We Who Are About To Die : Shloka Shankar

Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer and visual artist from Bangalore, India. She enjoys experimenting with Japanese short-forms and different found poetry techniques. A Best of the Net nominee, her work has most recently appeared in Under the Basho, Rogue Agent, Right Hand Pointing, Drunk Monkeys, and so on. Shloka is the founding editor of the literary & arts journal Sonic Boom, and its affiliated press, Yavanika. Twitter: @shloks89  

Where are you now?
I reside in Bangalore, India. My room is pretty much my haven. 

What are you reading?
I am currently reading Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire and reviewing chapbook manuscripts. The former is for a found poetry challenge, called 'The Poeming,' that I will be undertaking in October 2018.

What have you discovered lately?
Confidence. Lots of it. I am also doing different things and experimenting more in terms of my writing and art.

Where do you write?
I make random drafts on my phone and then set about working on longer pieces sitting up in bed — blanket, throw pillow, and all!

What are you working on?
I run a literary & arts journal called Sonic Boom as well as its affiliated press, Yavanika. My team and I are currently wading through submissions. I also recently set up an online store for selling my art prints and other products, so that's an exciting new avenue to explore. I hope to bring out my debut full-length collection of Japanese short-forms of poetry in 2019. 

Have you anything forthcoming?
I recently completed a 31/31 creativity challenge called 'Write Like You're Alive,' hosted by Zoetic Press. One of my erasures is forthcoming in the Write Like You're Alive Anthology 2018. I also have seven pieces forthcoming from h&) I will be guest editing The Haiku Foundation's 'Per Diem' feature for the month of December 2018. 

What would you rather be doing?
I am in my happy place. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

Recent poems: 

old doorways —
the nerve palaces
of midnight

pulling sins out of a dreamer conscience

- First published in the Ku section of Under the Basho, 2018.

We Who Are About To Die : Alyse Knorr

Alyse Knorr is an assistant professor of English at Regis University and editor of Switchback Books. She is the author of the poetry collections Mega-City Redux (Green Mountains Review 2017), Copper Mother (Switchback Books 2016), and Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books 2013), as well as the non-fiction book Super Mario Bros. 3 (Boss Fight Books 2016) and the poetry chapbooks Epithalamia (Horse Less Press 2015) and Alternates (dancing girl press 2014). Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University.

Where are you now?
I live in Denver, where I teach English at Regis University.

What are you reading?
I recently finished Monica Youn’s “Blackacre” and now I’m reading “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin.

What have you discovered lately?
Lately I’ve been discovering the beauty of mathematics. Growing up I was always pretty afraid of math, since it didn’t come easy to me and I often felt frustrated that I couldn’t understand the simplest of concepts. But my colleagues in Regis’s math and chemistry departments have helped to show me the elegance of mathematics and the imagination and creativity involved in this discipline. Math is very similar to poetry, in its use of symbols and metaphor. I love to hear my colleagues talk about the beauty of their favorite equation, or the revolutions of geometry.

Where do you write?
I usually draft on my laptop on my living room couch and revise by hand on print-outs. Occasionally I also write on my desktop at work.

What are you working on?
I’m currently at work on two projects: an opera libretto about the life and work of Christine de Pizan, the world’s first professional woman writer, and a poetry project called “Wolf Tours” about a pack of wolves that runs a wilderness touring company in Colorado. 

Have you anything forthcoming?
Yes, I have a few poems forthcoming at print and online magazines, including a piece called “Epistemology of Wolves” that will be  published by Alaska Quarterly Review.

What would you rather be doing?
I love video games, baking, and running, and often wish I had more time to do all of these. I also really enjoy traveling and working on my new house. I’ve been learning how to tile and how to do basic plumbing and electrical work, but there’s never enough time to do all the projects I want to do!

Two poems

“Floating Epithalamium” at Alaska Quarterly Review

“Genesis” at Requited

We Who Are About To Die : Eric Schmaltz

Eric Schmaltz is an artist, writer, and educator living in Toronto. His work has been previously featured in Lemon Hound, Jacket2, The Capilano Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review, The Puritan, and Open Letter. His first book of poetry and text-art, Surfaces, is available from Invisible Publishing. For more: ericschmaltz.com or @eschmaltzzz.

Where are you now?
Physically, I am in Toronto, Ontario, a city that occupies the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Mentally, my sense of where-ness is distributed across this space and a multiplicity of other spaces, networks, devices, and future tenses.

What are you reading?
I’m reading a lot again. Most recently, Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed, Johnny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead, Sludge Utopia by Catherine Fatima, and I Left Nothing Behind On Purpose by Stevie Howell.

What have you discovered lately?
I’ve recently discovered the privilege of a less structured mode of living that is very temporarily untethered from the direct machinations of the neoliberal institution of higher education. 

Where do you write?
I create wherever I can I place my laptop.

What are you working on?
I’m working on a few things: I’m researching for a new poetry project, (finally) completing a final draft of an edition of I Want to Tell You Love by bill bissett and Milton Acorn, and editing the inaugural issue of Not Your Best, a new periodical published by Knife | Fork | Book.

Have you anything forthcoming?
I have a handful of periodical publications forthcoming, including poems, articles, interviews, and book reviews.

What would you rather be doing?
Nothing.


from Assembled Lines

We Who Are About To Die : John M. Bennett

John M. Bennett has published over 400 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials.  Among the most recent are rOlling COMBers (Potes & Poets Press); MAILER LEAVES HAM (Pantograph Press); LOOSE WATCH (Invisible Press); CHAC PROSTIBULARIO (with Ivan Arguelles; Pavement Saw Press); THE PEEL (Anabasis Press); GLUE (xPress(ed)); LAP GUN CUT (with F. A. Nettelbeck; Luna Bisonte Prods);  INSTRUCTION BOOK (Luna Bisonte Prods); la M al (Blue Lion Books); CANTAR DEL HUFF (Luna Bisonte Prods); SOUND DIRT (with Jim Leftwich; Luna Bisonte Prods); BACKWORDS (Blue Lion Books); NOS (Redfox Press); D RAIN B LOOM (with Scott Helmes; xPress(ed)); CHANGDENTS (Offerta Speciale); L ENTES (Blue Lion Books); NOS (Redfoxpress); SPITTING DDREAMS (Blue Lion Books); ONDA (with Tom Cassidy; Luna Bisonte Prods); 30 DIALOGOS SONOROS (with Martín Gubbins; Luna Bisonte Prods); BANGING THE STONE (WITH Jim Leftwich; Luna Bisonte Prods); FASTER NIH (Luna Bisonte Prods); RREVES (Editions du Silence); NEOLIPIC (Argotist); LAS CABEZAS MAYAS/MAYA HEADS (Luna Bisonte Prods); BALAM MALAB (Logan Elm Press); LA VISTA GANCHA (Luna Bisonte Prods); THE SOCK SACK/UNFINISHED FICTIONS/MORE INSERTS (with Richard Kostelanetz; Luna Bisonte Prods); T ICK TICK TIC K (Chalked Editions and White Sky Books); THIS IS VISUAL POETRY (This is Visual Poetry); EL HUMO LETRADO: POESÍA EN ESPAÑOL (Chalk Editions; 2nd ed. White Sky Books); ZABOD (Tonerworks); TEXTIS GLOBBOLALICUS (3 vols.; mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press); NITLATOA (Luna Bisonte Prods); OHIO GRIMES AND MISTED MEANIES (with Ben Bennett, Bob Marsh, Jack Wright; Edgetone Records); SUMO MI TOSIS (White Sky Books); CORRESPONDENCE 1979-1983 (with Davi Det Hompson; Luna Bisonte Prods); THE GNAT’S WINDOW (Luna Bisonte Prods); DRILLING FOR SUIT MYSTERY (with Matthew T. Stolte; Luna Bisonte Prods); OBJECT OBJET (with Nicolas Carras; Luna Bisonte Prods); CARAARAC & EL TÍTULO INVISIBLE (Luna Bisonte Prods); LIBER X (Luna Bisonte Prods); CUITLACOCHTLI (Xexoxial Editions); BLOCK (Luna Bisonte Prods); THE STICKY SUIT WHIRS (Luna Bisonte Prods); PICO MOJADO (with Byron Smith; Luna Bisonte Prods); SOLE DADAS & PRIME SWAY (Luna Bisonte Prods); OLVIDOS (Luna Bisonte Prods); SACARON NAVAJAS (Redfoxpress); AREÑAL (with Luis Bravo; Yaugurú); LA CHAIR DU CENOTE (Fidel Anthelme X); THE LUNCH THE GRAVEL (X-Ray Book Co.); BRAVÍSIMA RESEÑA (with Diana Magallón; Luna Bisonte Prods); TURNS IN A CLOUD (White Sky Books); YES IT IS (with Sheila E. Murphy; Luna Bisonte Prods); DE LA MEMORIA EL PEZ (with Lola López-Cózar; Luna Bisonte Prods); AMINIMA (with Richard Kostelanetz, Archae Editions); MIRRORS MÁSCARAS (Luna Bisonte Prods); VERTICAL SLEEP (Luna Bisonte Prods); SELECT POEMS (Poetry Hotel Press/Luna Bisonte Prods); THE WORLD OF BURNING (Luna Bisonte Prods),  THE SWEATING LAKE (Luna Bisonte Prods), and OLAS CURSIS (Luna Bisonte Prods).  He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of publications and venues.  He was editor and publisher of LOST AND FOUND TIMES (1975-2005), and was Founding Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries.  Richard Kostelanetz has called him “the seminal American poet of my generation”.  His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions, including Washington University (St. Louis), SUNY Buffalo, The Ohio State University, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major libraries.  His PhD (UCLA 1970) is in Latin American Literature. 

www.johnmbennett.net
http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/avantwriting/
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/lunabisonteprods
http://johnmbennettpoetry.blogspot.com/

Where are you now?
In my office at Luna Bisonte Prods in Columbus, Ohio usa.

What are you reading?
L:a Noche de la Usina, por Eduardo Sacheri.

What have you discovered lately?
A mexican potsherd in my garden.

Where do you write?
Mostly in my office; sometimes in a hotel room or wherever.

What are you working on?
Oh many many things: poems, art, sounds, books, articles, presentations, cooking dinner.

Have you anything forthcoming?
Many many things, all over the place. I'd tell you to contact my agent, if I had one.

What would you rather be doing?
Right now, taking a nap; I worked too hard (for my back) in the garden this morning.



flood of moons
     - For C. Mehrl Bennett

the dream of seeing your
parents' basement through a
hole in the driveway
representative of a foaming
,lack of ,chase a lung wh
at columbine gurgles in a
ear a n ear a ear ly snake~ish
sm eared into yr sandwich :my
fellow comb your swallow's ch
ittering air swirls in the
attic lengua p ants st
icky was the tide's gone
out a penciled shadow
and your fought fake lake
is a beehive murmuring in
the wall you sleep against
your hand held in
wind ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
mud brick palace melts be
fore a mountain wiitz your
speaker's name or antihistamine a
cup of gravel and urine
blk
scr a wl eg
limptner ch ain g loss
tu olvido era ,de
caminar por una playa car
mesí y sumar la arenasca



filter

)your swea
ty shirrt
(((
caps aweigh
dr ink

daw h
um uh
whiffled ear

should neck
short a
mile d

d rim
bas t ante
lento ni
ojo hole

br reach a
f ist br
eath ah
g nat            *

sungg s
nail unh
bag s nore
)(  )(  )(  )(  )   ( 

We Who Are About To Die : nathan dueck

nathan dueck’s middle name is russel, which means his initials spell “nrd.” His parents tell him that no one used that word when he was born, but dictionaries say otherwise. He is the author of king’s(mère) (Turnstone Press) and he’ll (Pedlar Press). His next poetry collection, A Very Special Episode, is forthcoming from Buckrider Books.

Where are you now?

Cranbrook, BC: right of the Purcell Mountains, above Mount Baker, left of Kootenay River, below St. Mary’s River. My wife and I moved here with our kids a little while ago, so I’m still looking to the map for help. All I know for sure is this is the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa Nation.

What are you reading?

I’m in the middle of Brecht on Theatre because I’m researching for a project about der Verfremdungeffekt, which translates as “the Alienation Effect,” but it sounds way more scholarly in German.

What have you discovered lately?

The German word Gestus, which translates as both “gesture,” suggesting movement, and “gist,” attitude. In “A Short Organum for the Theatre” Brecht describes “the realm of gest” as those “attitudes adopted by the characters towards one another” (translated by John Willet). Actors, then, in Brecht’s “epic” theatre have to move in ways that portray their attitude, only those movements are not meant to appear natural or representational, but artificial or presentational. Instead, they mean to reveal their characters through “a set of social relations.” Also, I need to come clean: I’m a poser. I’m throwing German around here, but barely know a word of the language.

What are you working on?

I just don’t understand what lead to the emergence of the alt-right. I suspect it has origins in historical events and figures from the 1990s – e.g., Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate cult, the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, the detectives who beat Rodney King, Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, and Theodore Briseno. I’m writing poems about that history that incorporate Gestus by “writing through” (as John Cage put it) lines of plays by Brecht. I’ve just started on this project, though, so I’m still working on the angles. That’s why I’m hiding behind all this academic-speak.

Where do you write?

At home, whenever I find time, on a computer with a family portrait on the desktop.

Have you anything forthcoming?

My next book of poems, tentatively titled A Very Special Episode – alternately titled Brought to You By – will be out with Buckrider Books in 2019.

What would you rather be doing?

God’s honest? Watching cartoons with my kids.

You have died

Originally appeared at h&

We Who Are About To Die : Stanford Cheung

Stanford Cheung is a poet and musician from Toronto. He is the author of the chapbooks Comfort of Malice (Inspiritus, 2018), Kite Extension (Words(on)Pages, 2017) and Any Seam or Needlework (The Operating System, 2016). His work has appeared in Nomadic Journal, Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, X-Peri, Otoliths, and elsewhere. His full-length collection of poems Structures from the Still will be published by Akinoga Press in summer 2018.

Where are you now?

Toronto, Scarborough, in my room, by the piano.

What are you reading?

I just finished reading War of the Foxes by Richard Siken, a poet who gives me the analogue of a painter rather than imperatives of what lifespans of words can notate. I recently revisited Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong- which has been savored a dozen times already. The work of Kiyoko Nagase, also interests me. Her poem Burning a Light at Night, I find myself constantly returning to.

What have you discovered lately?

Paintings of Florine Stettheimer at the AGO

The best hot chocolate stand at Distillery District

Mango Saké

Where do you write?

Writing in cafes is where I usually enjoy finding myself, simply due to the mosaic presence of people and the natural white noise it provides in the backdrop. Now days, I often write on my phone while doing my daily night train commute across Toronto- usually standing. During summer, Bamburgh Park is where solace and routine finds me. I’d say writing comes to me anywhere with a sense of lilt and cadence. I can also say that I love writing in supermarkets. Anywhere urban, familiar, and fresh. Another part of me is convinced writing can be enjoyed anywhere so long a sense of passionate urgency arrives; and the field is open for attention.

What are you working on?

I have this vague idea of a new poetic form I’ve been having visions about in my sleep. Timbres of what fashions memory and the repetition of trauma in the mundanity of metered line breaks- visual signatures in relation to canvas. A freedom within the manmade metronome perhaps? For the time being, at least.

Have you anything forthcoming?

My full-length collection of poems Structures from the Still, will be forthcoming from Akinoga Press in 2018. I also have a chapbook coming out titled Comfort of Malice.

What would you rather be doing?

I don’t know.

A DAY WITH THE NIGHT

I told stories to myself cranium after

silence

When I speak talk from pillows punctured by

dreams when
glory are piles high that come crashing down
that soothe my calmness
If you let go of sleeping,
glory are the eternal days that layer
and minister a way of longing
probing the air and rest
If you stretch out a measure
with every indication of day break coming
Things like sweethearts and faith
like afternoon legend,
like dove treatise
If finitude
my nostalgia like take it or leave it,
things like fractions that elapse
and leave fractions nomad
and collapsing 

We Who Are About To Die: Braydon Beaulieu

Braydon Beaulieu is a freelance game designer, narrative designer, writer, and editor. He studies creative writing, poetics, games, and science fiction at the University of Calgary as a doctoral candidate. His creative work has appeared in Matrix Magazine, Broken Pencil, and the Windsor Review, and in the anthologies Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories and The Calgary Renaissance. He has also published five chapbooks with various micropresses. His most recent critical work has appeared on First Person Scholar and in FreeFall Magazine, and in 2016 his essay "Dystopoetics: The Broken Dream of Conceptualism" earned him a nomination for the Emerging Writer Award from the Alberta Magazine Awards. He lives in Toronto.

Where are you now?

I'm enrolled in the PhD program in English at the University of Calgary, where I'm studying creative writing, poetics, science fiction, and games. I'm living in Toronto, though, with my partner Lindsay and our two cats, Salem and Azazel. In 2017, I broke into the game industry on a freelance basis, editing five tabletop RPGs, designing the alternate-reality game (ARG) "Waking Titan" for No Man's Sky at Alice & Smith, and designing escape games at Secret City Adventures. It's been a fantastic year, I've learned a lot, and I'm excited to see what 2018 has in store.

What are you reading?

I just finished reading Blindsight, by Peter Watts, and have started its sequel, Echopraxia. Amazing works of science fiction. In Blindsight, Watts proceeds from the premise that vampires existed in human prehistory, and we've resurrected them. Now, a vampire leads a deep-space exploration team, his undead body optimized for space travel. It's a premise for explaining the capacity for cryogenic freezing and the temporal commitment required by space travel, so elegant that I'm surprised that this is the first time I'm seeing it in science fiction. My summary doesn't do it justice — you've got to just read the books.

Next up: full-metal indigiqueer, by Joshua Whitehead.

What have you discovered lately?

Since my candidacy exams, I've been battling mental illness and exhaustion. I found that after reading about 150–200 books in the space of a year, I lost my love for reading — the whole reason I study English in the first place — partially as a result of these two struggles. This year, I've rediscovered my love for reading, which has been amazing. To feel excited at the prospect of opening a book again, to become enthralled by its contents instead of feeling like I have to either slog or skim… it's been overwhelming to experience these positive emotions again.

Where do you write?

Wherever, honestly.

What are you working on?

A few things.

1.       My dissertation, which is a collection of interconnected short stories and poems in science fiction. These stories all centre around the concept of language loss as a series of characters experience the fallout from a first contact incident in a zoo.

2.       An alternate-reality game (ARG) in partnership with Useful Splendor, about artificial intelligence.

3.       A super-secret game project that no one knows about yet, but which I'm hoping to release mid-2018.

4.       Freelance work in game design, narrative design, writing, editing, and research — hire me!

Have you anything forthcoming?

I'm just getting back into the swing of my practice, so I'll have new submissions of poetry and fiction out soon. As far as my professional work goes, keep your eyes peeled for Secret City Adventures' announcement of their new escape game in Toronto — I worked on the game on contract with them, and it's going to be a lot of fun!

What would you rather be doing?

It's not a matter of what I'd rather be doing, but where I'd rather be along the road. I should be done my PhD at this point, according to my younger self's plan, but my battle with mental illness has set me back a great deal by affecting my productivity, my passion, and my perseverance. I want to have published more fiction and poetry, to have designed more games, to have designed games on bigger teams. I feel my ambition returning, but with its return comes a distinct flavour of sadness, for my pace and for my failures. I always saw myself being more accomplished than I am now, which is not to belittle what I have accomplished, but to remark on how I've had to change pace in the last few years. And that it's okay, too — it's okay to take care of oneself, to take time, to ask for help and to slow down. Would I rather be touring around the continent promoting my bestselling book(s), while also designing critically-acclaimed games at some AAA studio and running a chapbook micropress for experimental literature or some shit? I mean, yeah, sure. But I also love what I am doing and respect the path that I, personally, need to walk to get where I'm going. And I am just so, so grateful for the people who are walking it with me.

ERASURE: A Short Story, published by above/ground press in 2016

ERASURE: A Short Story erases content from pages of Batwoman: Elegy to create a new narrative from the remains.

We Who Are About To Die : Sophie Anne Edwards

Sophie Anne Edwards is a writer, curator and visual artist whose work has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council since 2004. She has a Certificate in Creative Writing from the Humber School for Writers (Toronto), and a PhD (ABD) in Geography (Queen’s University, Kingston). She is the founder and Artistic/Executive Director of 4elements Living Arts, a community arts organization on Manitoulin Island | Mnidoo Mnising.

Where are you now?

Geographically, I live on Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island) – I’m what you might call an uninvited ‘guest’. I live outside of the little village of Kagawong on the North Channel of Lake Huron, with just a few year-round neighbours, my daughter, and a lot of cat and dog fur. Physically, I am at my desk. Physically/biologically/socially/culturally, I’m ‘round about mid-life (tail of that range). Emotionally, I am in transition (see last sentence). I am also about to be laid-off (see last two sentences). Spiritually, I am in transition (see last three sentences). Creatively, I am taking advantage of the last four sentences.

What are you reading? 
I’m reading the current issue of C Magazine, Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, Food & Drink magazine holiday edition, Stephen Collis’ The Commons, Daphne Marlatt/Betsy Warland’s Two Women in a Birth, a Garfield anthology (it’s like being 12 again). These are books I keep close by: Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, Chris Turnbull’s Continua, Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill.  And – the best – my daughter regularly reads me her most recent short story.

What have you discovered lately?

The format of the page (vertical, horizontal, size, spread) dramatically affects the structure of a piece of writing; and the structure in/forms how the work is produced and how the writing works (or doesn’t), and what can and can’t be shown visually.

As a single mom working as the Executive and Artist Director for a very dynamic (read: constantly seeking funding and adequate staffing) organization, I repeatedly forget how to write creatively, remember that I did write, discover pieces I thought I hadn’t written, and can’t find things I have.

Where do you write?

Always in my head. Bits and pieces of paper. Random notebooks. Shopping lists. Envelopes.

But if I want to focus, I often begin writing (as a thinking through process) in my armchair with a notebook, reference materials, books and articles that resonate. This tends to happen on Saturday mornings when it’s quiet and I have some time to myself. If I have something tangible in my notes, I then re/write on the computer which is in the corner of our spare room studio – a large room with wonderful morning light, stuffed full of art materials, books, my daughter’s loom and spinning wheels, fibre, and all of my academic books and papers. The visual texts are easier to work on with pen, paper, scissors and paper (on a long, flat table well heated by the woodstove) both because I enjoy the tactile aspects of paper, art materials and the making (and being warm), and because I possess only a marginally passable command of design programs.

What are you working on? Have you anything forthcoming?

I’m working on a chapter for a forthcoming book on Geo-poetics (edited by Eric Magrane, Linda Russo, Sarah de Leeuw, and Craig Santos Perez). This chapter is provisionally titled, ‘Poking holes in her canoe: writing through the 19^th century narrative of Anna Brownell Jameson’ and explores the productive possibilities of creative, hybrid writing as an intervention in settler/colonial narratives. Annalogue, is a book length hybrid text I am working on, in which I use a range of techniques/interventions to unsettle Jameson’s text, representational narratives, and authorial voice. Essentially, this book is a reworking of my unfinished PhD dissertation.

What would you rather be doing?

Today, I’d rather be out snowshoeing if it wasn’t too cold to smile.

Sample from the work-in-progress, Annalogue:

a settler hates a tree

subject to a settlement duty of clearing 5 acres per 100

within the first seven years:

trees cast shade on crops, create a colder climate,

risk of fire,

pests.

what she didn’t

sound of Jameson’s voice (the husband). there is not a single word.

tribal specificity.

what bark it was that cured her cough.

how early it was that she found a new doctor.

what exactly it was that ailed her.

what was said when coin was laid in hand

to paddle more quickly.

We Who Are About To Die : Aaron Tucker

Aaron Tucker is the author of two books of poetry, irresponsible mediums (BookThug, 2017 ; http://bookthug.ca/shop/books/irresponsible-mediums-the-chess-games-of-marcel-duchamp-by-aaron-tucker/) and punchlines (Mansfield Press, 2015 ; http://mansfieldpress.net/2015/03/punchlines-2/), as well as the forthcoming coming novel Y (Coach House Books, Spring 2018 ; https://chbooks.com/Books/Y/Y). In addition, his current collaborative project, Loss Sets, translates poems into sculptures which are then 3D printed (http://aarontucker.ca/3-d-poems/); he is also the co-creator of The ChessBard, an app that transforms chess games into poems (http://chesspoetry.com). He has also written two scholarly texts: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Currently, he is a lecturer in the English department at Ryerson Universitywhere he is currently teaching creative and academic writing.

Where are you now?

As I write just before Christmas, I’m currently in Mainz, Germany, not far from Frankfurt, staying with my partner.

Mainz is a quiet city that I like a lot. The lights for the Christmas markets are strung across and in every tree. We stop for glühwein often, let it warm us. Even though there is no snow, it is wet, and we see off-duty American soldiers from the Army base just outside the city towards Wiesbaden, walking through the puddles, speaking English like us. I know an infinitesimal amount of German, and when someone speaks it to me, my brain automatically responds in French. It’s strange.

What are you reading?

The two books I am reading now are Nevil Shute’s On the Beach and Thierry Poibeau’s Machine Translation. 

Machine Translation is a really terrific and condensed history and basic theorization on machine translations that does well to cover a lot of chronological and mechanical ground in a hurry.  I have been reading it to firm up some of the thinking around my new media projects which involve translation and computers. My newest, O/Ô, uses the Google Translate camera function to translate the Canadian Parliamentary Hansard from the day that “O Canada”/“Ô Canada” was adopted as the national anthem, generating photographic concrete poems. Additionally, Loss Sets is a collaborative project with Jordan Scott, Namir Ahmed and Tiffany Cheung that translates poems into models which are then 3D printed (http://aarontucker.ca/3-d-poems/); the ChessBard is a project collaboratively created by Jody Miller and myself that translates chess games into poems (chesspoetry.com). In the fall of this year, I published a beautiful print version of the project, Irresponsible Mediums (Book*hug, 2017; http://bookthug.ca/shop/books/irresponsible-mediums-the-chess-games-of-marcel-duchamp-by-aaron-tucker/), which translates all of Marcel Duchamp’s chess games into poems. Machine Translation has given me a lot of vocabulary and further reading to help me push these projects further.

In Shute’s novel, the Northern hemisphere of the globe has been completely irradiated by nuclear weapons and the resulting fallout drifts south to Melbourne, Australia where the characters wait helplessly for this cloud to overtake them. In contrast to the near-instant eradication of nuclear warfare, when I first read this book over a decade ago, I was struck by the creeping, slow acceptance of extinction the book shapes itself around and I have been re-reading it because of a talk I will be giving about it in the new year at the Toronto Public Library, where I want to argue that we having been living post-apocalyptically since the Trinity Test, the first explosion of an atom bomb in 1945. This is a conversation I have been returning to as I have been editing my first novel Y (Coach House Books, 2018 - https://chbooks.com/Books/Y/Y), about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, and I’m trying to situate myself within the current very-real climate of nuclear culture and war.     

What have you discovered lately?

Given that it is the holidays, I have had a bit more time to read and catch up on books and have been reminded of all the great poetry and fiction being published across Canada. In no order, the books that have come out this year that I’ve loved:

-        The Greats by Sylvain Prudhomme (Book*hug Books) - https://bookthug.ca/shop/books/the-greats-by-sylvain-prudhomme-translated-by-jessica-moore/

-        My Ariel by Sina Queyras (Coach House Books) - https://chbooks.com/Books/M/My-Ariel

-        Incarnations by Janieta Eyre (Coach House Books) - https://chbooks.com/Books/I/Incarnations

-        Double Teenage by Joni Murphy (Book*hug Books) - https://bookthug.ca/shop/books/double-teenage-by-joni-murphy/

-        Dawn by Jordan Scott (tinfishpress) - https://tinfishpress.com/?projects=dawn

-        I am a Truck by Michelle Winters (Invisible Books) - http://invisiblepublishing.com/product/i-am-a-truck/

-        Charm by Christine McNair (Book*hug Books) - https://bookthug.ca/shop/books/charm-christine-by-mcnair/

-        This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (House of Anansi)- https://houseofanansi.com/products/this-accident-of-being-lost

-        Sons by Dale Smith (Knife Fork Book) - https://knifeforkbook.com/shop-kfb/can

-        Voodoo Hypothesis by Canisia Lubrin (Wolsak and Wynn) - http://wolsakandwynn.ca/books/178-voodoo-hypothesis

-        Full-Metal Indigiqueer by Joshua Whitehead (Talonbooks) - http://talonbooks.com/books/full-metal-indigiqueer

-        Pockets by Stuart Ross (ECW Books) - https://ecwpress.com/products/pockets

-        Admission Requirements by Phoebe Wang (McClelland & Stewart) - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547924/admission-requirements-by-phoebe-wang/9780771005572/

-        The Chemical Life by Jim Johnstone (Véhicule Press) - http://www.vehiculepress.com/q.php?EAN=9781550654820

-        If Clara by Martha Baillie (Coach House Books) - https://chbooks.com/Books/I/If-Clara

-        Still Point by E. Martin Nolan (Invisible Books) - https://invisiblepublishing.com/product/still-point/

-        Table Manners by Catriona Wright (Véhicule Press) - http://www.vehiculepress.com/q.php?EAN=9781550654745

-        Rag Cosmology by Erin Robinsong (Book*hug Books) - https://bookthug.ca/shop/books/rag-cosmology-by-erin-robinsong/

-        A, A Novel by Derek Beaulieu (JBE) - https://www.jean-boite.fr/product/a-a-novel-by-derek-beaulieu

-        No TV for Woodpeckers by Gary Barwin (Wolsak and Wynn) - http://wolsakandwynn.ca/books/171-no-tv-for-woodpeckers

-        My Nostalgia by Ralph Kolewe (Talonbooks) - http://talonbooks.com/books/inspecting-nostalgia

-        Cruise Missile Liberals by Spencer Gordon (Nightwood Editions) - http://www.nightwoodeditions.com/title/CruiseMissileLiberals

-        All the many things Jim Johnstone and company do at Anstruther Press - http://www.anstrutherpress.com

-        All the many many things rob mclennan does at above/ground - http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.de

I can’t help but be so excited by the wide range of amazing books being published and it is really great to get to read books from people who I love and respect. This is especially potent when I go to a local bookstore, like the incredible and indispensable Knife Fork Book (https://knifeforkbook.com) or Type, (http://www.typebooks.ca) to scope out the shelves: I want all the amazing books!

Maybe more specifically, I recently returned from my first trip to Berlin and the Hamburger Bahnhof. There is a wing of the gallery that is dedicated to full room installations and I saw a number of incredible pieces, in particular War Damaged Instruments by Susan Philipsz (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/20/susan-philipsz-war-damaged-musical-instruments-review-tate-britain) and Bruce Nauman's Room with My Soul Left Out (lhttp://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/hamburger-bahnhof/exhibitions/detail/bruce-nauman.html). Philipsz’s work reminded me of a Janet Cardiff piece I saw at the AGO (http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/motet.html), and was incredibly evocative - I stood in the middle with my eyes closed and listened to the instruments shift around me, thought of the specific history of those specific instruments, thought of my own relationship to listening to music, to listening in general. Nauman’s piece was surprisingly visceral - it was cold! And the bomb-shelter structure was unnerving, stark and no-place. All of the works, but those two specifically, pushed me to think about scale and space (and bodily enactment within that space) in ways that I don’t immediately think about with poetry, and have encouraged me to expand the types of work I want to make.   

Where do you write?

When I actually sit down to write creatively I tend to do it at my desk facing my big window. However, I find myself writing all the time, just not creatively (emails texts etc) and usually on my phone in transit, and have struggled recently with how to focus and write when the time comes. In many ways, my response to rob mclennan’s blog (http://mysmallpresswritingday.blogspot.de/2017/12/aaron-tucker-my-not-writing-day.html) was me making peace with leaving behind a certain stage of my writing life and transitioning to a new one that means less, but hopefully sharper, writing and creative work. I don’t write for a living and so that part of my practice has to fit around the other major blocks of responsibility in my life and I struggle sometimes with that.  

What are you working on?

Loss Sets, described above, is an ongoing project; we are hoping to get to nine sculptures and sculpture five has been giving me fits at the printing stage, so the first task in the new year is to make that one, then move to the next group.

I’ve also been asked if I might contribute a chapter for an upcoming book about Florine Stettheimer, and so have been doing some initial reading and thinking through her portraits of Marcel Duchamp. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Duchamp over the past few years in relation to Irresponsible Mediums and this chapter will hopefully push me into some new directions.

In terms of solo creative work, I’m writing weird little bird-lyric poems based on some of the travelling I have been doing. I’m not exactly sure what they are, or what they might become, but I’ve enjoyed writing them so far.  More substantially, I want to finish O/Ô, to translate the whole proceedings and begin hosting them online, in addition to working through a physical photographic form of the project. 

Have you anything forthcoming?

I’ve spent an incredibly satisfying past few months editing Y (https://chbooks.com/Books/Y/Y) with Alana Wilcox and am so excited to see it published in the spring of 2018.  About two years ago I picked up American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, though I can’t remember exactly why now, and was struck by how complicated figure Oppenheimer was. He was a brilliant polymath, a Communist sympathizer, and a Humanist, yet still led the building of the first weapon of mass destruction at Los Alamos. On top of all this, his romantic life was incredibly tangled and he seemed to live his life split and bouncing between the two poles of himself. So I started writing ithin this rich historical frame, thinking it might be a short story, then a set of short stories, until it was a novel. On the whole, I’m extremely proud of it.

What would you rather be doing?

I really do feel I’m doing exactly what I want to do be doing.

The following poems are excerpted from Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp (Book*hug, 2017 ; http://bookthug.ca/shop/books/irresponsible-mediums-the-chess-games-of-marcel-duchamp-by-aaron-tucker/). In 1968, avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp and composer John Cage exhibited Reunion, a chess performance that took place in Toronto. Whenever Duchamp or Cage moved a piece, it generated a musical note until the game was transformed into a symphony.

Inspired by this performance, Irresponsible Mediums translates Duchamp’s chess games into poems using the ChessBard (an app co-created by Tucker and Jody Miller) and in the process, recreates Duchamp’s joyous approach to making art, while also generating startling computer-made poems that blend the analog and digital in strange and surprising combinations.

Further description of the translation process can be found at http://chesspoetry.com/about/and http://chesspoetry.com/poetics/

machine sealed sand or

resistance, any blurred sketch, instant

questions deserted cell or cord

single cast or broken sand

warily measures some seashell

single silicon gobbles within

the reassemblage, dormouse beside coherence

each speed the purposeful decomposition

gobbles beside cloudy redundancy

               Playing White vs M. Schroeder (New York, 1922)

a centre among drawing and
blazing mathematics, hunches beside instant

hooded astonishment beyond complete insult
or texture inside deception and
washed specimen traps

            Playing Black Vs. Anatoly Alekseevich Chepurnov (Paris, 1924)