[Moving]

YAY! It's time to move!

You can now find Jeremy Allan Hawkins over at Wordpress:

http://jeremyallanhawkins.wordpress.com

Trust me. This will be better. Full switchover will take a little while, but it's worth it.

[Poets & Laureates]

First off, calling poets: new digital chapbook publisher, Blue Hour Press, is open for submissions through August 1st. Actually, while the first six chapbooks released in the first five months of its existence were all released digitally, Blue Hour Press is proving a change in lexicon is coming to make my language anachronistic: the worlds of print, literature, and information technology are merging in such a way as to make it silly to refer to something as "digital." These are simply books, if distributed differently than tradition has taught us before this decade, and the press is literary, even if the machinery remains virtual. Check the mission from their website:

Blue Hour is dedicated to bridging the gap between the beauty and tradition of print with the accessibility and possibility of the web, releasing digital chapbooks that are satisfying, respectable, and innovative.

It's a good approach, and it's leading to beautiful artifacts that can, arguably, never go out of print. I also like the fact of how this press exhibits that art-making, more than ever, doesn't need to participate in the standard market economy to proliferate and have worth. This all fits very nicely with art-as-gift à la Lewis Hyde.

In terms of Blue Hour Press, the foundation has been set, and now it's open for growth. One thing I'd like to see from a press like this (hint, hint, BHP) is a project to rescue and redistribute classic and ecstatic chapbooks that have long since gone out of print. It could be a good, valuable, and rewarding partnership for a young press like this to facilitate the digitization and resuscitation of excellent books from other small presses, like Joseph Massey's terrific Eureka Slough from Effing Press, that have seen their limited runs end. I like the thought that small publications no longer need to be driven by an economy of scarcity!



In other news, (I'm a little late, though) congratulations to Carol Ann Duffy, formerly mentioned on this here site, the new Poet Laureate of the UK following the end of the tenure of the former Laureate, Andrew Motion. Yes, the big news is that she's the first woman in hundreds of years, or, simply the first, to be named to the position. I, for one, am happy to see a poet of great skill and accomplishment be named above the burden of identity politics. This seems in tune with the declining power of racial politics in America. I only hope Duffy's work doesn't suffer as a result of a duty often parodied as institutionalized and versified sycophancy. Truth be known, though, I don't doubt for a second that she will take on the challenge.

[Quarantine]

No, this is not a post about Swine Flu in Romania (cue google search result flood...NOW!). And no, I'm not making jokes about Swine Flu or the possibility of it reaching Romania; that'd be just the kind of awful joke to come true and put me in my grave.

The quarantine I'm referring to is of the virtual kind: Jeremy Allan Hawkins has been without internet in his home for seven days! It's brutal, and no this isn't part of a self-help routine to get me over my net addiction. In fact, it's completely involuntary sequestering. My internet company, RCS & RDS, has failed to fix some problem with my connection for a week now, without explanation for the issue, and without a time frame in which they expect to solve it.

The good news is that nice weather has given me more excuse to leave the house, get out into the mountains, and soak up the natural surroundings. Still, leeching off wifi from libraries and cafés is not ideal when trying to maintain such a profound habit: my google reader account is over-stuffed, I've missed countless tweets on Twitter, I have no idea what new fotos my friends have posted on Flickr, I've barely even heard about SWINE FLU let alone other news stories, and I haven't been able to phone my mother in over a week. Not good.

This is one cranky American poet who'll be writing a letter of complaint.

(in the meantime, I'm thinking about my upcoming switch to WORDPRESS!)

[Canongate's Gift]

Super hip independent publisher, Canongate Books, is attempting something groovy on the internet. Taking some of the Edinburgh cool and trying to make it virtual, Canongate wants to make their new website, Meet At the Gate, into a cultural hub. Not only will it feature catalogs and information of all Canongate releases, but they hope it will also serve as a place to communicate on a wide range of cultural topics with other interested people. Good idea from a good publisher; I hope it works out.

Even better, they're giving away free stuff: when you sign up for a personal account (and you can elect to receive no notification emails if that kind of thing bothers you), you get a free digital copy of The Gift, by Lewis Hyde. The Gift is of course a gift in itself, and a must-read for those of you who haven't. Make it an easily portable ebook, and it seems like a smart approach to publishing in the digital era. (So long as the print copies survive!)

DISCLAIMER/DISCLOSURE: I am not in any way affiliated with Canongate, other than as a customer and a fan! (though I should say that Lewis Hyde teaches at my Alma Mater, and while I never had him as a professor, that automatically makes me biased in his favor)

[Teaching in Translation]

There's an interesting article from Russell Scott Valentino on Words Without Borders regarding a debate on the level of education about literature in translation. Here's the introduction:

The general membership meeting of the American Literary Translators Association’s annual conference in October of this year went smoothly until the final item of business. The members present were sharply divided over the newly imposed rule stipulating that only books with the translator’s name printed on the cover should be eligible for the National Translation Award, which is administered by that organization. The rationale for the new rule is clear enough—publishers should pay more attention, and encourage readers to pay more attention, to the fact of translation; and translators should be better recognized and acknowledged for…

I recommend reading the rest. I was inspired to leave a hefty comment, though it's still awaiting moderation right now. If you have anything to say in the matter, go weigh in!

[Dream a Little Dream of Me]

Lately I've been taking a detour through the dark and wonderful pages of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. It's reminded me of when I was a kid, riding bikes with my friends to the local comic shop a few neighborhoods over. I was big on Marvel's X-Force and the young Image Comics' mega-title, Spawn. I wasn't very serious; but I liked comics enough to hang around the shop for a few years. I remember The Sandman; I remember seeing it on the shelves and wanting to buy it, but thinking both that I'd love it and that I'd hate it. I didn't have much money, either, so I saved it for Spawn, Boston Baked Beans, and the occasional game for my Nintendo Entertainment System.

Eventually my exceedingly casual approach to all manner of hobbies led me away from comics. But one of the many wonders of a good text is that you can almost never be too late to return to it. I find myself wondering if my life would be different today if I'd read The Sandman back then (whoa, the profundity!), but I am loving the power of the reading experience I am submitting to now. I think the dream is as deep, as intoxicating as it would have been, if not more.

[Vertigo]

Some interesting ideas about the tyranny of the enlightened self:

"Men had to do fearful things to themselves before the self, the identical, purposive, and virile nature of man, was formed, and something of that recurs in every childhood. The strain of holding the I together adheres to the I in all stages; and the temptation to lose it has always been there with the blind determination to maintain it. The narcotic intoxication which permits the atonement of deathlike sleep for the euphoria in which the self is suspended, is one of the oldest social arrangements which mediate between self-preservation and self-destruction--an attempt of the self to survive itself." -- Adorno & Horkheimer, from Dialectic of Enlightenment

I can't say this completely disrupts my outlook, but it sets me to thinking.

[Ólafur Arnalds]

There's quite a bit of interesting new music out there that attempts to fuse classical forms with modern electronic composition and aesthetics. Max Richter has been making excellent and moody albums for several years, and I have also really enjoyed Japanese group RadicalFashion's album, Odori. Artists like these are often labeled as classical, while being compared to rock groups such as Sigur Ros and Mono. The niche these artists fill is sometimes referred to as New Classical Music.

Regardless of what we call this loose genre, another notable contributor is the young Ólafur Arnalds, a 21 year-old Icelander. While I don't think his music innovates in either the classical mode, or the modern electronic mode, I do think the fusion leads to an incredibly listenable and lovely album, perfect for solo mornings with cups of tea and good books.

Right now, Ólafur has a fun project going on that he's calling Found Songs. Here's part of the press release:

Ólafur Arnalds to record and release one song per day.

With the critically acclaimed debut album 'Eulogy for Evolution' and follow-up EP 'Variations of Static' – both released on the cinematic music label Erased Tapes – under his belt, Icelandic neo-classical composer Ólafur Arnalds embarks on a brand new collection of tracks entitled ‘Found Songs’. Each track from this series will be created and released within 24 hours and made exclusively available online as a free download HERE on foundsongs.erasedtapes.com .

For the first time Ólafur will compose and release a track daily – an idea which he developed as a way to collate several lost and found musical sketches and ideas in a 'very challenging, but fun' series. From Monday April 13th, Arnalds will create a song a day, for 7 days – instantly making each track available and keeping his fans up to date on the artist’s Twitter.

‘Found Songs’ will provide listeners with an intimate insight into the artists creative world.

'The songs will be different from what's on my albums, they will be short, mostly just made up from piano. Something to keep me going. Feel free to send me hatemail if I miss out a day!'

I like the idea, and like to see artists coming to grips with new media in ways that are meaningful. I look forward to hearing the first release tonight. Check it out.

Found Songs

Ólafur on Twitter