Wife Beaters & Cut-Offs: Southern Summer Comfort Book Tour
Chloe Caldwell, Elizabeth Ellen, Mary Miller, Brandi Wells and Donora Hillard are getting in a rental van and sailing the South.
I’m really excited about this. The Southern part of the US needs as much love as we can get. It’s hot down here, and we’ve got mosquitos and no gay marriage.
If you live in one of these cities (Austin, Houston, New Orleans, Oxford, Tuscaloosa or Atlanta), or if you are feeling generous, you can donate money on the tour’s Kickstarter page here.
If you catch me in Houston, I’ll buy you a beer and we can talk for a long time about racism/sexism/Tao Lin.
Here are the tour dates:
July 11th – Austin, TX – Domy Books, 7pm
July 12th – Houston, TX – Domy Books, 7pm
July 13th – New Orleans, LA
July 14th – Oxford, MS – Square Books, 6pm
July 16th – Tuscaloosa, AL
July 17th – Atlanta, GA – Beep Beep, 8pm
big-ass crunky green tomato reading notes
Done went 50+ poets in three days Alabama, something. Reading (s) questions/notes:
1. What to do with hands?
1. How long do you think about what you are going to wear?
2. Introductions longer than poems.
44. Risky: reading in southern accent because you are in The South.
11. Poetry readings in bars make the bartenders almost mime-like, hushed ordering, pouring of drinks, a reverent tinkling of glass, silent smiles. Quite lovely.
[Brandi Wells reading at The Green Bar. The can of beer in right corner low is Abe Smith‘s beer. It is a Good People IPA.]
3. POETRY (profound, hushed voice…book in hand) versus “Uh, these are some poems.” (crinkly paper in hand)
3. Read first or read last or read middle or refuse to read?
3. Inside jokes to friends during reading to larger audience as never effective?
3. Flask/no flask?
3. Revelation: I am beginning to prefer undergraduate or other poets who have not read live very often.
3. I honestly thank/congrat one poet and he blows me off. He ‘cut’ me as Hemingway used to say. A poet. It costs him one book sale and some bad word of mouth later at a beer trough. So what? Respect or hater? A tad of both, I suppose. I still dig his poetry.
4. Do you prefer podium or some physical thing to psychologically shield you from audience?
6. Moon, muses, gossamer. Three words possibly enfeebled/faded, or possibly a challenge to prove otherwise?
4. Best intro line I heard since it could be innocuous or an absolute rip-shot across bow or simply authentic or really smart-ass: “Hey ya’ll, I’m not really a poet. I wish I was, I’d be real smart.”
3. Eagerness is interesting.
ANNALEMMA SIX: IT’S GOOD
bearing the cross -- for you
I just got finished with Annalemma Six (with the Sacrifice theme), which just came out. It’s fucking awesome, and not just because it features Giant familiars like Roxane Gay, Ryan Call, Jimmy “the gangbang took place in Unit #209” Chen, J.A. Tyler, Brandi Wells, and others.
Uncategorized / 18 Comments
May 26th, 2010 / 3:07 pm
May 26th, 2010 / 3:07 pm
On Brandi Wells’s ‘Instructional’
HTMLGIANT reader Joseph Goosey asks in a recent email:
Regarding Ms. Brandi Wells’s piece in the latest PANK, could a male have gotten away with composing a similar piece, let alone publishing it in a fine journal?
Anyhow, I asked Roxane Gay, new HTMLGIANT contributor and current Associate Editor of PANK, if she’d like to respond to Goosey’s question before I posted it for others to comment on. Here’s what she sent back via email:
I definitely think a man could have “gotten away” with writing a similar story for a couple reasons. First, we don’t read blind at PANK but our submission manager assigns each file a number and if the writer doesn’t include their name in their .doc file, we have no real way of knowing who they are as we read submissions. I’m far too lazy to open up Firefox and see who wrote what as I’m reading. There was no identifying information in Brandi’s file so Instructional could have been written by anyone. I loved the story and didn’t give a thought to the gender of its author.
If I had seen a man’s name in the file, I would have thought, “eww, perv,” or “this is creepy, I hope he never finds out where I live,” but I still would have loved and chosen the story. The writing is spectacular.
I also think it’s a bit… sexist (or something) to assume that it’s somehow safer or more acceptable for a woman to write a graphic, uncomfortable story. This is not a case where it’s different for girls.
THE BRANDI WELLS REVIEW
the BRANDI WELLS REVIEW now exists. i think they accept anything. the good thing about accepting anything is that anything has a chance to please other people. there is no bad thing about accepting anything because you don’t have to read the bad things. the shit still sucks shit and the good still flushes shit. also, i really like brandi wells. read anything of hers you can. bye.
Uncategorized / 14 Comments
April 5th, 2009 / 5:06 pm
April 5th, 2009 / 5:06 pm
Reap the Willow Weep
9 new winter themed additions have been added to the Willows Wept Review. I am not usually a fan of themes. To me themed writing feels contrived and meaningless kind of like a forced shit after eating too much cheese.
I read all the posted pieces . Nothing felt contrived. Everything was vibrant.
Specifically this piece by Brandi Wells:
I’m ending the post on a high note. There is no where else to go from here.
Uncategorized / 8 Comments
February 5th, 2009 / 2:29 pm
February 5th, 2009 / 2:29 pm
MLP: 3 Reviews
I got the second batch of Mud Luscious Press chapbooks today, and read them excitedly. J.A. Tyler (editor) chose bright neon colors which, for me, reflected a certain kind of synthetic violence I found to be a unifying factor.
Rat Beast by Nick Antosca
[Spoil alert] This piece starts off fairly ‘normal,’ a first person narrative about a dour kid turned teenager having trouble at school. A Huxleyian counselor enters with treatment alternatives, the final of which takes a rather grotesque Kafkian turn (two name-drops, sorry), towards the eponymous animal. The ending is even more evocative due to the well-handled restraint in the writing.
Patience by Brandi Wells
A man carves the female reproductive system in the rind of an orange, creating a fetus in place of the fruit. At one point he “carves a fist beside the labia,” an allusion (in my sick mind at least) to fisting, or at least the manual ways women’s bodies are altered by patriarchal ideals (I’m so gay). Wells describes fallopian tubes wrapping around blades of glass and ants eating them; a kind of abortion detritus. J.A. Tyler plays well with the physical page break, embracing the most precious (bad word!) moment of the story.
In the Rape Year of the Ghetto Toddler the Houses Will Awaken by Blake Butler
To try to understand the title is to try to understand Butler’s writing, and I mean that in a good way. Butler is concerned with ideas, themes, and language–and how those three things cook down into meaning. He doesn’t explain it; but describes it, and he trusts the reader and himself enough to know that, through the thick confusion and minor nausea, his writing will be intuitively understood, and more importantly, viscerally manifested. Herein, rabbits live in bacon-greased arm sockets, wallpaper patterns dent cheeks, and a man is on vacation his whole life. Unabashed controlled chaos. Through the surrealism, I always get the feeling that Butler is talking about something less metaphysical, and more actual: an America today that might cause one to dry heave.
On a formal note, J.A. Tyler is marking MLP chapbooks with a signature ampersand in place of all ‘and.’
& it rocks.
New at My Name is Mud
New writing at My Name is Mud by familiars and faves Brandon Scott Gorrell, Kendra Grant Malone, Brandi Wells and Colin Bassett; and also Alex Rettie, Chris McSween, Mike Sikkema, Terry Deeks.
I like this sentence from Colin alot, something about the cadence and reverse thinking: “There were a lot of other people around them who were not living on the rock.”
I also like this sentence from Brandi: “the people inside got older without living.” Some of that reverse thinking again (a contradiction which is implied or actual). Brandi’s bio pic shows her doing something weird with a slinky. To be a successful writer, one must have weird bio pics.
I think ‘My Name is Mud’ was taken from the Primus song. That’s cool, though If someone started a journal called ‘Symphony No. 40 in G minor’ or ‘Baby Got Back’ I would think, ‘pretentious prick.’
Good stuff people. Good job Adam.
Uncategorized / 12 Comments
November 13th, 2008 / 3:54 pm
November 13th, 2008 / 3:54 pm
Brandi Wells is a dream person
There’s a new issue of THE DREAM PEOPLE now live, I like the Dream People, it is a surrealist/absurdist journal that’s been kicking for quite some time now, run by the good man D. Harlan Wilson. It seems there aren’t enough surreal-related venues out there by far and often when places claim surrealism they mean ‘goofy,’ but The Dream People seems to be on point with the view, and at the very least is a great read, all -isms aside.
I particularly enjoyed in this issue, Brandi Wells’s BABY. Brandi Wells has been doing a lot of interesting work lately, publishing weird, tight and image-ripping short things all around, I really like what she’s got her hands in. She also seems to be able to write about ridiculous things in a way that makes them seem sensible, which is harder than making sensible things ridiculous.
Lines like this: “She followed me to the bathroom and watched me piss, told me I wasn’t pissing right and I ought to piss better if I was going to be a mother.”
I want a Brandi Wells novel.