Carey McHugh interviewed in Open Alphabet

A detail from Cyanotypes of British Algae by Anna Atkins (1843), courtesy of the Public Domain Review

Open Alphabet recently shared a short interview with Carey McHugh which covers everything from the daily writing practice to Robert Frank to rejection in one condensed form.

Open Alphabet: How did you come to poetry? At what point did you know you were a poet?

Carey McHugh: I distinctly remember, at age seven, receiving a rejection letter for a poem I had submitted to Highlights Magazine. This was the beginning of rejection, and so, perhaps the beginning of true poethood.

Head over to their website to read the interview in full and for more conversations with first-book poets.

More of Carey McHugh:

Author page

Purchase American Gramophone through Amazon

INTERVIEW: Stephen Ira and Kay Gabriel on Trans Poetry Journal ‘Vetch’

Vetch, a biannual journal of trans poetry and poetics has recently published its first issue! The journal aims to publish work highlighting the ways in which power shapes language, poetry and relations among trans people. Editors Stephen Ira and Kay Gabriel recently took some time to sit down with intern Emily Kaufman to discuss the online periodical, among other things.

Emily: Why did you start Vetch?publication that, like most poetry journals, had an open reading period and published only poetry. It feels like a way to stake out space in the poetry world for trans writers.

Emily: What do you hope Vetch will provide to the public?

Vetch: Our call for submissions for this issue asked for work “by trans poets in trans language,” which “does not bother to translate itself for a cis reader.” To elaborate on this point, we see Vetch as supporting work by trans poets that allows itself to speak primarily between trans people, and that is not faced with the necessity of authenticating itself to a cisgender audience through appeals to a narrow and reductive set of tropes. Our hope is that Vetch will help broaden the horizon of trans poetics, and through the work we publish, foster trans poetry written in new and currently unimagined registers.

Emily: The media has put a spotlight on trans culture in several ways, including shows such as Transparent. Why do you think it took the media so long to highlight trans issues and how do you think the face of trans people in the media will change in the future?

Vetch: It’s very popular right now to talk about the importance of trans visibility and representation in mainstream media. The thing is, trans people–particularly trans women–are already hypervisible in our culture. We’re thinking here of the stares and street harassment trans women receive walking down the street, or the way the bodies of trans people are scrutinized by the medical industrial complex in order to be eligible for lifesaving care–or of the constant jokes in media that posit trans women as repulsive punchlines. In 2015, a year that’s ostensibly the best it’s ever been to be trans in America, twenty-three trans women had been murdered so far. So this increase in visibility does not necessarily bring better living conditions with it, particularly not for those trans people who are most marginalized intersectionally–the majority of those murdered women were black. In the future, we hope that trans people will have increased agency and ability to tell our own stories in media, rather than having scripts written and scenes directed for us by cis people. Maybe that can bring this conversation beyond visibility, and then we can ask different questions: When we see trans people in media, what are they doing? How do representations of trans people in media train us to treat trans people in daily life? As lurid and disposable spectacles, or as fully-fledged three-dimensional human beings?

Check out more on Vetch and download the issue for free!

Diana Spechler Starts "Going Off" Column for The New York Times

Ernst Haeckel’s Radiolaria (1862), courtesy of the Public Domain Review

Augury friend Diana Spechler has recently begun a weekly column for The New York Times’ Opinionator entitled “Going Off.” In this series, she recounts her experiences while coming off of the prescription medications she uses to treat depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Diana sat down with Augury assistant editor Nicolas Amara to talk about the new column.

Augury Books: What has the initial response to “Going Off” been like?

Diana Spechler: A lot of advice. A lot of people sharing their own stories. Some thank you notes. Some anger–that I’m not coming out as staunchly anti-meds or staunchly pro-meds. I love it. All of it. What’s clear to me from the response and what was clear to me before I started the column, is that in 2015 psychiatric medications are still a taboo; now that I’m writing about them in the New York Times, in this very candid way, people are dying to talk. For some reason, we’re supposed to hide our psychiatric disorders and treatments. We’re supposed to feel embarrassed about them. That’s silly. There’s this story a guy once told me, probably seven or eight years ago, that’s always stuck with me: He went out with a woman and was turned off because he found antidepressants in her medicine cabinet. He relayed this information to me to explain why he never called her again. I told him, “You have to be kidding.” For one thing, what was he doing in her medicine cabinet? For another thing, turned off by her medication–her efforts to be healthy and happy? Jeez. Tough crowd! Antidepressants are one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in America. Chances are, you know a lot of people on antidepressants and benzos and sleeping pills and mood stabilizers. Great. We’re all on drugs. Now let’s talk.

A: Did you ever feel nervous about running the column?

D: I was terrified before I started. Even after I started, I was terrified. I had a couple of bad days when the first piece ran. I felt so exposed. I felt like I was mooning the world. But it’s worth it for me to do this, to be as honest and open and straightforward as possible. It’s still scary, but now that I have this platform, I feel intense responsibility: I have a voice; I need to use it. I’m grateful to have public support through such a brutal process. Most people getting off their meds have one or two people to talk to, or they have no one. I’m extremely lucky and I never forget that.

A: Do you think the sort of writing you’re doing helps de-stigmatize depression?

D: That’s the idea. I don’t like any topics to be off-limits. I want to talk about everything. I want everyone to tell me everything, too. You know how people cover their ears and say, “TMI! TMI!”? There’s no such thing as TMI to me. If you’re insanely jealous of someone, or if you’ve stalked someone, or if you have a rash on your genitals, I totally want to know about it. I’m not above talking about my exes on a first date, either. We have all these pointless rules. It’s not hurting anyone if I talk about my period, if I talk about my panic attacks, if I talk about my medication. What are we, Puritans? I hope to help others feel less ashamed.

To read “Going Off,” click here.

More on Diana Spechler

6 More Days: Support Stevie and the Lion’s IndieGoGo Campaign for ‘The Perpetual Emotion Machine EP’

Kate Branagh, vocalist and guitarist of Stevie and the Lion, recently sat down with Augury to talk about the band’s upcoming EP, their Indiegogo campaign, their Taylor Swift parody that recently blew up online, and songwriting in general.

Kate Branagh, vocalist and guitarist of Stevie and the Lion, recently sat down with Augury to talk about the band’s upcoming EP, their Indiegogo campaign, their Taylor Swift parody that recently blew up online, and songwriting in general.

Augury Books: Tell us a little bit about your upcoming project, The Perpetual Emotion Machine EP. What can your fans and followers expect?

Kate Branagh of Stevie and the Lion: The Perpetual Emotion Machine EP is Stevie and the Lion’s recording debut. These are true and personal stories sung by big expressive voices. The songs selected for this album balance artful sincerity and intimate, straight-up, unashamed pop. A vocal duo accompanied by guitar, accordion, and clarinet, Stevie and the Lion delivers a stand-out sound with an untraditional framework to support strong pop sensibility and poignant lyrics. These songs are as thought-provoking and emotionally stirring as they are fun and easy to listen to.

A: How did you start songwriting? How has your process changed or evolved since you started?

K: I have been songwriting and performing as a solo artist since I was 15 years old. I went through a Joni phase. And then an Ani phase. And then with my solo album “Minutia” I finally accepted that I was INDEED a writer of pop music. Dan Testa, with a musical theater background, started experimenting with songwriting in college, collaborating and performing with a band and lending his amazing sense of harmony as a backup singer to many of us in the NYC music scene. In 2009 we became roommates and started to collaborate naturally around the house, at first just with Dan adding harmony over whatever I was working on. But soon he started bringing his own lyrics and melodic ideas to the table. Over the past few years of writing with Dan, I have seen him develop into a thoughtful and mature songwriter. On my end, learning to collaborate with Dan has made me a much more focused and prolific songwriter. We regularly schedule songwriting sessions and are continually talking about editing whatever ideas we’ve been chewing over. It’s an amazing connection to have with a person! We make each other better artists.

A: What is the history of Stevie and the Lion? What about the meaning behind the name?

K: Stevie and the Lion was formed by Dan and myself in 2010—the year before I developed vocal nodes that ended up altering my sound and limiting my range. As I started to teach myself to sing again, Dan and I started collaborating. Eventually our casual writing sessions turned into something more serious. We developed our writing style and sound over the next year, and then in 2011, Carolyn joined the band after seeing us perform live.

The name Stevie and the Lion took us a year to come up with. We like to leave the source a mystery but what I CAN tell you is that it involves Ebay and a T-shirt made by some hippy witch from the Midwest. That’s all you get!

A: What encouraged you to do an Indiegogo campaign?

K: The music industry is an ever-changing beast. Albums used to be funded and produced by record labels. Today musicians and artists need to be directly connected with the audience. Through crowd-funding sites like Indiegogo, fans get to impact the industry by ensuring the music that they love gets made! We subscribe to this notion as fans of music, and so it was an easy decision when it came to raising money for our own EP.

A: Your recent parody, “5 Taylor Swift Songs that Are Actually About Sandwiches,” has really blown up. What inspired this song? Do you frequently incorporate comedy in your music, or was this a departure for the band?

K: Ya know … we are just a funny bunch of kids! When we’re together we’re constantly making up fake songs about random nonsense and/or inappropriate subject matter. Dan’s endless well of creativity and comedic timing is a near miracle. Despite the serious subject matter of our songs, our Internet presence and onstage banter tends to be sweetly inappropriate and always hilarious. The idea for the song came from our friend Armand Valdes at Mashable. Dan and I lived with Armand for a time and so he knew that we were the perfect group to tackle this challenge. Dan Testa also happens to know every Taylor Swift song in existence, so we had that business pounded out in about 20 minutes! We had a blast doing it and look forward to working on other parodies!

Purchase the full digital download of Stevie and the Lion’s “The Perpetual Emotion EP” and help support their campaign for six more days! Go on—it’s the holidays!

Frances Justine Post Interviewed in Print-Oriented Bastards

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

We are excited to acknowledge that Pennsylvania-based journal Print-Oriented Bastards has recently interviewed Frances Justine Post (BEAST, Augury Books, 2014). The interview, conducted by Ines Pujos, POB’s senior editor, covers questions of process, environmental influence, and the overall aesthetics of BEAST.

Post: ‘Self-Portrait as Beast’ was the first self-portrait poem I’d ever written. Though it was new to me, there is a long tradition of self-portrait poems (Lucie Brock-Broido and John Ashbery come to mind). I found myself most drawn to writing ‘Self Portrait as…’ poems. Rather than writing straight-up self-portrait poems about my actual self, I started treating them as almost-persona poems. In these poems, I’m not really trying to speak in the voice of someone else. I am still the speaker; I just try on different skins for a little while.”

The whole of the interview, as well as the rest of issue 4, can be read online!

Bruce Covey on "What’s New in Poetry?"

Bruce Covey doing introductions at a “What’s New in Poetry?” reading

Bruce Covey, publisher and editor at Coconut Books, recently announced the closing of “What’s New in Poetry?,” a reading series organized by Covey at Emory University in Atlanta. The series ran for 12 years, co-hosted by Coconut Magazine’s senior editor, Gina Meyers, from 2011-2014, and brought over 300 new and emerging poets to students at the university. Covey recently shed some light on the beginning and end of an expansive venture in contemporary poetry.

 

Nick: What drove you to start ‘What’s New in Poetry?’

Bruce: At the time, I was teaching Creative Writing at Emory, and the Program brought only 1-2 poets per year to campus, all of whom were recognized and widely lauded figures.  More than once my students told me about the distance they felt from these readers–they couldn’t imagine what had to happen for them to get from point A (where they were at the moment) to point B (e.g., winning a Pulitzer Prize).  Also at the time there wasn’t much of an independent reading scene in Atlanta–a pretty established slam series, but not much else.  I wanted to start a series that focused on writers with 0-2 books that took place in the Emory residence halls–bringing poetry to the students on their own terms and in their own homes.  In addition to these younger writers, I wanted to feature more established small press and experimental writers, so students could be exposed to a wide range of aesthetics (the Creative Writing department as a whole tended to favor very traditional poets).  In every case, I asked writers to hang around after the readings just to talk with students.  Pretty soon after that, the series started to draw poets from the Atlanta community.  And not long after that our audience expanded to 70-100 per event.

N: Is there a reading that sticks out in your mind, for whatever reason, as remarkable? A particular poet? A moment?

B: Honestly, I really loved all of our readers and readings–I love poetry readings, and everyone has been wonderful.  But meeting Ron Padgett for the first time was wonderful.  He was one of the first two poets (along with Ted Berrigan) I’d read and liked (in high school).  It’s the most nervous I’d been before a reading, but Ron was incredibly nice and gave an incredible reading–totally humble and funny and powerful as his work always is.  But we’ve had a lot of terrific moments.

N: Do you think the closing of the series will be a blow to the poetry community at Emory? In Atlanta?

B: I guess so?  I mean, Atlanta has some great and relatively recent reading series that have already and will continue to bring awesome poets to town.  And I’m not sure how much we remained on Emory’s radar after I stopped teaching & after Harmony Neal and Molly Brodak left as fellows–even though the series took place on campus, we didn’t draw many students over the past two years.  The gap we leave is probably one of volume (we brought more than 70 readers last year) and the fact that we could pay each reader–something I was always proud of. That said, I’m not worried about poetry thriving in Atlanta–it will continue to do so, and I’ll still be around with Coconut and other things.

 

The final events in the series are listed on Facebook. A large portion of “What’s New in Poetry?” readings can be listened to and downloaded for free via iTunes. Links to this material and a full archive of the series’ past events can be found at the Emory Poetry Council webpage.

Also, Coconut Magazine’s submission period is currently open! Head over to their site for more details.

MoviefiedNYC Interviews Ashim Ahluwalia

Miss Lovely, Future East Films

MoviefiedNYC, run by friends of Augury John David West and Myrna Duarte, sat down with Indian director and former documentary filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia (John & Jane, Thin Air), about his award-winning debut feature, Miss Lovely, recently released in NYC and set in the criminal depths of Mumbai’s C-grade film industry.

Ahluwalia talks about the business of Indian cinema and the emergence of the C-grade movie:

… [P]ornography is illegal—just to put it in context—any kind of pornographic material is illegal; it will get you a minimum of three years. It’s non-bailable. So when you think about these movies, they’re not B-movies, which want to be real movies; they’re C-grade movies that are made for the excuse for these sex bits to be illegally interspersed. They get interspersed at the cinema level, and not through the censors. So these reels, in the ‘80s, used to be delivered on bicycle at night and get spliced into these movies. So you’d have a movie, which people would be waiting for the sex bit to appear. I was fascinated by this.”

MoviefiedNYC provides in-depth film criticism, reviews, lists, and film suggestions that feature old, new, and upcoming films. The site also covers film-related events happening in New York City and around the world.

Read the full interview, “Making Movies that Matter,” here.

See MoviefiedNYC’s “Best Films of 2014 So Far.”

Follow MoviefiedNYC on Facebook.

Follow MovifiedNYC on Twitter