Dana Teen Lomax and Kindergarde are the Next Big Thing

I tagged Dana Teen Lomax for the Next Big Thing: you can read her post at Black Radish Blog.

C.S. Carrier's Next Big Thing: Mantle

C. S. Carrier writes about his new collection Mantle from H_NGM_AN BOOKS: the number eight, a"poem in the form of a stage play, ejaculate as sulfuric acid, Denzel Washington, and Idi Amin. Read the full post at lingua schematic.

Laura Goldstein's loaded arc is The Next Big Thing

Laura Goldstein has posted her self-interview for The Next Big Thing for her new book loaded arc from Trembling Pillow Press. Think floods, Kabbalah, Marshal McLuhan, Harryette Mullen, the George Bushes, and Katrina -- then read her post at makes a change!

Catherine Daly's "my version"

One more tonight: Catherine Daly posts about her ten-part project CONFITEOR at my version.  Some intriguing vectors of alignment/correspondence (between computer language, heresy, & prayer (Catherine), circuits, neurons & memory (Jen), self-induced trance, ender & the sacred (j)) in these projects. 

Jennifer K. Dick: The Next Big Thing

Jen Dick has posted her piece for The Next Big Thing, talking about her new book Circuits published by Corrupt Press -- Jennifer K. Dick.

The Next Big Thing: j hastain's SOS: Song of Songs of Solomon (a Queer Translation)

Last week, I tagged j hastain for the Next Big Thing and she has posted her self-interview on her new collection SOS: Song of Songs of Solomon (a Queer Translation).

Camille Martin is THE NEXT BIG THING

Camille Martin has posted her interview up at Rogue Embryo -- R is the Artichoke of Rose is the Next Big Thing!

The Next Big Thing: (em)bodied bliss

What is the working title of the book?

(em)bodied bliss. The title came from a Dusie chapbook of the same name, which forms one part of the new book, so no there was no working title.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Laura Mullen had been reading some work of mine, including the Dusie chap and pointed out the conversation the two sets of poems were having. As to the sources of the two parts or impulses of the collection, these were driven first by the ordinary pleasure of being in this world and the cold drench of the unacknowledged human terrors belying them.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry, though the forms of the poems themselves are diverse: double poems, prose poems, lineated poems, collage poems, dialogic poems. The poems from the Dusie chap draw on the released documents (and their erasures) from the investigations into torture by the U.S. government during the Iraq War – “Enduring Freedom” – as well as other related texts.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Anthony Hopkins as Walter Diaz, the Marquis de Sade, and John Yoo; Makram J. Koury, the Israeli Arab actor, as Abu Zabaydah. The speaker of the poems otherwise might alternate dialogically between Cate Blanchett and Hiam Abbas, the Palestinian actress and director.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Engagements with the torture of recent national policy against the quotidian pleasures of being, the poems navigate a territory whose boundaries become permeable, unfixed, go missing – horror/beauty, fear/delight, punishment/eros – probing the nature of complicity and the (mis)uses of language.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Perhaps a year and half or two, the two vectors of the project taken in sequence.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

A sense of place, of the human relationship to place, those we “inhabit,” as well as those we travel to/through inevitably, and a desire to forge modes of connection and understanding to places – their ecologies, histories, narratives. That is one half. The torture poems came directly in response to the horror the revelation of sanctioned torture policies evoked and the untenable yet unavoidable knowledge of my silent complicity in them. The impossibility of silence.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Mina Loy as the Shekina/Lilith/the Shulamite.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

(em)bodied bliss is published by Moria Books. The book and e-book can be found here. Huge gratitude to Bill Allegrezza.

Thank you to Susana Gardner for tagging me.  My tags go out to Dana Teen Lomax, Jill Stengel, Camille Martin, Jen Dick, C.S. Carrier, and Laura Goldstein.

Poet Carolyn Hembree's Skinny (Kore Press) dazzles, sparks, creates its own undertow and pulls us down, in, under the tides of memory and love, of lost things, old selves, the collision of what was and what is. A vivid revision of the Southern Gothic in fractured, fragmented narrative: we follow Skinny as she makes, takes, loses her way and finds it. Or not. "My whole body's a hand inside the hole of some clock reaching--"

Her language pulls itself apart and reknits in a wild force, both compassionate and brutal. Her lines lilt and tilt, break hard like waves impossible to ride, the tide on which Skinny and her kin move, Hembree riffing on rhythms, rhymes, sounds, repetition: songs to carry Skinny through her own fits, rowing her way through dreams of fame, Mamie's decline, the Mother's vanity and distain -- "so you can't tell / the skin beneath from what's been laid atop" -- and the counsels of First Cousin and Bird. "Not your time yet, Skinny." Maybe. Maybe not. But it is certainly Carolyn Hembree's time! Skinny is an astonishing debut, fire's heat and cool water's sudden quench. Get. This. Book!



Carolyn Hembree earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University and is an assistant professor at the University of New Orleans. Her poetry has received three Pushcart Prize nominations, a PEN Writers Grant, a Southern Arts Federation Grant, and a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship Award in Literature. Her second manuscript, Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine & Other Ways to Escape a Plague, was a finalist for Tupelo Press' 2012 First/Second Book Award and for Switchback's 2012 Gatewood Prize. You can read more about the fabulous Carolyn Hembree here.

OPEN Letter to Danielle Pafunda at Horse Less Press

My letter to Danielle Pafunda on her new Dusie Press collection Man Hater appears at Horse Less Press.

OPEN letter on China Cowboy by Kim Gek Lin Short

My OPEN letter to Kim Gek Lin Short on her new novella  China Cowboy, riffing on Patsy Clone at Horse Press.