NEW in Ex-Spec Po - Four Collaborative poems by j/j hastain & Juliet Cook!

"Barrels of guts
inside sludge trucks.
Garden whores yelling
at the drivers
to dump them
as fast as humanly possible.

But they're not human.
They are lunar
lunges with fish
dying inside the musculature
of their thighs."

j/j hastain and Juliet Cook have four collaborative poems appearing in Ex-Spec Po today!

The lines above are the beginning of the first poem.

Read more HERE - https://medium.com/the-operating-system/a-collection-of-collaborations-by-juliet-cook-and-jj-hastain-33c486819ea0

A Red Witch, Every Which Way for Halloween 2016!

Just in time for Halloween 2016, "A Red Witch, Every Which Way" has been added to the Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/473901408/new-a-red-witch-every-which-way-2016?ref=shop_home_feat_1

"A Red Witch, Every Which Way", is the new 2016 full-length poetry book collaboration by j/j hastain and Juliet Cook, newly published by a new small press, Hysterical Books!

More than 100 pages of poems!

Cover image created by Carabella Sands.

"A Red Witch, Every Which Way" is "aboil with the grotesque and macabre. These poems explore the recesses of the body in all its glory and all its shame. No one will read it and come away unscathed."

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This book is also available via the Hysterical Books website AND via Amazon.

HERE - http://www.hystericalbooks.com/#!product-page/cl84u/1a2d7e83-4bef-31d5-09e1-3326ee271c09

HERE - https://www.amazon.com/Red-Witch-Every-Which-Way/dp/0940821044

The NEW May Issue of Pith has arrived!

"The sky needs to be pulled apart
into two pieces,
one to fit in each
river down.

The river of sludgy lies.
The river of cold wet truth.
Which river will hold on
to your shimmering alabaster
thighs with stalkless barnacles?

Inside stockings live my kneecaps.
Inside my hand lies a gun
metal alloy."

from the poem "Grave Contortionism" by j/j hastain and Juliet Cook, appearing within the new issue of Pith, surrounded by lots of other poems!

HERE - http://www.pithjournal.com/project/issue-4/

Blog Tour Interview – Juliet Cook’s Writing Process

“The dead baby birds that still live inside my head and want to be re-born, even if they’re tiny and broken.”

Thank you very much to Susan Yount for inviting me to participate in this Blog Tour Interview regarding my writing process and related thoughts (and peculiar brain based entities that can be positioned into a straddling stratosphere of semi-edible, semi-grotesque poem creatures). 

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What I’m working on - Trying to stay on top of my own poetry writing and submitting – along with publishing and promoting poetry chapbooks through my one-woman indie press, Blood Pudding Press – along with the monthly update of my blog style online literary magazine, Thirteen Myna Birds – along with reading other poetry – along with creating poetic visuals via painting/collage art hybrids – and more…

This year, my Blood Pudding Press has published three different poetry chapbooks – “House on Fire” by Susan Yount, “Stick Up” by Paul David Adkins, and “They Talk About Death” by Alessandra Bava. You can read and see more about each of these unique collections at the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress .

Also, a new poetry chapbook of my own, “RED DEMOLITION”, was very recently published (in August) by Shirt Pocket Press (http://shirtpocketpress.wordpress.com/catalog/) and includes fourteen poems inspired by dissolution, discord, divergence, and instability along the lines of  (non)long lasting romantic relationships and ongoing questioning about the definition of love.

Also, a collaborative poetry chapbook by me and Robert Cole, “MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM”, which was accepted for publication over a year ago by Hyacinth Girl Press, is coming closer & closer to publication, closer to the end of this year.

I’ve been working on collaborative poems with a few other poets too, especially j/j hastain, with whom I’ve assembled about thirty poems and we are still working on more – writing new ones, revising old ones, submitting many of them, organizing some of them into chapbook format...AND, while I was in the middle of completing these blog tour answers, j/j and my collaborative chapbook manuscript, “Dive Back Down”, was just accepted by Dancing Girl Press, to be published next year!

I’ve been submitting my own second full-length poetry manuscript (on & off, with various subtractions, re-visions, and additions) for about four years now – and occasionally find myself wondering if it doesn’t fit in anywhere; if I don’t fit in anywhere ON A LARGER SCALE. 

Then again, versions of the manuscript have made it as far as being a Semi-Finalist in the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize in 2012 and a Finalist for Imaginary Friend Press in 2013, so I guess it comes close to somewhere/something.

Sometimes I wonder if my poetic content is too repetitive. Other times, I wonder if its content is not thematically linked enough for most presses to consider on a full-length scale. Even though its content strikes ME as thematically linked, the poems were not all written in a short span of time, focused on one set theme - and sometimes I get the feeling that's where the primary interest lies these days – a collection of poems purposely based on one theme - rather than my kind of ongoing similar thematic content for YEARS.

*

Why my work is different – Because it emerges from my own brain and I’m not aiming to fit in to anyone/anywhere else in particular. I am not some easy to understand cliché.  I’m a contradictory mess with semi-repetitive streaks.  My brain is a mental mini-semi with multicolored darkness. I care deeply about my creative expression, but it’s not aimed in any one concrete direction or any one group.  It’s a misshapen rotating circular flow.

It does appeal to me when my poetry receives attention, since my poetic expression is truly important to me and since I do direct lots of my time, focus, mental energy and genuine passion in the realm of poetry – but when I’m working on the writing, I’m not trying to make it fit in anywhere in particular or appeal to anyone in particular. I don’t think of myself as particularly mainstream, or purposely outsider, or overly academic, or too genre-esque. I think of myself as ME.

Also, my works’ content is somewhat different than it used to be, because my brain is somewhat different than it used to be. This is partly due to stylistic changes, but also due to an actual brain disorder/disability.

At the beginning of 2010, less than 3 months after I had turned 37, I had an unexpected carotid artery dissection - which led to an aneurysm - which led to a stroke, which caused me to lose some parts of my brain.

I am technically disabled with mild aphasia, ongoing small word issues, and other uncanny side effects. I think it was my long lasting passion for unique words, reading, writing, and poetic expression that seriously upgraded my recovery process and helped my brain to neuroplasticize itself.

My reading is still considerably slower than it used to be though, and requires more concentration. I’ve always been poetry-focused in terms of my own writing but now I am even MORE poetry focused in terms of writing AND reading.

I’ve always felt like a mixed up, mixed bag, mixed feeling mini-deluge in one way or another – but those traits combined with brain loss and love loss/marriage loss/divorce exactly one year after the stroke (causing me to question real love and anything long lasting) seem to have escalated my realization that supposedly meaningful things can suddenly and unexpectedly change.

I was lucky to live through my stroke, but instead of making me feel more positive, the experience caused me to feel somewhat more negative and “what is the point”?  I don’t mean that in a depressed sort of way.  I am very glad I am still alive, because life speed races way too fast, as it is.  But still, what is the overall point?  I don’t think there is an overall broad scale point; I think there are just small but interconnected individual points (or other shapes or flows or coagulations). Individuals can either give up on encountering anything meaningful OR choose to believe in what is important to them and focus on that while they are alive. For some people, that focus is family and raising kids; for me that focus is unique personal expression and poeticism.  I’ve never really related to un-passionate adults, bored adults, adults who don’t seem to have any particular focus or anything to do with their time. Time is extremely fast paced and limited and could very suddenly end. While you still have time remaining, why not choose your own point, space, shape, flow, force field or whatever you want to call it and focus on it while you still can?

I don’t want to hide myself, overly privatize myself, or overly focus on pleasing others.  I want to be myself, express myself, and give myself freely to whomever/wherever I choose. My own point, space, shape, flow, force field, “spiritual state” is expression-based, hoping that some of my words will last longer than my body-based life. I’ll never have enough time to get enough done – and a lot of people won’t be aware of me in any way – and even some people who are aware of me will not really understand or relate to what I’m doing -  but I will keep working on what often feels meaningful and passion inducing to me.

*

What I write about – I derive from odd impulses instigated by my own experiences, memories, thoughts, and feelings. I coagulate them into my own individual hybrids of realistic, abstract, emotional, extremities, and/or repetitions reshaped and rearranged. Ongoing mental disorders regarding self, relationships, breaking down, hurling, rebuilding, questioning. 

An amalgamation of individual womanhood fused with horror. The dead baby birds that still live inside my head and want to be re-born, even if they’re tiny and broken.

*

My process – Expressing myself rather than repressing myself. I feel like I will never be anyone’s favorite thing and that hurts my feelings, but that does not mean I have any desire to be less than I am, act different than I feel, or hide the real me.

I’d rather express my qualms and flaws and uncertainty and unease instead of keeping it all inside myself, keeping myself hidden, secret, semi-fake, and feeling as if the real me barely exists. I’d rather reveal myself, even if many don’t relate to my sorts of expression. For me, extraction of negative brain waves via poetic/artistic expression is far preferable to keeping such feelings hidden. Expressing deviation or darkness can be empowering; can release space for temporary light.

Up until the last few years, I almost always started my writing process by hand, on paper, lying on my stomach on the floor. I didn’t start typing a poem in progress on the computer until it felt pretty close to being done.  In recent years, since I’ve been more focused on collaborative writing with poets who aren’t physically near me, most of my writing process has been online – and frankly, I haven’t even been spending enough time on the ground with my own poetry.

Also, in recent years, it has crossed my mind quite a few times that perhaps I should abandon (or at least put on hold for a few years) my Blood Pudding Press publishing endeavors, since that takes up a significant amount of my time and energy – and that in combination with the fact that I have slower reading skills than I used to, has caused my own writing and reading to fall farther and farther behind.  I have hundreds of unread books on my floors and feel like I’ll never come anywhere near to catching up unless I focus on spending substantially more time in that direction – and the only way I can do so is if I spend substantially less time in another direction.

I do think it is meaningful and important for poets to focus significantly on other poets; not just themselves  - but my Blood Pudding Press has now existed for almost 8 full years – so maybe it’s time to take a break and focus more directly on rebirthing my own process again.

This is not an official announcement, because I haven’t decided the exact details or time frame yet, but I’m tentatively thinking I might keep the press alive for another year and then after 2015, put my press on hiatus for a few years, and then start a new press a few years later, with a somewhat different process associated with that new press too.  

*

Tag, you’re slithered in between (or underneath) my sequins (whichever way you like it) - I wish to read the answers to these interview questions by the following unique and extraordinarily slithering poet creatures (and please tag me somewhere in there so I know when your answers are up and readable/edible/in-edible/a delightfully horrid amalgamation of delicious poison treats etc…)...

(ALSO, if anyone has any questions related to any of my answers, please feel free to ask me. ALSO if any of my other poet friends have not been tagged to participate in this interview yet and are dying to do it, feel free to let me know and I can add you to my tag list below.)

Alessandra Bava, Paul David Adkins, Lora Bloom, John Burroughs, j/j hastain, and Margaret Bashaar!

Six Collaborative Poems by j/j/hastain and Juliet Cook at ALTPOETICS

Like a bee moth with bloody honeycomb lips.
Whose mouth will you sting next?
Whose mouth will become your own
next sticky chrysalis space?

from Inside Out, one of six collaborative poems by j/j hastain and Juliet Cook, now up at ALTPOETICS

here - http://altpoetics.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/six-poems-by-juliet-cook-and-jj-hastain/

Blood Pudding Press's reaction to “Secret Letters” by j/j hastain, published by Crisis Chronicles Press (CC #47)

Intro:

This isn’t going to be a standard book review, so much as a small array of thoughts and feelings derived from partaking of its content.

Well, I guess the first part could be perceived as akin to a semi-standard mini-review – but then the red part in the middle is focused on personal divergence regarding female blood flow and clots and positive/negative creative horrific overly personal goop – and then when the font color turns black again, the two perspectives fuse together and end my review. I’ll go ahead and number them into three sections, in case some people would rather avoid the overly personal section two.

Part 1: (Mini- Review)

“There are ways to turn the orbs inside out without having to break them."

Like most of j/j hastain’s poetry collections that I’ve read, much of the content fuses visceral imagery with the mind’s perception of mental/physical relationships, how the body responds and why.  The mind and body fusion is not just focused on the outer body, but also inwardly.  In “Secret Letters”, this inward focus includes positioning, the liquids inside, and different kinds of perception of (experimentation with) insemination and reproduction, both mental and physical.

“I told them to tie me to the cross that had never been forced upright."

The liquids inside could be explored as an attempt to discover one’s own non-traditional mind/body connections and/or desires and/or spirituality - to find oneself (and/or another variation of oneself and/or a partner for oneself) on a deeper level.

“Digging in the moist meadow I unearthed a set of swan wings that had been dyed red. The wings were

somehow animate and flapping without them having a center”

Much of j/j’s work is described as having a cross-genre, trans-genre focus and while I don’t disagree with that, most of the recent content I’ve read by j/j strikes me as uniquely feminine, in which the primary genre amalgamation seems womanly and earthly – female mind and body combined with the ground, dirt, water, plants (transplants), animals, birds, and blood flow.  Underground, buried down, dug up, re-birthed, renewed and open to more exploration.

***

Part 2:  (Overly Personal Goop)

Of course not every male or female or gender-perception or genre-perception (or everyone’s viewing of gender and genre) is the same – but regarding how I view some of j/j’s content, one way in which its bodily perception feels different from mine is regarding female blood flow (or at least the way I interpret its perception of female blood flow).  

Here are a few more lines from the “Secret Letters” and how they got my mind and body flowing:

“This morning I am bleeding in the meadow, trying to read my clots, to perform translations by way of them while on my knees.

I see lace ladders in the red. I want these lace ladders to be edible to you”

My perception of such lines could differ depending on my state of mind when I read it, but when I read it the other day (and various other parts of the “Secret Letters” too), I initially had a hard time with it, not because of its writing style, but because its body based content seemed female blood flow positive to the point of desiring to explore one’s own menstrual clots like edible art and share them with “you”.  

Since I personally happen to be in the midst of feeling uncomfortable with my own body (partly based on a middle aged mini mid-life crisis, no partner, not even sure what appeals to me relationship-wise or sexually anymore, and not enthralled by repeatedly exploring my own body by myself), partaking of body based exploratory content caused me to feel even more aware of/bothered by my own stomach, as if the lines were going straight into my stomach and causing it to stick out more.

Those lines got me thinking about menstrual blood and how I’ve never related on a personal level to how some people seem to perceive the menstrual cycle/ovulation/fertility as an empowering force field of womanhood, the choice to give birth, the choice to not give birth, life/death power.  It’s not that I don’t understand that perspective, but I view menstrual blood as more akin to horror movie gore art.

I desire to create art, but I have never had any desire to give birth to another human being. For me personally, I don’t feel stronger (or weaker) and more life (or death) force based than usual when clots of blood are gooping out of my vagina and into the toilet bowl (or inside or outside).   I feel uncomfortable, cramped, grossed out, and relieved I haven’t been impregnated by some other bodily fluid spew.  I’m not against the idea of using one’s own blood as part of creating art, but if I used menstrual blood in my art, it wouldn’t have a positive flow or a spiritual perspective – it would be more like a queasy-licious horror gore abortion scene.

When little clots of dark red goop drip out of my body, I’m not feeling proud to be a powerful woman with a monthly flow of vaginal blood. I’m leaning more towards blood bath and how maybe it looks like I’m oozing out tiny, grotesque, misshapen alien body parts which will soon be flushed down the drain – but then in a month, that mini creature will rebirth itself inside me like an ongoing mutilated suspension cord brimming with on & off cramping horror clots for more than 30 years until the egg sacs finally dry up and I lose my wet cunt sex drive. Not that I’m looking forward to losing my sex drive.  I’d rather deal with clotted cramp horror movie alien life form vaginal goop for another 30 years.

But I don’t feel inclined to explore my own menstrual flow (or non-menstrual flow) and the idea of literally, physically giving birth sort of grosses me out too.  If I don’t relate positively to natural reproduction, is there something unusual about my physical and mental organs? I am willing to question my mind’s contours and I am willing to try to expand them and I am willing to engage in certain kinds of body experimentation, but I am not willing to literally give birth with my body. 

With my body, I tend to feel overly bothered/borderline disturbed by any parts of it that are not small and tight - overly bothered by the parts of my body that naturally get loser as I get older. Any part of my body that stands out too much, sticks out too much, is significantly increased or decreased by consumption bothers me. It doesn’t bother me much if my clothes stand out, because those can be easily removed and replaced – but not my own body parts, both the visible parts and the visceral crevasses. I don’t desire them to suddenly expand or contract beyond my control, except for during orgasm (and I think it took me longer than average to desire that, because it involves letting go of yourself – but only temporarily – and usually I don’t even like temporarily letting go of my body if it’s just a casual fuck – and who in the fuck are you supposed to trust your body with? I don’t want to give mine to someone who would take any body they could get.)

On a less than temporal level, I can analyze what’s going on inside my mind – but how am I supposed to analyze what might be going on inside my body?  Since I can’t, I feel uncomfortable with bodily changes beyond my control.  Perhaps I should be interested in attempting to explore my own uncontrolled body more, but I don’t usually enjoy uncontrolled exploration. It reminds me of how my stomach sticks out right after I eat.  I feel like it’s either a matter of keeping my eating under control or increasing it and not caring very much about my own stomach anymore.

Granted, in “secret letters”  j/j’s body-based imagery seems to involve being in control in unique, creative, chosen  ways and/or experimenting with a (dear secret) someone/something, so I’m not sure why I suddenly got so focused on notions of experimentation beyond my control .

Also, stepping away from my own overly grossed out self, me saying I don’t particularly relate to a positive perspective on red clots doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate j/j’s perspective.  I like the exploratory slants and I like those lines I quoted, especially the “lace ladders in the red”.  Part of me also desires to be oddly and uniquely edible to someone (certainly not everyone, but someone), even the parts of myself that I view as negative and/or inedible.

I appreciate divergent possibilities, which is part of the reason I appreciate j/j’s creative work, even if some of it makes me uncomfortable.  Heck, some of my OWN creative work makes me uncomfortable too, in a different way. Eliciting discomfort and thus causing one to explore and consider and re-consider and question one’s thoughts and feelings is part of the creative process – and part of the creative flow, bloody or not.

***

Fusion Mix Finale:

“I have been pressing additive hearts onto the middles of dark trees, forming ulterior organs out of fruit pulp”

Maybe our different approaches on body and blood flow is part of the reason why the collaborative poems that j/j and I have been working on for months involve a hemorrhaging plethora of dark red goop and paradoxical body based offerings. Positive healing fetish violence intertwines with negative stabbing fantasy/reality (sexy, queasy, girly, womanly, queer). Visceral splatter paint gets revised into different shapes and sizes and contours and body based positioning and varied divergent life forms with their own vows.

j/j certainly seems to be in honor of divergence, after all:

“mixing the old, new and imagined shapes into divergent symmetries.

Rain falling both inside and outside of the glass, I court contraries in order to learn to couple with you.”

I truly appreciate that j/j’s content provokes me in different ways, even if some of the thoughts it provokes are sometimes troubling for me.

I very much liked the never-ending, ending final lines in this collection of “secret letters”:

“a she becomes a he becomes a she

 being buried re-occurringly to upkeep obscure shrines. This is a place that, when it is added to, is so

dense that it will never dry."