I review Undercastle by Feliz Lucia Molina

Go read my review of Undercastle in The Rumpus, and then go scoop it up!

A little taste: "Undercastle stamps its passport with poems titled “Paris, Las Vegas”, “Ibiza”, “Saudi Arabian Dream Machine”, “Italy Italy”, “Buenos Aires” and “Blockbuster Operator in Manila,” and name-checks many other cities; in time, its territory ranges from the ‘90s to the present. People, words, habits and products who share this time-territory are young, but not as young as we once were; we may not know more, but it seems true to say that we know differently."

Post script

My copies of Overheard While Hiding From the Sun came today, thanks to a mail carrier who generously came back around, interrupting her route (in the snow!), when she realized I was home to sign the slip.

That was an above-and-beyond move, but it prompts me to also declare my appreciation of mail carriers doing what they usually do. MAIL CARRIER APPRECIATION FOR LIFE, and I'm not just saying that because the great James McShane did that work our second winter in Providence. (The two descriptors he used most often were "tiring" and "cold.") This is a public thank you to everyone who has ever brought me a package with a book in it, or brought a copy of one of  my books to someone else.

Overheard While Hiding From the Sun + Found Poetry at GRIN Gallery

When I fill a notebook, I go back through, gather words and phrases that I haven't already turned into something else, and use them as the first draft of a poem. Sometimes they're phrases that sound good but that I haven't found a place for; sometimes they're things I've read on signs or labels, or heard people say. I have about 35 of these poems now, and some of them have just come out as a chapbook from above/ground press, Overheard While Hiding From the Sun.

I'll be reading from this book, and from the cento booklets I make of past Publicly Complex readings, at:

Finding Poetry in the Existing and Everyday
at the GRIN Gallery in Providence (60 Valley St.,  #3)
on Friday, February 21st, at 7 pm.

Maria Anderson, Martin Elwell, Paul Hostovsky and Amy Pickworth will be reading with me.

La Vague: Antiquest

Super beautiful new issue of La Vague is up with poems by me, Gina Abelkop, Kate Colby, Sandy Florian, Eirann Lorsung, Melanie Hubbard, Laura Kochman, and Jessica Smith. What a lineup! So pleased to be included in this.

"I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody."

"To my old brown earth
And to my old blue sky
I'll now give these last few molecules of "I."

And you who sing,
And you who stand nearby,
I do charge you not to cry.

Guard well our human chain,
Watch well you keep it strong,
As long as sun will shine.

And this our home,
Keep pure and sweet and green,
For now I'm yours
And you are also mine"

— Pete Seeger

A couple of things

I just set up a monthly donation of $25 to the RI Community Food Bank.

This interview between Sarah McCarry and Mairead Case about being a working artist with depression -- the first in a series -- is good to read, but the part that really got me was "When I feel like E.T. I phone home." I am so grateful to and for all the people I can phone home to.

Some poems up at Similar:Peaks:: about making and fearing futures. Thanks to Rachel and David and the other Similar:Peaksers::. Thinking about fear a lot lately. (Also, feeling a lot of fear lately.) Watch this space.

Witch Fingers

Providence is full of sinister magic and phosphoresence. Ask anyone. Or see for yourself in Witch Fingers, a new book of lore, a demonic offering.

Witch Fingers was edited and printed by Xander Marro and includes word and picture work by CF, Kate Schapira, Joanna Ruocco, Alison Nitkiewicz & Juilia Moses, James Talbot Frain, Sussy Santana, Aaron Anderson, Carrie Collier, Mickey Zachili, Shey Rivera-Rios, Polina Malikin, Sasha Wiseman, Anna Purna Himel Wagner, Olivia Horvath, Liz Luisada. Costs $13, obviously.

New work at Return to Default! Old work at With + Stand!

Some new poems up at Return to Default! These are from a new manuscript called The Duration.

With + Stand lost their hard copies of their 6th issue, with work by many excellent humans including Tyrone Williams, Jennifer Bartlett, Angela Veronica Wong, Cara Benson and me, but you can now download a silky-soft PDF.

Publicly Complex: Simone White, Christine Hou, Geoffrey Nutter!

Tomorrow (Saturday, 10/26) at 6pm:

poetry by
Simone White
Geoffrey Nutter
Christine Hou

at Ada Books (717 Westminster St.)

Three poets whose work I think is just so great. You will too, if you come and hear them.

Review of The Fluency of Light

I reviewed The Fluency of Light: Coming of Age in a Theatre of Black and White by Aisha Sabatini Sloan. This book surprised, provoked and moved me; I recommend checking it out.

Publicly Complex presents Waldrop, Ragosta, Hayden!

This is tonight we're talking about:

poetry by
Keith Waldrop
Ray Ragosta
Sarah Hayden

Saturday, October 19th, at 6 pm
at Ada Books (717 Westminster St., Providence)

Hovering with The Skin Team

I added a power tower to the map, which is not the territory:

Jordaan Mason's book is stingo stuff.

Also, the government

In the department of "doesn't actually address the roots of the problem, but might make some people's lives more possible in the short term", today is a great day to donate to a food bank (because WIC is affected) and/or veterans' services (because the VA is affected). Donating to a national park, when the National Park Service's website is back up (it's down now because of the shutdown) would also be a good idea.

Links are to RI institutions because that's where I am (and where I donated), but searching for "[your state] food bank" or "[your state] veterans' services" should get you there.

New work in N/A

The new issue of N/A is up, and it's full of good work by Gina Abelkop, Matt Henriksen, Rae Armantrout, Michelle Detorie and more (including me). Go look!

Review of origin of by Kiely Sweatt

My review of Kiely Sweatt's origin of is up at Coldfront.

A little taste: "The speaker may lust for a 'Frenchman with a thick accent' or feel an addict’s hunger, but the relative terseness and tight surface of the poems as a group offer a resistance and a desire to get the moment of intensity in and over with."

Poetry on Demand and Post-It Lit at the RISD Museum 9/19!

As part of the RISD Museum's Design the Night: Open House, I and six other poets will be at the museum on September 19th, 7-8:45 pm, with two participatory events.

Poets will be stationed at typewriters in four places around the 4th and 5th floors of the museum. You can walk right up to them and request a poem. They will type it for you on either a Smith-Corona Skyriter or a Smith-Corona Galaxie, and you'll get to walk away with it in your hand.

You can also come to the Post-It Zone (near the new media gallery on the 4th floor) and make poems on the museum walls, Magnetic Poetry style, with lines from participating poets, or add your own.

The poems made over the course of the evening will be collected in limited-edition chapbooks made by four Providence writers / book artists. To get a copy, you'll want to come to Ada Books on Sunday, 11/17, at 4 pm, for a reading and distribution party.

The Design the Night poets:
Mary-Kim Arnold
Lindsay Beebe
Indigo Bethea
Adam Golaski
Cherry Pickman
Amish Trivedi

The chapbook artists:
Maria Anderson 
Janaya Kizzie
Kat Murphy
Kate Schapira

My review of The Disordered is up at the Small Press Book Review

I reviewed Anhvu Buchanan's The Disordered over at the Small Press Book Review. Go look!

Arterian, Mena, Schapira at Ada Books on September 4th!

This reading just popped up like an enthusiastic and intricate fungus in the hot damp end of summer:

Diana Arterian
Erica Mena
and me, Kate Schapira

at Ada Books (717 Westminster St., Providence)
on Wednesday, September 4th, at 7 pm

Please come!

Note: this isn't a Publicly Complex reading. Those start on 9/21, with Krystal Languell and Rangi McNeil.

Brenda Iijima's going blooming falling blooming

I reviewed the drastically beautiful going blooming falling blooming, by Brenda Iijima (from Delete Press), for LitBridge! Go look, and then invite this object into your home so it can bite you.

Danielle Vogel TODAY (Sunday) at the RISD Museum!

Danielle is the last performer in my week, so you can scratch your nagging "I was supposed to come to that thing Kate was curating" itch AND hear incredible, embracing, destabilizing and recentering work at the same time! 12-1, Lower Farago Gallery (Benefit St entrance), please come.