HAY(NA)KU AND SHADORMA

Over at MindsLoveMisery's Menagerie (a title that makes me laugh), Bastet presents the hay(na)ku with a "shadorma "ending. The latter, new to me, is a  3-5-3-3-7-5 syllable poem.  You can go HERE to see this lovely sequence but here's its shadorma ending:

a shadow 

t’was just a shadow 

no, not him 

nor his tears 

just a trick of light and rain 

on my window pane.

Thanks ye lovely Bastet and Menagerie...

A BOOK THAT TRANSLATES INTO SUPPORT FOR A SCHOOL!

(A young student in T'Boli garb dances ... as all children should!)

Dear All,

I am doing a three-day fundraiser on behalf of a T'Boli school in the Philippines which had been threatened by a shut-down due to poor proceeds from weather-damaged local crops (among other things).  Recently, I saw an 11-year-old make a $5 donation (to help keep paying teachers!) and I was so moved that I decided to do this modest fundraiser, to wit:

If you order any of my books, I will donate the proceeds to the school -- for info on the school fundraiser, go HERE.  I will even send the book out to a gift recipient, holiday-wrapped and with a To/From card from you if you choose to give said book as a holiday gift. Go to MY WEBSITE and click on PUBLICATIONS to choose the book.  Message me on Facebook or email me at Galateaten@aol.com if you wish to buy a book that will help out a school!

Best,
Eileen

HAPPY 15TH ANNIVERSARY, BLAZEVOX BOOKS!

Celebrating, BlazeVOX 15 is fresh with tons of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, text-art and author interviews. As its publisher-editor Geoffrey Gatza is wont to say: Hip Hip Hooray!

And I'm also honored to be part of the issue by being one of the author interviewees. You can check my blather HERE.  Some of the answers in terms of recent reads and views are outdated but y'all get the drift...

GALATEA WORKS ON THE RESURRECTION!

When you forego shoulds and convention(al how-tos), wonderful things can happen -- especially in the arts, including poetry-reviewing. Thus, will Galatea Resurrects' next issue be delighted to present a review by T.C. Marshall of three books one would not necessarily think to join together:

Poems to Work On: The Collected Poems of Jim Dine. Ed. with Foreword by Vincent Katz (New York: Cuneiform Press, 2015)

Albert Saijo’s Woodrat Flat (Kaneohe, HI: Tinfish, 2015)

Guantanamo by Frank Smith. Trans. Vanessa Place (Los Angeles: Les Figues,  2014)

Here's the marvelous first paragraph of Tom's review -- yet another reason to anticipate the forthcoming issue of Galatea Resurrects #25, where we love Poetry enough to leave it unconstricted of paradigms --

            The idea of reviewing these three books together rose out of my first look into them, when I saw the radically different angles on poetry that they embody and what they have in common. I had chosen them from Galatea’s “purse,”  as Eileen Tabios calls it, based on interest in the three writers. One, Albert Saijo, was a naturalist and a companion to a few of the famous Beat poets. He was also the brother of an admired acquaintance of mine, Gompers Saijo, who painted the wildflower poster that most of us used back in the day for learning to recognize and name California’s botanical highlights. I was pleased to see new poems from this sentimental old favorite poet and anxious to see how the concerns of the naturalist fit with the attentions of the poet.. Another was a great NY painter, Jim Dine, whose “Hearts” adorns a poster on my covered back porch. He is another sort of sentimental favorite, but his sensibility is from that other coast and from that other world called “painting.” I wanted to see if I could discern a clear relation between his acts of painting and his poetry. The third was an un-sentimental un-favorite that I had only recently first encountered because of the furor over her work that re-inscribed Gone with the Wind as a series of tweets. Vanessa Place’s name is there only as translator for this book by Frank Smith, who is said to be “a French journalist, nonfiction writer, and author of multiple books of poetry,” but it was her name and concerns that drew me. As the press release says, “translated into English by Vanessa Place, Guantanamo unsettles the categories of law and poetry, innocence and guilt, translation and interpretation.” It is her “Translation and interpretation” intermixed as something like “trans-terpretation” that engages me with this book because of her efforts in this realm of “conceptual poetry” and the meanings that they have taken on for progressive poets and readers of poetry. I wanted to see what she was putting forward for us, whether the concept was all there might be to “get” from the original “trans-terpretation” by Smith of interrogations of prisoners. It is these admixtures that engage my attention in all three books: the lyricism and naturalist leanings of Saijo’s late work, the poetry and painterly sensibility in Dine’s Poems to Work On, and the unsettling of categories pushed into each other by Frank Smith and emphasized by Place.

*****


And this seems like a good time to note that even as I work on the upcoming release of the next issue, I've set the next deadline for the subsequent issue.  Reviews for Galatea Resurrects #26 are due no later than June 30, 2016.  Do check GR's list of review copies in case you want to participate!

BOOKMARK MOI, THE BLOG

Really: I would much rather sleep.  But insomnia also has generated some interesting projects.  My latest is the blog

BOOKMARK MOI

where I follow up on my intent to have a collection of bookmarks.  From the Introduction:

It's early stages so my thinking may change.  But for now I'm thinking, given the almost infinite variety of bookmarks out there, I may try to focus the collection on bookmarks with literary connections -- from presses, from bookstores, from magazines, from books ... you get the drift. This would allow me to provide commentary that may be useful, e.g. for the bookmark associated with Bino A. Realuyo's award-winning poetry collection, The Gods We Worship Live Next Door, I then can point you to his poetry which is certainly recommended reading.

I'm a huge admirer, too, of the DIY ethic.  If any writer wants to send me a custom-made bookmark, contact Moi at galateaten@gmail.com and maybe we can do an exchange. Or, surprise me!  Here's my address: Eileen Tabios, P.O. Box 361, St. Helena, CA 94574

See you THERE!

INVENT STORY, E.G. THAT "STRETCHMARK" I NEVER HAD

physically, though experienced several times as a metaphor...

I was blessed to wake up to this review by Joey Madia/New Mystics Reviews on INVENT(ST)ORY.  You can see entire review HERE but here's an excerpt:

...works from Tabios’s early years, beginning with 1996, where, in the very first poem, I read the line “your finger trailing the ragged seam of my stretchmark.” Having read Tabios’s more political work, stemming from issues of Filipino nationalism and diaspora, the condition of the orphan, and gender transformation, among other elevated topics, I found this line a reminder that all art, no matter its purpose, must be personal and evocative. It must paint with words—words chosen with the utmost care and discernment.  

An early experimentation of Tabios’s that defines her relationship to the reader that I found fascinating is from 2003, when she published There, Where the Pages Would End, which is a series of “footnote poems.”  The idea was to have one of the poems at the bottom of an otherwise blank page so that the reader could create the story that would generate the footnote. I encourage the reader to do so. For writing teachers, or writers looking for exercises to sharpen their skills, this is powerful practice. In general, there is a considerable portion of Invent[st]ory that could be used to structure a series of workshops or to engage a class of writers with the endless possibilities for our craft that are left beyond the margins when we teach a static poem on the page and ask them to merely imitate.

I'm also taken by how, if there was one poem Joey said he'd recommend to someone who's never read me, it'd be the same poem I read this weekend at Eastwind, "What Can A Daughter Say?"--a poem I wrote by my father's deathbed and which took me nine years to be able to read it for the first time in public. It's actually a poem my long-time editor Tom Fink said is the best I've ever written, but which never got much play because of its length and the circumstances in which it was writ. I was heartened to see Joey's acknowledgment of it.  (HERE is Part I of the six-part poem and John Bloomberg-Rissman's engagement with the poem.)  Thank you Universe.

NEXT, HAY(NA)KU TRAVELS TO NEW ZEALAND!

This weekend I received an email that contained:

I'm writing to you from New Zealand where I'm putting together a Primary School text book  with creative poem prompts for 8 - 11 year olds.  

I'm writing because I'd love to include Hay(na)ku in this book. 

I'd love to explain the form in the book, give my own examples and encourage students to write their own... What I'd love to do is include some information about how you came up with the form as the book will encourage the young people to come up with their own form and rules as well, in a further section....

Amazing how that hay(na)ku just continues to travel!  Anyway, I directed the emailer to HERE, the hay(na)ku site!  When the form was launched in the first hay(na)ku anthology, the form was swiftly picked up for a "Poetry for the People" course at U.C. Berkeley. I also discussed the form in a presentation on "Children's Literature" at the recent Fil-Am International Book Fest.  It is indeed a teachable form -- do consider it!

Hay(na)Ku Drawing by Glynda "Q-TRACER" Velasco

EASTWIND, WHERE MAGANDA BOOKS THRIVE!

Maraming Salamat to Maganda Magazine and Eastwind Books for sponsoring today's reading with Barbara Jane Reyes and Arlene Biala. It was such a pleasure to read with Arlene and Barbara (thanks for the idea and inviting me, Barbara), and of course it didn't hurt that Erika of the fabulous KROAKLAND was the one fortuitously to helm the bookstore that day, which is to say, a fabulous platter of  her Kanom Krok was available for snacks.  Kanom Krok is  specialty Thai dessert made from coconut milk, rice flour, sugar, and salt. As well, it is vegan and gluten-free.  Here's Erika:

Wait, this report was about the poetry reading ... gotta get moi brain out of the food gutter.  So, here are pics of the lovely event! (Click on images to enlarge.)

Attendees included Marian Cordon, Edwin Lozada, Arlene, Barbara, Moi, 

Ryan Kitchell, and Joeminel Docuyanan

A crowd of other writers!

Arlene! So honored she has my book!

Marian and Joeminel of Maganda did Intros.

Barbara and Arlene check out the bookshelves of "Asian American Literature," including close-ups below (in case you want to know what Actual Asian American Literature looks like):

I am grateful Eastwind is stocking so many of my books, as well as books I've published through Meritage Press, including books by Luis H. Francia, Jean Vengua, Aileen Ibardaloza and Karen Llagas.  Check out all these lovely offerings in Berkeley!

EASTWIND READING THIS SUNDAY!

The poem I'll read this Sunday is a choice in response to the recent tragedies in Paris and Beirut.  I had chosen which poems to read, but I tossed them aside and thought to read "What Can A Daughter Say?" in response to the events in Paris and Beirut: because we are, all of us, interconnected ... and, thus, complicit ... And even as I say this I feel the poet's appropriate frustration over how such a reading will matter.  Still -- 

You are invited:

Eileen Tabios will read with Barbara Jane Reyes and Arlene Biala!

Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015, 3 p.m.
East Wind Books
2066 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 548-2350
FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE

(click on image to enlarge)

Information about the three authors -- who've all just released new books -- is available if you click on their names:

Arlene Biala

Barbara Jane Reyes

Eileen R. Tabios

A PUNETA POETICS: "DON'T CALL ME FILIPINO"

So one of the visual offshoots of my "Murder, Death and Resurrection" project is graffiti-ing the hallowed walls of the Philippine Cultural Center in Manila as art, poetry and vizpo offerings from Filipino poets and artists are exhibited as part of "Chromatext Rebooted" curated by poet Krip Yuson and artist Jean Marie Syjuco. I have to thank poet-editor Susan Schultz for helping me realize that my work would have been weaker had it been just the stark four orange pieces of paper above in its initial installation, spelling out the constipated "DON'T CALL ME FILIPINO." Instead, printouts of the poem "Excavating the Filipino in Me" helped allow for the work's complexity, per below in its final installation form (click on all images to enlarge):

My husband looked over my shoulder at the computer screen (as I prepared this blog post) and, discerning art critic that he is, noted, "I assume you've got a reason why the paper is orange...?"

Haughtily, I replied by reading from a paper I'd previously written whilst contextualizing the project: "Since CHROMATEXT REBOOTED is an exhibition, I opted to write the words with black marker against orange paper. I theorize it by suggesting that the orange-and-black contrast is more visually dramatic than a black-and-white printout; that handwriting intensifies intimacy; and that orange is the color of a flame and it’s part of my ars poetica that A poem should burn!"

In response, my husband who knows me very well, just looked at me.

So less haughtily, I admitted: "Well, and the orange paper was what was available in the house at the time ... "

Anyway, here's how the long poem starts:

EXCAVATING THE FILIPINO IN ME

I forgot the horizon is far, is near, is what you wish but always in front of you. 

I forgot one can choose always to face the horizon.

I forgot how the faces of elders bestow a haunting on others reciprocating with their own weariness.

I forgot how gazes can drop like debris.

I forgot missing teeth and gums full of potholes.

I forgot how shoulders sagged to crumbling ruins as they sat by roadsides under trees whose shade they treasured for costing nothing.

I forgot the young hugging the ground, their damp faces eagerly turning here, eagerly turning there, searching their surroundings for treasures invisible but I also believed existed when I still shared their innocence.

I forgot there is a country somewhere on the opposite of where I stand on this earth, a country whose scents stubbornly perfume my dreams.

I forgot my mistake. The radically old and the radically young are the same in their difference from me—they do not need much, they need too much. They do not ask, they must often plead.  I forgot how, unlike them, I knew what it took to survive.

Here's another excerpt:

I forgot to savor my childhood house where grandmother gave births with abundant abandon, where generations died more radiant than a sun’s implosion.

I forgot seashells sleeping on windowsills.

I forgot clouds of cushions recycling chicken feathers to soften every inch of narra furniture.  Stitched lace and sequin tempted viewers to believe angels never fell and a harpsichord could last for eternity.

I forgot foregoing milk for tapey rice wine as I preferred my tongue sodden—I forgot meticulousness in preserving memory as proof that someone will always remember you and me.

I forgot Diego lifting eyelashes to reveal soot.

I forgot the Ilokano sea witnessing eighty virgin men dangling from trees to protect me.

I forgot Marisa peeling the skin from a blue-boned fish, Shakira rustling up an old clothesline for tying hands together after mosquitos bit, Doris with ears attuned to lullabyes emanating from the wings of fireflies, Luisa who squatted besides betel-chewing crones with crooked front teeth, and Marjorie who swallowed the scarless sky over Siquijor.

I forgot we accepted a colonizer’s alphabet in exchange for electricity.

I forgot when memory became a colander with generous holes. 

I forgot the daughter lapsing to deception as she confronted her father's legacy as a dictator.

*****

My favorite work from the exhibit (from what I've seen through online missives so I haven't seen everything) attests to something about me, in case you hadn't gleaned it yet from the very first image above: "Puneta," one of three fiber art works cheerfully proclaiming invectives.  The artist Jenny Ortuoste talks about her work and the exhibit HERE.  And here's moi paborito:

*****

And here are photos from the exhibition brochure -- Thank you, curator and stellar-poet Krip Yuson, for having been so open to me, ever since my early days as a poet that began last century:

...THE PERSISTENCE OF WINTER

(Reading Goolrick at Pattiserrie B, San Francisco)

Robert Goolrick is such a fine writer that I read his latest novel about a topic of almost zero interest to me: Wall Street traders from the 1980s.  I'm talking about his The Fall of Princes.  And not only did I finish the book but it actually generated ten poems during its reading -- a result that pleases me since this meant I wrote poems about a topic of almost zero interest. Poetry can be (on) anything -- why shouldn't I write poems also on stuff that doesn't interest me?

Just a nota bene to the blog-as-file cabinet.

AT BUFFALO'S POETRY COLLECTION!

I was delighted (and honored) to learn yesterday that the University at Buffalo Libraries Special Collection, the Poetry Collection had been including all of my books and publications.  Today I'm sending them three publications to help them complete their collection (though it's not likely to be complete as my very first poetry collection, AFTER THE EGYPTIANS DETERMINED THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD IS A CIRCLE, is both out of print and a rarity).

Looking at these three works encourage me yet again to thank Mandy Laughtland for publishing, technically, my first novel, NOVEL CHATELAINE (later collected in SILK EGG):

And I'm also moved to thank scholar and jazz musician Theo Gonzalves for having produced my first and only single-author CD, The Empty Flagpole, which unbelievably includes Mei-mei Berssenbrugge as a guest artist reading her what-will-be-classic-poem "The Four Year Old Girl"!!!   (The CD's poems are also in Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole). It's been years so I'd almost forgotten about that project and Mei-mei's generosity. Here are pictures  of the CD and the CD liner notes:

I'd for sure forgotten about my appreciation for Richard Thatcher's mixed-media art, specifically his use of bolts as "marks" on fields to create sculpted "paintings" -- an appreciation that reveals itself in the image of carriage bolts on the four corners of the CD's paper sleeve.

Thanks for the memories, Buffalo, and having carried my works all these years!

BOOKMARK MOI!

The poet Lee Herrick once showed a photo of framed bookmarks on Facebook. Apparently, he collects bookmarks!  As soon as I saw that, I wondered why I also hadn't been collecting bookmarks, especially as Meritage Press had put out a couple of great ones (courtesy of designer Michelle Bautista). I'm talking about a bookmark tied with tiny Kali swords for Michelle's book KALI'S BLADE and a bookmark attached to a condom for Tom Beckett's UNPROTECTED TEXTS. I do hope I still have copies of those somewhere.

But anyway, yesterday I decided to start up a bookmark collection when I received these two from Vagabond Press.  They came with review copies and the bookmark's "pleas" to be reviewed made me laugh.  Here they are (and do check out Galatea Resurrects' Review Copy List):

And so we start a new collection! Alex Gildzen -- you have any bookmarks you're deaccessioning?

EXTENDED FINAL DEADLINE FOR NEXT GALATEA R.!

The new deadline for sending reviews over is Nov. 28, 2015.  Come one, come laggard to appreciating Poetry!

More info HERE.

TONY FRAZER: ONE OF THE POETRY EDITOR GREATS!

Happy Birthday, Tony Frazer! Delighted to be part of your Festschrift!  (Thanks again for publishing SILK EGG: Collected Novels!). I was also moved by how so many thought to put this project together for you -- but then you deserve it when we read ABOUT YOU, including the following:

"Tony Frazer is one of the great poetry editors of our time. This website is a tribute to him on his 64th birthday. It contains more than 200 contributions from poets whose writing he has published since 1981 under his imprints Shearsman Books and Shearsman Magazine, as well as from friends and well-wishers. Together, these present a unique collective tribute ... to Tony’s achievement as the publisher of more than 300 writers"

My very modest participation allowed me to showcase moi dawgs -- why not as I understand Tony Frazer to also be a great animal-lover! Here's Athena and Achilles doing some bedtime reading with SILK EGG: