wendy s. walters | h o m e t o w n

I have a new review up on Hyperallergic this weekend:

“Siglio Press’s anthology of text-based art, It is Almost That, is a rare gem: a book of pivotal works that have received little critical attention. Because of its attention to the obscure, It is Almost That is essential for anyone interested in feminist art, performance studies, cross-genre writing or the graphic novel.

It is Almost That was conceived and edited by Siglio publisher Lisa Pearson, who envisioned the book to be the first of several editions that would document pieces in the fuzzy area between art and text, works that are “not-quite-this-and-not-quite-that.” In her afterword, Pearson emphasizes that “categories cannot contain” and that works that are “partly (almost) visible to one world [are] often entirely invisible to another.” The twenty-six pieces that comprise the volume are not arranged in chronological order, though they are loosely associated with works that precede and follow them. Through this manner of curation, Pearson poses the question of what it means to “read” a text that reveals itself primarily as image when it is not the only work of its kind.”  There is more.

I offer my take on the life and work of Adrienne Rich, which is part of VIDA’s collaborative elegy “21 Love Poems to Adrienne Rich.”  Here’s a clip:

“Adrienne Rich understood that being underestimated afforded one liberty to innovate.

She predicted that most of us would have to revise our perception of power in order to see the world clearly.  She implored us to stop regarding our injuries with disappointment and bless them out of respect for our endurance.

She practiced associative thinking with such dexterity that she made us take for granted how hard it is to employ metaphor without simplifying a subject.  How she maintained a sense of romance while writing a subjective, political poetry remains a mystery.”

For the rest of my piece and great insights by twenty other writers, go here.

We are holding our second FPP Harlem Reading at Shrine next Monday night 4/23 at 7pm featuring playwright Bathsheba Doran; former editor of The Believer and novelist Ed Park; and short story writer Tiphanie Yanique.

Writers will read from their body of work and new pieces exploring the plural voice.  Join us for this one-of-a-kind evening!

For more information on the series, see the links below:

Website
http://www.firstpersonpluralharlem.com/

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-First-Person-Plural-Reading-Series-Harlem/237006713050080

Venue:
Shrine World Music Venue
located at 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.
Harlem, NY
http://www.shrinenyc.com/

Here’s an essay I wrote about the unpredictable influence a teacher can have on her student for a recent issue of The Aviary Online.

The Aviary Online is has some really interesting reviews and essays about poetics as they relate to the larger project of literature.  Check it out!

Opening Event March 5, 2012 @ 7 pm
Shrine World Music Venue, FREE
(on Adam Clayton Powell between 133rd and 134th )
Harlem, NY
http://www.firstpersonpluralharlem.com

Thanks to this month’s curator, Sommer Browning, my poem “In Search of the Face” is featured this week alongside the sharp, dark and funny work of Julia Cohen, Juliana Leslie, Bianca Stone, and Arda Collins on Everyday Genius. Please check us out.

I have been fortunate to hear a bit of good news lately. I am a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, which is an awesome honor given the list of winners and judges.  I was given the extra honor of being nominated in the category of nonfiction as well, though I could only be awarded a fellowship in one genre.  In addition to this amazing opportunity, I’m excited to have a bunch of new work coming out during the next academic year.  A review essay on Melissa Kwasny’s newest book The Nine Senses (Milkweed), will appear in an upcoming issue of Coldfront.  Poems from my latest project are scheduled to appear in the next issue of Los Angeles Review.  And I am working on a few more developments I will be sure to post here as they materialize.

In addition to finishing some big projects I hope I can brag about soon, I am committing to doing a few more reviews this spring.  In the coming months there should be an update about that work as I complete and place them.  So far the process has been slightly inspiring.  This has something to do with the kind of work I am reading.  This may or may not have to do with the fact that I am no longer as patient with protocol as I used to be.

A lot of talk lately about empathy and the ways we have become immune to it suggests that the severe challenges we now face are a product of our own laziness.  I take a photograph from inside my car while I drive by Cherokee’s House on my way to downtown Detroit.  Of course I am on my way to someplace important, and I do not have time to stop the car, get out and look around.  Lately it seems I am moving from one fast moment to the next without resources to complete any of my appointed tasks without engaging in some complicated backstep.  To go forward I must move sideways then backwards then sideways before I can start to move in a right direction.   I am aware a building is not a person and connecting with a place is a ridiculous substitution for people love, but buildings evidence a people’s relationship to the geographies and economies they have inherited.  I mark my driving by with a snapshot.  It will be a stormy afternoon in Southeastern Michigan, and what we do expect is several waves of thunderstorms, perhaps an isolated tornado.

Highland Park, MI

I am honored to be introducing Leslie C. Chang at the reading celebrating the release of her new book, Things that No Longer Delight Me, which was selected by Cornelius Eady for the 2008-9 Poet’s Out Loud Prize.  The reading will take place Tuesday, March 23 at 7:00 pm, 12th Floor Lounge, Fordham University, Lincoln Center, 113 West 60th Street in NYC.

The book is an ambitious and patient engagement with memory and history.  All the relics that evidence no one, all the family photographs mistaken for the past.  It is not a small book.  Do not miss it.