Shawnte Orion's Blog, page 6

Crashing the NewTimes' list of 100 Phoenix Creatives (and Goodreads, too)

"I make art because I want to document the ideas and experiences that I am too
socially inept to tell you about in person."


--from my recent Q & A with the Phoenix New Times after being included in their annual list of 100 Phoenix Creatives. Read the rest at the Jackalope Ranch blog:


http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/jackalope/2014/08/shawnte_orion_phoenix.php


I'm currently putting together an official local book launch event with live painting and music for Saturday September 6th. I'll post more about it as details and special guests become clear.

In the meantime, I'm excited to have The Existentialist Cookbook finally show up on Goodreads.
I will probably do a book giveaway over there, sooner or later. Here is that link, in case you'd like to add it to your virtual shelves:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23006031-the-existentialist-cookbook


If you're looking for a bargain, Small Press Distribution has an offer for 40% off my book (or any of their other titles), through this August "shelfie" promo. Here are the specifics:
http://www.spdbooks.org/Pages/Events/Summer-Shelfie-Sale.aspx

If you're camera-shy, you can even stay out of the pic. Here is the photo I am going to use:

Three (now, four) Poems from my co-host Bill Campana's new book "Said Beauty To The Blues"

So all of your friends bought the latest Mary Oliver or James Franco books because that's what's always in stock on the Barnes & Noble shelves...but you'd like something under the mainstream radar. Something outside the curriculum that can be your secret.


One of my co-hosts for the Caffeine Corridor Poetry Series Bill Campana will be having an unofficial and unauthorized book launch reading Wednesday night at Glendale Community College, so I asked his permission to post a few sample poems from his book to give people a glimpse into the peculiar way he sees the world.

folk poem #2 / joint custody


every saturday morning
a man who looks like he might someday
drown his four-year old son
in one of the nearby irrigation canals
comes into the coffee shop
with a four-year old boy
who looks like he is ready
to begin swimming lessons




light and darkness but mostly darkness and then light again


one hand holds a gun to my head
the other fills out the self addressed stamped envelope
and the suicide forms

when i die the birds will sing
the same songs they sing now
not one note bluer

if i were a blind man i would stir
the cocktail with a white cane swizzle stick
wander into a wine flavored blizzard

flashes of light on the rims of my eyes
count darkness as one
sleep walk into the void

hold a gun to the hand that holds the pen
write until the entire page is black
edit until the entire page is white





bon voyage


only a diehard hypochondriac
would trade in his car
for a used ambulance

then while suffering
the most debilitating case
of buyer's remorse

blame the chip
in the windshield
on a kidney stone




eclipse


at the library
looking at a book
about the sun

a man walks by
carrying a book
about the moon

the librarian
goes
blind

http://www.amazon.com/Said-Beauty-Blues-Bill-Campana/dp/1938190173



But his poems have to be heard to be believed,
so if you're in the neighborhood on Wednesday Sept. 20th
come to the Free Association Open Mic Poetry Series
at Glendale Community College
with special featured readers Bill Campana & Sara Dobie Bauer


Glendale Community College (in Student Union room 104)
6000 W. Olive Ave.
Glendale, AZ 85302

FREE and open to the public
open mic starts at 7pm

Campus Map for where to PARK and where to find the Student Union:
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/2016/freemap.jpg

My Book Is Officially OUT NOW - The Existentialist Cookbook at an Online retailer near your wi-fi

"Reading The Existentialist Cookbook is like attending a raucous dinner party of the imagination."

~Denise Dhamel

"This debut collection offers the unexpected, looking at life in Technicolor and tie-dye. These poems are smart, funny, and poignant."

~Kelli Russell Agodon

"Shawnte Orion's The Existentialist Cookbook is a barrel-ride of styles down swirling rapids."

~Matt Mason

I got this beautiful box of books this week and I'm not even going to pretend that I was too cool to COMPLETELY FREAK OUT but secretly and silently within my own head, of course.

Here is the official page at the NYQBooks website with all of the info, blurbs, availability and ordering info (links to Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's, Small Press Distribution , etc).

Hopefully it will show up on Goodreads soon!

I can't thank Editor Raymond Hammond and NYQBooks enough for taking so much care to make these turn out more perfect than I could have hoped. Carol Roque's cover art looks even more fantastic in real life.

Locally, I will be putting together a Book Launch event at {9} The Gallery on Saturday evening, September 6th. More on that as details are confirmed.

It was more than a decade in the making and there were several times when I doubted that it would ever come together. But I am incredibly fortunate that it ended up in NYQ's hands and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Thanks to the hundreds of people who have shown interest and support along the way. Most of you don't even know how much you meant to me at certain points.


So I am excited and proud to be able to take this out for some readings in other cities and states (looks like California's Long Beach Poetry Festival will be my first outing on October 18th).
I hope this book makes lots of new friends out there in the world.

Blurb Week: Matt Mason (3 of 3)

Blurb Week comes to a close with this third and final installment:

Shawnte Orion's The Existentialist Cookbook is a barrel-ride of styles down swirling rapids. His poems switch voices like a chameleon switches shades (then they make fun of the chameleon just as you are thinking that), as he writes poems listed as found poems, as not-yet-written by other poets poems, as poems that come across like a party of different personalities in his head where you get a title like "Kentucky Freud Chicken" mixed with botany lessons mixed with puns mixed with lines so lovely they leave you reading slowly so as not to miss bits like: "The wind looks for sailboats, but finds/each miniscule opening/between the buttons of your/brand new jacket." Get your life jacket or water wings ready. Dive in.

—Matt Mason, author of The Baby That Ate Cincinnati

Matt Mason is officially an International Man Of Mystery, so this is the one that took the longest to chase down. The State Department sent him off to Botswana for awhile to teach slam poetry workshops (or at least that's the cover story that we're supposed to believe).

But I was willing to wait because it was important for me to have Matt involved. About seven years ago, I was scheduled to open for him when he came to Phoenix to do a workshop and reading at The Paper Heart. I knew nothing about him at the time, but he was awesome and he probably blew me off the stage and I immediately became a fan.

The way he was able to blend the craft of his writing into memorable performances left a great impression on me. It gave me something to strive for in my own way and it certainly helped shape many of the poems in The Existentialist Cookbook.

After the show we traded chapbooks and one of the ones he gave me was Mistranslating Neruda which was a beautiful production from Diagram/New Michigan Press (seriously, they do wonderful work over there and their catalog is impressive). It's Mason's homage to Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. A translation from someone who doesn't speak Spanish. I've probably purchased about 6 or 7 copies of this over the years, because I often give mine away if someone seems interested.



I have also loved both of his full length collections, The Baby That Ate Cincinnati (Stephen F. Austin University Press) and Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (The Backwaters Press). 

And he is likely the only poet I have met who has actually WON a Pushcart Prize (for this poem below).


 
If you missed my other two Blurb Week posts on Kellli Russell Agodon and Denise Duhamel, 
just scroll back a few posts.

Blurb Week: Denise Duhamel (2 of 3)

Now for the second installment in my Blurb Week series:

Reading The Existentialist Cookbook is like attending a raucous dinner party of the imagination. Host Shawnte Orion lets you know right away that the usual two off-limit topics—politics and religion—don't apply at this gathering. The Existentialist Cookbook is smart, pun-filled; it's full of serious wordplay, pop culture, and inventive persona. This fusion poetry cuisine takes on haiku, haibun, and KFC. The Existentialist Cookbook is a delightful concoction. Bon appetit!
 

—Denise Duhamel, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Blowout

I don't even remember how I first discovered Denise Duhamel's book Kinky , which was an entire collection of her Barbie poems. But I immediately fell in love with it. I was captivated by how the poems were able to explore complex grown-up issues, through the simplicity of common childhood toys. One of those books that always makes a great gift.

Buddhist BarbieIn the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches “All is emptiness”
and “There is no self.”
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt.  

From Kinky, Orchises Press, 1997

That book is also a great source of inspiration for the way it came about.
Check this interview excerpt from an issue #24 of Rattle :

Alan Fox: Your book, Kinky, was rejected, what was it, fifty-three times?

Duhamel: It sure was, yes.
...And now it's my best-selling book. So it's one of those lessons to writers... Keep knocking on doors.
I think the book was probably done in '92, maybe '91. And it came out in '97.

Fox: Did that bother you, to get it back time after time after time?

Duhamel: Yes (laughs). Yes, I have to say it did. It was horrible. It was awful.

Fox: What gave you continued confidence in it?

Duhamel: I think at some point it just turned into stubborn maniacal behavior (laughs), more than confidence.




One time at a local writing conference, I was able to take a workshop from her and she is even better in person. She told us how much of her comedic sensibilities came from a terrible Communications Professor that she once had, named Denis Leary who made the class focus on helping his fledgling stand-up career. I grew up watching all of those "Live from The Improv" type of shows and followed the careers of certain stand-up comedians like baseball all-stars. So we had some common background and I felt like I understood where she was coming from a little bit.




I thought her most recent book Blowout was her best yet. Click here for the excellent beginning poem from that collection. Her craft and her popularity seem to be at all-time highs (one of her poems was even quoted in the television series Breaking Bad). I believe she's had work included in about 9 volumes of the annual Best American Poetry anthologies and she was even chosen as the Guest Editor for the 2013 edition.

Official Cover Art for The Existentialist Cookbook

I couldn't be more in love with the official cover art for the new book:

 

It's by artist Carol Roque and I stumbled onto it when she had an exhibit at {9} The Gallery where I co-host a monthly reading. 
I immediately fell in love with it and it seemed ridiculously appropriate on every level.

Blurb Week: Kelli Russell Agodon (1 of 3)

Now that my first book should be out within a couple of weeks (!!!),
I'm scrambling to get all those last details in place.

I wanted to take a few days this week to post the blurbs that I was incredibly grateful to receive and spotlight the poets who were so generous to me.

In The Existentialist Cookbook, Shawnte Orion finds poetry everywhere—in onions, oncoming traffic, papercuts, and even Keith Richards. This debut collection offers the unexpected, looking at life in Technicolor and tie-dye with Orion bringing a fresh, engaging, and much-needed voice into the poetic conversation. These poems are smart, funny, and poignant, and the book as a whole satisfies the deliciousness readers hunger for, something we can return again and again to savor.

—Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Hourglass Museum

I first stumbled onto Kelli's work with these three poems in an old issue of Superstition Review.

I began following her blog which was entertaining and very informative (for example- here is one of her posts about titling manuscripts that references a great monkeyhouse quote by Tim Gunn). As the former editor of a great journal called Crab Creek Review, she was able to post lots of helpful advice from both sides of the slushpile. She also started the annual Big Poetry Giveaway which probably gets participation by close to a hundred blogs.

Nowadays, she devotes most of her focus to Two Sylvias Press which she co-founded with Annette Spaulding-Convy.
Annette Spaulding-Convyt. She also started and organized the yearly Big Poetry Giveaway that probably gets participation by somewhere close to a hundred blogs. She
These are her two most recent books and they are both excellent.




You can visit her home page here at http://www.agodon.com/

I will post my other two blurbs and my appreciation for those poets throughout the week, so feel free to check back with this blog or lookout for the links when I post them on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Behind The Poem: Comedy Issue of Barrelhouse edition

I'm proud to have a poem in the new Comedy Issue of Barrelhouse.
This volume begins with Editor Mike Ingram's clarification of Humor vs. Comedy
and includes interviews with Megan Amram and Maria Bramford , and work from Christopher Citro , Patricia Lockwood, Adrienne Celt , and many others.



A few things that jumped out when I first thumbed through randomly:

from John Mortara 's "game over, man"

my love for you is the 1984 movie The Terminator

you will have no knowledge of my future love for you
until it arrives in your life
naked and muscular

from Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney 's collaboration "Some Notes on Foolishness"

The verb "fool" can mean both to be a fool and to make a fool of. "You fool" is
surprisingly polysemous.

and this opening by Brian Warfield :




My poem is "Breaking Dawn Within A Dawn Haibun" and I can partially blame it on Charles Jensen.
A few years ago, Hayden's Ferry Review gave me a free pass to ASU's Desert Nights Rising Stars Writers Conference. One of the first workshops was by Charles Jensen and here's a secret: I almost didn't go.
I have to confess that I saw Charles' promo author photo and it seemed so austere and like the kind of person who takes everything-including-himself way too seriously and it would be obvious that I was only there because of this free pass from HFR and really did not belong.

But his subject was The Prose Poem so I was curious and went anyway.
It only took me about 5 seconds to realize that my preconceived notions WERE COMPLETELY WRONG ON EVERY LEVEL. Charles was an energetic sweetheart with a gigantic sense of humor and enthusiasm that was as contagious as his smile. This is a more accurate depiction of Charles:
 
His session was entertaining and engaging and if I knew there were Professors like him, I probably would have gone to college, myself.
So the next day I made sure to take his other workshop on the Haibun. This Japanese form of a prose poem followed by a haiku dates back to Basho, but Charles was showing us contemporary examples by poets like Aimee Nezhukumatathil and pointing out that the form is so underused that it's possibilities are wide open.

I remembered something I once wrote for a big Poe Show performance and I wondered if re-working it into a haibun could help it translate from stage to page. I liked the idea of shoehorning pop culture obsessions into an ancient Japanese art form. I try to bring together high-brow and low-brow whenever I get the chance and I am grateful that Barrelhouse could appreciate my "Uni-brow Poetics."

Here is a video of that early first-draft performance from the 2010 Poe Show at MadCap Theatre:



You can buy this special Comedy Issue of Barrelhouse RIGHT OVER HERE.

"When Asked What Kind of Cult I Grew Up In" and something like Radiohead

I've got two new poems up at Kentucky Review:

" When Asked What Kind of Cult I Grew Up In "
& " Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval "

There will be a print issue at the end of the year,
but you can click here to read them now .


Now that I'm always so busy with all these poetry projects, I don't get out to see live music as much as I used to, but the other night I did make it to a Lupus benefit show that had musicians from some of my favorite local bands like Colorstore, the Minibosses , and Treasure Mammal covering Radiohead's OK Computer album. A different group of musicians was doing a fantastic job of covering Portishead's Dummy album when I arrived, but here are some photos from the Radiohead set:

Tagging Two More Arizona Writers for the Process Inquisition

To fulfill my chainmail obligations for the Writing Process Blog Tour, I tagged two writers
in order to avoid 7 years of form rejections.



I met Isaac Kirkman at a recent Tucson conference. He was an awesome literary ambassador and an intriguing dude, so this was a perfect opportunity to find out more about what he's up to (which includes his involvement in a Bruce Springsteen-themed crime pulp anthology:

http://www.isaackirkman.com/108/

  



Fortunately, Allyson Boggess lives in the vicinity, so I occasionally get to hear her read around town. I'm always impressed by these brief glimpses of her poetry and now it makes sense when I see the photo of her nifty writing-space where cross country snail mail collaborative sonnet crowns are created:
 
http://allysonboggess.com/