Tag Archives: enough is enough

Rah! Rah! Roundup

rahrahroundup“[Birds of Lace] is influenced by the spirit of cunty women, criminal queers, wild open waters and DIY opulence.” – Birds of Lace Editor Gina Abelkop talks with ENTROPY in the latest edition of their small press interview series.

“We all have biases but the whole idea of ‘greatness,’ which arises out of a white male tradition, is so awful for poetry and for people.” – Bruce Covey talks with Fanzine about Coconut Books, poetics, and more.

“I thought, This is a great genre where I can get people’s voices, I can mold them, I can sculpt them. They’ll still pass through me, but I don’t want to be the one who’s speaking. I don’t want my voice to be on the page.”  – Juliana Delgado Lopera on ¡Cuéntamelo! (“Tell Me About It”), a collection of oral histories by LGBT Latino immigrants.

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To Being Unreasonable in 2015

from Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s “How to Suffer Politely (And Other Etiquette for the Lumpenproletariat)”

in spring of 2014 you hear Alice Notley read for the first time in your life. because it’s spring, you wear the wrong things and end up with a pile of cardigans and scarves piled at your feet and tucked into your armpits. you drink champagne because you were, at the time, in a depression. hours earlier, the day of the reading, you had seen Alice in front of a Popeye’s in Bed-Stuy. you couldn’t be sure but you were sure; it was her. you felt it, and it was a strange thing to feel. the day after the Notley reading, you find a brick wall near your apartment and write out in capital mint-colored letters the only thing you remember from her reading: “I DON’T HAVE A PLAN/ I HAVE A VOICE.” you don’t know why you do it but you do it. this feels important.

a few weeks before the Alice Notley sighting, you go to a colleague’s poetry reading at Unnameable Books. afterward they are going to the Copula reading at Wendy’s Subway—they ask if you want to join. you want to and don’t want to—something feels off—and ultimately walk home sulking. you don’t know how to make friends and this has become a problem. you feel shy. or are you distrustful? people make you nervous and exhausted. especially poetry people—the possibility for false intimacy is high. to ease your anxiety, you tell yourself you would have just gotten drunk at Copula and would be hungover the next day. you know what that space is like. later in the night, you get a few texts telling you to come to Copula but you don’t. the moon is full inside you like a knowing thing. Continue reading

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Rah! Rah! Roundup

rahrahroundupPart Two of the Female Aesthetic(s) Symposium, moderated by Metta Sáma, went up this week on The Conversant. It features Racquel Goodison, Monica A. Hand, Patricia Spears Jones, Tracy Chiles McGhee, and Arisa White.

“Avant-garde poetry’s attitudes towards race have been no different than that of mainstream institutions.” – Cathy Park Hong in her essay, “Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde.”

Delirious Hem’s forum on Rape Culture and the Poetics of Alt Lit continues during November.

Sarah Seltzer’s interesting take on the Lena Dunham controversy explores the distinctions between triggering art and abuse.

Various cartoonists give their perspectives on writing characters of different races than your own.

Read an interview with Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, the artist behind the “Stop Telling Women To Smile” anti-street harassment campaign.

Women, Action and the Media (WAM) has partnered with Twitter to support women experiencing gender-based harassment on the social media platform. You can report any instances of harassment through this online form.

Poets in NYC met this week to talk about sexism and accountability in local poetry circles. Read the meeting handout here.

What did we miss? Share your links in the comments.

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