In this clip, recorded the same day I saw the Pacific Ocean in person for my first time ever, I recite my signature poem, "John Cage Engaged and Uncaged." I forget who recorded it, but will update this when I find out.
Here I perform my poem "No Other" accompanied by the River Cow Orchestra
during Fountainverse: KC Small Press Poetry Festival on 13 October 2018
at La Esquina in Kansas City, Missouri. Video recorded by Jason Preu (thank you!).
I wrote "No Other" on 30 March 2018 - inspired by Tony
Ingrisano's "Far Enemy" - for an Ekphrastacy program at Heights Arts in
Cleveland Heights. The poem first appeared in print in The Gasconade
Review Presents: Missouri Is a Ghost Shaped Thing, edited by John Dorsey
and Jason Ryberg for Spartan Press.
No Other after Far Enemy by Tony Ingrisano
A wide web of geometry and pixelation
looms over my brick suburban bungalow.
The colors warm and entice me
with creeping florescent sophistication.
I feel them drawing me up and in
while equally I am drawing them inside.
It’s a network of jasmine attraction
bringing untoward craving and resentment,
hate and cruelty from America the beautiful,
Russian bots, unacknowledged racists,
television networks, Amazon.com, nihilism
proponents, penile enhancement specialists,
trolls, moles, sexist pols and ad-mongers,
while the colors of it all bleed into pools
of need and reaction, stupefaction,
failure to listen disguised as debate,
hasty action, dystopian dissatisfaction,
snark disguised as lark and warring factions.
This poem began as an expression of appreciation
for a wide web of precious colors and pixelation
before I met the so-called far enemies
in my bathroom mirror and hardly
If you're in the Columbus area, you can pick up some books of mine - including Oct Tongue and Loss and Foundering - at Gramercy Books in Bexley, Ohio Thanks to Linda Kass for being the perfect host, and also for these photos from my reading with Anna Soter there on Friday evening.
The others are 11/4 for the Hell's Lid Reading Series in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and 11/29 at the KGB Bar's Red Room in New York City. I'd love to see you at one of these!
So far I’m resisting planning many events in 2019, although I look forward to the handful I already have scheduled. I expect to have a new book out at some point during the course of the year, however, and will likely set up more events when I have a clearer idea of when that is happening.
Second Sunday Poets featuring John Burroughs, hosted by Doc Janning at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch of Cuyahoga County Public Library, 1876 S. Green Road, 44121.
Thursday 14 March in Clarion, Pennsylvania
More details forthcoming.
Sunday 17 March in Columbus, Ohio
Peripatetic Poets, hosted by Doug Rutledge at the St. Stephen's Episcopal Church and University Center, 30 W. Woodruff Avenue, 43210.
30 August through 1 September in New Hartford, Connecticut
National Beat Poetry Festival. More details forthcoming.
I've been meaning to post a link to this video for awhile, but other things kept coming up. This clip catches me on 22 April 2018 in the middle of reading my poem "Ataraxis" during the Tongue-in-Groove Poetry Jam hosted by Ray McNiece at the Millard Fillmore Presidential Library in Cleveland's Waterloo district.
My folder full of to-do lists runneth over. I've been having some
concerning short-term memory issues lately, hence my recent round of
neuro testing. There's a good chance it could just be as simple as me
not getting adequate rest (apnea is a likely candidate, but I'm awaiting
final results) - although I do obsess about the remote possibility of
Alzheimer's, especially since DNA testing reveals that I have a gene
that makes me more susceptible to that as I age. No matter how hard
I work each day to get things done, fulfill commitments and cross
things off these many lists, it seems that every day I acquire even more
things to do. Although much (most) of these are things I love to do, it
can become a bit overwhelming at times. Especially concerning to me is
that there are several cases recently where I say I'll do things that
are important or interesting to me and if I don't write them down (maybe
I'm driving - or I'm somewhere without my lists folder) I totally
forget until something unrelated (or the person I never got back to)
reminds me. For this reason, I'm going to have to start saying no to
more things. I will still fulfill my current commitments (including
several events coming up, poems I've committed to writing, two presses
I've promised to put together manuscripts of my writing for, and 14
titles to publish in my Crisis Chronicles Press
queue, as well as catching up on updating the online Cleveland literary
calendar). But other than that, I'm going to try to say no to any new
commitments at least through the winter, by which time I'll be more
caught up and have much less to keep track of. If I was supposed to do
something for you and it hasn't happened yet, there is a high likelihood
that you're on one of these lists, in which case it will get done as
soon as I can. There's also a possibility that, despite how important it
was to me at the time, it somehow slipped through the cracks and I
forgot to write it down or get back to you, in which case I hope you
will be gentle and forgive me. I won't be offended if you send me a
reminder. Maybe I'll feel self-conscious about this post (I kinda
already do) and delete it soon. But since Facebook asked what's on my
mind, that's some of it. Now, it's back to work for me!
Crisis Chronicles Press is delighted to announce the publication of glitter witch Juliet Cook's new darkly delicious full-length poetry collection, Malformed Confetti,on 16 October 2018.
All
hail the Queen of Grotesque, Juliet Cook! Her imagery is monstrous, distorted
and unnatural — an unmistakably unstable mixture of estranged dollcanos and blood. These poems plunge
into “your neckline, your mouth, your eyes”— into the absurdities of existence,
and Cook can barely contain all that is coming apart, even “a stuck tongue
keeps breaking.” Malformed Confetti
is alive! And absolutely “plotting an insurrection.”
—Susan
Yount, editor of Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal
Juliet Cook’s full-length collection, Malformed Confetti, is a visceral examination of the body: bones, blood, teeth, breasts, ovaries, eyes, throat and thighs. Cook’s poetry is elemental grindhouse feminism; confronting what is most difficult with the unblinking eyes of a coroner. Lush and guttural, Cook leads us on a journey through a harrowing cycle of creation and destruction.
—Kelly Boyker, author of Zoonosis and Poetry Editor at Menacing Hedge
In
her second full-length collection of poetry, Juliet Cook offers up a menagerie
of beaten, bloodied, insect infested, ink ingested, broken girl bits. Her words cut into the eyes with nettles and
burs, leaving nothing but an empty socket, a hole to be filled with desire
“rooted in sick compulsion.” Cook stares unflinchingly at the sugar and spice
and everything nice to reveal the dark nature of such malformed conceptions of
beauty and womanhood. Each graphic image
is threaded with the red yarn of things that are forbidden to say, so Cook
cracks the skull open as easily as the shell of an egg. She stares the darkest horrors of the mind
straight in the eye to say “Doesn’t mean I still can’t maneuver up. / Maybe I
just don’t want to / with you." Her poems in this collection leave the
reader dazzled by blue blood and dead birds made out of the vocabulary of what
it means to be a capital P Poet.
—Tracie
Morell, author of Matilda's Battle Waltz
Poetry
that devours you. That isn’t afraid to put its best twisted doll foot forward.
I like to read Juliet’s poetry in the buff because her words keep me modest as
I rail against the perversity of playing with shit and all the anorexic
nightmares that go along with it. Her pound cake poetry fits perfectly in your
misshapen pie hole. Swallow her words like a handful of blue-tinged tacks
because there’s no standing on ceremony in this land of ravenous parasites and
machinated halos. Her well-chosen and ill-fated albino words aren’t afraid to
get their hands dirty as the maggots begin singing an emaciated melody and
there’s nothing left but her Tilt-O-Whirl porno star mannerisms. This
collection of Malformed Confetti will leave you in traction as it’s rolled
fresh from the oven and acts as a tranquilizer or dark red cloud burst
depending on your dissolution or poisoned discord and how prepared you are to
walk into the silently screaming fires.
—Charles
Cicirella, co-author of Ether Bisque
In Malformed Confetti, Juliet Cook conveys both a rare elegance and grotesque violence simultaneously. This book is
unafraid; it is not ashamed. It takes unabashed risks, and turns language into
something that is breathing, and alive with vigor. In this landscape of “secret
luminarias” the body is devoured like food, and her “tongue unroots from its
dank cave”; “bones are tapered syllables” and “hollow flutes.” There is a
vulnerability embedded in the anger and gore, and though some may say we are
“forbidden to talk about hunger,” Cook speaks of it fearless of her
rivals.
—Lisa
M. Cole, author of Dreams of the Living
and Heart Full of Tinders
Malformed Confetti by Juliet Cook is 113 pages, perfect bound, 5.5x8.5" and features cover art by Simona Candini. ISBN: 978-1-64092-973-9. Available for $12 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA.
Meet the author:
Tuesday 16 October 2018 at 7 p.m. during Poetry Plus featuring Juliet Cook at Art on Madison, 14203 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio.
Sunday 11 November at 6 p.m. during Uncloistered Poetry at Calvino's Restaurant & Wine Bar, 3143 W Central Avenue in Toledo, Ohio.
Juliet Cook [photo by Darryl Shupe, processed by Cook]
Juliet Cook has been writing poetry for more than
25 years. Her poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, both
online and in print. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently
including a collaboration with j/j hastain called "Dive Back Down"
(Dancing Girl Press, 2015), an individual collection called "From One
Ruined Human to Another" (Cringe-Worthy Poets Collective, 2018), and with
another individual collection, "Another Set of Ripped Out Bloody Pig
Tails" forthcoming from The Poet's Haven.
Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX in late 2008, ten years ago
now. Her more recent full-length poetry book, A Red Witch, Every Which
Way, is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016.
Her MOST recent individual full-length poetry book is this one, Malformed
Confetti.
The poems within Malformed Confetti
range from 2008 to 2015. In early 2010, Cook suffered from an unexpected
Carotid Artery Dissection, which lead to an Aneurysm which lead to a Stroke.
Later in 2010, while on the brink of divorce and temporarily living with her
parents, Cook began to assemble and submit an earlier version of this
manuscript. As time went on, she revised it, added more recent poems, and
rearranged it, forming it into a dissected but interconnected discombobulation
of pre-stroke and post-stroke work.
Cook's poetic style has undergone changes over the
years, but her passion for poetry lives on.
Cook also sometimes creates semi-abstract painting
collage art hybrid creatures.
Cook also runs her own tiny independent press,
Blood Pudding Press, which sometimes publishes hand-designed poetry chapbooks
and sometimes sells art.
Lodgings confirmed for Fountainverse: KC Small Press Poetry Fest this weekend in Missouri! I was unsure until the last minute whether I would actually be able to go because I needed to get Juliet Cook's
book done before I left and I've had a packed past few weeks. But we're
on track and it's all good. I won't get results for today's neuro
testing until the end of the month. Heading out of town tomorrow and
coming back Monday. Hope to see you either this weekend in Kansas City
or this Tuesday 10/16 at Art on Madison in Lakewood, Ohio, for Poetry Plus Featuring Juliet Cook, where Crisis Chronicles Press will release her highly-anticipated second full-length poetry collection, Malformed Confetti.
Many thanks to Michael DeBenedictis for recording this video of my 28 September reading at Nervous Dog Coffee on Market Street in Akron. The poems included are "Mark This," "Odd Missive," part one of "Lit (Er, a Tour)," "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Identity Crisis."
Very much looking forward to the following October lit events! At some I'll be reading. At some I'll be manning the Crisis Chronicles Press book fair table. At some I'll just be present in support of great poets whose books I recently a hand in publishing:
