Ellen Welcker

- Ellen Welcker - H_NGM_N #15 - H_NGM_N: an online journal & small press

Mon, 06 May 2013 01:01:56 -0400

- Ellen Welcker - H_NGM_N #15 - H_NGM_N: an online journal & small press:

eight sections of a long poem entitled “Mouth That Tastes of Gasoline” in H_NGM_N 15.

THE NEXT BIG THING

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:28:22 -0500

Jennifer H. Fortin tagged me. Thanks, Jennifer! You should read about her chapbook GIVE OR TAKE (in which she intimates, “the hidden cost of having family photos taken is having a family”) here.

What is the working title of the book?

Mouth That Tastes of Gasoline

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I dreamed I was a member of a league called the Urban Lightwing Professionals. At times I was in on the actions, and at times I was an outlier. One thing led to another, though I am still not sure if I am in or out…

What genre does your book fall under?

Sense of desperation; paranoia, real or imagined; technology as stand-in for human interactions, secret missions; overt-consumption; the general and pervasive hopelessness that leads to single-issue indignant righteousness; urban hiking; toxic ecosystems, internal and external; imaginary and nefarious plots; concepts of ‘duty’, ‘heroism,’ and ‘alienation.’

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

It would have to be an ensemble cast of nobodies, & I mean that in the best possible sense.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

A vascular alternative to a machine—beating, beating, incessantly beating.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I wrote the first section, The Urban Lightwing Professionals (a chapbook at H_NGM_N, free, downloadable, here) in winter/spring 2010, and the next sections have come out of that. So, I guess a year and change. Have been revising the other sections until late 2012.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Often I am writing to try to understand that which is too large to comprehend at face-value (this seems obvious), and in this case it’s the question of how to go from a world/nation/community/individual feedback cycle of greater and greater toxicity and chaos to a more balanced and healthy environs. Unfortunately I continue to fail at the understanding part. I read lots of good books though, in the effort to — including The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual (Or, Notes on Demilitarizing American Society), Kim Hyesoon’s All the Garbage of the World, Unite!, & my favorite book from when I was a tot, Busy Day, Busy People.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Readers who are full or part-Nebraskan, hypochondriacs and the people who love them, and those who enjoy the mysteries of biology.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

n/a

My tagged writers for next Wednesday are:

Don Mee Choi, Megan Kaminski, Drew Dillhunt

3 poems in JERRY #6

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:37:52 -0500

3 poems in JERRY #6:

thanks, Jerry!

3 poems from _A Cyborg is a Kind of Hybrid_ in Everyday Genius

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:44:18 -0500

3 poems from _A Cyborg is a Kind of Hybrid_ in Everyday Genius:

October 8, 2012

review of Kim Hyesoon's All the Garbage of the World, Unite!

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:42:16 -0400

review of Kim Hyesoon's All the Garbage of the World, Unite! :

Issue 29, Septemberish, 2012.

“Mama, Mama, fly through my window…” is the...

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:38:03 -0400

“Mama, Mama, fly through my window…” is the poem of the day for April 10, 2012 on InDigest’s Poem of the Day podcast.

"Mama, Mama, fly through my window..." in InDigest Magazine

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:35:34 -0400

"Mama, Mama, fly through my window..." in InDigest Magazine:

March 29, 2012

"The Prophet Remembers Her Being" in Phantom Limb

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:32:20 -0400

"The Prophet Remembers Her Being" in Phantom Limb:

Spring, 2012 issue

"A Cyborg Lover Would Be More Dependable" in Leveler Poetry Journal

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:27:20 -0400

"A Cyborg Lover Would Be More Dependable" in Leveler Poetry Journal:

January 15, 2012.

reading “Rice” at my poetry station at Smoke...

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:33:00 -0400

reading “Rice” at my poetry station at Smoke Farm’s Lo-Fi Arts Fest 2011!

The Urban Lightwing Professionals

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:58:33 -0400

The Urban Lightwing Professionals:

Something comes and I have to learn to speak it…

The Urban Lightwing Professionals dream fearsome baby dreams. They are numb with gossip, everything purple to them. The Urban Lightwing Professionals have lacy tentacled hearts. They have decided to do something. They will do it on their own or together, then sleep beneath undercover covers.

Upcoming Readings!

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:23:00 -0400

August 13 at Smoke Farm’s Not To Scale Arts Festival, Arlington, WA. Details TBA.
August 18 at The Off Hours Reading Series, Seattle, WA. Details TBA.
December 2, at The Nature of Words, Bend, OR. Details TBA.

..."during which time soften the eyes": Brenda Iijima's If Not Metamorphic

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:33:43 -0400

..."during which time soften the eyes": Brenda Iijima's If Not Metamorphic

The Botanical Garden! Now available from Astrophil Press.

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:34:00 -0400

The Botanical Garden! Now available from Astrophil Press.

The Botanical Garden

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:27:26 -0400

The Botanical Garden:

A careful poet will find herself again and again faced with the difficulty of capturing the quiddity of things without reducing or stripping them of their strangeness, of telling us about the world without seeming to claim ownership..In Welcker’s hands, the stable categories…that allow us to organize and discipline our emotional responses to others—that allow us to define away the compassion we ought to feel—are made suspect. The resulting book is unsettling, unforgettable, a map of the world that respects no borders, respects no limiting names, and reminds us that “Counting is a system that does not involve seeing.” — Levi Stahl (The Quarterly Conversation).

I feel so grateful to live in a world that has books such as The Botanical Garden. Lyric elegy, futuristic science fiction, aliens and whales, oulipian listing. it is all here in this beautifully moving book. — Juliana Spahr ( NUCLEAR, THIS CONNECTION OF EVERYONE WITH LUNGS, and THE TRANSFORMATION)

"Rice"

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:17:36 -0400

"Rice" :

when you have a body / as I do our bodies will speak a language and it will exist / in-between // translate into being alive

On Not Answering The Question

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:13:00 -0400

On Not Answering The Question:

the “wire-breath” of Julie Carr’s 100 Notes on Violence (Ahsahta Press, 2009).

Trillions and Trillions of Conflicting Thoughts

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:10:00 -0400

Trillions and Trillions of Conflicting Thoughts:

Meg Hamill it is difficult, so very difficult, to praise and lament (on her Trillions & Trillions of Heartbeats, Resonant Books).

excerpt of TBG in Shampoo 37

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:05:00 -0400

excerpt of TBG in Shampoo 37:

I found myself in “Australia”; the Australian trees had skin like me.

Only Poems Can Translate Poems: On the Impossibility and Necessity of Translation

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:02:16 -0400

Only Poems Can Translate Poems: On the Impossibility and Necessity of Translation:

Books discussed in this essay:
• it. Inger Christensen. (Trans. Susanna Nied. New Directions. $17.95. 304 pp.
• Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, editors. Routledge. $47.95. 224 pp.
• The Poethical Wager. Joan Retallack. University of California Press. $24.95. 291 pp.
• Night is a Sharkskin Drum. Haunani-Kay Trask. University of Hawai’i Press. $27.00. 96 pp.
• Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre. Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Bamboo Ridge Press. $16.00. 148 pp.