CAConrad, October 3, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012 CAConrad at Counterpath. Introduced by Mathias Svalina.
CAConrad has been working with (Soma)tic poetry since 2006, a practice which directly engages the world, and allows the poet to be inside the process with ever expanding tools and rituals. The aim of (Soma)tic poetry and poetics is the realization of two basic ideas: (1) Everything around us has a creative viability with the potential to spur new modes of thought and imaginative output. (2) The most vital ingredient to bringing sustainable, humane changes to our world is creativity. This can be enacted on a daily basis.
Come join in the discussion about what are the possibilities for poetry in our changing world. From the manifesto of his new book A BEAUTIFUL MARSUPIAL AFTERNOON: New (Soma)tics (WAVE Books, 2012):I cannot stress enough how much this mechanistic world, as it becomes more and more efficient, resulting in ever increasing brutality, has required me to FIND MY BODY to FIND MY PLANET in order to find my poetry. If I am an extension of this world then I am an extension of garbage, shit, pesticides, bombed and smoldering cities, microchips, cyber, astral and biological pollution, BUT ALSO the beauty of a patch of unspoiled sand, all that croaks from the mud, talons on the cliff that take rock and silt so seriously flying over the spectacle for a closer examination are nothing short of necessary. The most idle-looking pebble will suddenly match any hunger, any rage. Suddenly, and will be realized at no other speed than suddenly.
CAConrad is the author of A BEAUTIFUL MARSUPIAL AFTERNOON: New (Soma)tics (Wave Books, 2012), The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010), Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined (Factory School, 2010). He is a 2011 PEW Fellow, a 2012 UCROSS Fellow, and a 2013 BANFF Fellow. Visit him at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com.