Living Room, 11.9.10

Resisting the Intelligence (Alex Bleecker facilitates)

Often likened to Billy Collins and criticized by academics as seeking to ‘dumb down’ poetry, acclaimed poet and critic Tony Hoagland has always been an advocate of making/keeping poetry accessible.  Worried that poetry is becoming over-entranced with artifice, Hoagland actively campaigns against the trend in contemporary poetics to obscure direct meaning and emotion.

Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland

To begin the Nov. 9th Living Room circle, we will listen to an interview with Hoagland from the Poetry Magazine podcast, wherein he laments what he refers to as the “the poetics of vertigo” – a move to create intentionally disorienting poetry.  This, Hoagland argues, represents a shift in poetics from the heart to the head.  We’ll discuss the interview and perhaps hold such a lens up to our own poetry.  Hope you can join us!

Bring new work for a gentle critique by those gathered, read the work of someone else, or come just to be in the engaging company of other writers. $5 suggested donation keeps SPLAB open, and every $5 donated gets you an entry in our monthly raffle for SPLAB swag!

7P, Tuesday, November 9, 2010, in the Cultural Corner. Enter on Edmunds through the double doors between Rainier Ave S and 36th Ave S. Parking is available RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DOOR and we’re three blocks from the Columbia City Link Light Rail station. Look for the new SPLAB sign!

Splab Sign

Splab Sign

About Splabman

Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.
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