Abendroth, Luong and Tremblay-McGaw Reading March 5th

On Tuesday March 5th, 2013, Karen Hannah of Zumbar Press and Nick Sarno of Press Works on Paper hosted an evening of poetry celebrating the publication of  Emily Abendroth's EXCLOSURES, a broadbook (broadside + chapbook): "This 6-page, hand-sewn book is printed in duotone and it dialogues with both worn and damaged type, along with new, never-before-used type, textually exploring a number of different themes through these fonts" (Zumbar). Brian Teare's Albion Books, released EXCLOSURES 1-8 in 2012.  I am a big fan of Emily's work and noted EXCLOSURES 1-8 as one of my 2012 bests on Michael Cross's 2012 Disinhibitions. Abendroth's diction is always juicy and her syntax elastic, tensile. Additionally, she is a fabulous reader of her work.

Francois Luong and I had the opportunity to read with Emily for a lovely and attentive crowd in the very fabulous Press Works on Paper bookstore in the Mission at 3108 24th Street. This bookstore specializes in art, fashion, and poetry classics. Plus they carry pencils to lust after.

Serendipitously, each of us read work that rhymed in terms of concerns, inspiration, and diction. I read some new small poems written to the accompaniment of bird calls from the Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds and some of the sections from an ongoing work in progress tentatively called "after oppen and howe," that is in tensile conversation with Of Being Numerous and Howe's work generally, particularly its interest in history.

Francois also read work engaged with Oppen. Of the selections from After Architecture, he says "the entire project was very much written under the influence of Oppen (especially Of Being Numerous and its poem "A Theological Definition"), Celan (mostly Fadensonnen, I think), Royet-Journoud and Esther Tellermann (whom I was translating at the time)."

Emily read from EXCLOSURES and from a prose piece that responded to questions posed by a friend, Tessa. Fabulous!


R  E  A  D   S  O  M  E   O  F   T  H  E   W  O  R  K    H  E  R  E:

• Emily Abendroth, from Exclosures
• Emily Abendroth, "Tell Me What is Possible?"
• françois luong, from After Architecture
• Robin Tremblay-McGaw, from after Oppen and Howe

photo by Amy Trachtenberg

Emily Abendroth--EXCLOSURE 9, 11, 17

EXCLOSURE 9, 11, 17

Emily Abendroth Exclosures 9, 11, 17

Emily and Karen Hannah
photo courtesy of francois luong

Emily Abendroth is a writer and teacher currently residing in Philadelphia. Her print publications include: NOTWITHSTANDING shoring, FLUMMOX (Little Red Leaves), Exclosures 1-8 (Albion Press), Property : None (Taproot Editions), and Toward Eadward Forward (horse less press). An extended excerpt from her piece “Muzzle Blast Dander” can be found in Refuge/Refugee (Chain Links, Vol 3).

Emily Abendroth--Tell Me What is Possible?

****Excerpt from “A Closing Note in Favor of the Improbable”
Emily Abendroth

TESSA: Tell me what is possible.

To which a subsequent hour’s now altered version of oneself surmises:

At this moment, I'm putting every wager on the prospect of constant reinvention while, at the same time, making no claims as to our capacity for scale. I want to acknowledge the craving that such a thing can happen and does happen, even if not always or only very rarely as we imagine it for ourselves. Further, I want to insist that it can happen without the demand for secession from everything and everyone with whom one has lived and invented oneself previously, but rather among them --- even perhaps by, with and under the careful shepherding, husbandry and compañera-ship of their encouragements. That may be going too far, I think, into the arena of wishes, into the impossible. One wish then is that "going too far" is what is possible.

Another wish is the fossil record itself - to cease hording it. Or at least to cease believing that we are its only seasoned or valid specimens.

Francois Luong

from Against Architecture

françois luong

 

how to build within

        a dissemination

        of cement    each

slab facing

        an opposite direction

    against the notion

         of a millstone

    or the notion

         of a road

arising from the cutting

            of the soil

those trenches that support

                the word

how words crumble 

in time

         the outline of

        a gate

    gradually losing

        its lattice frame

    until all that remains

describes a quarry 

        an outline

        to be used

la nécessité de plier 

print     le livre

          as enclosure

          a unbuilt roads

away from a constant

     space of appearances

between shadow

     and pigment

passing through a silicate

     matrix     not as impurity

but as light

          le mot du mur

au-delà du concret

             du béton

     we keep on building

               on adding

from ghost of notes

          letters as steps

toward an extension of space

     through poles and lines

     placed here

          and there

or as freely          across

          this expanse

a presence stolen by

     the frame of a doorway

under the condition

     not to end

     the book can only turn

into all that is there

     a house of infinite

walls     doors     windows

windows for an f

     function of an invariable

     frame surrounding

silhouettes     against

          the windowpane

in the margins

a succession of indeterminate

                         articles

photo courtesy of Amy Trachtenberg

Originally from Strasbourg, France, françois luong lives in San Francisco. He has translated the works of Esther Tellermann, François Turcot, and Rémi Froger, as well as other francophone poets from France, Québec and elsewhere. His translations have appeared or are forthcoming in LIT, West Wind Review, Verse, Dandelion (Canada), Aufgabe, and elsewhere.

Robin Tremblay-McGaw, from after Oppen & Howe

After Oppen and Howe Excerpt March 17 2013

Robin sweats at Funky Door Yoga in camel and standing-head-to-knee pose, lives in San Francisco, and edits this blog. Her work has appeared in Little Red Leaves, mirage, HOW2, and elsewhere; an article on the work of Joan Retallack is forthcoming in Aufgabe.

photo by Marie Regan

S   A   R   A    W  I  N  T  Z
is curating the Spring season of Small Press Traffic's Reading Series. 


On February 17th, she brought us: Maya Weeks, Andrew Kenower, Laura Woltag, and Laura Neuman.  The reading was diverse, the audience packed. I liked the work a lot. You can read some for yourself here:


Maya Weeks

Andrew Kenower

Laura Woltag

Laura Neuman

Laura Woltag at Small Press Traffic

from REFERVID VIRGA, from the section did our never sound?

by Laura Woltag 

 

 

a distance transgresses me to appear as you. a bundle of sumac reaches into the indecisive melt. when we have to split to speak and rip to hear. I just want it to lift, so I say rip me.

sight might seem then; regenerate loss

warming into what’s falling. the fence then flakes. a poke at a vacant other. until I remember to look up. until I remember what to look up.

/

a coreless flicker stings me, rescues you. a splint in a splitting sound, falsified by the flight it ravages.

so dictating to lose phenomenon’s all I am.

do you want water?

/

what filters us inhales. air composed mid-pressure to reassure a circulation. so realms where “we don’t belong” glide above a severely patterned course. individuating devices powered down.

glean anyone for liberty.

touch in itself touches blood. tied up tone. blood fields. scratches then deletes. lands me you.

/

in gathering, a dispersed person hinges

our feeling floods we need

in the tone—

horizon’s giant hinge

placates quiet

beyond powers to invoke it

the form takes its conduits and marshes them

bundle the stems, suspend

/

one that might be you slips outside the heat that’s not mine

completely trial

like tagging

yourself’s split

/

can you hear?

-no, can you hear?

Laura Woltag lives in the East Bay, where she tends to things. Her work has appeared in Try!, OMG! and is forthcoming in Mrs. Maybe and the Manifest Reading Series anthology. She facilitates a listening/sound studies class through the Bay Area Public School.