Luna Miguel, now in English translation
The great Spanish poet Luna Miguel has a bilingual, Spanish/English-translation book coming out from Scrambler Books, entitled Bluebird and Other Tattoos. It ships December 22nd. Here is my blurb for it:
Luna Miguel is a poet who can make me cry. Her passion for life and for poetry is uncommon. She makes language concise, supple, and exciting again. Recurring images: of birds, disease, spit, and blood, integral to a mortal, embodied poetry that reminds us ‘Death cannot be experienced neither for the living nor the dead but for the sick.’ Luna writes a poem, ‘The Beautiful World Gives Me Disgust.’ She writes, ‘I exist, therefore, / then I tremble.’ She writes of the suicidal poets, she writes of all women, she writes of the young. She writes knowing it’s a lie, she lives in the shadow of death. Luna writes of her ‘unprotected life,’ her ‘unprotected diary.’ There is no comfort in this poetry, there is hard beauty. ‘The wind was this. Being born was this. Dying without dying and without a disease was this. To tell you the truth: I am here and I need you.’ Luna.
Illuminati Girl Gang Vol. 2
The second issue of the all-female literary zine Illuminati Girl Gang, edited by Gabby Gabby, is online, featuring work by Luna Miguel, Roxane Gay, xTx, Mira Gonzalez, Cassandra Troyan, Maggie Lee, Ashley Opheim, Natalie Chin, Carolyn DeCarlo, Bunny Rogers, Alice May Connolly, and more.
Excess of bad poetry: an interview with Luna Miguel
Luna and I have been preparing this interview for five months–or, I should say, I’ve been lazy and bad enough to (with the swerving and errant dedication that is now emerging as my style) let this one sit, short as it is, raveled and incomplete since October, asking a question every few weeks, no doubt irritating Luna in bookish, unpromising bursts. Which is all so stupid, so feckless of me because of how much of a force–a clearly, as you’ll find out, erudite and redoubtable force–Luna is in contemporary literature. Eg, here she is in Elmundo yesterday. As one might expect, Luna writes with the irreverent edge of a Rimbaud, but goes beyond mere edge, beyond what one might call the chintz of aspiration, to the “elsewhere,” not of youth, but of style, which is the earmark of youth; she might be called one of those writers who is not ahead of her time, who in fact has no toehold in anyone else’s time, but rather is planted squarely in her own time, but precisely because she has founded it–not alone, but en bloc with her comrades, who are amply referred to below (in fact, what we have there is a catalogue for the future). Hers is the time of a new world poetry. Welcome her.
Power Quote: Luna Miguel
It’s impossible to support today the idea of the author as a divine entity… If we want people to approach poetry, it would be better to delete the myths.
14 crucifix clutching cocaines
5. The Bateau Press Boom Chapbook Contest is open for submissions until December 31, 2010. Fuck yes!
4. This woman is a fucking conceptual food artist and vegetable butcher.
11. Thing now is to drop F bombs at readings. Three readings, 9 readers, carpet F bombing. Even lamer is to prep the F bomb. “I know you’re college kids, but I’m about to say fuck so deal with it…” or “Hope you people can handle some fuck words. No babies in here, right?” Fuck on. Fuck off. People don’t seem as drunk as usual. Maybe the F bombs are Freudian life relief at reading sober. Fuck.
77. An interview with Luna Miguel by SJ Fowler. Thank you, 3:AM. You are a hitchhiker in my heart.
But if I think back to my youth, the truth of the matter is that I didn’t pay any attention to criticisms, reproaches, and suggestions either. So I have no authority to speak today.