Tag: Afrofuturism

April is National Poetry Month

John Winkelman

New arrivals for the week of April 27, 2022

This past Tuesday I went to my first Open Mic night in over two years. The event, Poetry & Pie, took place at The Sparrows on Wealthy Street in Grand Rapids. It was the return of an event which had been ongoing at the cafe for some time before the pandemic closed everything down. Of course, with Tuesdays being Tai Chi night for the past thirty years, I had never attended, but now that practice has moved to Wednesday I took advantage of the opportunity and listened to some poetry.

Two new volumes arrived at the house in the past week.

First up is the latest issue of Poetry Magazine, a publication of which I have a shelf full of unread issues. But this being National Poetry Month, I am working my way through them at a rate of roughly one issue a day. So I might catch up to present by the middle of May.

Next is The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, which arrived unexpectedly as a gift from my good friend Miyah. An unexpected and appropriate addition at the start of National Poetry Month.

In reading news, in addition to the back issues of Poetry, I recently finished I Am the Brother of XX by Fleur Jaeggy, and also This Is Us Losing Count, a superb collection of Russian poetry in translation from Two Lines Press, as part of their Calico series. It’s books like these that prompt me to shell out the money for annual subscriptions to their catalogs.

In writing news, it’s all poetry, all the time, for the entire month. So far I am on track for one poem a day for 30 days and, as last year, I do so love having my mind in this space.

Links and Notes for the Week of May 6, 2018

John Winkelman

* Some words: incubate, incubus, cubiculum, cubicle, purgatory

* A small selection of Afrofuturism books to get started in the genre.

* Kim Stanley Robinson: Science Fiction is the Realism of Our Time

* Donald Trump as attention-seeking virus

* Metafilter has posted a new catch-all thread following the current hell-state of American politics. Much information to be had from links and comments therein.

* How So-Called “Right to Work” Laws Aim to Silence Working People

Links and Notes for the Week of February 25, 2018

John Winkelman

* An interesting, fun, and very strange article and comment thread, courtesy of Charles Stross. From the intro: “I am working (for reasons of my own) towards a comprehensive list of plausible techno-thriller plots from 2010 where the MacGuffin is named Satoshi Nakamoto.”

* Homecoming: How Afrofuturism Bridges the Past and the Present is an excellent article.

* Once upon a time I was a fan of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth books. Then he starting carrying water for Ayn Rand, and the decent-but-not-great quality of his interesting-but-not-innovative stories declined sharply. Now he has distinguished himself as a jackass by publicly insulting the cover artist of his latest book. The internet, of course, is having none of this and is doing an excellent job of roasting Mr. Goodkind. It appears his behavior has cost him spots at a couple of conventions, and will likely make future business with the publishing industry more difficult for him. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

* Since students are protesting their presidentially (45) approved murder at the hands of NRA-backed second-amendment fetishists and other terrorists, members of the mainstream conservative fascist and fascist-adjacent community are sending them death threats and accusing them of being crisis actors, etc. This has not stopped the students from protesting, and indeed seems to be reinforcing their will and message. To that point it is important that students (and enforcers of student-affecting rules) know which rights are in play. The ACLU has helpfully published a page which clarifies students’ rights.

* Voyages in Sentence Space is a wonderfully strange tool which “bridges” the space between two arbitrary sentences with additional sentences along a “gradient” of meaning. From the example:

  1. I went looking for adventure.
  2. I went out on a mission.
  3. I shouted awkwardly.
  4. I stared incredulously.
  5. I feel desperate.
  6. I never returned.
  7. I never returned.

Sentences 1 and 7 are user input. Sentences 2 through 6 are generated to “fill the space” between 1 and 7. Here is an example I generated:

  1. His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god.
  2. His features seized his mistressmaker, and then.
  3. True Bailey leaped through little branches at them.
  4. Send Clayton taking off his shot.
  5. No more pictures stood in things.
  6. It has returned close to none.
  7. And none returned alive, save I.

Interesting and fun in an absurdist, surrealist way. The full article details the thought and technology behind the experiment.

* At the time of the publishing of this post, I have 1,091 books cataloged at LibraryThing.