FLY OFF THE PAGE WITH MOI & CO.!

I guess AWP likes wine-tippling farmers. I think I've got a near-thousand batting average with getting approvals for panels that includes Moi. For next year's AWP Conference, I was pushed (grin) by Catherine Daly to organize and moderate a panel. So a wingtip scratched a lovely head, brewed up something, and sent it over to AWP. Well, it was approved! Over 900 panel applications were received and mine got in -- causing Nick Carbo over in France to celebrate this morning by drinking "dark red brulhois wine" (huh?).

Here's some panel information I sent to AWP and I hope it also interests you enough to attend next year!

"OFF THE PAGE: MULTIDIMENSIONAL WRITINGS"
presenting

Nick Carbo (sculptures and video)
Catherine Daly (paper craft, innovative book art)
Thomas Fink (painting)
Thylias Moss (film / video / sonic performances)
Eileen Tabios (conceptual/performance/community-based/visual art)

This panel presents poets and writers who work in a variety of disciplines encompassing video, sculptures, paper craft, innovative book art, painting, performance events, conceptual art, drawings, film, multimedia events, among others. Panelists discuss how other disciplines affect their texts and presentation of such texts. In some cases, the poetry book was transformed to not just present written poems. In other situations, community-based performances inspired new poetic forms and theories.

from STATEMENT OF MERIT
This panel explores a multidisciplinary approach to making poems. Eileen Tabios and Thylias Moss have created two new poetic forms (respectively, "hay(na)ku" and "poams"). Thomas Fink, by being a New York resident, will be able to bring actual small paintings to illustrate his paper. All panelists are at the forefront of poets exploring the making of poems beyond the writing of verse on page -- not just to create fetishized objects but to integrate communities / the world.

I was going to drop by next year's AWP anyway because I'd be in New York then, so now it'll be great to meet Thylias Moss in person! I'm particularly intrigued to meet her non-stinky "poams" -- "products of acts of making in which form embraces the possibilities of the assisted and unassisted senses in any combination in any location at any scale simultaneously, with a majority of her poams, most of which are available for free in the Limited Fork and the Limited Fork Music podcasts at iTunes, currently taking on visual and sonic iterations, with text existing as part of larger visual systems."

Here are some bios skewed by the poets to address their leap off the page:

Nick Carbo is the author of three books of poetry, the latest being Andalusian Dawn (2004). He is the winner of fellowships in poetry from the N.E.A. and N.Y.F.A. and residencies to Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain), Le Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland), Moulin a Nef (France), and Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and VCCA (USA). His visual poems have been exhibited at Harvard University's "Infinity" show, and at galleries like Blueten Weis (Berlin), and The Studio Alternative (Armonk, NY). He recently taught visual poetry courses at the New College of Florida.

Catherine Daly is author of six books and eBooks, most recently Secret Kitty, a flarfy critique of flarf, To Delite and Instruct, a meditation on the poetry exercise, Paper Craft, including sound and visual poems in a foldable format, and Chanteuse / Cantatrice, a book of verse about collaboration and complicity that can be read in reverse.  She is also the publisher of i.e. Press, that is to say, a press publishing books appealing to the eye and ear.

Thomas Fink, a Professor of English at City University of New York—LaGuardia, is the author of four books of poetry, including No Appointment Necessary (Moria Poetry, 2006) and After Taxes (Marsh Hawk Press, 2004,)and two books of criticism.  In 2007, Fairleigh Dickinson UP will publish a collection of essays on David Shapiro that he and Joseph Lease edited. Heather McHugh and David Lehman chose his poem “Yinglish Strophes IX” for The Best American Poetry 2007 (Scribner’s).  His abstract paintings hang in various collections.  Recently, he has developed series of poems in abstract shapes that had also been used in series of paintings. 

Thylias Moss, the author of ten books, most recently TOKYO BUTTER, her first collection of poetry written entirely according to principles of Limited Fork Poetics: the study of interacting language systems, a literary theory she developed in October 2004 while at the Quality 16 cinema watching a film she can't recall.  The revelation led this MacArthur Fellowship and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient to the making of poams (products of acts of making) in which form embraces the possibilities of the assisted and unassisted senses in any combination in any location at any scale simultaneously, with a majority of her poams, most of which are available for free in the Limited Fork and the Limited Fork Music podcasts at iTunes, currently taking on visual and sonic iterations, with text existing as part of larger visual systems.  So far, her poams are not odor-emitting, so are consistent with neglect of olfactory systems, neglect which, in understanding the principles and interactions of Limited Fork, should be overcome eventually.  She teaches Limited Fork Poetics at the University of Michigan where she is a professor of English and of Art & Design.  Her other awards and honors include: a Whiting Writer's Award, the Witter Bynner Prize from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Dewards profiles performance Artist Award, an NEA grant, and inclusion in the Best of the Best American Poetry series.

Eileen R. Tabios has released 15 poetry collections, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, and a short story book. Recipient of the Philippines' Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry, she released two multi-genre collections in 2007: SILENCES: The Autobiography of Loss (Blue Lion Books) and The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes (Marsh Hawk Press, 2007). Her conceptual/visual art and poetry performances have been exhibited or presented in art galleries in California and Manila. Her poems have been translated by other artists into Spanish, Tagalog, Japanese and Italian, as well as Paintings, Video, Drawings, Mixed Media Collages and Sculpture. She is the publisher of Meritage Press (San Francisco & St. Helena), a multidisciplinary arts press.