Humanimal eyes on primate prankery.
I have made honorary Punjabi status on Bhanu’s blog! Just for sending her a link to the monkey reform schools. See here.
Will Ms. Kapil’s next book be an exposé on macaque misbehavior? Speculations, anyone?
July 22, 2009
Trickhouse features Heide Hatry, Heads and Tales
1
The “genotype” is her genetic constitution.
The “phenotype” is the observable expression of the genotype as structural and bio-chemical traits.
Genetic disease is extreme genetic change, against a background of normal vari-ability.
Within the conventional unit we call subjectivity due to individual particulars, what is happening?
She believes she is herself, which isn’t complete madness, it’s belief.
The problem is not to turn the subject, the effect of the genes, into an entity. Between her and the displaced gene is another relation, the effect of meaning.
The meaning she’s conscious of is contingent, a surface of water in an uninhabited world, existing as our eyes and ears.
You wouldn’t think of her form by thinking about water. You can go in, if you don’t encounter anything.
Though we call heavy sense impressions stress, all impression creates limitation. I believe opaque inheritance accounts for the limits of her memory.
The mental impulse is a thought and a molecule tied together, like sides of a coin.
A girl says sweetly, it’s time you begin to look after me, so I may seem lovable to myself.
She’s inspired to change the genotype, because the cell’s memory outlives the cell. It’s a memory that builds some matter around itself, like time.
–from The Four Year Old Girl, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
The pairing of this poem and this image can be found in Heads and Tales by Heide Hatry. Images of Hatry’s sculptures are coupled with pieces by writers like Bersssenbrugge, Thalia Field and Joanna Howard.
Creating Life
The portraits in Heads and Tales are photographic documentations of sculptures I made out of animal skin and body parts, intended to provide springboards for stories, reminiscences or meditations on the lives of women. I asked a number of writers I admire to select the image of one of my women and create a life for her. As the work addresses issues of violence, death and gender identity, the writing reflects similar concerns as they are specific to women, not necessarily from an obviously politically fraught or polemical perspective, but more typically resorting to fantasy, satire, irony, and other subversive modes of presentation to disrupt the hegemony of the everyday and release the power of its horror.
–from Hatry’s artist statement.
Read and view more at Trickhouse.
July 15, 2009
KSP Member Tiff Dressen, New Chapbook–Messages.
The scanner’s granularity does not do this vessel, a.k.a. a little book, justice but surely the pixels here portend. Contact stealthyelfpress, tiff_dressen@yahoo.com, for the hands-on magic.
July 12, 2009
Summer Supper
Some KSPers at a recent meeting. From left to right: Ramsay Breslin, Tiff Dressen, Patricia Dienstrfrey, Val Witte, Rena Rosenwasser.
July 7, 2009
Lisa Rappoport and Katherine Case Celebrate Letterpress
Join poets and letterpress printers Lisa Rappoport and Katherine Case for a celebration of the long tradition of letterpress-printed poetry. Katherine and Lisa will read from both older and newer work. Lisa has a new double chapbook published this year by EtherDome, “Figments” and “Aftermaths.” Letterpress broadsides created by the poets will also be available. Buy a broadside and get a chance to print the final ink color yourself! Friday, July 10, 7pm at the San Francisco Center for the Book, 300 De Haro Street (entrance on 16th Street), 415-565-0545.
For more info contact: Lisa Rappoport: <cutvelvet@earthlink.net>
July 6, 2009
Notes on the experience of reading Humanimal.
-KSP guest blogger Jarvis Fosdick.
I once operated a chai stand with Bhanu.
Prior to reading I made these notes:
Clouds thick in June breaking for July, finally the sky is clear so as to illuminate these pages for reading.
In that prior dark mist I had seen photographs and heard rumors. At the dedication page I Cut the ‘o’ from Rohini, then put it back ever so soft so she didn’t notice the mended seam.
I am on page 1. Page 5, but 2 – 4 are only sky.
I like page zero.
I am what, in the Middle Ages specifically, would be referred to as an architect. Today I am an artist or gardener. Of course everything I make is invisible.
Page 6. I wanted to write before I read, that is, I want to record my thoughts going in because I am illiterate. I think I can read, but I can’t. Only see pulleys and gears. Machines to build some block wall to arch. Index. I admit I peaked and saw the numbers reference paragraph picture.
I ordered two copies and cut them both into index cards of pages. Then I shuffled. Then I read. Notwithstanding page zero, I left that out.
It was too violent, we had to sew the pages back together.
8:43 am, June 30th.
Readers Reading:
Page 30, cigarette, although I don’t smoke.
Page 39, I write: “in a fever she spoke language”
Page 43, make fold to remember.
Page 63, draw box around text
10:15 am, June 30th: Readers Writing.
I realize now there was no need to shuffle the pages. The order is already divided into colors by root threads. But the beginning actions are my forearm – the readers reading. This great cloud of work, the weather map of jungle colors in its schizophrenic index does break into that sunshine – a type of sewn dress that speaks beyond style, beyond that of nationality. It is broken from them and then set in gauze. This sunshine logic – the automata – it too breaks and a from forth comes about with powerful intensity.
These for me are the moments of sky. Remembering without sound. Pure anxiety attached to the body, then to succumb to touch.
that touch makes the words, erases the story, that is, to take the pages and fold them into colors. Not ignoring the violence of the body, not to leave out the screams of jungle mad fever wolfgirls.
This violence makes it worth feeling and to allow that pain to be soothed, a structure of attachment, location and setting that when heard screaming becomes an action now ready to succumb to the overlap of touch.
Jarvis does book binding & quilting with artists and writers. He himself is a sculptor and landscape architect.
July 1, 2009
Visible: A Femmethology
Sunday July 5th, 6:00 pm
Femme- an identity that has caused controversy, celebration and ridicule- is now the topic of a two-volume set from Homofactus Press and editor Jennifer Clare Burke titled Visible: A Femmethology. Bay Area contributors Amy André, Sand Chang, Sherilyn Connelly, Kimberly Dark, Daphne Gottlieb, Alex Holding and Alisa Lemberg will be reading. Join us for this dynamic event.
Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley (510) 649-1320.