Testing the waters: poetry of place

It seems like there is a spectrum of feeling around the poetics of place, especially with so many Los Angeles-based blogs becoming these grand sites for radical spatial narratives. Maybe it's because I've been thinking about the different turning tides in southeast LA in the course of my life that I look for that which I want to see. Place is always a big factor in most creative works, at least it's the yin to time's yang. What an awful simile. Place and Time. Perquin, El Salvador, 1981. Mexico City, 1968. Some narratives are larger than others, but every narrative waits to be written. Our blogs serve as every day acts of resistance, a thoughtful intervention into the banality of state logic, vessels we invigorate with meaning.

I'm interested in starting a POETRY OF PLACE collaborative series at any number of spaces that are proliferating in neighborhoods we inhabit and are estranged from.

I'm doing one at galeria de la raza to test out material before doing stuff in LA. I have this crazy idea of doing quarterly events in different parts of our schizophrenic metropolis. Maybe inspiring folks to think more critically about the way they inhabit the world that they do and return the form to some kind of reportage that takes place, critical witnessing if you will. We all do it, so why not do it together?

Anyone interested in some kind of event that focuses on areas such as Boyle Heights, Alhambra, South Bay, Northeast LA, Venice, dollar you call the zip code!?