Sous Rature

Nico Vassilakis: One biographical note: Momentum accrues. Two biographical notes: Staring discorporates logic; form new logic. Three biographical notes: Information accrues.
Poetry best suited to achieve nothing. And it does. Visuel Concreate

Brooklyn Copeland was born in Indianapolis in 1984. Chapbooks are forthcoming from Greying Ghost, Further Adventures, Wyrd Tree, Spooky Girlfriend and Dancing Girl Presses. These erasures from Harold Buls' sermon notes are part of a manuscript about the Votic language, which was down to fewer than twenty native speakers at the last count.

Maria Williams-Russell's recent work includes a series of poems based on the art installations of Spencer Finch which were exhibited at the MassMoCa in 2007-2008 under the name "What Time Is It On The Sun?". Maria is a graduate of the MFA writing program at Goddard College and is the editor of the fine arts website ArtId.com. She also teaches college English courses and is an assistant poetry editor for Quay. Her poetry manuscript Swallow is currently seeking a publisher, and in the meantime, she continues to write from her home in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

Peter Ciccariello is an interdisciplinary, cross-genre artist, poet, and photographer. His work is a pastiche of language and text in 3-D digital environments. He has studied painting and design at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, and Parsons School of Design, New York, New York. His work has been exhibited at Harvard University, Boston, MA, The University of Arizona Poetry Center, Tucson, AZ, and at the “Interruptheque – Language driven digital art” Festival, at Brown University in Providence, RI. Recent work has appeared both in print & online in, amongst other places, Poetry Magazine, New River, a journal of digital writing and art, dbqp: visualizing poetics, Oregon Literary Review, MOCA The Museum of Computer Art, Otoliths, and Word For/ Word – A journal of new writing. His book “Imaginal Landscapes”, was published by Xexoxial Editions, La Farge, WI. Invisible Notes Liminal Spaces Hope Street

David-Baptiste Chirot Born Lafayette, Indiana. Grew up in Vermont. Lived in Arles & Paris,France--Gottingen, Germany--Tagarps Skola, Sweden--Wroclaw, Poland, Boton, MA & Milwaukee, WI Work published in 80+ print/ejournals in 8 languages over 300 Visual Poetry & Mail Art Exhibtions, 16 Anthologies, 3 Books & numerous chaps/echaps, video interview/reading & audio work on line Anarkeyologist of The New Extreme Experimental American Poetry & Arts (Apartheid,Torture, Genocide,Prisons, Silence, Fascism, Military & Arts avant-garde)-Human Rights Activism-My work is a love & faith with the Found, everywhere Found all around one. A rhythmic scrawling singing coloring Thanks for that which is. Laughter which is a Light in the Darkness & Depths. http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com http://cronacasouversivafeneon.blogspot.com

Rodrigo Toscano's newest book is Collapsible Poetics Theater, which was a 2007 National Poetry Series selection. His experimental poetics plays, body-movement poems, polyvocalic pieces have recently been performed at the Disney Redcat Theater in Los Angeles, Ontological-Hysteric Poet’s Theater Festival, New Langton Arts Space (San Francisco), Yockadot Poetics Theater Festival (Alexandria, Virginia), KSW Vancouver, Canada, Links Hall (Chicago), Teubingen University, Germany, and Poet’s Theater Jamboree 2007 (California Center for the Arts, San Francisco). His radio poetics pieces have appeared on WPIX FM (New York), WNYU FM, KAOS Radio Olympia, WFMU (New York), and PS.1 Radio (New York). He lives in Brooklyn, and works in Manhattan at the Labor Institute.

Christophe Casamassima is a professor of English at Towson University and the Director of Literary Arts at the Towson Arts Collective. His collections include The Proteus (Moria Books, 2008) and Joys: A Catalogue of Disappointments (BlazeVOX, 2008). When he is not writing or teaching he is publishing "autonomous anthologies" under the guide of Furniture Press, of which he is sole proprietor and editor and book maker.

James Sanders is the least-huggable member of the Atlanta Poets Group (atlantapoetsgroup.blogspot.com). Among their other projects, they run a sound poetry magazine at www.aslongasittakes.org and a paper-based magazine Spaltung (see spaltungmag.blogspot.com).

Barry Schwabsky is an American poet and critic living in London. He writes regularly for The Nation and Artforum and his new collection of poems is Book Left Open in the Rain (Black Square Editions). The four poems published here are from a new project in which he has asked fellow poets to give him failed or abandoned poems of theirs to work on.

Michelle Naka Pierce is the author of Beloved Integer (Bootstrap/PUB LUSH, 2007) and TRI/VIA (Erudite Fangs/PubLush, 2003), a collaboration with Veronica Corpuz. Her creative work has been anthologized in For the Time Being: The Bootstrap Book of Poetic Journals and Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry. Currently working on a book-length project of pedagogical interviews, she has had exchanges with Juliana Spahr (Rain Taxi), Thalia Field (Teachers and Writers), and Kass Fleisher (Transformations). She is associate professor at Naropa University and teaches workshops on avant-garde poetry and hybrid writing.

Sue Hammond West is a painter and mixed media artist who combines art making with the energy of Buddhism and yoga philosophy. Local and national exhibitions include The Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, Beacon Street Gallery in Chicago, and Isis Gallery at The University of Notre Dame. Recipient of several awards, including grants from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The National Endowment for the Arts, she is currently Chair of the Visual Arts Department at Naropa University. Hammond West teaches and researches contemporary and contemplative art forms and practices.

Alexander Jorgensen wakes up indulging in queer tirades. Has suffered from existential homelessness while learning to communicate. Attempts to remind himself just how apples once tasted. He lives and works in the People's Republic of China (where he has divided his time since 2002). His work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Oranges & Sardines, Otoliths, Venereal Kittens, and Van Gogh's Ear. "Letters to a Younger Poet," correspondences with the late Robert Creeley, appears in Jacket magazine #31. Visit: http://www.alexanderjorgensen.com

Celina Su was born in São Paulo, Brazil and lives in New York. She is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Brooklyn College and the author of two books coming out in May 2009: Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University Press) and Our Schools Suck: Young People Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failure of Urban Education (New York University Press, co-authored). Since 2001, she has also served as Program Officer for the Burmese Refugee Project. Recent poems have appeared in 88, XCP, and Indefinite Space.

Matina L. Stamatakis is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee who engages in poetry, photography, and noise artistry. Some of her works have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Big Bridge, Inertia, Segue, Text Sound Journal, and Zafusy. She is the author of one forthcoming chapbook, Metempsychose (Ypolita, 2008), the self-published Sensoria (Lulu), and has authored two e-books, Harmonious Hogwash (VUGG) with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, and Phos (VUGG).

Amy King is the author of I'm the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an Alibi, both from Blazevox Books, and most recently, Kiss Me With the Mouth of Your Country (Dusie Press). She moderates the Poetics List and the Women's Poetry Listserv (WOMPO) and also teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. For information on the reading series Amy co-curates, please visit The Stain of Poetry: A Reading Series blog and her own website www.amyking.org for more.

Bill Marsh lives in Queens, NY. He co-directs Factory School (factoryschool.org) and teaches at Queensborough Community College.

Charles Bernstein is the author of 40 books, ranging from large-scale collections of poetry and essays to pamphlets, libretti, translations, and collaborations. Recent full-length works of poetry include Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006), With Strings (University of Chicago Press, 2001), and Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000). He has published two books of essays and one essay/poem collection: My Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999); A Poetics (Harvard University Press, 1992); Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Sun & Moon Press, 1986, 1994; reprinted by Northwestern University Press, 2001). Shadowtime (Green Integer, 2005) is the libretto he wrote for Brian Ferneyhough's opera and Blind Witness (Factory School, 2008) collects the libretti he wrote for Ben Yarmolinsky.

Brenda Hillman is the author of eight collections of poetry, all from Wesleyan University Press, including Practical Water, forthcoming in 2009. She is Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga , California.

Samit Roy is a visual artist and poet who believes that every "successful" art object is the result of a series of interrelated social events, and whose work explores both the visual characteristics of text and narrative elements of visuals. Brought up in the gray zones between urban Victorian Kolkata and its semi-rural suburbs, his work further attempts to articulate a small part of the history of his time and context. He has worked with UPENN's South Asia Center and Department of South Asia Studies, and the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Annetna Nepo, Kaurab, Natun Kabita, Otoliths and Black Robert Journal.

Stacy Szymaszek is the author of Emptied of All Ships (Litmus Press, 2005). Recent chapbooks include Orizaba: A Voyage with Hart Crane (Faux Chaps, 2008) and from Hyperglossia (Hot Whiskey, 2008). Hyperglossia, the complete poem, is forthcoming from Litmus Press in early 2009. Szymaszek is the Artistic Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church.

Paul Hoover’s most recent poetry collections are Edge and Fold (Apogee Press, 2006) and Poems in Spanish (Omnidawn, 2005). With Maxine Chernoff, with whom he edits the literary magazine, New American Writing, he edited and translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin (Omnidawn, 2008). With Nguyen Do, he edited and translated the anthology, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions, 2008). His collection of literary essays, Fables of Representation, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2004. Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University , he edited the widely adopted anthology, Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994). An additional poetry volume, Sonnet 56, will be published by Les Figues Press in 2009; it consists of 56 formal versions of Shakespeare’s sonnet of that number.

Thomas Devaney is the author of A Series of Small Boxes (Fish Drum, 2007). Devaney was a curatorial consultant for an exhibition on Edgar Allan Poe for the Philadelphia Free Library, which runs until February 2009. He was also the editor of a feature on George Oppen for Jacket (36) http://jacketmagazine.com/36/index.shtml#oppen-list. Devaney is a Senior Writing Fellow in the Critical Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania. For more on Devaney's poems and work see: http://thomasdevaney.blogspot.com/

Sparrow lives with his wife and daughter in a Victorian house in Teaneck, New Jersey. The house doesn't have a name, like an old English mansion, but maybe it should: a name like Ulallia.