In Case of Sleep

Amy De'Ath:
In Case of Sleep,
syndicat d'initiative

Jello Biafra Interview

Girlfriend in a coma

Time

Piotr Gwiazda:
Time, Mudlark

WTO Libretto

Allegiance of the Drones:
WTO Libretto

Big Bridge

Dear Friends of Big Bridge,

It’s that time again for our annual request for donations to help us keep Big Bridge going.

We greatly appreciate any amount you can contribute during these difficult economic times. Thanks so much to all who donated the last time we made a call for donations. Your contributions helped pay our Webmaster, and server fees.

Information on how to donate is at the bottom of this email.

Here are some highlights of what is to come in the 15th Anniversary Issue of Big Bridge due out in Spring 2012:

bridge work, a feature poetry chapbook by Andrei Codrescu, with illustrations by Nancy Victoria Davis

Voices for Change: A Contemporary Anthology of Moroccan Poets, edited by El Habib Louai

Guest Editor, Ampat Varghese will offering up a fine selection of New Wave Indian Writing

Jonathan Penton will manifest Cuyahoga Burning, a feature on current Ohio literature

We are honored to present an anthology of Tibetan Poets in Exile, from guest editor Teresa Chuc Dowell

Brian Unger will grace Big Bridge with another installation of Excerpts from the Philip Whalen Journals

Poetry from Japan, A Contemporary Anthology of Japanese Poetry will be a special guest edit by Jane Nakagawa

Guest editor, Adam Cornford will present a special feature “Neo-Surrealism and the Politics of The Marvelous”

Susan Deer Cloud will guest edit a Native American Anthology of poetry, prose, art and articles.

Thomas Devaney will be editing an exploratory anthology of contemporary tree poems.

Guest editor, Bonnie Finberg will be presenting 20 POETS, a poetry anthology dedicated to Akilah Oliver which will include poems by Jim Harrison, John Yau, Steve Dalachinsky, Bob Holman, Alice Notley, Patricia Spears Jones, Lynn Crawford, Louise Landis Levi and more.

And the compelling artist, Jim Spitzer, will be back with his tour de force project of art and text: THE BOOK: 40 PAGES

Plus! A mindbending gallery of visual splendor from Paris-Tsunami Book’s Henrik Aeshna.

As you know, Big Bridge is always free to readers. Please support Big Bridge, so we can keep giving you all we’ve got!

All donations are greatly appreciated!

BONUS: Donations of $20 dollars or more will get you a copy of Goofbook for Jack Kerouac by Philip Whalen.

Please, donate now if you can!

There are two ways to donate.

You can send a check to Big Bridge, Box 870, Guerneville, CA 95446
Please make checks payable to Committee on Poetry, our fiscal sponsor, a 501(c) 3 Corporation.

or

You can go to Big Bridge Donation page at: http://www.bigbridge.org/BB15/donations.html and make a donation via Paypal.

Thanks to our fiscal sponsor, all donations are tax-deductible.

Thank you for your support.


Love and Peace,

Michael & Terri
www.bigbridge.org

Revelator

Ron Silliman:
From Revelator,
Shampoo #39

Camarade poetry

Cha

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal

Poem for Roberto Vargas...

A.D. Winans:
Poem for Roberto Vargas
and the Nicaragua Freedom
Fighters, the outlaw poetry

Important Confessions

Tomaz Salamun:
Four Poems,
Asymptote

Theme from Rawhide

Spencer Selby:
Poem, Shampoo #39

Streak Artefacts

Tom Jenks:
from Streak Artefacts,
Blackbox Manifold 7

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 105

The Camarade Project

The A.D. Winans Slide Show

The A.D. Winans Slide Show,
The A.D. Winans Fansite

Love Is Better Than War

Swedish Summer

Stina Kajaso:
Swedish Summer,
ACTION YES

Soho Curzon - Marcus Slease

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 104

hello tiny bird brain

Poetry at the Soho Curzon
Wednesday August 31st 2011~ 7pm ~ Entrance free
Marcus Slease launches ‘hello tiny bird brain’
Wayne Clements launches ‘western philosophy’
collections published by Knives forks & Spoons press

also readings by
Tim Atkins - Elizabeth Guthrie- Michael Zand
Linus Slug - Patrick Coyle & SJ Fowler
the Soho Curzon cinema, Mezzanine bar
99 Shaftesbury Avenue London W1D 5DY 0871 703 3988

Past Simple #10

Past Simple #10

The Other Room 27

Discovering New Lyrical Situations

Grzegorz Wróblewski:
Five Poems, 3:AM Magazine

Redneck Rampage

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 103

Five Visual Poems

Spencer Selby:
Five Visual Poems, Otoliths

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 102

Love Me, I'm a Liberal

100 Thousand Poets

Dear Friends of Big Bridge,

I am writing to find out if you would be interested in organizing an event on September 24 for 100 Thousand Poets for Change in your community.

So far 100 Thousand Poets for Change has over 230 cities and 54 countries signed on to organize events, as part of a global initiative to celebrate/demonstrate poetry and address issues of peace and sustainability.

We have set up an event page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=106999432715571
and a blog/website for the event at http://www.bigbridge.org/100thousandpoetsforchange

The website discusses the concept of the event in more detail on the ABOUT page, but the bottom line is that this is a global event, with the overall theme of peace and sustainability, in which each local community can address its specific concerns.

I am very excited by this project, there seems to be a groundswell. I live in the San Francisco area and originally hoped to have 1 big event but it has evolved into 11 events in the SF/Bay Area, with City Lights bookstore tweeting the event and posting flyers around the store, Oakland Slam poets will be putting on a SLAM FOR CHANGE, Word Party will organize an event of poetry and music, Free University of San Francisco will have a day of lectures by poets about poets and their art, The North Beach Annual Poetry and Art Walk located at The Beat Museum has dedicated their event to 100 Thousand Poets for Change, and there will be a 100 Thousand Poets for Change reading at the Oakland Public Library sponsored by PEN Oakland. Other groups have indicated their interest in fundraisers to help projects they care about. I like the idea that so many poets of so many styles and inclinations have seen their way through this initiative to join with each other.

Also, the website provides each individual event an EVENT LOCATION page, which is also a community page blog, that allows participants to post particular event details and also to post poems, photos, documentation to share with all the other participants around the world. Poets and writers around the world need to know each other better and these events pages will facilitate and initiate communication.
After September 24th, these event pages as a whole will become a major document of contemporary world poetry.

Not to go on too much—I would be honored to have you set up an event in your country, city, town, or neighborhood on September 24 for 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Please let me know if you are interested.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincere regards,
Michael Rothenberg
100 Thousand Poets for Change
walterblue@bigbridge.org

ps. you can learn more about me at Big Bridge online magazine. I am the editor and publisher. http://www.bigbridge.org/BB15/2011_BB_15_EDITORS/bioroth.htm

pss. Here is a very short list of some of the events that will be taking place:

In Vancouver, BC Fraser Riverkeeper will lead a TD Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup at False Creek East, near some of the dirtiest waters in Canada. Mary Woodbury of Moon Willow Press is working with community poets and artists to develop a poetry reading later that afternoon or evening.

In Philadelphia, there will be a PACE action, which is a wandering participatory reading through the streets.

In a Seattle, a 12 hour skype session, poets skypeing poems in from around the world.

In Kathmandu, Nepal there will be an all day school project which involves discussion of peace and sustainability, writing poems, a contest, and inclusion of the poems in a book to commemorate the event.

In Milwaukee poets who are active in the Labor Union demonstrations will give a reading.

In Guatemala, Mexico City, Lisbon, Portugal, Sydney, Australia, Austin, TX, Oakland, CA, Spokane, WA, Hilo, HI, Accra, Ghana and Athens, Greece there will be a Slam for Change!

Bancroft, Ontario, has the distinction of being known as, 'Ontario's Most Talented Town,' and this year is Bancroft's 150th anniversary so, on September 24th, they'll be celebrating their thriving arts community and a birthday with poetry, music, and, possibly, theatre. For change, their focus will be on creating more awareness about their natural environment.

In Mentone, AL for Sept 24. It will be an outdoors/picnic event with poets, speakers and music/singers/artwork. We will use the event to call attention to environmental issues and citizen action for change.

In Nigeria they will have a peace rally against gang violence with a poetry reading.

(The list goes on. And it is early yet so people are still formulating their programs).

Poems from Smashing Time!

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 101

Die For Oil Sucker

Melancholia

The Stamp Collector's Wife

Grace Chua: The Stamp Collector's Wife,
firstfruits publications

Invisible Cage

Hal Sirowitz:
Two Poems,
Used Forniture Review

Sheet Metal Project

Behind the Scenes

Daniel Gallik:
Akron Has Less Men Than Women,
Apparatus Magazine
Behind the Scenes,
poeticdiversity.org

Hamlet Chicken Plant Disaster

Rise

staring@poetics

staring@poetics

2011, 5" x 8", 56 pgs, Full Color.
ISBN 1-936687-03-8 | EAN-13978-1-936687-03-9
$12

To read about the book or purchase a copy - http://xexoxial.org/is/staring_at_poetics/by/nico_vassilakis

from the book:

How do our retinal experiences alter what we think we know about alphabet? From minimal to maximal, the alphabet is explored and expanded on. From the contextual aggregates and combinations of letters to the visual elements that form a single letter. The visual poetry of alphabet insists that writing is the drawing of what and how we think, and within that writing, images accrue, the letters themselves, drawn, or otherwise printed, are illustrating or reproducing our thought.

Nico Vassilakis works with text and visual alphabet. Nico, with Crag Hill, edited the forthcoming The Last Vispo: Visual Poetry Anthology 1998-2008. He has published several books, including West of Dodge (redfoxpress, 2009), Protracted Type (blue lion books, 2008), Text Loses Time(Manypenny press, 2008), Disparate Magnets (BlazeVOX, 2009) and DIPTYCHS (Otolith, 2008). Nico lives in Seattle with the poet Crystal Curry and their kids..


staring poetics:
http://staringpoetics.weebly.com/

The Good Anarchist

Yakking Points

Mark Yakich:
Yakking Points,
Boston Review

Annie Freud Visits UMDNJ

saturday morning pick-up

Puma Perl:
Two Poems,
Clockwise Cat

This is Radio Clash

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 100

TEXT FESTIVAL, Bury/UK

Text Festival, Bury Art Gallery, UK

100 Thousand Poets for Change

Do you want to join other poets around the USA and across the planet in a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change? 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE is organizing a global event for September 24, 2011. If you think you would like to participate or organize your own event, please sign up on Facebook or contact 100 Thousand Poets for Change at walterblue@bigbridge.org.

A-Nube

Spencer Selby: A-Nube series, The New Post-literate: A Gallery of Asemic Writing

Sustainability

Scott Thurston: Four Poems from Sustainability, 3:AM Magazine

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 99

100 Thousand Poets for Change Anthology

100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE: An Anthology

(Ed. Anny Ballardini & Obododimma Oha, in collaboration with MICHAEL ROTHENBERG)

"We will turn to the idea of the messianic in Chapter Ten of this book, but for the moment it suffices to stress that both Benjamin and Agamben employ the term in singular fashion. For them, a messianic idea of history is not one in which we wait for the Messiah to come, end history, and redeem humanity, but instead is a paradigm for historical time in which we act as though the Messiah is already here, or even has already come and gone. What is so difficult about Agamben's use of the term messianic is how radically it is to be distinguished from the apocalyptic. Agamben says that to understand "messianic time" as it is presented in Paul's letters "one must first distinguish messianic time from apocalyptic time, the time of the now from a time directed towards the future" (LAM, 51). To this he adds, "If l had to try to reduce the distinction to a formula, I would say that the messianic is not, as it is always understood, the end of time, but the time of the end" (LAM, 51). The model of time corresponding to this idea is one that no longer looks for its decisive moment in a more or less remote future, but instead finds it in every minute of every day, in this world and in this life; and it is through such expressions as "dialectics at a standstill" and "means without end" that the two thinkers aim to return our gaze from the distant future to the pressing present."
(from GIORGIO AGAMBEN: A Critical Introduction, Leland de la Durantaye, 2009, p. 120)

Set in the context of this split between "the end of time" and "the time of the end" is Michael Rothenberg's recent invitation for the global writing public to participate in "a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change" titled 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE on 24 September, 2011. As protests for political reforms sweep across North Africa, the Middle East, in some parts of Europe, in the United States, with the recent disasters in The Gulf of Mexico and in Japan, one cannot help thinking about the "Rothenberg Project” as a highly significant creative response to change as something more than an adjustment to the way social relations are constructed.

Obododimma Oha and Anny Ballardini, in collaboration with Michael Rothenberg’s event, will edit and feature outstanding poetic compositions for the 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE on Fieralingue's Poets’ Corner. Visual artwork, poems, poetic fiction, poetic nonfiction, and photographs to be submitted for consideration should go beyond the simple and gratuitous statement that ‘a change is needed.’ Our present, our Messianic time requires a STILLSTELLUNG (Benjamin’s word) translated by Dennis Redmond in On the Concept of History (1940) with “an objective interruption of a mechanical process” into which we have been engulfed. Dennis Redmond continues in his explanation of STILLSTELLUNG: “rather like the dramatic pause at the end of an action-adventure movie, when the audience is waiting to find out if the time-bomb/missile/terrorist device was defused or not.” We feel that we are living in a similar situation, and we are in need of a Stillstellung followed by ideas to offer our politicians, to make students/friends/our communities more aware of how we can change, revise history, start over again.

Visual works and photographs for submission are to be saved in JPEG format, while texts, which should not have rigid formatting, are to be in Word. All submissions should be emailed to the editors anny.ballardini@gmail.com and obodooha@gmail.com by September 1, 2011 with "100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE" in the Subject line.

Best wishes,
Obododimma Oha
Anny Ballardini

SIGN UP TO JOIN US AT 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE-- THE EVENT
Ps. If you are interested in signing up to participate as a reader, organizer or attendee, in the 100 Thousand Poets for Change event on September 24, 2011, (in your town) please go to Facebook for more details and indicate that you would like to attend the event. Link:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=106999432715571 . At Facebook you will be able to read more about event organization ideas and our thoughts about “what kind of change.” Over a thousand people have already signed up and over twenty cities have begun to organize events for their communities. JOIN US!!

Alec Soth with Andrei Codrescu

I wrote it all down

Amy Corbin: Poems, The Smoking Poet

San Francisco Beat

An Interview with Christian Hawkey

An Interview with Christian Hawkey
+ Three Poems, notnostrums

Wet are the Boards

Revelator

Ron Silliman:
From Revelator,
Blackbox Manifold #6

The Wordshed

Nature and Costumes

Rod Mengham:
Prose poems,
Blackbox Manifold #6

The Manchester Review

The Manchester Review

Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin, The Chinati Foundation

In Small Southern Towns...

Daniela Olszewska:
Poem, Sixth Finch

Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop

Starry Night

Amy King:
Two Poems,
Past Simple #9

when life is quite through with

e.e. cummings:
Poems,
Poets' Corner

sea-chanties

Christopher Mulrooney:
Two Poems, Web del Sol

K. Silem Mohammad

from STAMPOLOGUE

Nico Vassilakis: from STAMPOLOGUE, Eratio

Ambient

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 98

http://humansympathy.tumblr.com/post/3590236561

Crystal Curry Reading

Drunk Radio Poems

David Church 1947-2008, Photo: Tara Church

Dave Church:
Drunk Radio Poems,
the outlaw poetry network

Francesca Beard: Interview

Francesca Beard:
Interview,
Small Acts

Meteorology is Easy

Audri Sousa:
Meteorology is Easy,
isReads.com #7

Puma Pearl - poetryvlog.com

St. John of the Cross

Riggio Forum: Anne Waldman - The New School

A Poem from Smashing Time

Marcus Slease:
A Poem from Smashing Time,
These Special People,
NEVER MIND THE BEASTS

MIMEO MIMEO

MIMEO MIMEO

Joe Strummer - Interview

Poetry Lecture by J.H. Prynne

Being Female

Eileen Myles: Being Female, The Awl

The Hobby

Amy Corbin:
The Hobby,
Vagabondage Press

Howl

The New Heaven

Amy De'Ath:
The New Heaven,
Amy De'Ath BLOG

Beat the Dust

The Roadhouse

Marcus Slease:
The Roadhouse,
NEVER MIND THE BEASTS

Maple Syrup Sonnet

Expression of Facts

Susan Tichy:
Expression of Facts,
Free Verse

Inferno

The Other Room 23

Wednesday 6th April 2011, 7.00 pm.

Ken Edwards, Carrie Etter and Alec Finlay with Derek Henderson by live stream.
The Old Abbey Inn, 61 Pencroft Way, Manchester, M15 6AY (on Manchester Science Park).

Assassin

Mark Yakich:
Assassin,
Lyricism at 40,
Adultery,
La Petite Zine #25

Kabir

SAND

Tomaz Salamun:
SAND, TYPO #14

Seeing Birds in Church is a Kind of Adieu

Arlene Ang: Seeing Birds in Church
is a Kind of Adieu, Cinnamon Press

Del Ray Cross reads...

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 97

still winter

Spencer Selby:
Six Visual Poems,
Bresson Bevel,
Otoliths #20

Haywire

Thaddeus Rutkowski:
Haywire,
Starcherone Books

Thaddeus Rutkowski Seeks a Change
in Outlook, Interview, Green Planet

Accidental Being

Grzegorz Wróblewski:
Accidental Being,
Review by Gilbert Wesley Purdy
("A Marzipan Factory" - new and
selected poems"), Eclectica Jan/Feb 2011,
Three Poems, Shampoo #38

Experience Has No Part in Nature

Andrea Baker:
Experience Has No Part in Nature,
TYPO #14

To Whom It May Concern

Ann Beattie (NY State Summer Writers Institute)

Backcloth

Barbara de Franceschi:
Backcloth,
Eclectica Jan/Feb 2011

Rockpile Revisited

A Giant Asleep In Fortune's Spindle

Brandon Shimoda:
A Giant Asleep In Fortune's Spindle,
RealPoetik

Erec & Enide

Amy De'Ath:
Erec & Enide,
Salt Publishing

Unpublished endorsement: It is the world’s wild glare that provides the complex heart of Erec & Enide. With wisdom, uncommon wit, and precision, Amy De’Ath’s spirited first book unsettles all things to reveal that neither a language nor a body is a closed system. De’Ath’s is an inclusive imagination that meets the world with lyric intensity and irony—her poems invite us to feel: “stranger, it’s a hunger I’m looking for.” –Peter Gizzi

Unpublished endorsement: Lyrical, local, literary, strong, domestic, delicate, sexy and epic, Amy De’Ath’s Erec & Enide also brings the modernity and speed of much recent North American poetry to these too-often inward-looking isles. “In the lay and spook of an age,” as she says, there is enough screwing over, glamour, residual meaning and resin delight in these poems to intrigue, excite and entertain even the gloomiest reader. De’Ath’s emphatic arrival on the British poetry scene is cause for both hope and celebration. –Tim Atkins

Unpublished endorsement: While we oscillate between life and death, Amy De’Ath’s poetry looks to the whir, the engines and the effects of such daily migrations. She ably slows us to take in and weigh the view, to ask how we construct the ‘publicity of meaning’. De’Ath’s is a sensitive search; and while the unearthed may challenge (‘opened every cupboard looking for the nature of it’), the unanswerable space is enriching.

Erec & Enide is fiery and soft. Let it carry you on wings of seductive metrics and lyric playfulness, below and between timeless narratives. –Amy King

A Poolacious Trick

Sparrow:
A Poolacious Trick,
Eoagh #5

The Other Room 22

10 Questions for A.D. Winans

A.D. Winans:
The Interview
The Fox Chase

Douglas Messerli by Charles Bernstein

Berth Rites

this is visual poetry
by Nico Vassilakis

Mike Topp: Stuyvesant Bee, Volume 1, Issue 96

Amy King - Interview

Amy King
interviewed by Derek Alger,
Pif Magazine