Every once in a while, an event occurs that brings home simply, fully, exactly what it is you have set out to do, seeing it fully realized in an evening, unexpected, unforgettable. The launch of STANFORD CHEUNG‘s full-length debut, STRUCTURES FROM THE STILL (Akinoga Press, Baltimore) with JC BOUCHARD (Let This Be the End of Me. Hybrid Heaven, Montreal) was such a night. Thank you, poets. knife | fork | book
STRUCTURES FROM THE STILL, the debut full-length poetry collection of Stanford Cheung, is an imperative to recall and forge an internal landscape bound by kites, transmission towers, and the shifting sky — where seemingly unrelated subjects become the very acts of narrative and perception.
CONGRATS to William and Nicole, words (on) pages, Spring 2017 Chapbook Launch with new work by STANFORD CHEUNG Kite Extension, LINDSAY CAHILL BORG EMOJI: robot sleep studies, and rob mclennan Cervante’s bones (with special thanks to AARON TUCKER, standing in for rob.)
STANFORD CHEUNG’s reading copy of Any Seam or Needlework (The Operating System, 2016) last night at knife | fork | book
A poet is plunderphonics. Living in the surreal but grasping the environment by the neck to what exists. Then it’s translated to words and redefined universally. A poet is not just a stagnant identity itself, nor is it a made identity. Anyone can be a poet as long as one holds firm to expressing themselves. I feel there is no label.
Just as it is impossible to perform tasks such as making a shirt without a seam as stated in the ballad, the process of bringing the poet’s thoughts in unison with the poem can be, if not, just as impossible as the tasks stated in “Scarborough Fair”. My playing with the consciousness of the poem is the key feature of this collection. It often starts out with a rant of mine and like a seed sown beneath the soil, it will continue to grow and as it grows, I begin to manipulate the formation of words, the rhythm and musicality of the idea in which the play on of living words brings my naked poem into life. It’s almost like the phenomena of playing with fire.
