FAMILIAR Review/Interview

Hi Friends, I'm really excited about this incredibly insightful and generous  Limestone Post review/interview of my book FAMILIAR by the marvelous Hiromi Yoshida. Many thanks to her for doing this great write-up and also to publisher Ron Eid for running the piece.

NEW BOOK: FAMILIAR

Hey Friends! It's been a while, but this is my new book, FAMILIAR. If you click on the cover it'll take you to the Pickpocket Books site where it's now available for pre-order. I've been working on this book for the last three years, and I'm so excited for people to get to read it. Following this paragraph is a description of the book and a couple more pictures to give you a sense of it. I really hope you'll check it out.

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FAMILIAR is a joyous obliteration of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" (via the Spanish version of the poem by the 20th Century anti-fascist poet and critic Leon Felipe) to make an entirely new poem that revels in the dissonances we face and the responsibilities we have to one another. Part deliberate mistranslation, part phoenix from the flames, part mosh pit of angles and angels and sleep, the poem is personal, familial, familiar and strange--wooly with possibility and awe/full reoccurrence. It asks how to live and what to do in the turbulence and summons of our time, and what it proposes as an answer is a creative process of ever more radical inclusion and open-heartedness: "If you crash through the world of this life without love, you'll have zilch to contribute when you get to the void."

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2019 Book Tour + Links to new books: EVERYTHING BREAKING/FOR GOOD and THE OBLITERATIONS

See a more detailed list of the readings for my fall 2019 tour below. I will be updating this as more dates firm up in the coming weeks. Additionally, to the right are links to my new books. Please check them out, if you can. Hope to see you on the road!

Thurs. 9/19—Midwest Writing Center 40^th Birthday SPECTRA Bash—Bent River—Rock Island, IL (w/Ryan Collins, Skylar Alexander and Sarah Elgatian)

Mon. 9/23—Edgewood College—Madison, WI

Tues. 9/24—Mucky Duck—Ames, IA (w/ Molly McDonald, Caroliena Cabada, and Anasia Sturdivant)

Wed. 9/25—Prospero’s Books—Kansas City, MO (w/BJ Soloy)

Thurs. 9/26—Beaverdale Books—Des Moines, IA (w/Leah Huizar)

Fri. 9/27—Monsters of Poetry—Madison, WI (w/Jesse Lee Kercheval and Clemonce Heard)

Sat. 9/28—BONK! 100 Thousand Poets for Change!—Racine, WI (w/a cast of thousands!)

Sun. 9/29—Heist Series—a Poet at Green Hill—Union, KY

Tues. 10/1—Bluffton University—Bluffton, OH

Wed. 10/2—School for the Creative and Performing Arts—Cincinnati, OH

Thurs 10/3—Two Dollar Radio—Columbus, OH (w/Kamall Kimball and Negesti Kaudo)

Fri. 10/4—1^st Friday Co-op Reading—Fort Wayne, IN (w/Emmanual Ortiz)

Sat. 10/5—Vertex Coffee Roasters, Ann Arbor, MI (w/Emily Corwin and Carlina Duan)

Mon. 10/7—Public Space One—Iowa City, IA (w/Skylar Alexander, Izzy Casey, and Lauren Haldeman)

Tues. 10/8—THE NEXT WEATHER—Columbia, MO (w/Donald Quist)

Wed. 10/9—University of Wisconsin, Platteville—Platteville, WI

Thurs. 10/10—Moon Palace Books—Minneapolis, MN (w/Matt Mauch and Michael Torres)

Fri. 10/11—Poetry and Biscuits—Chicago, IL (w/Lucy Alford)

Mon. 10/14—Flying Out Loud Reading Series—Louisville, KY (w/Sam McCormick)

Tues. 10/15—Art on Madison—Lakewood, Ohio (w/Nicole Hennessy)

Wed. 10/16—Illinois Wesleyan University—Bloomington, IL

Fri. 10/18—Lo-Fi Lounge, Indianapolis, IN (w/music by Amy Lashley, The Arc of Etheline, and NEVERNEW)

Sat. Oct. 19^th—The Bishop—Bloomington, IN (w/Yalie Kamara, Chris Mattingly, and NEVERNEW)

Sun. Oct. 20^th—Basik—Brooklyn, NY (w/Millie Ferguson, Bridget O’Shea Bernstein and Jeremy Clark)

Mon. 10/21—KGB Monday Night Reading Series—NYC (w/Leah Umansky)

Tues. 10/22—UCONN—Storrs, CT (w/Russell Dillon)

Sat. 10/26—Midwestern Press—Cincinnati, OH (w/Chelsea Whitton, Sam McCormick, Millie Ferguson, and music by NEVERNEW, R.RING, and A.M. Nice)

Tues. 10/29—Carnegie Mellon University—Pittsburgh, PA

Wed. 10/30—Duende at Silo City—Buffalo, NY (w/Joe Hall and music by Oats Holy Roller)

Thurs. 10/31—Point of Contact Gallery—Syracuse, NY (w/Jules Gibbs)

Fri. 11/1—White Whale—Pittsburgh, PA (w/Lauren Shapiro and Jenny Johnson)

Tues. 11/5—Hugo House—Seattle, WA (w/Diannely Antigua, Brandon Courtney, and KMA Sullivan)

Wed. 11/6—TBA—YesYes Celebration—Portland, OR

Thurs 11/7— Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus—YesYes Celebration—Portland, OR (w/Diannely Antigua and Brandon Courtney)

Fri. 11/8—Portland LitCrawl—Corporeal Writing—Portland, OR (w/ Jennine Capó Crucet, Steph Cha, Brandon    Courtney, Diannely Antigua, T Kira Madden, and Ross Gay)

Sat. 11/9— TBA—YesYes Celebration—Portland, OR

Mon. 11/11—Bellarmine University—Louisville, KY

Tues. 11/12— Free Nashville Poetry Library—Nashville, TN (w/Gabriela Gonzales and Mike Young) 

Wed. 11/13—Tusculum College—Greeneville, TN

Thurs. 11/14—Scuppernong Books—Greensboro, NC

Fri. 11/15—Holler Salon at Firefly Farms—Knoxville, TN (w/Kristi Maxwell and Ashley Dailey)

Sat. 11/16—TBA—Writer’s Block—Louisville, KY

STAY TUNED....

A DOZEN NOTHING

Friends, I'm very excited to be the featured poet this month at A DOZEN NOTHING! If you haven't seen A Dozen Nothing before, the way it works is they feature one poet a month each month of the year, and that's it. Visitors to the site can read the poems online, or print the poems out as a downloadable pdf. I really hope you'll check them out. Massive thanks to editors Pete Miller and Jeff Sirkin for publishing this work.

KGB MONDAY NIGHT POETRY + 3 NEW POEMS at MONSTER HOUSE

Dear Friends, I hope this finds you all well.

I'll be in NYC Monday night to read with DARCIE DENNIGAN and ERIC ROY in the KGB Monday Night Poetry series. Here's a link to the Facebook event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1706850582876073/

If you're in the city, I'd love to see you. I'm sure it'll be a great night.

Matt

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Additionally, I was remiss in posting this a few weeks back, but here's a link to some new poems at the Monster House website. I hope you'll enjoy them:

http://www.monsterhousepress.com/mhart/

JAM TARTS MAGAZINE: ON NOISE AND NOISEMAKING

Hey All,

My giant blast site of an essay/rant/talk/debacle on noise (and noise in poetry) is up at the marvelous new online magazine Jam Tarts. Find the essay here. I hope you'll check it out, along with the rest of the issue, which features lots of great poetry and fiction and an interview with former US Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky.

Matt