Today's book of poetry: The Golden Book of Bovinities. Robert Moore. With illustrations by Chris Lloyd. Signal Editions/Vehicule Press. Montreal, Quebec. 2012.
Drink up. Because a glass of milk is never going to go down your throat in quite the same way again. The Golden Book of Bovinities takes allegorical poetry to the stockyards, barns, cattle pens and meat trays, the domain of cows, and explains everything.
Not since Art Spiegelman's Maus has an animal acquired such a voice.
The Golden Book of Bovinities is several things at once. The first thing you absorb is the rational voice of bovines, then you get caught up in cow world something fierce.
There is much seriousness afoot and ahoof. Rarely do we find so much plain reason acquiring such gravitas and big belly laughs at the same time.
...
After you've been branded,
had the living horn sawn from your skull
and seen your little ones sold into confinement
and certain death, you start to think it couldn't get any worse.
But then, life comes along and hits you right between the eyes
with a bolt pistol.
...
Somehow Robert Moore has transcribed the unspeakable horrors we humans inflict on bovines and made poetry out of it. That is one hell of a good trick.
Today's book of poetry guarantees that after you read The Golden Book of Bovinities the next hamburger or steak you encounter will talk back to you.
Bovinities is illustrated by Chris Lloyd. Today's book of poetry is not a big fan of illustrations in poetry books. But Chris Lloyd has rendered a mysterious parallel world that entirely makes sense in this cow context. Another very good trick. These simple drawings are the perfect jewelry for this bovine extravagance.
...
The inventions for which cows are responsible
but for which they receive absolutely no credit include
the following: the fork, selective memory, human error,
the fuel gauge on a time machine, the ironically named hearty breakfast, and Tuesday afternoons. And, oh yes:
the eye rolled back in abject terror.
...
Robert Moore has one hell of a dark sense of humour and we like that here. He has also opened up an entirely new world of bovine history that illuminates all the questions cows want answered.
At our morning read everyone was on board, everyone wanted a turn and was delighted to read aloud. Even Milo cracked a smile. Egads! The Golden Book of Bovinities is a tidy little marvel. From this day forward cattle have their Little Red Book, their Gideon's Bible. Wit and bovine wisdom abound in herds, our misconceptions about cows foul the ground we trod upon.
...
Proof of reincarnation visits daily
in the form of scores of biting insects
who blithely assume your blood is theirs to take.
Being human must be a difficult habit to break.
.
They call where we're kept in barns a stall.
Good word. Pretty much says it all.
.
If a man ever approaches you from an oblique angle
carrying a sledgehammer, prepare to be absolutely
astounded.
...
Today's book of poetry will be MOOning about The Golden Book of Bovinities all day.
Robert Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Moore's previous books are So Rarely in Our Skins [2002], Museum Absconditum [2006] and Figuring Ground [Wolsak & Wynn,2009]. He has been a finalist for the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the ReLit Award. He lives in Saint John, New Brunswick.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
The former director of Halifax's Khyber Centre for the Arts, Chris Lloyd has had solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Art Gallery of Calgary and participates in group exhibitions across Canada. He lives in Montreal.
Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher. They are shown here for publicity and review purposes. For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.
We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"
and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies. Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.
Today's book of poetry: Undercurrent. Rita Wong. Nightwood Editions. Gibsons, British Columbia. 2015.
Rita Wong's Undercurrent is a siren scream, call to action, manifesto, electric cattle prod, banshee wail. Wong's poetry is a passionate plea, a desperate entreaty for us to act. This is a love song for our planet.
Wong loves water and she has researched her heart out as her list of materials, journals, essays, books and so on stretches for several thousand pages. She has distilled, from the murk of our most polluted streams, a clear vision and it requires our participation.
Declaration of Intent
let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions that they are
i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us
the beauty of enough, the path of peace to be savoured
before the extremes of drought and flood overwhelm the careless
water is a sacred bond, embedded in our plump, moist cells
in our breaths that transpire to return to the clouds that gave us
life through rain
in the rivers & aquifers that we & our neighbours drink
in the oceans that our foremothers came from
a watershed teaches not only humbleness but climate fluency
the languages we need to interpret the sea's rising voice
water connects us to salmon & cedar, whales & workers
its currents bearing the plastic from our fridges & closets
a gyre of karma recirculates, burgeoning body burden
i hereby invoke fluid wisdom to guide us through the toxic muck
i will apprentice myself to creeks & tributaries, groundwater &
glaciers
listen for the salty pulse within, the blood that recognizes marine
ancestry
in its chemical composition & intuitive pull
i will learn through immersion, flotation & transformation
as water expands & contracts, i will fit myself to its ever-changing
dimensions
molecular & spectacular, water will return what we give it, be that
arrogance & poison, reverence & light, ambivalence & respect
let our societies be revived as watersheds
"water is unstoppable" -Wes Nahanee, from the Squamish Nation
because i am part of the problem i can also become part of
the solution
although i am part of the problem i can also become part of
the solution
where i am part of the problem i need to be part of the solution
while i am part of the problem i can also be part of the solution
one part silt one part clear running water one part blood love
sweat
not tar but tears, e inserts a listening, witnessing, quickening eye
broken but rebinding, token but reminding, vocal buck
unwinding
the machine's gears rust in rain, moss & lichen slowly creep life
back
the rate of reclamation is humble while the rate of destruction
blasts fast
because we are part of the problem we can also become part of
the solution
Who are we? We are the beings who need clean water in order to live a life of dignity, joy and good relation. Maybe you are a part of "us" without even knowing that you are. Maybe we are the one who are too often taken for granted or ignored, the quiet witnesses to atrocities, greed, mean-spirited hierarchies, hostages of capitalism. Maybe we are remembering what it means to respect water, because doing so is to respect ourselves, our shared, fluid vulnerability, our funny contradictions, our stumbling, dancing, crying, laughing, eating, drinking, pissing, working, playing, burping, farting, messy selves. Maybe we are the thunderstorms that precipitate when too much has been repressed, the weeds that refuse to stop, the coyotes, the grandmothers, the yet unborn. Maybe we are flash floods, demoralized workers, the hospitalized, the angry entitled children who don't even remember to thank the water that keeps them alive. Maybe we are system change as well as climate change. Dripping & spitting, we rise. ...
One way or another every person on earth is in Wong's Undercurrent. Back in the early 1980's I was studying at Trent University in Peterborough and was a student in their first year of having a Cultural Studies program. Jody Berland was one of the instructors for that program and here she is again. Deep inside Undercurrent. You and your mother are in here, her mother too, because Wong is swinging for the fences big time, she wants all of us to come with her and makes a damned good case.
Today's book of poetry remains a big, big sucker for the list poem. Rita Wong does not disappoint. My minions all had numerous poems picked out from Undercurrent that they wanted used, they campaigned hard but it all fell of deaf ears. It was as though there was a rush of a waterfall, all taps turned on full, the shower drowning out all minion sound. The list prevailed.
immersed in chlorinated water
immersed in formaldehyde off-gas
immersed in car exhaust
immersed in the oxygen produced by oceanic plankton
immersed in windy chinook
immersed in barbecue aroma
immersed in smog
immersed in someone's sneeze
immersed in the oxygen produced by cedar
immersed in the oxygen produced by fir
immersed in the oxygen produced by hemlock
immersed in carbon dioxide
immersed in the colonial present
immersed in loonsong
immersed in endocrine disrupting dust
immersed in the smell of the ocean
immersed in stale air
immersed in English
immersed in ego-jacking capitalism
immersed in thought
immersed in ancestral respect, or not
immersed in natureculture
immersed in electromagnetic fields
immersed in gravity
immersed in radio waves
immersed in multilingual contact zone
immersed in transmission frequencies
immersed in ultraviolet rays
immersed in someone's perfume
immersed in ambient sound
immersed in neighbourhood vibe
immersed in urban hurry
immersed in pedestrian drift
immersed in the protocol of sunlight
immersed in the irrepressible commons, come!
immersed in q'elstexw
The forest is falling. It hears itself. The rain ineluctable Speechless and necessary. -Phyllis Webb ...
Years ago a dear friend, David Collins, told me that I should listen to more of Ben Webster. He was right. We should all listen to more of Ben Webster. At first it falls over you like a warm mist that you didn't know you needed. The more you listen, the deeper you get in the water, until finally you are adrift on an ocean that is beautiful. Today's book of poetry is making everyone in the office listen to Ben Webster exclusively this morning. It goes perfectly with the deep, deep water Rita Wong wants us to swim in.
Good poetry is always timeless, and really good poetry is timely as well. Rita Wong could be singing these poems on the late night news. Her crisp interpretation of world of water could headline.
North Shore Sewage Story
crows party
at the wastewater treatment plant
hop, skip, skim the scum
for meaty delectables
released from urban drains
crows swoop
the bubbling froth
with the grace of gravity
one lone monkey puzzle tree
sits at the lions gate
witnesses sludge stream
gas flares
the huge digesters process
what we have left behind
our discards sifted
chlorinated, pumped out
into the burrard inlet
primary treatment
was built to handle good shit, not
phthalates & flame retardants
birth control pills & antidepressants
morphing fish anatomy
decreasing sperm counts
infiltrating fishy homes
while i long for tertiary rescue
the crows salvage
what they can
from cities industriously pumping out
chemical consequences
transgendering water & children
testing ocean temper
"The era of flush-and-forget is ending... it is the responsibility of every citizen to make sure that defecation means fertilization of the land that feeds us" - Peter Warshall, Septic Tank Practices
...
Today's book of poetry takes off our Pork Pie Hat to Rita Wong. It takes a lot of gas to really put your money where your mouth is. Undercurrent is as strong as truth always is.
Completely unassailable.
Today's book of poetry nominates Rita Wong to be Canada's next Poet/Minister of Water.
Rita Wong
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rita Wong is the author of four books of poetry:monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998), forage (Nightwood Editions, 2007), sybil unrest (Line Books, 2008, with Larissa Lai) and undercurrent (Nightwood Editions, 2015). forage was the winner of the 2008 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and Canada Reads Poetry 2011. Wong is an associate professor in the Critical and Cultural Studies department at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design on the unceded Coast Salish territories also known as Vancouver.
BLURBS
undercurrent is Rita Wong's love song for rivers, land, and sentient being on earth. It's an elegy for the polluted and cancerous rivers, land and life. It's also a cry to wake up all the warriors to do something for the earth dying in the hands of humans. "What better gifts can we offer?" asks Rita. Well, her poetry is the best gift, the current that jolts us into actions before it's too late.
- Wang Ping
Rita Wong painfully & poignantly articulates the devastating impact of capitalism on water & the health of our planet., while reminding us of the beauty that surrounds us and providing hope that we can change the direction of this nightmarish journey of consumerism we're currently taking. Rita Wong offers us another way of seeing this world and our place within it, and she does so in a way that exudes kindness, respect, joy and a deep love of life. This poetry will enrage, enlighten & move you to try engaging your fellow beings & the waters we share in a more protective & humble way.
-Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
Rita Wong
Cascadia Poetry Festival Readings
video: MS PoetryDocs
nightwoodeditions.com
399
DISCLAIMERS
Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher. They are shown here for publicity and review purposes. For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.
We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"
and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies. Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.
Today's book of poetry: American Urn - Selected Poems (1987-2014).
Mark Irwin. The Ashland Poetry Series. Ashland, Ohio. 2015.
"Oh Jesus!" I muttered out loud, it was late and I startled my almost sleeping wife. "What is it?" She responded in that startled almost sleeping voice. "This poem, it is so beautiful and so sad, this is why I love poetry."
I was talking about this poem:
Rider
As I carried my mother from the hospital bed
across the room toward the chair by the window,
she played with my gold watch as if it were a toy,
flipping the strap up and down, then singing Giddyup, Giddyup, but as I looked at her she did not smile
so I nodded my head, snorted, then put a pencil
in my mouth, as bit, and cantered about the room
till I was out of breath, puffing, and she patted me, saying, Good boy, Good boy, so I pawed the carpet, slobbering a little
like her, as she waved and I nodded my mane,
until this was how we said goodbye one spring
while the sun shrank to a white hot BB among a thousand
others receding in the jeweled, black sky as the rivers
galloped away with her breath through the dark green land.
...
Mark Irwin's American Urn gives us a tasting menu of twenty-five years of poetry from one of America's most honoured poets. American Urn is James Taylor's "Steamroller" - Irwin is laying down a seamless path. These poems are a rich and subtle accounting of our last century's terrible beauty.
On page after page, in poem after poem, Irwin explains some dark lesson that only required his light touch to illuminate. Remember that word, illumination.
Passion is a word I usually reserve for my timelessly patient partner in crime, K. But I'll bring it out for Irwin. These poems are bursting with a fierce intelligent passion.
No, wait, I mean compassion. American Urn is a passionate plea for compassion. Mark Irwin's vision is intensely humane and American Urn can be seen as a new primer. It should replace every Gideon's Bible in every motel and hotel in North America.
Elegy (with Advertisement) Struggling to Find Its Hero
It was a century in which we touched ourselves in mirrors
over and over. It was a decade of fast yet permanent
memories. The kaleidoscope of pain
some inflicted on others seemed inexhaustible
as the positions of sex, a term
whose meaning is as hybridized as the latest orchid. Terrorism
had reached a new peak, and we gradually
didn't care which airline we got on, as long as the pilot
was sober, and the stash of pretzels, beer, and soft drinks
remained intact. On TV, a teenage idol has just crawled, dripping wet,
from the top of a giant Pepsi can, or maybe I imagined it,
flicking through channels where the panoply
of reality shows has begun to exorcise
the very notion of reality, for both the scrutinized actor
and the debilitated viewer who becomes confused and often reaches
into the pastel screen for his glass, while down Broadway
sirens provide a kind of glamorous chorus
for this script of history where everything is so neatly measured
in miles, pounds or megabits. How nice it would be
to drowse in the immeasurable. How nice
it would be to escape.
And there's a wobbly marble bench beneath an out-of-focus tree on the Web I like to occasion my body with.
How brief we've become in our speed
I think. How fast the eternal.
How desperately
we need a clearing, a place
beyond, but not necessarily
of nature. And the rain was so deep the entire forest smelled of stone, then the sun broke, burying the long shadows in gold. And the wounded
king woke in a book long since closed, and the princess
came to in a bed so large
she could never leave. How desperately
we need a new legend, one with a hero, tired
though he may be. One who has used
business to give up
business, one who has bought
with his heart what we
sold with ours.
...
Today's book of poetry is a big fan of hope, even when draped in despair. Irwin's smart mirth elevates these poems to something closer to psalms.
Unfortunately for you readers, Today's book of poetry concentrated on only the first few sections of these Selected Poems, not because we didn't want to expand our horizon but simply because I got caught up in his most recent poetry and couldn't get out of it. The poems from Irwin's two most recent collections, Tall If (2008) and Large White House Speaking (2013), both published by New Issues Press out of Western Michigan University, kept me fully occupied.
Irwin gets so much right it becomes hard not to see him as some sort of Illuminati, some sort of Minnesota bred Michel de Nostredame, Nostradamus. Today's book of poetry gets the impression that Irwin sees back and forth into time.
American Urn
A wide prairie dotted with buffalo, finding some mountains.
A machine on a long track moving west: People in feathered
costumes. --Flags, a slaughter. Below, a war with this flag
and another that, as you turn the bronze, becomes a modern
riot. Now a metropolis and airport, a radio tower,
then a dead tree that resembles a cross as the images become
more cluttered--an ad for soap that will make you younger,
a tiny action figure staring into the distance, and an enormous
shine from I can't tell what, but could be the evening
with all its bright tons settling down over wheated fields.
...
There is rarely much in the way of total agreement here at our office but everyone was on board today. American Urn - Selected Poems (1987-2014) is a must-have book for any poetry shelf or bedside reading pile. This is must-read poetry.
If you don't like this book I will come to your house and read it to you until you do.
Mark Irwin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Irwin was born in Faribault, Minnesota, and has lived throughout the United States and abroad in France and Italy. His poetry and essays have appeared widely in many literary magazines including The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, New England Review, and the New Republic. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (M.F.A.), he also holds a Ph.D. in English/Comparative Literature and has taught at a number of universities and colleges including Case Western Reserve, the University of Iowa, Ohio University, the University of Denver, the University of Colorado/Boulder, the University of Nevada, and Colorado College.
The author of eight collections of poetry, including The Halo of Desire (Galileo Press, 1987), Against the Meanwhile (Wesleyan University Press, 1989), Quick, Now, Always (BOA , 1996), White City (BOA, 2000), Bright Hunger (BOA, 2004), Tall If (New Issues, 2008), Large White House Speaking (New Issues, 2013), and American Urn: Selected Poems (Ashland Poetry Press, 2015), he has also translated two volumes of poetry, one from the French and one from the Romanian. Recognition for his work includes The Nation/Discovery Award, four Pushcart Prizes, National Endowment for the Arts, Colorado and Ohio Art Council Fellowships, two Colorado Book Awards, the James Wright Poetry Award, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, and Wurlitzer Foundations. He lives in Colorado, and Los Angeles, where he teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern California.
BLURBS Large White House Speaking
“Large White House Speaking is a book of startling marvels . . .Mark Irwin is one of our best poets, and this is his best book yet.”
- LAURA KASISCHKE
Tall If
NOTABLE BOOK OF 2008 - Bloomsbury Review, International Poetry Review
“Even as individual lines and phrases achieve a luminous clarity, there remains a brooding circularity to Tall If, in part the apprehension of mortality at mid-life but in part something stranger.”
- G. C. WALDREP, West Branch
Bright Hunger
“ . . . virtuoso performances . . . an intensity, an urgency about the evanescence of life and the various forces pressing on the human spirit and psyche.”
- PAMELA ALEXANDER, Field
White City
“Subtlety of ear, of phrasing, of language altogether, and a light-play of feeling, disguise the urgency and evocative range of Mark Irwin’s grave sensibility. The richness and evanescence of the moment surface repeatedly in his lines.”
- W. S. MERWIN
“This is a book one wants to taste again and again.”
- JOHN ASHBERY
Quick, Now Always
“ . . . a jagged, heartbroken, and ecstatic excursus on the late 20th century, a race through troubled paradise.”
Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher. They are shown here for publicity and review purposes. For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.
We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"
and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies. Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.
Today's book of poetry: Bodymap. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Mawenzi House. Toronto, Ontario. 2015.
We all have the histories of our bodies to lament or rejoice, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Momma Thorton's her Whitman' YAWP.
Ol' Walt intoned "I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world." Bless his cotton socks. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha yawpsings a "queer disabled femme of colour love song." The entire time she sounds like a cross between the sweetest songs of love and desire - and a hep mad cat fist-machine hell bent on bending the world into welcoming her point of view. Bodymap is a splendid step in every direction at once.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's poems are scalding prayers of intimacy and desire.
a million dollars
I was pumping gas and you asked to pump it for some spare
change.
I said sorry man, I have forty bucks to my name,
and you said, well, you look like a million dollars
& I wondered what a million dollars looks like
and what
minus 187 in overdraft plus fees looks like
cause I have looked like that.
I have looked like that
hard femme
don't fuck with me
switchblade ass swish
ima cut you at the bus stop for saying good morning
because I know everything that could and has come
from that moment
I have looked like
walking to the store in a miniskirt
after the car breaks and the phone breaks
and there is twenty dollars in a wallet
for the next two weeks
I'm a chipped manicure full of starry glitter
ends worn to the quick
from hard
hard work
I'm a gorgeous ass that's bedbound
I want you to love me messy in the morning
the same four year old booty shorts and no bra.
I want you to know
I beautiful
like a 36 year old on her couch
before the shower
the makeup
what I show you
what I will allow you to see.
I want you to love me
after the lipstick wears off.
...
Today's book of poetry is an almost 60 year old, straight, white man run operation. What the hell do I know about femme lit/life? How do I read, process and share Bodymap? Many of these poems are scathing indictments - but they aren't aimed at me - they are a manifesto aimed at a new type of freedom and poetry has no more noble purpose.
I love hard girls for amber dawn
hips like a hummingbird jackhammer
a brick house body a brick city
crumbling
Boots that climb to thighs
thick and pebbled
with the big bags of potatoes and rice waiting in the pantry
to survive hard times
Those girls who will fuck you up for no good reason
I love girls with whiskey espresso belly
I love the brown girl worry line
perpendicular to the perfect eyebrow
The rosewater olive oil in the food and in the homemade facial
toner
the groupon and the gas money
the twenty bucks tucked away and passed
the penny jar hip bones shaking brass
the emergency stockings the you wanna make $300?
The delicious satisfaction of wanting to text go fuck yourself I hate you fuck you
I love girls who wanna set shit on fire,
whose cut eye can penetrate oil spills
I love girls who want to smash faces, break windows
whose asses swish with the cut of razors
I love every loud-mouthed-hard-assed-fuck-with-you
skin soft like a loquat as they punch your cunt into an infinity
femme
I love girls who will fuck you up for no
and every good reason
and I love those girls
who look at me hard and whisper thank god
who have never once been scared of me
...
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha reminds us here at Today's book of poetry of those many dear friends we all share whose lives are complicated by the colour of their skin or their choice of partners for intimacy. Bodymap is a real kick in the ass that reminds us all that there are an infinite number of paths to joy. Justifiably angry and frustrated by having to kick against the pricks - Lakshmi Peipzna-Samarasinha none the less finds ways to soar. These poems allow us to soar with her. Remember the Yawp.
These poems narrate a sad roster of disappointments and laments but the more I read, the more universal it all sounded and the more I began to hear the joy within. The best poetry always rises above labels and this poetry raises above any particular agenda. This is another colour for the mosaic that celebrates all the colours of the rainbow.
I will take care of you forever
spring equinox and I wake at six a.m. because you're not standing
on my chest
but something is hovering, I turn the light on, edit what I wrote.
I feel you pass out of right ovary
I don't have to hold on to you.
there's no way I could lose you
I whisper, I don't think I ever told you the Cree word for love means we'll take care of each other forever
and even though we'll never speak again
I promise: this to you.
...
Today's book of poetry has to tell you, unequivocally, that there are some heart-stopping, jaw-dropping, sweet-sweat inducing horny poems in Bodymap. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is going to raise the temperature in every room her poetry enters.
Today's book of poetry was enthralled by the boisterous intelligence that rivets the reader to every page. The world inside this book isn't a new world but it is generally one overlooked by the day to day of the mainstream. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's Bodymap opens a big door, walk in.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Winner of the 2012 Lambda Literary Award, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha is a queer disabled femme writer, teacher and performer of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan, Roma and Irish ascent. The author of Bodymap, Love Cake and Consensual Genocide and the co-editor of The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities, her writing has been widely anthologized. She is the co-founder of the queer people of color arts incubator Mangos With Chili,
a lead artist with Sins Invalid and co-founder of Toronto’s Asian Arts Freedom School. In 2010 she was named one of the Feminist Press’ 40 Feminists Under 40 Shaping the Future. Her first memoir, Dirty River, is forthcoming from Arsenal Pulp Press in fall 2015.
BLURBS
"Sharp, yet remarkably compassionate, Piepzna-Samarasinha knows that the poem is no place for tidy inquiry and easy answers. She offers her own tenacious guts and veins on each every page. Only someone who understands rage and reconciliation and blood and bone can write like this."
—Amber Dawn, author of How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir and Sub Rosa
"These poems are a gift for your love for self, your love itself and everyone you love. It is rare that a poet priestess offers words that allow us to emerge reborn with dirt, glitter and tenderness... Revere it. Revel in it. Read it again and again!" —Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author, Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Loft Equilibrium Supershow
video: The Loft Literary Center
mawenzihouse.com
397
DISCLAIMERS
Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher. They are shown here for publicity and review purposes. For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.
We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"
and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies. Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.
