking projects, in addition to the founder of Zone Zero.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Having given notice at work yesterday, I am now free to go public.
I leave around December 20 to go here for two months. I had been trying to get into this program for the last three years, and finally, a window. The residency is in the heart of Taipei, at the center of a growing international arts scene. My fellow residents will be art critics, choreographers, installation artists, painters from Australia, Austria, Taiwan and other countries. I will be working on a libretto, a memoir, short stories, and quite possibly, some poems and collage work.
Some upcoming pre-departure appearances in California:
December 10, Riverside Public Library, 3-5 p.m.
December 13, Denise Roberge Gallery, Palm Desert
December 14, Poetry at the Loft, Redlands
December 16, Tebot Bach, Huntington Beach
Hoping to see some good artwork in L.A. during our trip and visit with Michael S who recently located to the West Coast from NY where he is developing Foot Foot - a contemporary performances space in Chinatown.
I leave around December 20 to go here for two months. I had been trying to get into this program for the last three years, and finally, a window. The residency is in the heart of Taipei, at the center of a growing international arts scene. My fellow residents will be art critics, choreographers, installation artists, painters from Australia, Austria, Taiwan and other countries. I will be working on a libretto, a memoir, short stories, and quite possibly, some poems and collage work.
Some upcoming pre-departure appearances in California:
December 10, Riverside Public Library, 3-5 p.m.
December 13, Denise Roberge Gallery, Palm Desert
December 14, Poetry at the Loft, Redlands
December 16, Tebot Bach, Huntington Beach
Hoping to see some good artwork in L.A. during our trip and visit with Michael S who recently located to the West Coast from NY where he is developing Foot Foot - a contemporary performances space in Chinatown.
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