New book of translations from Taigu Ryokan

New book from Taigu Ryokan...The Kanshi Poems of Taigu Ryokan...his journal poems from his years as a mountain monk, translated by Larry Smith and Mei Hui Liu Huang.
Check it out. http://smithdocs.net/laughing_buddha_series_of_books

Working-Class Writing

General Characteristics of Working-Class Writing and Art:
1) The writing is based on lived experience and shows characters as human persons
in a lived space, depicting their daily life including their actual physical work.
2) The writing creates space for people to speak and represent themselves, includes speech idioms and dialects, curses and blessings.
3) The writing is communal in nature. The individual "I" is speaking for the collective "We."
4) Readers can recognize themselves in the writing; it gives validation to their own stories and culture.
5) The writing gives language to human suffering and grief. Economics forces are recognized thus giving validation to deep feelings often ignore by mainstream art.
6) The writing (art) has agency in the world, is useful.
7) The writing includes forces of history and their impact on human relationship.
8) The writing challenges dominant assumptions about aesthetics... It breaks rules or conventions of form in favor of verity of experience.
9) The writing builds consciousness of class oppression....denial of rights, exploitative marketplace, etc. and may lead to rebellion.
10) The writing takes sides..."Whose Side Are You On?" it asks and then declares.
[Source: Developed in collaboration with Janet Zandy and her Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work (Rutgers University Press)]

Photo Gallery of Cleveland Poetry Scene and Bottom Dog Press

Here are some images from the last couple years of our activitites in the Cleveland Poetry Scene.

New Addresses...

AOL went out of the business of hosting web pages this November, and so this has necessitated creating new pages on yahoo.com's small business web hosting. Please check the pages below for our newest address both for Bottom Dog Press and Larry Smith. Let us hear from you.
We have some big new books out. COME TOGETHER: IMAGINE PEACE is a big great anthology of peace poetry. Best, Larry See it at

http://smithdocs.net/foodpoems.htm

Cleveland Poetry Scenes Chronology

Please check my web page for the Cleveland Poetry Scenes chronology dated from 1945 to the present. It is extensive and open to suggestions for editing and adding to it. d.a.levy, Daniel Thompson, CSU Poetry Center, etc. http://smithdocs.net/Clevelandpoetrychron.html

Our homepage is now http://smithdocs.net

Rebel Poets Portrait

Looking for additional poets who belong here. Please add yours. Over the years, this image of the poet has evolved...beginning with the Romantic poets of Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, Thoreau...into a social and cultural outsider who sees and responds to the contemporary world. It's a position of power and insight that gives poetry a motive and works for results...nothing so small as changing the world. Anne Waldman's new book OUTRIDER (La Alameda Press, 2006) asks the question...what is the poet and the poem today? How are they tied to the world?
Here is our new homepage at Bottom Dog Press
http://smithdocs.net/

Writing and Art and Movement

As a writer I have always been more drawn by the other arts. Walking through a gallery or museum of paintings or photos can move me in stronger ways than most reading can. I've thought this is kind of like the cook who loses his taste for food, but I really do love fine writing and seek to do it. The art though seems to sneak into my mind and heart in all sorts of ways, intuitive and deep. I usually don't think the painting or photograph, it just moves into me, and I like that feeling. Now I do take inspiration from it, and it may come across in my writing, but not as consciously as does reading other writers. This is something I've observed throughout my life and am still seeking to understand. If you can help, write here. Larry