Tag Archives: National Poetry Month

Selvage, Diaspora, and Lingual Processes: a Conversation with Hoa Nguyen

National Poetry Month 2020

By: Savannah Trent

I sat down, well more accurately sat down and logged into google chat, to talk to poet Hoa Nguyen to ask her about identity, belonging, and the diasporic experience.  Nguyen, whose 2016 book length collection of poems Violet Energy Ingots was shortlisted for the 2017 Griffin prize in poetry, is a poet whose work is known for its melodic quality, weaving rhyme, non sequiturs, syllabic play, and references to Sappho and Shakespeare among others. Born in the Mekong Delta, she was raised in the Washington DC area during the time of punk, post-punk and the Reagan presidency though she now resides in Toronto where she teaches creative writing and serves as a mentor to Miami University’s low residency program in creative writing. She is also the author of Dark (Skanky Possum 1998), Your ancient see through (AA Arts 2001), Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey 2009), As long as trees last (Wave 2012) and Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008 (Wave 2014).

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Meet Your Professors! Interview One — cris cheek

National Poetry Month 2020

At the start of this semester, I wanted to begin a series of interviews with professors; I believe our faculty are what make the entire Miami English department special and I hoped to use the platform to showcase that. Now that so much has changed as a result of the pandemic, I hope this series can also help future students get to know the creative writing program since they can’t come visit in person. To kick this series off and continue with our National Poetry Month theme, I I interviewed poetry professor cris cheek about his work:

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Nīnauele me Jim Chapson — Interview by Paul Vogel

National Poetry Month 2020

Born in Honolulu in 1944, Jim Chapson attended San Francisco State University and received his MA in 1968. With his partner, the Irish poet James Liddy (1934–2008), he moved to Milwaukee in 1976 and taught in the UW-Milwaukee English Department as an adjunct until 2016. He served as Poet Laureate of the City of Milwaukee from 2014 to 2016. He spends most of his time reading, writing and shopping at Whole Foods.

I once wrote that Jim’s poems move deftly between razor-sharp satire and passionate spiritual concern. I’ve also been close friends with him for many years and understand how important he is to his former students and poets in Milwaukee.

Paul Vogel: What was growing up in Hawaii like? What does your haole identity mean to you?

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Virtual Student Reading — “Annabel Lee” read by Cosette Gunther

National Poetry Month 2020

To kick off this week, we have another virtual student reading! Today, Cosette Gunther (a first year and member of the editorial staff for inklings) is reading a favorite poem of hers — “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe — and discusses a little bit about why she loves Poe’s poetry.

Art, Legacy, and Activism: An Interview with Siri Imani, by Kyle Flemings

National Poetry Month 2020

Siri Imani is an artivist who has galvanized the city of Cincinnati with her potent lyricism and star quality performances. Imani and her collective Triiibe, that includes the talented vocalist and musician Aziza Love, and the incredible beat maker and lyricist poet Pxvce (Peace), have performed nationwide and are quickly becoming artists who are force to be reckoned with. 

I am interested in their work because besides being friends of theirs. I have watched their growth from just starting out too performing at SouthWest by SouthWest to winning Hip Hop & Artist of the Year for Cincinnati Entertainment Awards.

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“The Time to Play among the Borders of the Possible is a Gift:” An Interview with cris cheek

National Poetry Month 2020

cris cheek is a documentary performance writer, sound composer, and photographer. They worked alongside Bob Cobbing and Bill Griffiths with the Consortium of London Presses in the mid 1970’s to run a thriving open access print shop for little press poets. In 1981 they co-founded a collective movement-based performance resource in the east end of London at Chisenhale Dance Space, working in collaboration with choreographers, musicians, and performance artists to make interdisciplinary events. cris taught Performance Writing at Dartington College of Arts (1995-2002), played music with Sianed Jones and Philip Jeck as Slant, collaborated on works about value and recycling with Kristen Lavers in Things Not Worth Keeping and has been a professor at Miami University in Ohio since 2005. cris lives in Cincinnati. Most recent publications are the church and the school, the beer (Critical Documents, 2007), part:short life housing (The Gig, 2009), pickles & jams (BlazeVOX Books, 2017), and fukc all the king’s men: the tower and a few beasts living in its rubble (Xerolage, 2019). They podcast with Mark Hagood as Phantom Power: sounds about sound.

It would be, in every sense, a fool’s errand to try and pin down what particularly interested me so thoroughly in cris cheek’s work that I was compelled to reach out to them for an interview; not because it couldn’t be done, but because any attempt to delineate singular points of interest would inevitably only serve to push away others just as present as I read their work. To say, for example, that I was drawn immediately to the way in cheek’s pickles & jams that words, lines, even stanzas dance staggeringly across the page, often floating towards and juking away from stability, while certainly true, would ignore how equally pulled I felt toward the way cheek’s refusal of alphabetic context in fukc all the king’s men: the tower and a few beasts living in its rubble simultaneously implodes reading-as-such and constructs images so literal they refuse to not be read. Perhaps the most sensible argument I can make for the following interview is that cheek’s work is, at every point, a performance; therefore, like all great performances, cheek’s work inspired in me the festering curiosity that ignites every behind-the-scenes documentary. I needed to know the distance between the artist in the wings and art unfolding on stage. More importantly, I needed to know how, and by what crafty devices, the distance might be crossed so fluidly, so fully, and with such clarity of motion that I found myself unsure the distance actually existed.

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Virtual Student Reading: 19 by Madi McGirr

National Poetry Month 2020

Here is the first in a series of student creative writing readings. Sophomore Madi McGirr reads her poem “19” which is after the poem “21” by Patrick Roche. You can read this poem as well as other poems and art by Madi in this year’s forthcoming issue of the Femellectual.

Appreciation: Rae Armantrout’s “Bardos,” by Trevor Root

National Poetry Month 2020

Rae Armantrout, a San Diego native famous for her terse, funny, brainy poems, visited Miami to read from her poems last April. Thanks to generous funding from the Clark Capstone Fund, Armantrout was in Oxford for several days to visit classes and meet with students for individual conferences. Author of over ten collections of poetry and a memoir, Armantrout won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award for her 2009 book Versed.

Miami MFA student Trevor Root is a fan of Armantrout’s mercurial, skeptical style. Thanks to Trevor for contributing the following appreciation of Armantrout’s poem “Bardos” to the blog:

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Sarah Gridley – Poetry as an Art of Making For, Interview by Dylan Ecker

National Poetry Month 2020

Hello all! March may have felt like years for a lot of us given the current state of affairs, but we have at last made it to April. April, of course, means that it is National Poetry Month! Here on the blog all month long we will be posting a lot about poetry. We have interviews, reviews, and some virtual student readings in the works so be sure to tune in regularly!

All best, Lauren Miles (CW Program Apprentice)

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