GRADUATING FROM BARNARD COLLEGE TO ...

"Eileen Tabios: From Barnard to hay(na)ku"

I’m grateful but also stunned by this unexpected article on me “By Barnard Archives and Special Collections.” I wasn’t expecting it, and felt a variety of emotions as I read through it. I feel a little shocked, to tell the truth, because this article  is the first time I get to have a sense of what a third-party would say about my life  based on researching what’s out there. It’s sort of a version of a life which is not immediately familiar to me. That is, while there’s nothing inaccurate in the article, the matters that are emphasized are different choices than what I would have made – thereby giving a different sense of the life that I thought I’d lived. I suppose that’s the difference between biography and autobiography, and/or biography written with or without the subject’s involvement. Anyway, I can only be grateful to Barnard College for the love. And gratitude to BC Class of 2020 students Sarah Barlow-Ochshorn and Jenna Jaquez

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I should also thank certain poetry groups whose past attention on me or my works ended up being part of Barnard’s sources:

The Argotist

Jacket

Marsh Hawk Press

Our Own Voice

Poetry Foundation

WritingLikeAnAsian

THE HAY(NA)KU VISITS CUNY LAGUARDIA!

Sometimes, world-traveler hay(na)ku visits schools. I'm delighted to share a poem by Janessa Graham, a student at a CUNY LaGuardia course called "Poetry Workshop" and taught by professor-poet Thomas Fink. At this course, Janessa wrote--and thank you, Janessa!

Its Truth-By Janessa Graham

(Co-inspired by Robert Creeley’s “The Language” and Eileen Tabios’s Hay(na)ku)

            Poetry,

its truth

is a persona’s

            lyrical

dancing through 

pen taps on

            floor

piece, the

living, the crux

            posture,

of visceral

the sculpt of

            its

body matter.

*****

A few more students also wrote in hay(na)ku. If their poems become available for sharing, I'll be delighted to feature more on this space. I feel blessed!

And if anyone wants to learn more about the hay(na)ku, go to its link ... and here's my latest hay(na)ku book:

DAY 7/7 FOR MINIATURE BOOK SOCIETY

I’m a new member of the Miniature Book Society and I was nominated to post 7 books for MBS’ Facebook page. "Miniature" books are sized at 3-4 inches or less. I’ll be replicating the posts on this blog for the next 7 days.

DAY 7/7  My favorite miniature book covers

MBS

My favorite miniature book covers
MBS

I’ve been sharing books by some of today’s contemporary poets. My 7th presentation involves one of my poems but focuses on contemporary sculptor/storyteller Raelinda Woad. She creates gorgeous metal-based books which lend themselves to jewelry and the second-to-last image shows some from my collection of her works. Raelinda’s works interest me because she also used her small sculptures to bind her short stories. Her materials include steel, brass, etched glass, opals, and sea glass. The particular book I present is where she used one of her sculptures to bind one of my prose poems, “Returning The Borrowed Tongue.” Her pages all unfold in the accordion format and her books are sized at 1.25” X 1” X .25”. An exception, as shown on last image, is her 1” x 1” dragonfly series of books all containing the word “Peace” in 14 languages.

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Today I nominate any new member of MBS. I love seeing all the books already shared, AND I’m also interested in the *gateway* books—those that made you discover mini books or the first books you’re collecting. Some of the books I’m posting, for example, were created before I knew that miniature books were a thing. So I nominate MBS New Member #7.

*****

This is a challenge for contributing to the spread of reading culture. The method of participation is to post a favorite book, one book per day, for 7 days. You upload some images with a short explanation about the book and invite one FB friend to participate in this challenge.

DAY 6/7 FOR MINIATURE BOOK SOCIETY

I’m a new member of the Miniature Book Society and I was nominated to post 7 books for MBS’ Facebook page. "Miniature" books are sized at 3-4 inches or less. I’ll be replicating the posts on this blog for the next 7 days.

DAY 6/7  My favorite miniature book covers

MBS

I’m sharing books by some of today’s contemporary poets. My sixth presentation is of a family-oriented series, books by Melinda Luisa de Jesus and her children Malaya (8-years-old) and Stinson (13-years-old). While Melinda is a noted feminist/peminist scholar, she is also an artist/poet who raises her children accordingly. In recent years, Melinda underwent training in the letterpress arts at the San Francisco Center for the Book where she studied with Mary Laird and became certified to use the Vandercook cylinder press; she started her own press, "Latenight Letterpress/peminology." She printed these three books published by Minitage Editions entitled MANGOS (by Melinda), SPAM (by Stinson), and MERMAIDS (by Malaya). These are all 3 x 3 inch accordion books handprinted from polymer plates on Stonehenge and Nepali paper.

All of the poems are in the Filipino diasporic “hay(na)ku” form that is based on three lines with the first line being one word, the second line two words, and the third line three words. It’s, thus, nifty that the authors also number three! As well, I present the hay(na)ku and this Filipino-Pennsylvania Dutch family because it’s Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month here in the United States and Melinda is a Filipina-American with Pilipinx kids.

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Today I nominate any new member of MBS. I love seeing all the books already shared, AND I’m also interested in the *gateway* books—those that made you discover mini books or the first books you’re collecting. Some of the books I’m posting, for example, were created before I knew that miniature books were a thing. So I nominate MBS New Member #6.

*****

This is a challenge for contributing to the spread of reading culture. The method of participation is to post a favorite book, one book per day, for 7 days. You upload some images with a short explanation about the book and invite one FB friend to participate in this challenge.

DAY 5/7 FOR MINIATURE BOOK SOCIETY

I’m a new member of the Miniature Book Society and I was nominated to post 7 books for MBS’ Facebook page. "Miniature" books are sized at 3-4 inches or less. I’ll be replicating the posts on this blog for the next 7 days.

DAY 5/7  My favorite miniature book covers

MBS

I’m sharing books—some handmade—by some of today’s contemporary poets. These are one-off editions and likely would not be shown elsewhere. My fifth book is ZIMZALLA OBJECT 005 by Canadian poet Derek Beaulieu, sized at 1 x 1 inches. The 2011 book comes in a cotton bag containing a magnifying glass and was produced through zimZalla, a publishing project managed by stellar U.K. poet/writer Tom Jenks. Beaulieu is well-known and respected in contemporary radical visual and concrete poetry; reviewer Suzannah Evans writes about this particular book:

“… Beaulieu constructs images which use letters, rather than whole words (as with some concrete poems). The letters are combined with line drawings and this results in tiny intricate graphics, many of which are reminiscent of visual images that already exist in our day-to-day lives; staircases, map contours, chains of molecules, pieces of machinery. There is a great breadth of style in the graphics. In some the letters are easily recognizable, some are abstract and too tiny to read. The visual styles range from dot-matrix to calligraphy.”

I show two interior shots to exemplify what Evans describes; you can see her full review here at Sabotage Reviews.

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Today I nominate any new member of MBS. I love seeing all the books already shared, AND I’m also interested in the *gateway* books—those that made you discover mini books or the first books you’re collecting. Some of the books I’m posting, for example, were created before I knew that miniature books were a thing. So I nominate MBS New Member #5.

*****

This is a challenge for contributing to the spread of reading culture. The method of participation is to post a favorite book, one book per day, for 7 days. You upload some images with a short explanation about the book and invite one FB friend to participate in this challenge.

DAY 4/7 FOR MINIATURE BOOK SOCIETY

I’m a new member of the Miniature Book Society and I was nominated to post 7 books for MBS’ Facebook page. "Miniature" books are sized at 3-4 inches or less. I’ll be replicating the posts on this blog for the next 7 days.

DAY 4/7  My favorite miniature book covers

MBS

I’m sharing books—some handmade—by some of today’s contemporary poets. These are one-off editions and likely would not be shown elsewhere. My fourth book is GRINGOSTROIKA by Jules Boykoff, sized at about 4 x 2.5 inches. Yet this post is more about its publisher, Dusie which was founded by poet Susana Gardner (you can read about Dusie). As shown through Jules’ book, Dusie released/releases small poetry books crafted from evocative paper ephemera—an approach that bespeaks the ineffability of poetry as well as a concern for the environment that manifests itself in recycling. As regards the latter, the approach also speaks to the issue of privilege, that is, how trash is defined—a relevant concern if one believes (as I do) that poetry can be found anywhere. Its approach means that book covers of the same title are often different; the last image shows five different covers to IT’S CURTAINS, one of my own books I was fortunate to have Dusie publish.

Boykoff’s book was from 2006 and part of Dusie’s innovative approach to poetry publishing. That is, not just publishing innovative poetry but disrupting traditional publishing into, for example, coop efforts. Thus, you can see the pun on Title Page about how it calls its book a “WE/E” book, not just referencing “wee” but also the homonym “we”.

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Today I nominate any new member of MBS. I love seeing all the books already shared, AND I’m also interested in the *gateway* books—those that made you discover mini books or the first books you’re collecting. Some of the books I’m posting, for example, were created before I knew that miniature books were a thing. So I nominate MBS New Member #4.

*****

This is a challenge for contributing to the spread of reading culture. The method of participation is to post a favorite book, one book per day, for 7 days. You upload some images with a short explanation about the book and invite one FB friend to participate in this challenge.

BOOK 3/7 FOR MINIATURE BOOK SOCIETY

I’m a new member of the Miniature Book Society and I was nominated to post 7 books for MBS’ Facebook page. "Miniature" books are sized at 3-4 inches or less. I’ll be replicating the posts on this blog for the next 7 days.

DAY 3/7  My favorite miniature book covers

MBS

I’m sharing books—some handmade—by some of today’s contemporary poets. My third book is THE STARS LOOK VERY DIFFERENT TODAY: A DAVID BOWIE TRIBUTE put together shortly after his death. It was curated/published by Poems-for-all, arguably the leading contemporary poetry publisher in the miniature book format, with books at about 1.75” x 2”.  This video of how poet/poetry lover/ex-bookseller Robert Hansen creates his books is enchanting and recommended.  Poems-for-all has an idealistic vision for the press to distribute tiny books of poetry worldwide like Johnny Appleseed in his day; his website notes, “Little books of poetry, scattered like seeds,” and Missouri’s Poet laureate Karen Craigo says about it, “I love the comparison, since lovers of poetry know how some words can take root in us and, to continue the metaphor, bear fruit forever.” (Craigo’s comments are at a review HERE). It’s worth noting that these books aren’t sold but distributed however the authors and publisher are able; you can get free copies by simply contacting Robert through his website https://poems-for-all.com.

In addition to the Bowie cover, I post 2 interiors shots. I’m also posting the cover to the latest Poems-for-all book I just received, IN A STATION OF THE METRO just because it presents my favorite couplet in literature (most poets will never write a mere 2 lines that warrant a book!):

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

By Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Poems-for-all also shows how a superb use of graphics can elevate modest production values (stapled card stock), so I’m showing covers from a random sampling of their books—all vivid and pleasing to the eye! Finally, as we all like seeing books as collections, too, I end with a photo of how I shelve my Poems-for-all books: I took a desk drawer organizer, upended it on its side, and created a bookcase!

P.S. I add a photo of me reading one of their books with one of their tiny bookmarks!

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Today I nominate any new member of MBS. I love seeing all the books already shared, AND I’m also interested in the *gateway* books—those that made you discover mini books or the first books you’re collecting. Some of the books I’m posting, for example, were created before I knew that miniature books were a thing. So I nominate MBS New Member #3.

*****

This is a challenge for contributing to the spread of reading culture. The method of participation is to post a favorite book, one book per day, for 7 days. You upload some images with a short explanation about the book and invite one FB friend to participate in this challenge.

BOOK 2/7 FOR MINIATURE BOOK SOCIETY

I’m a new member of the Miniature Book Society and I was nominated to post 7 books for MBS’ Facebook page. "Miniature" books are sized at 3-4 inches or less. I’ll be replicating the posts on this blog for the next 7 days.

DAY 2/7  My favorite miniature book covers

MBS
I’m sharing books—some handmade—by some of today’s contemporary poets. These are one-off editions and likely would not be shown elsewhere. My second book is VOYAGE by Hungarian poet Marton Koppany. Marton is a master poet—one of the most adept practitioners worldwide of visual poetry which (generally) does not rely on the normative use of words. There is much information about him if you Google him; I do like this personal homage to him. You also can see a convenient summary of hs works HERE. 

Marton hand-made VOYAGE in 2013 for a project I had curated, “Sit With Moi.” Before collecting miniature books, I collected miniature chairs and through this project asked poets and artists to make books small enough to place on those chairs. Several of those books end up qualifying to be “miniature” by MBS standards. VOYAGE is sized 2 x 2 inches.

The background explains why the “protagonist” in VOYAGE is a chair. You can interpret it any way you wish but my interpretation is to note how the chair is yellow at the start of its “voyage,” the voyage might be symbolized by the blue waters (could be an ocean) and the end of the trip shows how the protagonist has been changed by the voyage so that the chair is now the same color as the blue waters. Note, too, how the yellow chair at the start of the trip is incomplete whereas the chair at end of trip can be viewed as complete if one were to believe the front two legs are the same color as the blue ocean. There’s a saying, “Color is a narrative,” and Marton shows it to be so through his elegant, minimalist treatment.

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Today I nominate any new member of MBS. I love seeing all the books already shared, AND I’m also interested in the *gateway* books—those that made you discover mini books or the first books you’re collecting. Some of the books I’m posting, for example, were created before I knew that miniature books were a thing. So I nominate MBS New Member #2.

*****

This is a challenge for contributing to the spread of reading culture. The method of participation is to post a favorite book, one book per day, for 7 days. You upload some images with a short explanation about the book and invite one FB friend to participate in this challenge.

BOOK 1/7 FOR MINIATURE BOOK SOCIETY

I’m a new member of the Miniature Book Society and I was nominated to post 7 books for MBS’ Facebook page (you can google and join if you have an interest in miniature books). I’ll be replicating the posts on this blog for next seven days:

DAY 1/7: MY FAVORITE MINIATURE BOOK COVERS:

MBS

Thanks to Maria for nominating me. For a 1-year-old collector, how daunting! So I’ll be sharing books—usually handmade—by some of today’s contemporary poets. These are one-off editions and likely would not be shown elsewhere. My first book is “A Hay(na)ku by New Zealand-based Ivy Alvarez. 

This book, sized at 1.25 x 1-7/8 inches, is in a matchbox binding decorated by the poet. Here is the poem’s text:

A HAY(NA)KU 

“What are poets for in a destitute time?”

--Friedrich Holderlin

Poets

are good

to eat, as

they 

are more

tender and juicy

than 

any other

human. Any cannibal

worth

his/her

salt knows this.

The hay(na)ku is a 21st century poetic form that I invented with friends and which since has been picked up by poets around the world. It is a six-word tercet with the first line being one word, the second line being two words, and the third line being three words.

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Today I nominate any new member of MBS. I love seeing all the books already shared, but I’m also interested in the gateway books—those that made you discover mini books or the first books you’re collecting. The books I’m posting, for example, are books made for me and happened to be miniature; some were created before I knew that miniature books were a thing. So I nominate MBS New Member #1.

*****

This is a challenge for contributing to the spread of reading culture. The method of participation is to post a favorite book, one book per day, for 7 days. You upload some images with a short explanation about the book and invite one FB friend to participate in this challenge.