Monday, October 31, 2011

Libraries That Have Supported My Work

If you're interested in accessing some of my publications through libraries, especially some of the older ones, then go here:

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3ABeckett%2C+Tom.&qt=hot_author

Sunday, October 30, 2011

I've been sick for the last few days but powered through a punishing work schedule. Now am feeling depleted--drippy, woozy. I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle going to work tomorrow or not.

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Haven't been able to write anything of value since publishing Parts and Other Pieces. It feels like that book has fallen into a black hole. Which is depressing. It, along with an unpublished chapbook entitled Collapsing Structures, represent much of my best work from the last year or so.

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A bright note: my recent interview with philosopher Graham Harman at Ask/Tell. It was an energizing exchange. I hope poets are reading it too and not just philosophers. I say that because when I google the piece, the great bulk of references to it are at philosophy sites. The driving idea behind Ask/Tell is to get poets not just to converse with other poets but to engage folks from other disciplines and to expand the forms that poetics can take. I would love to see poets in conversation with choreographers, visual artists, ecologists, composers, philsophers, scientists, etc, etc. I want to explore the poetics of experience as much as anything else. With the hope that it will lead to further collaboration.

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Currently working on an interview with NF Huth. Nancy has recently released a full-length collection, Radiator, and a chapbook called 3 Words. I hope these books can find the wide audience they deserve. Her treatment of objects in her poems resonates for me with aspects of Harman's object oriented ontology.

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I couldn't sleep last night. We live a couple of blocks from the center of town. Twenty thousand Halloween revelers and the attendant police presence--siren after freaking siren--made much needed rest impossible. My eyes are barely open as I type this. So, later...

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Sunday, October 23, 2011

Sunday, October 9, 2011

If You're In Oakland Later This Week...


























Fellow Travelers Performance Group is back again with

Meditations on Being Lost
an installation dance work choreographed by Ken James


What
Meditations on Being Lost examines the quirks of being open to possibilities. It is about readjusting. Pondering decisions, and the possibility of fitting in and a series of impossible solutions. Performed in a unique space designed by Matthew Antaky, the audience surrounds the space offering opportunities to wander around the performance - readjusting your own view of the work.




Who
Choreographed by Ken James
Lighting and set by Matthew Antaky
Dancers Paula McArthur, Silvina Lopez-Barrera, Ken James
Super Fabulous Guest Artist Chris Black
Inspiration by the poet Tom Beckett


Where and When
Performed at The Project Bandaloop Studio
1601 18th Street at the corner of 18th and Peralta, Oakland CA 94702
October 14th and 15th at 8pm
$10.
Keep up on us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=178963072179982&ref=ts


Thanks for generous support from the Dancers Group Lighting Artists in Dance Grant and The East Bay Fund for Artists. And viewers like you, of course.




--
Fellow Travelers Performance Group
www.ftpg.org

Sunday, October 2, 2011

REGISTERS

An actual world

In a virtual universe.

Poetry is philosophy

Except when it’s shit.

Accept when it’s shit.



Echoes are objects.

Just like shadows.

Shadows like You.

Pronouns are flags.



Saying something is Something

Isn’t like anything.

Saying something is Something.