Poetry Mixtape Volume I

One of the great gifts of having an artist for a friend is the unique education that comes of asking what are you into? Nearly all my favorite music, writing, films, and paintings have been received as an answer to this question. Sometimes it is direct: Karl gives me a book, Ally sends me a link to a poem. Often it is indirect: A song I hear in Jane’s car as she drives me to the airport, a broadside stuck on Coco’s bedroom wall, a movie Kit cajoles me into watching. And then there is the mixtape.

Mixtapes are so cool because they're like...an intimate aesthetic sampler, comprised of beloved handpicked snippets and choicest cuts. They offer so much and demand so little. A mixtape doesn’t ask you to slog through a whole album; no need to hunt around for that one track that will finally crack open Captain Beefheart--here it is, unwrapped and waiting just for you. I love mixtapes! I love mixtapes so much that a few years ago I thought…why should this short-form DIY collage be confined to the aural world? And of course, it shouldn’t. So I started making people mixtapes made out of poems. And I started asking other people to make poetry mixtapes for me, too.

Today’s poetry mixtape was curated by Stacey Tran. I first met Stacey in 2012 when Poor Claudia, the press she edits, published a chapbook for me. I have since learned that Stacey does about a zillion amazing things, including curating a movement/text/film performance series, Pure Surface (with Danielle Ross) and serving as the executive director and curator of Cityscope, a nonprofit platform of urban/design performances, experiments, and discussions. She has a chapbook, End Solo, forthcoming from Fields Press (Spring 2015) and a chapbook, Gov Poems, forthcoming from Couch Press (Fall 2015). And, last but not least, Stacey Tran has made this killer poetry mixtape.

Yvonne Rainer, “No Manifesto.” From Dance

Sawako Nakayasu, "Texture of Needing Yellow." From Texture Notes

Hu Fang, “Three Principals of Garden of Mirrored Flowers”

Lisa Robertson, Cover art. From Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture

Tyler Brewington, “Boyfriend Mountain.” From Boyfriend Mountain

Kelly Schirmann, “Boyfriend Mountain.” From Boyfriend Mountain

Lucy Ives, “I Saw White Flowers Race To Cover My Eyes." From The Worldkillers

Jenn McCreary, “This is Poetix” from The Dark Mouth of Living: Pallaksch, Pallaksch (#1)