Into the Field from Jacket2.org

Angela Genusa is a writer and artist, formerly of Austin, Texas and now living in Louisiana. Her recent conceptual works include Simone’s Embassy (Eclipse Editions, 2015), Spam Bibliography (Troll Thread, 2013), Tender Buttons (Gauss PDF, 2013), and Jane Doe (Gauss PDF, 2013). Angela’s writing has also appeared in Abraham Lincoln, Jacket2, The Claudius App, EOAGH, P-Queue, McSweeney’s, the Post-Digital Publishing Archive, and Library of the Printed Web. She is currently a member of the collaborative writing group Collective Task, and you can find more of her work on her personal website. We spoke via Skype in July 2014.

Ara Shirinyan is a poet and publisher living in Los Angeles. He runs Make Now Press and is a co-founder of the Poetic Research Bureau with Joseph Mosconi and Andrew Maxell. The PRB hosts a long-running reading series, publishes books, puts on exhibits, and generally advocates for experimental writing culture. Ara is also a co-founder of The Smell, a legendary L.A. punk venue. Ara’s books include Syria Is in the World (Palm Press, 2007), Your Country Is Great: Afghanistan-Guyana (Futurepoem Books, 2008), and Julia's Wilderness (Poetic Research Bureau, 2014). You should check out Eric Rettberg’s recent essay on Shirinyan in Jacket2, "Laughing at Your Country is Great."

Steve Roggenbuck is a twenty-six-year-old Internet poet from rural Michigan. He has spent the last several years giving readings and talks all over the country, sleeping on couches, selling books and t-shirts, making thousands of friends. His full-length collections are CRUNK JUICE (2012) and IF U DONT LOVE THE MOON YOUR AN ASS HOLE (2013), both released in the public domain and available at steveroggenbuck.com. He recently founded Boost House, a publishing collective and actual house in Brunswick, Maine. You should follow Steve on Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube.

Joe Milutis is a writer, media artist, musician, and Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Washington-Bothell. His latest book is Failure, A Writer’s Life (Zero Books, 2013).

In this inaugural edition of Into the Field, I talk with Benjamin Friedlander at his home in Bangor, Maine. Friedlander is a poet, critic, teacher, and member of the Flarflist Collective. He currently teaches at the University of Maine. Friedlander reads a selection of poems originally posted on the Flarflist, as well as several from his book A Knot Is Not a Tangle (Krupskaya, 2000). In our interview, he discusses his years spent living in two of the major meccas of experimental writing in recent decades: San Francisco in the 1980s, and Buffalo in the '90s. We also talk about his use of the tools of Flarf to do the work of elegy, and his interest in widely forgotten poets of the nineteenth century.

I meet Andrew Zawacki in this episode of Into the Field, recorded on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens. Zawacki teaches in the creative writing program at UGA, and holds degrees from the College of William and Mary, Oxford, the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and the University of Chicago. His books of poetry are By Reason of Breakings (University of Georgia Press, 2002), Anabranch (Wesleyan University Press, 2004), and Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman House, 2009). Zawacki's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, and The New Republic, as well as in many anthologies and journals. We talk about his ambivalence toward his role as a "professional" poet, and discuss what he's learned from his students over the years. The show begins with a reading from his long poem "Georgia," which explores his sense of cultural alienation after moving to Athens in 2005.

Sina Queyras is a poet and writer currently living in Montreal. She was raised in western Canada, and has degrees from the University of British Columbia and Concordia University. Queyras has lived in many places and held many jobs, and we talk about the ways geography and work have shaped her poetics. Her poetry collections Lemon Hound (2007) and Expressway (2009) were published by Coach House Books, and her excellent blog is called Lemon Hound.

Tao Lin is a novelist, poet, and provocateur currently living in Brooklyn. He has written six books of fiction and poetry, including Richard Yates (2010), Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009), and cognitive behavioral therapy (2008). Lin runs the publishing imprint Muumuu House, and you can find his website here. He also occasionally contributes to the blog Thought Catalog. I spoke with Lin in his bedroom in June of 2010.

Kaplan Harris is a scholar and editor who writes about a wide variety of 20th- and 21st-century poetry, including the work of Ted Berrigan, Hannah Weiner, Susan Howe, and the Flarf poets. With degrees from North Carolina State University and the University of Notre Dame, he currently teaches at St. Bonaventure University in Western New York. For the last several years, Harris has been co-editing the forthcoming Selected Letters of Robert Creeley with Peter Baker and Rod Smith. His article "The Small Press Traffic school of dissimulation" was recently published in Jacket2.

Souvankham Thammavongsa is a poet who lives and works in Toronto. Her parents were raised in Laos, and she was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1978. Thammavongsa's family moved to Canada when she was a year old. Her book Found (2007) describes these experiences, and was made into a short film by director Paramita Nath. Thammavongsa's first book of poems is Small Arguments (2003).

Jeremy James Thompson is a renaissance man of the poetic arts: writer, publisher, printer, designer, teacher, and all-around organizer. On his website The Autotypograph, you can find his imprint Auto Types Press and his blog Autotypist, as well as a thorough list of his other projects and accomplishments. Thompson is also an elite bartender and mixologist, which we touch on in our conversation. We spoke on a broiling July day in New Orleans, where he moved last summer after spending several years in New York City.

Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford is a poet and video artist of the first degree. I spoke with him in Athens, Georgia on a muggy July afternoon just over a year ago. These days Alejandro makes a living as a professional VJ, touring the world regularly with the band MGMT. You can see a bit of his work for them here, and Art21 Blog has recently posted a demonstration of his Vonome video organ. Collections of his videos can be found on Vimeo and YouTube. Alejandro's poetry collection BHO is available on EOAGH, and his book Morpheu (BlazeVOX, 2009) can be purchased through Small Press Distribution.

Nick Montfort is a writer and scholar specializing in digital poetics and computational media. He has a Ph.D. in computer and information science from Penn, and is currently an associate professor of digital media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We discuss his most recent book, Riddle and Bind (Spineless Books, 2010), as well as his poetry generator series ppg256 and his early story "Kung Fu Christ." You can find more of Nick's work at nickm.com.

I interviewed Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen at their home in Austin last August. The two studied poetry at the New University of California, and they started the Skanky Possum imprint together in the late '90s. Hoa's book Hecate Lochia came out in 2009, and her new collection As Long as Trees Last will be published by Wave Books in 2012. Dale's most recent book of poetry is Susquehanna, published in 2008, and his book Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960 will come out early next year. For more writing by Hoa Nguyen and information on her independent poetry workshops, visit Hoa-Nguyen.com. Dale Smith's blog is Possum Ego, and his anthology Slow Poetry: An Introduction nicely encapsulates his aesthetic interests. The couple and their two sons moved to Toronto this past summer, where Dale has taken a position in the English department at Ryerson University.

Sean Cole is a poet and radio producer currently based in New York City. I spoke with him last summer in Toronto, where he was living at the time. Sean's chapbook Itty City (Pressed Wafer) was published in 2003, and The December Project (Boog Literature), a collection of postcard poems, came out in 2005. Sean has contributed to numerous public radio programs, including This American Life, All Things Considered, Marketplace, and Weekend America. He produced a memorable piece on Flarf poetry for Studio 360 in 2009, and his story "Death Mask" appeared as a Radiolab podcast last month.

I met up with Patrick Durgin at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches literature, writing, and critical theory. Patrick has published books and journals under the Kenning Editions imprint since 1998, during which time he's lived in a number of poetry-rich locales: Iowa City, the Bay Area, Buffalo, Ypsilanti, and now the Windy City. In 2004 he earned his Ph.D. in the SUNY-Buffalo Poetics Program. Patrick's latest book is The Route (Atelos, 2008), a collaboration with Jen Hofer. His essay "New Life Writing," on the writing practices of Jackson Mac Low and Hannah Weiner, recently appeared in Jacket2.

Steve Evans is a critic and scholar of poetry and poetics, and a professor at the University of Maine in Orono. He helps run the National Poetry Foundation and directs the UMaine New Writing Series, for which he's hosted numerous visiting writers and scholars. Steve's research often focuses on recorded poetry readings, and he's posted many of his personal favorites on his blog The Lipstick of Noise. His in-progress Jacket2 commentary series on related issues is titled The Phonotextual Braid. You can find more of Steve's work -- including his famed Attention Span survey series -- at ThirdFactory.net. I recorded Steve at his home in Orono in August 2010.

Maureen Thorson is a poet, publisher, graphic designer, and trade lawyer living in Washington, D.C. Her first book is the haunting and hilarious Applies to Oranges (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011), recently reviewed in Jacket2. She has also written several short collections, including the PDF chap Twenty Questions for the Drunken Sailor (Dusie/flynpyntar press, 2008). Maureen is the poetry editor for Open Letters Monthly and co-curates the In Your Ear reading series at the D.C. Arts Center. She ran the Big Game Books imprint from 2006 to 2009, under which she published dozens of tinysides and chapbooks. You can find more of Maureen’s work and get in touch at reenhead.com.

Joey Yearous-Algozin is a full-time man of letters living in Buffalo, New York. He’s a Ph.D. candidate in the SUNY-Buffalo Poetics Program, co-editor of the journal P-Queue, and a member of the TROLL THREAD publishing collective. Joey’s books include The Lazarus Project: Friday the 13th (Gauss-PDF, 2011), Poor (Minutes Books, 2012), The Lazarus Project: Alien Vs. Predator, The Lazarus Project: Faces of Death, The Lazarus Project: Night and Fog, and Buried (TROLL THREAD, 2011–12). You can find his essay on the street performances of Hannah Weiner, “No One Asked You,” in Wild Orchids.

Paul Dutton is a sound poet, visual poet, essayist, and novelist from Toronto, Ontario. Paul was a member of the seminal sound poetry group The Four Horsemen from 1970 to 1988, and since 1989 he's performed in the improvisational trio CMCC with John Oswald and Michael Snow. Paul has also worked with the vocal art supergroup Five Men Singing, among numerous other collaborations. Paul's 2000 album Mouth Pieces: Solo Soundsinging is available on PennSound, and his visual work The Plastic Typewriter (1993) is on UbuWeb. You can find an online version of his 1991 poetry collection Aurealities at Coach House Books. Dutton's novel Several Women Dancing was published by The Mercury Press in 2002.

Astrid Lorange and Eddie Hopely are a pair poets living in Sydney, Australia with strong links to the Philly and New York writing scenes. Eddie has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Temple University and currently works as a freelance editor, research assistant, and independent scholar. Astrid recently finished her Ph.D. at the University of Technology, Sydney and has taken a position as lecturer at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. Both are members of the assignment-based writing group Collective Task. Astrid’s books include FOOD TURNS INTO BLOOD (Gauss PDF, 2013), one that made it alike (Vagabond Press, 2013), Eating and Speaking (Tea Party Republicans Press, 2011), and Minor Dogs (bas-books, 2011). You can find more publications, videos, and recordings on her website. Eddie’s works include SNUG (2013), Power Move (Gauss PDF, 2011), RUDE DOOR (Trees + Squash, 2011), and many more. Together they run the SUS chapbook press.

Rod Smith is a poet, editor, and publisher from Washington, D.C. He’s a co-founder of Aerial Magazine and founder of Edge Books, which has published titles by Joan Retallack, Anselm Berrigan, Robert Fitterman, Benjamin Friedlander, K. Silem Mohammad, and many others. Smith, along with Friedlander and Mohammad, is a member of the Flarf Collective. Since 1993 he has managed Bridge Street Books in Georgetown. Rod Smith’s books of poetry include Deed (University of Iowa Press, 2007), Protective Immediacy (Roof, 1999), and In Memory of My Theories (O Books, 1996). He co-edited The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley with Kaplan Harris and Peter Baker, to be published by the University of California Press in January 2014.

Erín Moure is a poet, translator, and communications specialist living in Montreal. She was born and raised in Calgary, and later spent two decades working for the Canadian passenger rail service Via Rail Canada. Erín’s mother was born in the Galicia region of northwest Spain, and as an adult Erín began visiting Galicia regularly. She picked up the Galician language, and has since written poetry in Galician and translated the work of Galician poets including Chus Pato and Rosalia de Castro. Chus Pato joins us toward the end of our conversation to read a few of her original poems alongside Erín’s translations. Erín has also translated works from French, Spanish, and Portuguese into English.