Labor Love July 2, 2008: Late last year, The Monserrat Reporter published an article whose title begins “Deputy Governor of Montserrat writes book…” We can all imagine the subject matter of hardcovers that would be penned by (or ghostwritten for), say, the governor of Wyoming or Alabama or New Jersey or _________ (fill in your favorite state). In fact, just last [...] by Mark Nowak

The 1970s, (Dub) Identity, and Working-class Poetries June 29, 2008: Amidst the engaging recent posts by Peter O’Leary on the "Poetry of the 1970s" conference in Maine and Alan Gilbert on poetry and identity/identifying practices—as well as steering away from the seemingly looming question of whether or not I ever was a member of the Communist party!—I wanted to continue to post &/or discuss poems that [...] by Mark Nowak

Poetry is a verb June 25, 2008: I poetry. You poetry. He/she/it poetries. We poetry. You poetry. They poetry. That’s my conjugation. Early in the process of developing my transnational social movement “poetry dialogues,” when I was asked by the education directors at NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) to lead a series of two-day, eight-hour per day [...] by Mark Nowak

Zimbabwe June 23, 2008: The news from Zimbabwe is terrifying and rapidly escalating. Two days ago, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off elections. I read this morning that Tsvangirai has now sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare and that Britain will lead a campaign to declare that Mugabe is no longer the leader of Zimbabwe. But what [...] by Mark Nowak

Late-Late-Fordist Poetics June 21, 2008: When I was invited to be a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota this past spring, English Department Chair Paula Rabinowitz asked that one of the classes I teach be a senior seminar based, loosely, on the “poetry dialogues” I’d been facilitating between Ford workers at the closing St. Paul Assembly plant here in Minnesota and [...] by Mark Nowak

Office of Insular Affairs = Poetry? June 20, 2008: It’s not every day that a poetry collection I write a blurb for appears on the U.S. Department of Interior “Office of Insular Affairs” website. OK, so I’m one of those US poets imbricated in party politics: I read on a 2004 Democratic campaign stop with former VP Walter Mondale and then VP candidate John Edwards (though Edwards’ plane, [...] by Mark Nowak

NAFTA Superhighway Poetics June 16, 2008: Driving the width of USAmerica from Minnesota to Texas and back as I did the past two weeks (and may again later this summer), I began to imagine somewhere in Kansas or Missouri what a tri-national, social, cultural, and politicized middle North American poetry and poetics would look like, sound like, and read like. It’s a thought I return to [...] by Mark Nowak

“I Hear America Singing” June 12, 2008: More than a decade ago, just after I’d published the first issue of XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, a sheaf of poems arrived at my office. They were bi-lingual poems (in Khmer & English) from a poet then new to me, U Sam Oeur, whose collection Sacred Vows was scheduled to be published in 1998. I fell in love with the poems, and published two of [...] by Mark Nowak

Like a Rock? June 10, 2008: More notes on the Working Class, Obama, and "the superstructure of poetry" Alan’s excellent post and the excellent running commentary have pushed me to try to clarify a few things in my earlier entry. First off, by my use of “contemporary poetry” (and Alan is right to read a hint of skepticism) I mean the entire realm of the field, [...] by Mark Nowak

Tracing the Lines June 9, 2008: “Tracing the Lines: A Symposium on Contemporary Poetics & Cultural Politics in Honour of Roy Miki” Over the course of the past half decade or so, I’ve been invited to speak at conferences celebrating the retirement of two seminal Canadian writers, Fred Wah (University of Calgary in Alberta) and Roy Miki (Simon Fraser University in BC). [...] by Mark Nowak