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

IS WHAT PRESENTS: A MILLION WAYS TO TELL A STORY--THE GREENWICH, CINCINNATI 10/26, 8PM

Friends, If you live in Cincinnati, please come check out Is What Presents: A Million Ways to Tell a Story tomorrow night at 8PM at The Greenwich 2442 Gilbert Ave. I'll be reading poems. Is What will be blasting off with beats and spoken word. Tatsuya Nakatani will be playing the drums (etc.) in a way you've never seen before (that's a promise). And Doradus, a short film by Fernando J. Scarpa will be screened. You can find all the info here: http://samurailikemalcom.blogspot.com/2014/09/sunday-october-26-iswhat-presents.html

Sunday, October 26, 8PM

The Greenwich

2442 Gilbert Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45206

ISWHAT?! presents …

"A MILLION WAYS TO TELL A STORY"

Stories will be shared through

Film

Doradus

a short movie by Fernando J. Scarpa,

produced by Fernando J. Scarpa and Mara New.

www.doradusthemovie.com

“Beautiful cinematography, amazing acting and fantastic script”

Sonic sculpting, Drum solo

by Tatsuya Nakatani

Tatsuya Nakatani is a creative artist originally from Osaka, Japan, 

residing in the USA since 1994, currently based in Easton, PA.

Creating sound via both traditional and extended percussion techniques, utilizing drums, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects and bells, as well as various sticks, kitchen tools and homemade bows, all of which manifest in an intense and organic music that represents a very personal sonic world.

Poetry

by Matt Hart

Author, co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band TRAVEL.

Beats & Spoken Word

By ISWHAT?!

at 

The Greenwich

2442 Gilbert Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45206

(513) 221-1151

NEW POEMS IN HIDDEN CITY QUARTERLY

I'm thrilled to have some new poems in the just published issue of Baltimore's own HIDDEN CITY QUARTERLY, along with terrific new work by Evan Commander, Sam McCormick, Bradley Harrison Smith, and Nate Pritts, among others.

Big thanks to editors Noah Siela and Brian Checco for including me in the issue. You can see my poems here, but I sincerely hope you'll check out the whole issue. It's a barn-burner. 

MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR

Here are my answers to the MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR virus going around. Thanks to my friend, Beth Gilstrap, for asking me to do this. You can read what she wrote about her process and follow her work (which I recommend) here:

http://bethgilstrap.com/2014/08/14/my-writing-process-blog-tour/

And please check out the bios and site addresses for the three maniacs I've asked to continue the BLOG TOUR next week: Katie Byrum, Bradley Harrison, and Emily Weinstein. 


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1) What are you working on?

I’m actually at sort of a weird writing crossroads at the moment. I just finished two manuscripts of poems, which have occupied my time for the last three and a half years. There’s still tweaking to do on both of them, but in June I sent them off to a couple of trusted editors, and it’ll be a little while before I hear back. It’s time to move on, but the question is: Move on to what?

I’m writing poems everyday, of course, and I’m grateful to be out of manuscript mode and back into thinking of each poem as its own untethered-to-a-larger-whole, individual event. At the same time, I’m also trying to teach myself how to write again—by which I mean I’m trying to find a poem that I haven’t written before, or at least one which pushes in new directions things I’ve done in the past. Even as I’m writing this, it all sounds very abstract, and it is. I’m searching for something, I don’t what. The poems come out of sitting down and saying weird shit, reading, listening to music, describing the things on my desk or that are in my yard, the sad sick world (ever-seemingly) at war…

This summer I’ve gone back to Robert Bly, W.S Merwin, and James Wright as a way of trying to (re)understand/(re)acquaint myself with what a poetic image is—the way words can create resonate, radiant pictures in one’s mind—a set of linguistic relationships that point to so much more than language—nouns in relation to each other in time and space—a live microphone in a block of concrete, starlight fixed on a drowning worm, orange juice werewolf, five red apples in a green mailbox, and the mailman smiling at a cloud when he takes them, imagining his life as a thief in his dreams—endless endless endless. But I’m not sure that any of those are actually images. I like not knowing. Sort of. But it’s been interesting thinking about the fact that so many of my poems have been so much on speed in the last ten years that I’m not sure they really contained a lot of imagery—flashes of things, juxtapositions, associations and disjunctions, but images? What is a blur an image of? Is an indistinct image nevertheless an image? What’s the difference between a blurry image an urgent dis-clarity that “depicts” nothing? This is some of what I’ve been thinking about while trying to focus my attention on a rectangle of tinfoil blowing across my yard, a shiny kinetic reflector.

I’ve also been reading tons of fiction: Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Carroll’s The Petting Zoo, Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America (which somehow I’d never read before), Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Richard Powers’ Orfeo, Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (the first two books—thrid one’s out in Sept. Can’t wait), and John Gardner’s Freddy’s Book.

Oh yeah, and Peter Gizzi’s In Defense of Nothing and Rachel Zucker’s The Pedestrians. Both dynamite.

Listening a lot to Sandinista by The Clash, Bob Mould’s new one, Beauty and Ruin, La Dispute’s Rooms of the House, and that new Xerxes track “Chestnut Street.”

Eventually it’ll all lead somewhere, or I’ll find myself in something else, or…   

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?

Hopefully enough that it’s recognizable as mine and not so much that it isn’t recognizable as poetry.

Seriously though, I don’t think about this much. Scratch that. I don’t think about it ever. Poetry’s not a genre. It’s a way of paying attention in and to the world—a way of annotating, exploring, and otherwise exploding experience to make and remake the self and the world. Of course, everybody’s brain is different, so everyone’s attention is different. There are as many ways to make a poem as there are minds to make them. That’s overwhelming and marvelous. Maybe paradoxically, I spend a lot of time typing out other people’s poems as a way to get to my own. I find that I get to my best poems when I’m not thinking about “writing my poems” so I do what I can to stay distracted and open. This has nothing to do with genre, but look how far we’ve come.

3) Why do you write what you do?

Poetry is the way I make sense of the world, other people, and my own personal experience. It’s not in addition to my life; it’s an extension of my life, a written record—notes, footnotes, exegesis, splatter. It’s a way of figuring out what I think and how I think it—what’s what with regard to this particular existence. It’s not a way of explaining anything, nor of proving something definitively. On the contrary, it’s about making things more mysterious—to enliven and enlarge and unpack forever. “One always arrives at the universal via the personal” (Robert Motherwell). As I said in my answer to the second question, poetry (whatever else it may be) is a demonstration of a particular way of paying attention in/to the world. In my case, that happens to be pretty fragmented/obliterated most of the time, though increasingly I find myself making so much clear sense in my poems that it’s making me wonder if I’m even still writing poems… Certainly, the poems I’m writing now bear little resemblance to the ones I was writing twenty years ago, and I hope that’s true of the difference between the poems I’m writing now and the ones I’ll be writing twenty years in the future.

4) How does your writing process work?

My heart keeps beating, the blood keeps flowing. I take a lot of notes in my orange field notebook. I sit at the typewriter or the computer (I use both); I start typing. I describe what’s right in front of me, or something I dreamt, or I ask a question and answer it. Whose hippopotamus is that? Why is god’s fingernail green? Crust of bread? Squelch! I write down quotes from things that I’m reading. I wander off in the fog of words or try to sing a song to the deer in the yard. I go for a walk. Poetry is as much a part of my life as French toast or petting my dog or sitting with my daughter, watching her read a chilling book about Mt. Everest. It all ends up in the poems. Going running in the rain, drinking a Vicious IPA, “Serenading in the dark to no one…” (“Chestnut Street,” Xerxes). I should say, however, that it doesn’t always end up factually in the poems. Mostly, it ends up changed according to what the poem seems to want/to be. Put another way, I lie about everything to get beyond the facts to the Truth, to Beauty, to the Mess in all its glory. I steal from other sources to get to something authentic to find my own voice in somebody else’s mouth (which I think I stole from somewhere else). I wish to make the world a better/bigger place—what it could be, rather than what it is or might be.

The logistics of the process (which I’m sure is what this question’s really about) are various and change with the seasons, and won’t do anyone else any good, because everyone’s process is different. Sometimes I use the typewriter more, sometimes the computer, sometimes a pencil. Sometimes I write in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon or evening. The orange field notebook is a constant. You can get your own here, if you want: http://www.engineersupply.com/elan-economy-field-book-e64-8x4w.aspx.  Writing everyday—at least a little—is also constant. I would rather write a bad poem than no poem at all. I would rather forge ahead, or even come apart at the seams, than wait or think or, worst of all, be careful. My process is not careful. I fail a lot. I write bad poems a lot. Sometimes I surprise myself. I come face to face with the things that are on my mind that I had no idea were on my mind. Then I do best to confront them. Then I do my best to resist them.

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Next week on the MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR, I’ve tapped three of my favorite people, who also happen to be brilliant writers: Katie Byrum, Bradley Smith, and Emily Weinstein. See their bios below, along with the site addresses where they’ll be posting their answers next week.

KATIE BYRUM is from Kentucky but lives in Brooklyn, where she co-curates the Tri-Lengua Reading Series and the witchy reading series COVEN. Her first collection of poems, Burn It Down, is forthcoming from Forklift Books. Find more at hellohumanblog.tumblr.com.

BRADLEY HARRISON is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and a PhD student at the University of Missouri. His poems have appeared in New American Writing, Los Angeles Review, CutBank, Gulf Coast, Best New Poets 2012 and elsewhere. His chapbook, Diorama of a People, Burning is available from Ricochet Editions (2012). Find him at: http://bradleyharrisonpoet.tumblr.com.

EMILY WEINSTEIN writes the web site superlefty.com, where she has published over 300 essays, rants, screeds, and trip reports. Her work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Eleven Eleven, the Huffington Post, Identity Theory, Killing the Buddha, McSweeney's, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, The Morning News, and Vol 1. Brooklyn. She is the author of the chapbooks Lake Celeste, or the Joy of Sex and If You Think You’re the Best, and the nonfiction editor of Forklift: Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking and Light Industrial Safety. She lives, writes, teaches, and climbs in northern California. Follow her on Twitter at @emilymweinstein 

INTERVIEW AT THE REVIEW REVIEW ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY

Here's a conversation I had with Rob MacDonald (editor of Sixth Finch) and Gale Marie Thompson, (editor of Jellyfish Magazine) for The Review Review about the future of poetry. Lots of things get said here, but the good news (which isn't really news at all) is that clearly poetry keeps going--with or without our conversations "about" it. Gale and Rob are great in this. I get a little cranky at the end. Here's to writing more poems!

http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/future-poetry-dialogue-between-rob-macdonald

MATT HART ON TWITTER + 2 POEMS in SIXTH FINCH

Follow me on Twitter: @forkliftmatt666

https://twitter.com/forkliftmatt666


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Also, I have two new poems in the summer issue of Sixth Finch, which you can see here and here, or, even better, you can check out the entire issue here, including great new work by Lucy Biederman, Jeff Hipsher. Tony Mancus, Gregory Lawless, Mark McKee, and Elizabeth Scanlon, among others.

Thanks to Rob MacDonald and Roberto Montes for including me in the issue.

I hope you'll check it out.

Massive thanks,

Matt

BASH #22--THIS FRIDAY w/ Matt Hart, Stephen Burt and David Rivard

Friends,

I'm reading in Black Ocean's BASH reading series this Friday 7/11 at the Brookline Booksmith 279 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA 02446. 7PM.

I will read.

Stephen Burt will read!

David Rivard will read!

This is gonna be a terrific night.

If you're in the Boston area, please come check it out.

Here's a link to the Facebook invite: https://www.facebook.com/events/249240358604735/

and here's one to the bookstore site: http://www.brooklinebooksmith-shop.com/event/bash-reading-series-15

I hope to see some of you this weekend.

xo,

Matt

RADIANT ACTION at SPOKE TOO SOON: A JOURNAL OF THE LONGER

Dear Friends,

Twenty sections of my long sequence Radiant Action have gone up at Spoke Too Soon: A Journal of the Longer, along with recordings of me reading each section and close readings of the selection by both Ben Kopel and Jennifer Moore. I hope you'll take a second to check take a look. And please get on board with Spoke Too Soon in general. It's a great new online presence that's providing a forum for work that would be difficult to publish elsewhere.

Massive thanks to both Ben and Jennifer for the generous close readings and to Editors Kelin Loe and  Leora Fridman for believing in this work.

Matt

WORD OF MOUTH CINCINNATI READING TUES. JAN 21st @ MOTR

Hi Everyone,

I’m reading at MOTR Pub this coming Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 7PM. Please see the flyer above for details. BUT take note: There will be two open mics, so bring your poems. Bring your joy. I will be blasting some “Radiant Action.”

This series, WORD OF MOUTH Cincinnati, hosted by Jim Palmarini and Mark Flanigan, inspired by the late Aralee Strange, the former Cincinnati writer and artist who passed way in June, 2013. Strange ran readings, made films, wrote poems and produced plays and other performance work during her many years in Cincinnati, before moving to Athens, Georgia in 2007. In Athens, she co-founded Word of Mouth, a popular and successful spoken word series.


Word of Mouth Cincinnati is an intentional arc of both past and future utterance, inspired by our most revered voice, with a nod to her Athens, GA compatriots. Word of Mouth asks poets to Show Up, Mouth Off, and Pay Attention.

I hope to see you there.

Matt

SERMONS AND LECTURES BOXED SET REPRINT!

The fine people at Typecast Publishing have done a reprint of the Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless boxed set! You can get it here: http://www.typecastpublishing.com/matthart/. It looks like this:

This letterpressed boxed set, produced by the fine people at Firecracker Press, contains all the sections of the paperback version of the book, each with its own beautiful cover in silver, metallic ink. Additionally, it includes the CD of Blank Sermons...Relentless Lectures by my band TRAVEL, which uses cut up versions of the book's poems as lyrics. I'm really happy that this set's back out in the world. The first printing sold out before the book was even released, so now's your chance to get one. Quantities are very limited. I hope you'll pick it up.