Let your voice be heard! It is most important to the republik of poets here…

In this online (Zoom) workshop we will look at protest poetry in translation, and discuss poetry of witness in its context as an historical artifact. Writers will then be given a prompt and asked to generate their own poem of protest/witness for work-shopping.

Since it is the job of writers to bear witness to the truth, and the habit of writers to read widely, think deeply and seek their own counsel rather than adopt the propaganda of their leaders and the self-serving rationalizations of their fellow citizens, it should not be surprising that writers often find themselves in mortal opposition to the state apparatus: Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel prize winning author, was stabbed for his liberal, secular political religious views. Wole Soyinka, Nigerian, had to flee for his life because of his support for democracy. Taslima Nasrin, a Bagladesh essayist who wrote in favor of women’s rights, was forced to flee to Europe under threat of assassination by religious extremists, and El Salvadoran Roque Dalton who was executed for his writing.  In the United States we have a continuous faction trying to ban books in libraries and state apparati silencing voices.

It is again a perilous time to be a poet. Let your voice be heard!

When? April 12th, 2021

Pacific: 9:00 AM (PST)

Email to request Zoom meeting information at poetrepublik (at) gmail (dot) com

A Short Essay on Protest

In fourth grade, I refused to go to school until the principal met with me about the teacher who I said was cruel. In his office, Dr. Swan agreed, the teacher was a bully but also old. I should take pity on her outdated ways. As he handed me a mint lollipop, I watched his turtles circling each other in the terrarium. Read More >

Calaveras (literally, sugar skulls,) are traditional satirical Mexican poems published on and around the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos). The celebration of the day of the dead predates the independence of the countries in North America. Read More >

The Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Presents:

Maria Garcia Teutsch
&
Danusha Laméris

Sunday, September 13, 2:00 p.m. via Zoom

Email jfellguth@sbcglobal.net by Sat. September 12 to receive a logon link

Danusha Laméris’ first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her poems have been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. She is the 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Her second book is Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series). She teaches poetry independently, and was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California.

Maria Garcia Teutsch is a poet, editor, educator and performance artist. She has published over 25 book/journals of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Hartnell College as a member of their faculty. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ping-Pong Free Press, and publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Poet Republik Ltd. Her collection, The Revolution Will Have its Sky, won the Minerva Rising chapbook competition, judge: Heather McHugh. www.marialoveswords.com

Upcoming Reading: October 11 – Ken Weisner and Nils Peterson

For more information, please contact John Laue: (831) 684-0854

Sponsored by The Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium

Poet Republik Ltd’s chose as its first micro-press publication,  J. Hope Stein’s  collection of poetry, Occasionally, I Remove Your Brain through your Nose. No spoiler alert, but there’s something going on in this collection that is a kind of petroglyph for the times we are living through. These poems are original, experiential and vital. Read on…. Read More >

READ

skiers

miss the

snow &

scientists Read More >

In May of 2014 I participated in Aller Retour Paris:  a week of art, poetry, film, and music in the heart of Paris, celebrating the city’s role in shaping Henry Miller as a writer and raconteur. Ping-Pong literary journal hosted the opening night party at Shakespeare and Company. Reading poetry while looking at Notre Dame Cathedral is kind of wondrous. I hope I never get to that place where I think that isn’t the coolest thing on earth, cuz it kinda is. I figured since I was in Paris I’d see about interviewing one of my favorite poets, Alice Notley, who kindly agreed. J. Hope Stein, my friend and newest poetry editor at Ping-Pong also came along, and together we had tea and conversation with a woman who makes life itself an art, like Henry says is the trick of the whole thing. What follows is a shortened version (you have to buy the print copy of Ping-Pong to read it in its entirety).

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
the (partial) interview with Alice Notley

by: Maria Garcia Teutsch and J. Hope Stein
May 2014 at a café in Paris, France

MGT

I find a playfulness with language and punctuation in your writing with the things that bind our language and in some ways release them. And I’m wondering if in English you find there are more boundaries on the language than you do in the French?

Alice

No (laughs). No, because English is my first language and for me it has no boundaries. But I don’t think one has more or fewer boundaries than the other.

MGT

In French everything is gender, and I know in German everything is gendered.

Alice

In English a lot is gender and nobody notices it.   And if you speak a language you don’t notice it. I don’t notice it so much in French. Mostly I strive to master it so I can speak the language. The words you expect to be feminine are never feminine.   It never works the way it’s supposed to. It all comes from Latin. I took Latin in high school and I know that gender is always unexpected. (Laughs) Read More >

another’s dream

Read More >

A Wall in Philadelphia

Yellow stenciled
digits slashed
red with spray
paint, an asemic
text November
sun comprehends
as the limit of
its reach. Deep
green weeds
glow in the rift
where asphalt
meets wall—
arched leaves
wide as any
tire in the lot
drip light, but
the lines lead
the eye:
white oval
remnant
of a name
beneath
a square
cement patch.
The poem, all
that wants
to be said,
is said—there. Read More >

“Henry at Henry” by Maria Garcia Teutsch

Henry Rollins has rocked my world for as long as I can remember. When I first heard him sing with Black Flag my body hummed for hours afterwards. Read More >