New Poetry For February

I've had a couple of new poems come out this month.

One's in print, in David Kopaska-Merkel's spec journal Dreams & Nightmares. (My poem "The Dream" is in issue #100. You can order a copy from the site or his blog. ) D&M has been around since the '80s and is one of the few long-running journals dedicated solely to speculative poetry.

The other poem, "Andromeda," is online, in the poetry journal Tinderbox, in Vol. 1 Issue 3. Even
though this is a relatively new journal, it's home to some pretty amazing work. Two of my favorites in this issue are "Baby Giant" by Michele Harman and "On the Role of the Atom" by Anna Leahy.

Upcoming Workshops

I'll be leading two new poetry workshops for adults this fall at the Inscape Arts building in Seattle. Check these out...you can register through the Brown Paper Tickets links below or through me at laura@laurawaltonallen.com

Poetry & Art: Ekphrastic Beginnings

 November 15, 1 - 4 p.m.
Inscape Arts, Seattle
$45 per person

"All art is sensual, and poetry particularly so," said William Carlos Williams. In ekphrastic poetry, writers turn their senses toward the work of other artists (think Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn" or Anne Carson's Hopper-inspired poems.) In this three-hour workshop, we'll encounter the work of poets inspired by physical artworks, and explore some of our own responses to the artists of Seattle's Inscape studios.

Make It Strange: Art Techniques for the Poet

November 22, 1 - 4 p.m.
$45 per person

"Art makes the familiar strange so that it can be freshly perceived. To do this it presents its material in unexpected, even outlandish ways: the shock of the new." Victor Shklovsky

Want to write like a Cubist? Layer meanings like collage? In this short afternoon writing workshop, we'll experiment with techniques usually associated with the visual arts, such as collage, assemblage, and abstraction. Held at one of Seattle's most vibrant arts communities, Inscape Arts, this workshop is sure to freshen your perspective. (P.S.- Prose writers are welcome, too!)

"Make It Strange: Art Techniques for the Poet" is led by artist, writer, and instructor Laura W. Allen. She has taught for the Writer's Garret of Dallas and McLennan Community College, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications and journals such as Bathtub Gin, S/tick, Strange Horizons, and Tinderbox. She is also a working visual artist, concentrating mainly on assemblage and mixed media.

Simulation Theory, Sexbots, and Sweet Potatoes

Long-exposure photo by artist Bruce Bischoff

Since I haven't posted anything in weeks, I thought I'd pop in and add, at the very least, a newsy sort of update.

Speculative literature journal Strange Horizons has published one of my poems, "Heirarch." This one comes from a series of posthuman poems that's been in progress for...well, for a long long time. Maybe it's not a series. Maybe I just like posthuman/Singularity/upload/simulation theory themes enough to keep writing about them.


And on that note, I have two other poems out now, too. The Canadian feminist literary journal S/tick will be publishing "Peeling Sweet Potatoes" and "GirlsGirlsGirls" in their upcoming issue, but both are also available online here. "GirlsGirlsGirls" grew out of the same posthuman roots as "Heirarch." How will our tools feel about us?

The sweet potato poem? Probably not technological at all, or is so only in its reference to a paring knife, that most perfect of manmade augments.

Another of Bruce Bischoff's "Bronson Caves" series

Some Chariots

Always behind my back I hear
The spastic clicking of jerked knees
And other automatic reactions
Tracking me through the years to where
Time’s winged chariot is double
Parked near the eternity frontier
And in such moments I want to participate
In human life less and less
But when I do the obligatory double take
And glance behind me into the dark green future
All I see stretching out are vast
Arizona republics of more

-"Human Life" by Tom Clark

from the Cary-Yale Visconti deck, Milan

mid-1400s

from the Jacque Vieville deck, France

mid-1600s

from Salvador Dali's deck, released in 1984

from The New Tarot by Hurley, Hurley, and Horler

California, 1974

from The Housewives Tarot

(apparently contemporary)

from Sacred India deck by Rohit Arya

from The Celtic Tarot by Lo Scarabeo & Saverio Tenuta

2000

from the Hexen 2.0 deck by Suzanne Treister

from a project by fragOcon here on deviantart

added on 2010

from the Voyager Tarot by James Wanless

1986

from the Amano Deck by Yoshitaka Amano, 1991

            Here is where

            You can get nowhere

            Faster than ever

            As you go under

            Deeper and deeper

            In the fertile smother

            Of another acre

            Like any other

            You can’t peer over

            And then another

            And everywhere

            You veer or hare

            There you are

            Farther and farther

            Afield than before

           But on you blunder

           In the verdant meander

           As if   the answer

           To looking for cover

           Were to bewilder

           Your inner minotaur

           And near and far were

           Neither here nor there

           And where you are

           Is where you were 

-"Corn Maze" by David Barber