How can we articulate Atlantis?


Lisa Marie Basile´s book, Andalucía, focuses intently on a young woman’s rebirth. We ourselves become sucked into the dreamscape in which the narrator is rummaging through mirrors, running around the southern coast of Spain and Cataluña ¨to find [herself] in the sea…to be prettier than the sea…wanting to become the sea. ¨

Andalucía takes us on the journey of a woman ¨unfolding her first life ¨and intending to understand her present life -- if perhaps it is more than some existential reality.

She is dressing up in versions of herself and continuously falling down rabbit holes where men and broken glass, untamed flowers, and jars of tears are strewn.  As the lucky reader of this collection I have an inclination that she may be falling on purpose, and I like it:

What if it feels good to me, walking through

eternal firy stalls? What if I’m happy to

be a sinner, to drink red until my skin turns.

Basile provides a nail biting vixen exploring her sexuality, recovering from death and ultimately finding herself again in new skin -- uncomfortable perhaps -- but new: “I am suddenly aware of myself or the déjà vu of myself and that part of me is somewhere. ¨  By using a range of dialect and personification, she gives Andalucía a somewhat folkloric quality, and the lack of titles helps it to flow as such. Titles are people, places, animals, and verbs.  

In her dreams, Dolores ¨hides nothing…cleans… cries into soap. ¨ Dolores, stemming from the verb dolor, or pain, is Spanish.  ¨Spain as the woman who knows about being conquered and conquering,” she writes.  
In her first poems it is evident the young woman wants to be wanted by Andalucía, but it is not so simple. To escape the past does not always mean escaping the pain. There is a great sense of foreboding, dread and loneliness in this collection. In deft images, Basile is able to capture this mood. In a short poem, she writes, “I fill pots with tears/for miles stretching/only to look inside/and find them empty again ” and is at once an ominous image.
Lisa Marie Basile´s book is a legendary island, a world filled of mirrors and sadness, waiting to be explored and re-explored.  Remember, ¨when you want too much, you end up in Andalucía.”

The Next Big Thing

Recently two wonderful and talented ladies, RAE BRYANT (The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, fiction collection) and LEAH UMANSKY (Domestic Uncertainties, poetry) asked Lisa Marie Basile(Triste) to contribute to The Next Big Thing, a blog-series of questions and answers. Lisa then asked me. Usually I skip right over chain mails but this I just couldn’t pass up.

What is your working title of your book (or story)?

I have a book coming out with Patasola Press called, Origin of.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Origin of stemmed from the work I did in graduate school. It wasn’t until I was living in Spain: away from my family, my home, barely speaking English and trying to find myself in my new life that I actually felt ready to finish it.
    The first part of the book found its inspiration from Sappho/art/love affairs and stalking museum visitors. The other parts came from my 5 year stint in Spain.
    Although written in different life stages, I think it has still managed to maintain its “origin.” A lot of it focuses on past and memory, for example. I think the newness/abstractness of it comes from the feeling of loneliness and discomfort I was feeling those first 2 years in Spain. I wanted to be brutally honest and convey both in the language and the images that sense of isolation and homesickness.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters, in a movie rendition?

Chloe Sevigny- The I; or any of the girls in sex/drug scenes
Rolf Lassgard- The Father
Jessica Lang- Mom(she really does look like my mom too)
Gorid Mollá- The Spanish man
Michael Pitt- The everpresent male character. (He can play the French men, the bad men, the good men….really any is fine by me).

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

“…Two torsos/without limbs/attached to prove/what the arms suggest.”

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Origin of  will be released by Patasola Press, a press with a short history and a big future. Lisa Marie Basile, is a wonderful writer/editor. I’m happy to be working with her on my first full-length book.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

It took me about 1 year to write the first draft, turn it in, get a grade, then 2 years shoved in a drawer and 4 months to rewrite most of it. Total time = about 4 years.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was really blown away by Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho. My infatuation with Sappho transpires a lot in the first part of the book and really became the main source of inspiration for the book as a whole. The revisions I did about 2 years later, however, were also influential. I owe my (editor) friend Patrick in Barcelona a huge thank you. Even though he can be a real asshole(endearing) he has a great eye. He pushed me when I needed it most.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I was naked when I wrote it?



***
I’ve tagged Ana Božičević, Carter Edwards and Peter Bogart Johnson for the next round.

Summer in the Garden of a Dark Room

Kiely Sweatt started up Prostibulo Poetico and co directs Tri Lengua, a multi lingual reading series based out of Barcelona and soon to start up in NYC. She is founding editor of Libro Rojo, and co-editor of The Translation book, Volume 1. Her work has appeared online and in-print through such publications as, Barcelona Ink, Best American Poetry blog, Shampoo, Leveler and PaxAmericana among others. Her first full length collection, ´Origin of´ is almost available with Patasola Press and she is finishing a chapbook in translation with Knitting Guns Press.

Kate Lutzner's poetry and stories have appeared in such journals as Antioch Review, Poetry Magazine, Mississippi Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BlazeVOX and Rattle. She was awarded the Robert Frost Poetry Prize by Kenyon College and is recipient of the Jerome Lowell Dejur Award and the Stark Short Fiction Prize. Kate holds a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from City College.

B.C. Edwards is a producer at The Upright Citizens Brigade theater in New York. He was awarded the 2011 Hudson Prize for fiction and is the author of the collected stories "The Aversive Clause" (fall 2012) as well as two collections of poetry "To Mend Small Children," (february 2012) and "From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes" (fall 2013). He is a regular contributor to BOMBlog and his work can be found in Another Chicago Magazine, No Dear, The Sink Review, Mathematics Magazine, Hobart and others. He is also a Literary Death Match Champion and has the medal to prove it.

Lisa Marie Basile received her MFA from The New School. She is the author of Andalucia (Brothel Books.) Two collections are forthcoming: A Decent Voodoo (Cervena Barva) and Triste (Dancing Girl Press). Her work can be seen in Word Riot, La Fovea, PANK, kill author, Pear Noir, and elimae, among others. She is the founding editor of Patasola Press & the Patasola Review and is a managing member of The Poetry Society of New York and a contributor to thethepoetry. By day she works as a background and identity researcher and writer.

Tyler Flynn Dorholt's most recent chapbooks are The Point or What I Cannot Recall(greying ghost) and a Glottochronology (alice blue), with Thomas Cook. He curates end edits the film and writing series On the Escape as well as the print journal Tim (formerly known as Tammy).

Claire Donato's first book, Burial, will be published by Tarpaulin Sky Press this year. She holds an MFA from Brown and is 1/2 SPECIAL AMERICA.

Amy Lawless is the author of Noctis Licentia (Black Maze Books, 2008), as well as the chapbook Elephants in Mourning ([sic] Press, 2012) and My Dead, forthcoming (Forklift, Ink). She was named a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. Some poems have recently appeared in the Pen Poetry Series, H_NGM_N, Sink Review, and Zócalo Public Square. She teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and lives in Brooklyn.


Ray DeJesús was born, raised, and still resides in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has been publishedin Gobbet, The Best American Poetry's blog, Maggy, Augury Books, Peaches and Bats, PaxAmericana, Food I Corporation, Sinescope: A Journal of Arts. Work in Shampoo, Gondola,1913: A Book of Forms is forthcoming.

Stephanie Berger is the author of In The Madame's Hat Box, a chapbook from Dancing Girl Press, and her lastest collection Poem In Which I Am Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Permissive Death is looking for a publisher if you know one. Her poems have appeared in H_NGM_N, Coconut, and Whore Magazine, among many other publications. She is the Executive Director of The Poetry Society of New York, co-founder of the New York City Poetry Festival, and the Madame and creator of The Poetry Brothel. She's Editor-in-Chief of Brothel Books and teaches in the English Department at Pace University.

Jeff T. Johnson’s poetry is forthcoming or has recently appeared in *smoking
glue gun*, *dandelion magazine*, and The Organism for Poetic Research's *
PELT*. Other writing has appeared in *Sink Review,* *The Rumpus*, *Coldfront*, and elsewhere. With Claire Donato, he collaborates on SPECIAL AMERICA.He lives in Brooklyn, is Editor in Chief at *LIT*, and edits *Dewclaw*. For more information, visit jefftjohnson.wordpress.com.

Ben Fama is the author of the chapbook Aquarius Rising (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009) and New Waves (Minutes Books, 2011). He is the co-editor of Wonder, a publisher of art books, glossies, and pamphlets. His work has been featured in jubilat, notnostrums, LIT, Poor Claudia, Denver Quarterly, and on the Best American Poetry Blog.

Lauren Hunter is from North Carolina and lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in poetry from The New School and works with the team at Telephone Books as their Managing Editor. Lauren reads as Harriett Van Os with The Poetry Brothel and her chapbook, My Own Fires, was released by Brothel Books in 2011. Her poems and translations can be found online in pax americana, Lyre Lyre, Food I Corp Publishing Enterprise and in both English & Spanish in The Translation Project: Volume 1 (Brothel Books, 2011).

Christie Ann Reynolds is the author of Revenge Poems (Supermachine 2010), idiot heart (winner of The New School Chapbook Competition 2008) and her first full length is forthcoming with Coconut Books at the tail end of 2012. She co-curates Totem: poetry + other, lives in Brooklyn and is excited to design a poetry curriculum and teach science in a Montessori school this fall.

Gracie Leavitt's first book of poems—Monkeys, Minor Planet, Average Star—is forthcoming from Nightboat Books. A chapbook—Gap Gardening—is out this year from These Signals Press. Recently her poetry has appeared in Conjunctions, Lana Turner,LIT, No, Dear, The Recluse, Sentence, and SET. Transatlantic collaborations can be found in Whiskey & Fox's series "Parks and Occupation."

My Book is out for Pre Order/ Ahora Puedes Pre Ordenar mi Libro.

http://www.patasolapress.org/origin-of-by-kiely-sweatt/



There’s something shattered at the core of Kiely Sweatt’s neon, witty and chiseled poetry. The lovers and friends who haunt her debut collection, The Origin Of, are simultaneously inside and outside each moment, stuck in beautiful and startling disconnection. If you look to poetry to splash cold water on your face, this is a collection for you.

JOANNA FURHMAN


Origin Of is an unusual species of poetry book….This book is a sly and knowing mind-body problem slipping out of its leather dress and harvesting its body mind perspiration for scent, destined for anyone lucky enough to remember what they still don’t know. The beautiful young woman is soaking wet and all on fire and you had better listen before she dies or dries or ashifies and in or out of boredom goes and gets some clothes on. Sweatt should be a new star on the scene. Hotly recommended.
JENNIFER MICHAEL HECHT


Kiely Sweatt’s The Origin Of contains poems that do battle with their own narrative disassociations, seeking absent connective tissue or rules of sequence, while living “lives in five-second intervals.” After the disorder of “years turned sideways,” the urge of the poems is to seek shelter, study the surrounding environment, and piece together clues of what’s wanting (“two torsos/without limbs/attached to prove/what the arms suggest”), while avoiding the paralysis of poetic self-consciousness. Past sense is often delicious (“I am a mouthful/of currants and/rose petals”) and often agonizing, but in the end the book seems determined to make sudden sense of the patterns contained therein. A simultaneously turbulent and alluring book.
BRUCE COVEY


Imagine poems with the metal to enter any human part, or with the flesh to pass through any ghost. An arsenal of dynamite like an open invitation to origin. “But blood doesn’t have doors in the dark….” When I say dynamite it’s this book I am talking about to my friends as soon as I get my hands on some copies! Keily Lynden Sweatt has invoked a strength found in surrendering all origin of being human. These poems are all the things I imagine poems are capable of doing to me.

CA CONRAD


In poems that inhabit and eschew dislocation and homesickness—managing both at once—, Kiely Sweatt seems to have channeled the birds in their “native chirp.” Here, imagistic shorthand leads to sudden clarities, and a note is sounded, a little cautionary, a little calming. These poems “don’t give up, don’t panic/ and don’t push to be saved.” From there, from that not, Sweatt deftly demonstrates, arises the yet possible.

MARY ANN SAMYN


Kiely Sweatt’s Origin of is an exciting first book of poems by a fresh and original young poet. These poems move at the speed of life; jittery, impatient, the language won’t sit still. As we slide—this ice is slippery—from poem to poem the diction and the syntax and the forms metamorphose. We have long poems and short poems, poems formally arranged and poems very informally (and artfully) unarranged, prose blocks of narrative and description about artists with letters for names. The language can formally reference obscure biological creatures and then shift and become contemporary and colloquial and maybe a little shocking. What the poems share with each other, and with us, is a sometimes almost painful intimacy and a breathless intensity. Be careful with this collection. The poems have the qualities of a car driven too fast, a carnival ride that might not be safe, a boy or a girl you probably shouldn’t date. And there are other risks—dizziness, unpredictable idiosyncratic side effects, addiction. It’s also a book you can’t afford to miss.

EDWARD SMALLFIELD

Trilengua is a sporadic event which allows writers of poetry and prose to read their work to an open and appreciative audience in Barcelona. Trilengua aims to have writers in three languages at each session – that could be the regional language, Catalan, the national language, Castilian, and the international lingua franca, English, or it could be something else.




Edward Smallfield : is the author of The Pleasures of C, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (a book-length collaboration with Doug MacPherson), locate (a chapbook collaboration with Miriam Pirone), and equinox. His poems have appeared in Barcelona INK, bird dog, e-poema.eu, New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, Páginas Rojas, Parthenon West Review, 26 and many other magazines




Valerie Coulton: Valerie Coulton is the author of The Cellar Dreamer, passing world pictures, The Lily Book, and open book. Her work has appeared in Front Porch, kadar koli, New American Writing, Parthenon West Review, and e-poema, among other periodicals.




Txus Garcia: autora de Poesía para niñas bien (Tits in my bowl), ilustrado por Cisco Bellabestia. Cangrejo Pistolero Ediciones, 2011 Mujeres que aman a mujeres, editorial Vitruvio, 2011

- Blanco Nuclear. Antología de poesía gay y lésbica última, Sial Ediciones, 2011

- Puta poesía, editorial Luces de Gálibo, 2011

y mas




Sairica Rose : is a “Great Russish” (British/Russian/Jewish) poet, anthropologist and documentary maker based between Barcelona and New York.




Her first poetry anthology Subtitles for a Silent Movie was published in 2007 by Reactor Press, California. Since then, she and several of her alter-egos have appeared in avant-garde live performances with fellow poets, musicians, VJs, photographers, painters and others.




Sairica is currently writing a documentary on the Roma and preparing an art exhibition with an audio installation for One of Us is Invisible, with Layil Umbralux.

Kiely Sweatt shared an event: TOTEM: Debrah MORKUN///Simone WHITE///Brandon JOHNSON///Kiely SWEATT. TOTEM: Debrah MORKUN///Simone WHITE///Brandon JOHNSON///Kiely SWEATT Saturday, April 21 at 2:00am at Cantina Royal

31st March, Prostibulo Poetico, Espacio RAI