So we're going to have Laynie and Anne stand up here,
and we have a mic we're going to pass around.
So they're going to do questions for about 10 minutes
and then you can talk to them and have them sign some books.
Thank you to Anne and Laynie So.
Thank you to Melissa.
OK, we're here.
We're going to answer anything you ask.
In two minutes.
What does a world governed by women look like?
Well, we'll see.
I feel-- I think it's already going on.
There's a subtext here.
We have some very wonderful women poets in the audience.
I don't think-- it's not a done deal.
I mean, we have to deal with, as Amiri Baraka,
calls her scandalous--
Conda-skeeza, Conda-skeeza, and she's out of those loops.
There's so many women now going into the military.
Going, I mean, it's a, I think, civil rights come into this.
You know, be able to do whatever you want, on some levels,
in the civic sphere.
Sphere.
I haven't entirely visualized it.
I feel like I'm already living in it.
Yeah.
There's another good word-- amatriatism.
Yes.
Thank you.
And Anne, actually that-- you can take that out of there,
if you want.
Questions?
Ask them questions.
They want to answer your questions.
It's a question, I guess, for Anne.
I'm not sure I have the right word, but both of the things
that you did, they are really different.
They have the quality of being entertainments.
You know, so there's the dialogue between the two
characters in the first one, and the staging of an opera.
And somehow, the quality of entertainment
which makes it less real lets it be more real.
I just-- I wonder if you can talk
about the impulse toward that deflection
and how you think you might use it.
Well, and from some point of view,
we write to engage ourselves and create
forms and structures that are part of our own way of being.
I mean, I'm interested in-- always been interested
in ritual structures.
That's the kalachakra, where you work with dreams,
work with objects, work with implements,
you work with chant, you work with visualization,
as you know, as a Buddhist.
And so those kinds of-- and then studies
in various shamanistic practices and so on.
So there's always texts, there's always body, speech, and mind.
And then thinking of the three poeias--
mytho, logo, and phano poeia.
So there's always this kind of triad of activity.
But I don't I don't know if entertainment
is the word I would use, as much as, oh, enactment, sounding.
And-- but I want to be, I want people to laugh.
Yeah.
I mean some, like, I didn't mean like watching TV.
I meant like a sort of a mask or an entertainment,
in that sort of theatrical sense.
But thank you, that's great.
This is a question for Laynie And we've
kind of had a discussion about this before, but how
does your job and having kids--
because it seems like your work is so influenced by your job
and having kids.
How does that go into your process--
writing?
How does motherhood?
Or how does work?
Or both?
It seems like, yeah.
Both.
Pretty much, like, being around--
I'm never around kids.
We've had this, like, we have talked about it.
I'm never around kids and I feel like your work
is generous in that way, and playful.
It seems to have quality and a lot
of the words, particularly the poem
you read that was for your kids.
Well, it's always evolving because kids are always
changing.
But I think the main thing was that when I became a mother,
I needed some kind of breakthrough
in order to think about time and how to work.
And before that, I'd always had a concentrated quiet around me,
where I was choosing my sources and I was deliberately--
a lot of things were taboo.
And I didn't-- I didn't choose to include them.
And when I became a mother, I realized that wasn't--
if I did that, I might have to wait
20 years to get any work done.
I needed a new strategy, and so I kind of
exploded that notion to let it-- everything participate.
And that-- for me, that was really radical
because before that, in my work, I didn't do that.
So it was really liberating.
But as I said, it's always changing as the kids and life
is always changing.
Living in the matriacy.
Laynie, it was mentioned that you won the Gertrude Stein
prize many times.
And I was wondering then if you were influenced
by Gertrude Stein heavily?
And then I thought maybe a good question for both of you
would be what were some of your really
strong, earliest influences?
I was influenced by Gertrude Stein, I think,
before I read Gertrude Stein.
And then again after I read Gertrude Stein.
And I mean, so many influences.
I mean, it could go on, but--
Give me a couple.
Definitely Emily Dickinson, and Sappho, and HD.
And novels, too, like Proust and James
and Lucille our all important writers for me.
And then my peers and living writers
have always been really important to me.
Some of the writers here today--
Alice, Mei Mei, and Anne, and Bernadette--
who the book's dedicated to.
Oh, it's so huge.
I mean, one is just reading, reading, all the time.
And I'm interested in long structures.
And I'm interested in forms like the raga in Indian music--
that sort of thing, as well.
So there was always a--
and women, women vocalizing.
You know, so that plays into a lot of this-- the great epics.
The things we were reading, many of us, back in the day.
Of course, Stein is--
oh, and I got a little, oh, irritated with her,
at a certain point.
And with all the masters, as well.
And there's one more Olson--
all these Olson conferences coming up.
And I was saying, I'm older than Olson was the day he died!
You know, what is this?
I'm still looking to these kind of figures.
But all the poetry--
the new American poetry, so-called.
So many, again, people in this room and sense of community
and coming up together around the Lower East Side,
seeing at St. Mark's.
And reading and engaged with one another's
work, and mutually supportive.
Building our own thing.
So.
Anne, I'm wondering how much you rehearse?
I mean I get the feeling that there's a lot of spontaneity.
But are you ever at home, like, scaring your neighbors,
working a routine?
Or?
Oh, I should get better at that.
No, no, no rehearsal.
I mean, sometimes I hear something first
and I like to just say it, sound it, in a way.
And I've been working a lot collaboratively
with my son, who's a musician and composer.
So we have takes of things, for recording.
We're working on another CD right now.
So that's the most.
Another take.
And I'm working with my husband, who makes movies.
And I watch him doing take after take after take,
with working off.
And so I'm interested in that process.
But it's very--
I love the rawness of just coming into the space,
having an idea of what you're going to read,
not-- it's always going to be a little different every time.
And then making the selection for the particular reading.
But I've been enjoying reading from Manatee, because it
has a lot of different moves.
I'm in-- I'm intrigued with your movement.
And I've never seen anyone move like you to.
And I--
[LAUGHTER]
I just would like to hear some of it.
And you wouldn't have to say any words
and I get a lot out of it.
Oh.
So I'd like to hear some about--
The most zen poetry, where I just.
Well, I guess, it's something about--
I always-- these forums sometimes seem limiting.
And I need-- it's never quite enough
to express what is going on in the psycho-physical system,
and the imagination.
The way things come quickly, and sort of getting.
So there's ways that the body has to take on some of it,
and work it out, and let the sparks fly.
And it was wonderful with Red Noir, the play
that Judith Malina directed in New York,
because the fourth wall comes down
for the last third of the play.
And your seats are taken away and you, too,
have to come up on the run around
and start moving with the flow.
And that's her anarchist ethos, you know,
that the people have to make the piece, as well.
So I provided texts that people can pick up easily.
And so then people are invited on stage
to mouth certain things, and move in their various gestures.
The nipple is the cause!
That was my favorite one.
And it was always--
there was always this older, wonderful actor,
who would initiate that.
Who had been with Judith for many years and it
sounded very beautiful and elegant,
the way he would do that.
The nipple is the cause.
[LAUGHTER]
So.
Anyone else?
I was wondering if you guys could
comment on your relationship with technology?
And, like, do you own a TV?
Do you feel the need to filter, the internet, everything?
Do you write on a computer, or by hand, in a notebook?
What sort of is your relationship
with technology and maybe how it's changed over the years?
I like everything.
So I like to write by hand, I like to write on a computer.
I'm amazed at all the new possibilities for technology,
and I feel like I'm just starting to tap into it.
I recently created a piece with PowerPoint presentation,
with images.
A couple presentations with poetry using that and.
I feel like it's such an exciting time to have access
to high tech, low tech.
And the possibilities for communication
with other writers in the internet, and publication,
are just terrific.
So I'm very excited about it, to see how
it will develop for all of us.
Yeah, I'd say all of the above.
But I spend probably more time reading actual books.
And I'm still very interested in creating books, and text
on page that I can read solo.
I mean, there's all these other kinds of things going on.
I mentioned working with my son.
So I'm in a studio with technology.
And my husband works with technology,
and the internet is so important.
I mean, I don't think I could--
it's been breaking down lately, and it really is a rupture.
But I love to be away from it.
I didn't bring my computer here, so I could just be in Tucson
in a different way.
Thank you.
I don't know about those kindles--
those book things.
I see people on airplanes, and it
would be great to not have to carry
all these books everywhere, you know,
that one has to read every--
a book a day, at least.
But the Kindle, what do you think?
Does anybody have?
No.
Oh, good.
Oh, there's so many Luddites here!
OK.
It's like the car.
It'll never last.
[LAUGHTER]
I wanted to ask you, you mentioned a number
of performers of one kind or another,
in different media, that--
are most of whom are professional.
And what I'm wondering is, among performers
who are not so much professional as possessed, in one
way or another, on street corners,
or in villages in northern Mexico, or wherever.
If you would talk maybe a little bit about such ones
you've met that have influenced you?
Sure, well, a lot of travels in South America, Mexico, India.
I mean, India is amazing that way.
There's just always something going on in the street.
And then going-- trying to go to festivals to hear things
like, the bowels, for example.
But they're more anonymous.
They aren't-- in Indonesia, when I was working in Bali
for the Naropa program, there's no word for art.
And it's also-- all the rituals involve art
and they are not necessarily identified.
You can go to performances that go on all night.
And people are very refined in their performance,
but it's not about that kind of thing.
So.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
But I have a question.
I'm going to ask you the last question.
I'm curious with both of you-- what's in the next nine months,
creatively?
It's an awful question, but I'll ask it anyway.
Nine months?
That's--
OK.
A year.
Thank you.
That's a hard question, because every day something new
could happen that we don't know the answer to.
[LAUGHTER]
But I guess reading and writing, hopefully.
And travel, and teaching, and--
I don't know.
I'm not sure I know specifically beyond that.
Maybe you have a better feel?
Well, I'm finishing the big Iovis epic.
I'm still about 20 pages to go, and that's
take about a year or two years to finish.
So I'm still working on the end of that.
It's about 900 pages.
And a little scary.
So I think I'll drop dead once I finish.
So I have to finish, sort of definitively finish that.
Oh, a new anthology from Naropa, of transcripts.
I've been editing transcripts from all kinds
of people in the last months.
And Naropa itself, I have a couple of catalogs here.
Our program is coming up, and that's
the biggest performance in--
well, I've just-- it's a community.
And collaboration and all kinds of things go on there.
And work with Ambrose.
And a new secret text.
I have one thing I forgot, which is the biggest
probably project I've been working on
is answering the phone.
No.
I'm co- editing a large anthology of conceptual writing
by women, with Vanessa Place and Caroline Bergvall
That's going to be coming out from Les Figues Press
eventually.
So that's a big project.
And I worked with Noah Satterstrom today.
We did some collaboration.
Well, we have to end our speaking part of our event
this evening.
But I want to thank Anne and Laynie and all of you
for coming.
The Poetry Center, all of the sponsors,
Cybele and Gail, and buy some books.
Have them sign it.
Have a lovely evening.
[APPLAUSE]