54---> noise & ai

This sound composition is inspired by Ai’s 1979 book Killing Floor. It represents a collaboration between myself and Godefroy Dronsart, who created/improvised the soundscape. Godefroy and I collaborated on this piece because we've been experimenting with poetic noise compositions. We wanted to hear Ai’s poetry in a sonic-world because we’ve never heard it there before.  

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Portrait of Malik Crumpler by Scott Benedict

Malik Ameer Crumpler is a poet, rapper and music producer that’s released several albums, short films and five books of poetry. He co-founded the literary journals: Madmens Calling, Visceral Brooklyn and Those That This. Malik has an MFA in Creative Writing from Long Island University, Brooklyn. He is the curator/host of Poets Live, Paris and the new editor-at-large for The Opiate. Crumpler also wrote several musicals, ballets/arias commissioned by Harvest Works, Liberation Dance Theater, Firehouse Space, Panoply Lab, B’AM Paris, B’AM Vancouver, and Double Wei Factory.

Photo of Godefory Dronsart by Sabine Dundure

Godefroy Dronsart writes poetry mainly because novels are too long and let's face it drama requires performers. He is fond of poetry which takes back alleys and has a weird limp, both full of itself and honestly altruistic.

51---> shafiq & das

Name: Mohammad Shafiqul Islam

Hometown: Tangail, Bangladesh

Current City: Sylhet, Bangladesh

Occupation: English Teacher at Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh; Poet; Translator of Bengali into English.

Age: 38

What does poetry mean to you?

Poetry is very important to me. It gives me immense pleasure, astonishes me, accompanies me at my distress, sometimes takes me far away from the mundane reality, engages me in a distinct thought process, and also makes me happy.

Poetry is a second presence in my daily life – I sometimes speak to poetry, and it also speaks to me. Poetry is what does not let me sleep, leaves me in a space that is both known and unknown. Poetry, to me, is breeze that spreads love and peace. In another sense, poetry represents what happens around us every day, what we experience in our quotidian existence, how we see the world, nature and human beings, and how we feel after a certain shocking or pleasant experience. Through poetry, we see reality in a distinct way, we travel around the world, through spaces, and we discover something new. We strive to imagine a safer world through poetry.

Poetry continues to live, keeps us alive, and we cannot survive without poetry.

Favorite Poem:

Out of many wonderful poems from around the world, I would like to mention one titled “Banalata Sen” by Jibanananda Das.

Why do you like this poet/poem?

“Banalata Sen” by Jibanananda Das is one of my favorite poems—it is indeed one of the most read and acclaimed poems in Bengali literature. The poem has been translated by several translators into English; I have read both the original and the translated version of the poem. Banalata Sen is the name of a girl who is a paradigm of beauty—she stands beside the most beautiful women characters presented by poets, writers and artists. Female beauty is glorified in the poem. Banalata is the poet’s muse who is his eternal inspiration in the creative venture.

The poet sets words in the poem in such a way that one is reminded of a great work that is created out of love—words in the poem are like pearls placed one after another to form an eternal beauty. Reading the poem means walking through a serene forest path surrounded by trees where breeze kisses the leaves with a sense of grandeur.

বনলতা সেন 

– জীবনানন্দ দাস

হাজার বছর ধরে আমি পথ হাঁটিতেছি পৃথিবীর পথে,
সিংহল-সমুদ্র থেকে নিশীথের অন্ধকারে মালয়-সাগরে
অনেক ঘুরেছি আমি; বিম্বিসার-অশোকের ধূসর জগতে
সেখানে ছিলাম আমি; আরও দূর অন্ধকারে বিদর্ভ নগরে;
আমি ক্লান্ত প্রাণ এক, চারিদিকে জীবনের সমুদ্র সফেন,
আমারে দু-দন্ড শান্তি দিয়েছিল নাটোরের বনলতা সেন ।
 
চুল তার কবেকার অন্ধকার বিদিশার নিশা,
মুখ তার শ্রাবস্তীর কারুকার্য; অতিদূর সমুদ্রের পর
হাল ভেঙ্গে যে নাবিক হারায়েছে দিশা
সবুজ ঘাসের দেশ যখন সে চোখে দেখে দারুচিনি-দ্বীপের ভিতর,
তেমনি দেখেছি তারে অন্ধকারে; বলেছে সে, ‘এতদিন কোথায় ছিলেন?’
পাখির নীড়ের মত চোখ তুলে নাটোরের বনলতা সেন।
 
সমস্ত দিনের শেষে শিশিরের শব্দের মত
সন্ধ্যা আসে; ডানার রৌদ্রের গন্ধ মুছে ফেলে চিল;
পৃথিবীর সব রঙ নিভে গেলে পান্ডুলিপি করে আয়োজন
তখন গল্পের তরে জোনাকির রঙে ঝিলমিল;
সব পাখি ঘরে আসে – সব নদী – ফুরায় এ জীবনের সব লেনদেন;
থাকে শুধু অন্ধকার, মুখোমুখি বসিবার বনলতা সেন।

BANALATA SEN

For a thousand years I have walked the ways of the world,
From Sinhala’s Sea to Malaya’s in night’s darkness,
Far did I roam. In Vimbisar and Ashok’s ash-grey world
Was I Present; farther off, in distant Vidarba city’s darkness,
I, a tired soul, around me, life’s turbulent, foaming ocean,
Finally found some bliss with Natore’s Banalata Sen.


Her hair was full of the darkness of a distant Vidisha night,
Her face was filigreed with Sravasti’s artwork.As in a far-off sea,
The ship-wrecked mariner, lonely, and no relief in sight,
Sees in a cinnamon isle sings of a lush grass-green valley,
Did I see her in darkness; said she, ”Where had you been?”
Raising her eyes, so bird’s nest like, Natore’s Banalata Sen.


At the end of the day, with the soft sound of dew,
Night falls; the kite wipes the sun’s smells from its wings;
The world’s colors fade; fireflies light up the world anew;
Time to wrap up work and get set for the telling of tales;
All birds home ─ rivers too ─ life’s mart close again;
What remains is darkness and facing me ─ Banalata Sen!

Translated by Fakrul Alam

50---> guy & collins

Name: Guy Choate

Hometown: Beebe, Arkansas

Current City: North Little Rock, Arkansas

Occupation: Communications Team Manager at an engineering consulting firm; Founder and Curator of the Argenta Reading Series

Age: 35

What does poetry mean to you?

My default literary mode is set to nonfiction prose, so a lot of times what I think of as poetry is found within larger bodies of prose. To me, so much of the poetry I come across is the isolated brilliance of a section of prose or the arrangement of words within a piece that has no flaws. The relationship written poetry has with spoken language, however, is extraordinary.

I love reading aloud, so I can feel the written word. Sometimes, when I sit down to write something for an audience, I can’t get past an initial desire I have to stand at a podium and scream words at them. (I have no idea what this means.) As a form, though, prose typically requires more context than a yell, while I think a poem can inhabit this space. A good poet needs less reason, in the space of poetry, to hit people hard with words. She doesn’t always have to think about why or where the words, or the act itself of language announcing, must “fit” in the orderly space of essay. I will always be envious of that kind of expression, one that is not obligated to linearity, and the courage to articulate from these associative places. Poetry allows a space for words that don’t always want to be explained.

Favorite Poem:

“Dharma” by Billy Collins

Why do you like this poem?

The poem calls attention to how admirable dogs are for being able to leave the house without any belongings, and I think of the poem every time I put a leash on my own dog. It becomes a subconscious mantra for me when I walk out the door; every day I tell myself, I can navigate all of this, the whole world, without the help of the material goods of a house, what I put in the house. It find it so reassuring.

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You can follow the (un)material-ridden days of Guy Choate on his very active and humorous photo-a-day blog.

49---> lindsay & spenser

Name: Lindsay Turner

Hometown: Kingsport, Tennessee

Current Town: Greenville, South Carolina

Occupation: Poet and translator, and I’m finishing my PhD in English at the University of Virginia.

Age: 32

What does poetry mean to you?

I just finished a long project about the work of making poems. For me, poetry is that activity of arranging language, really grappling with forms and words, and the meanings forms and words are charged with before you even get your hands on them. I like to think that there’s something valuable and necessary in that activity, however it gets done.

But that’s “poetry” from the poet side and not the reader side. As a reader—actually I think it’s hard to say what poetry means for people who read it, and that that’s part of what poetry is. In the same way that there’s no one way for people to be activists or to change the world, for example—I mean that it would be wrong to tell people how to do these things—poetry’s a space that has to mean lots of different things for different people. Maybe poetry helps hold spaces like that open, reminds us that they exist.

Favorite poem or poet /Why do you like this poem?

I never pick favorites. For a long time I’d hedge and say that Elizabeth Bishop was a favorite, but I have such trouble saying anything much about her poems. I’ve been on a Bernadette Mayer kick for a year or so now. I love her work because it helps me write about the spaces where I live, which is something I avoided for a long time. I’m trying to read through the collected June Jordan but I keep getting stuck reading her off-rhymes (I really like off-rhymes) over and over.

But here are a couple of stanzas from Edmund Spenser’s long elegy, Daphnaida, written in 1591. I know not everyone has this problem, but sometimes I catch myself thinking that poetry has to have some kind of intellectual interest, or at least interesting emotion. And then there’s this: poetry about stupid, repetitive, non-cathartic, boring, useless anger and grief. It doesn’t offer anything false. It just comes up out of the centuries and is right there:

'Hencefoorth I hate what ever Nature made,

And in her workmanship no pleasure finde:

For they be all but vaine, and quickly fade,

So soone as on them blowes the northern winde;

They tarrie not, but flit and fall away,

Leaving behind them nought but griefe of minde,

And mocking such as thinke they long will stay.

‘I hate the heaven, because it doth withhold

Me from my love, and eke my love from me;

I hate the earth, because it is the mold

Of fleshly slime and fraile mortalitie;

I hate the fire, because to nought it flyes,

I hate the ayre, because sighes of it be,

I hate the sea, because it teares supplyes.

‘I hate the day, because it lendeth light

To see all things, and not my love to see;

I hate the darknesse and the drery night,

Because they breed sad balefulnesse in mee;

I hate all times, because all times doo fly

So fast away, and may not stayed bee,

But as a speedie post that passeth by.

‘I hate to speake, my voyce is spent with crying:

I hate to heare, lowd plaints have duld mine eares:

I hate to tast, for food withholds my dying:

I hate to see, mine eyes are dimd with teares:

I hate to smell, no sweet on earth is left:

I hate to feele, my flesh is numbd with feares:

So all my senses from me are bereft.

‘I hate all men, and shun all womankinde;

The one, because as I they wretched are,

The other, for because I doo not finde

My love with them, that wont to be their starre:

And life I hate, because it will not last,

And death I hate, because it life doth marre,

And all I hate, that is to come or past.

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Lindsay Turner’s first collection of poems, Songs & Ballads, is forthcoming from Prelude Books in 2018. Her translations include the Franco-Japanese poet Ryoko Sekiguchi’s book adagio ma non troppo, forthcoming from Les Figues Press, and The Next Loves, by Stéphane Bouquet, forthcoming from Nightboat Books. With Walt Hunter, she is the co-translator of a book of philosophy, Atopias, by Frédéric Neyrat, forthcoming from Fordham University Press. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina.

47---> jennifer & beatty

Name: Jennifer Jackson Berry

Hometown & Current City: Pittsburgh, PA

Age: 39

Occupation: Claims Adjuster, Poet, and Editor

What does poetry mean to you?

Poetry has saved me. When life took turns that I didn't expect and when those turns left me unable to verbalize my emotions, I turned to the page. When someone tells me that one of my poems has helped them, I am so profoundly honored and so deeply happy. When I find a poem that helps me, I am indebted to that poet.

A Favorite Poem:

"I'll Write the GIrl" by Jan Beatty

Why do you like this poem?

Jan Beatty is an amazing mentor, a generous spirit, and a powerhouse poet. This poem speaks to me because I lost my way in the poetry world for a long time. I didn't write anything for nearly ten years after completing my MFA back in 2002. I didn't know how to be a poet if I wasn't going to be in the academy as a professor/teacher. I didn't think that what I was writing about was important, was high-art enough. I started writing again and found the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops, which are workshops for students and community writers that are small, supportive, and intergenerational. I found friendships, support, and validation. I learned that I'll always write the girl, too, and that my voice is important when I'm writing about her.

45---> ross & oliver

Name: Ross Peter Nelson

Hometown: Northern Montanifornia

Current City: Helena, MT

Occupation: Playwright/Photographer/Programmer

Age: Slouching towards geezerdom

What does poetry mean to you?

Poetry is the girl you watch shyly from the sidelines, wondering if she'd like you. And when (or if) you finally get up the nerve to talk to her, you don't understand her at all. Rinse, repeat. Then, after dozens of confusing encounters, there is clarity, a spark. To me, poetry is a distilled essence of a mood, situation, and poet, and it's so personal and idiosyncratic that unless we match at a nearly genetic level, the connection doesn't happen.

Favorite poem:

I love Mary Oliver's "Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard."

Why do you like the poem?

I love the contrasts: it's dark; it's whimsical; it speaks of valentines; it speaks of death. It's imagery evokes so much. Her "festal mouse" conjures up an almost Arthurian gala, and the "aluminum ladder of his scream" is both aural and visceral. Her little owl is both darling and dread. It's a portrait no painter or photographer could ever match.

Mary Oliver is attuned to nature in a way that inspires awe. Her visions are clear-sighted; when she celebrates new life in the spring, she doesn't spare the observation of the whitened bones that didn't survive winter.

There is one bit of poetic advice that I try to hold to in my own writing and that is Emily Dickinson's "tell the all truth, but tell it slant," and I love writers whose own "slant" lets me see things anew.

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Ross Peter Nelson self-identifies as a playwright but enjoys cross-genre experiences as well. His plays have been produced on three continents, and his drama, fiction, photography, and political essays have been published in magazines, anthologies, and appear online. His dark internet surveillance comedy Becoming Number Six premiered last fall in New Orleans, and he will spend October 2017 as playwright-in-residence at Can Serrat, Spain.