Into the Field from Jacket2.org

Jeremy James Thompson is a renaissance man of the poetic arts: writer, publisher, printer, designer, teacher, and all-around organizer. On his website The Autotypograph, you can find his imprint Auto Types Press and his blog Autotypist, as well as a thorough list of his other projects and accomplishments. Thompson is also an elite bartender and mixologist, which we touch on in our conversation. We spoke on a broiling July day in New Orleans, where he moved last summer after spending several years in New York City.

Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford is a poet and video artist of the first degree. I spoke with him in Athens, Georgia on a muggy July afternoon just over a year ago. These days Alejandro makes a living as a professional VJ, touring the world regularly with the band MGMT. You can see a bit of his work for them here, and Art21 Blog has recently posted a demonstration of his Vonome video organ. Collections of his videos can be found on Vimeo and YouTube. Alejandro's poetry collection BHO is available on EOAGH, and his book Morpheu (BlazeVOX, 2009) can be purchased through Small Press Distribution.

Nick Montfort is a writer and scholar specializing in digital poetics and computational media. He has a Ph.D. in computer and information science from Penn, and is currently an associate professor of digital media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We discuss his most recent book, Riddle and Bind (Spineless Books, 2010), as well as his poetry generator series ppg256 and his early story "Kung Fu Christ." You can find more of Nick's work at nickm.com.

I interviewed Dale Smith and Hoa Nguyen at their home in Austin last August. The two studied poetry at the New University of California, and they started the Skanky Possum imprint together in the late '90s. Hoa's book Hecate Lochia came out in 2009, and her new collection As Long as Trees Last will be published by Wave Books in 2012. Dale's most recent book of poetry is Susquehanna, published in 2008, and his book Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960 will come out early next year. For more writing by Hoa Nguyen and information on her independent poetry workshops, visit Hoa-Nguyen.com. Dale Smith's blog is Possum Ego, and his anthology Slow Poetry: An Introduction nicely encapsulates his aesthetic interests. The couple and their two sons moved to Toronto this past summer, where Dale has taken a position in the English department at Ryerson University.

Sean Cole is a poet and radio producer currently based in New York City. I spoke with him last summer in Toronto, where he was living at the time. Sean's chapbook Itty City (Pressed Wafer) was published in 2003, and The December Project (Boog Literature), a collection of postcard poems, came out in 2005. Sean has contributed to numerous public radio programs, including This American Life, All Things Considered, Marketplace, and Weekend America. He produced a memorable piece on Flarf poetry for Studio 360 in 2009, and his story "Death Mask" appeared as a Radiolab podcast last month.

I met up with Patrick Durgin at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches literature, writing, and critical theory. Patrick has published books and journals under the Kenning Editions imprint since 1998, during which time he's lived in a number of poetry-rich locales: Iowa City, the Bay Area, Buffalo, Ypsilanti, and now the Windy City. In 2004 he earned his Ph.D. in the SUNY-Buffalo Poetics Program. Patrick's latest book is The Route (Atelos, 2008), a collaboration with Jen Hofer. His essay "New Life Writing," on the writing practices of Jackson Mac Low and Hannah Weiner, recently appeared in Jacket2.

Steve Evans is a critic and scholar of poetry and poetics, and a professor at the University of Maine in Orono. He helps run the National Poetry Foundation and directs the UMaine New Writing Series, for which he's hosted numerous visiting writers and scholars. Steve's research often focuses on recorded poetry readings, and he's posted many of his personal favorites on his blog The Lipstick of Noise. His in-progress Jacket2 commentary series on related issues is titled The Phonotextual Braid. You can find more of Steve's work -- including his famed Attention Span survey series -- at ThirdFactory.net. I recorded Steve at his home in Orono in August 2010.

Maureen Thorson is a poet, publisher, graphic designer, and trade lawyer living in Washington, D.C. Her first book is the haunting and hilarious Applies to Oranges (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011), recently reviewed in Jacket2. She has also written several short collections, including the PDF chap Twenty Questions for the Drunken Sailor (Dusie/flynpyntar press, 2008). Maureen is the poetry editor for Open Letters Monthly and co-curates the In Your Ear reading series at the D.C. Arts Center. She ran the Big Game Books imprint from 2006 to 2009, under which she published dozens of tinysides and chapbooks. You can find more of Maureen’s work and get in touch at reenhead.com.

Joey Yearous-Algozin is a full-time man of letters living in Buffalo, New York. He’s a Ph.D. candidate in the SUNY-Buffalo Poetics Program, co-editor of the journal P-Queue, and a member of the TROLL THREAD publishing collective. Joey’s books include The Lazarus Project: Friday the 13th (Gauss-PDF, 2011), Poor (Minutes Books, 2012), The Lazarus Project: Alien Vs. Predator, The Lazarus Project: Faces of Death, The Lazarus Project: Night and Fog, and Buried (TROLL THREAD, 2011–12). You can find his essay on the street performances of Hannah Weiner, “No One Asked You,” in Wild Orchids.

Paul Dutton is a sound poet, visual poet, essayist, and novelist from Toronto, Ontario. Paul was a member of the seminal sound poetry group The Four Horsemen from 1970 to 1988, and since 1989 he's performed in the improvisational trio CMCC with John Oswald and Michael Snow. Paul has also worked with the vocal art supergroup Five Men Singing, among numerous other collaborations. Paul's 2000 album Mouth Pieces: Solo Soundsinging is available on PennSound, and his visual work The Plastic Typewriter (1993) is on UbuWeb. You can find an online version of his 1991 poetry collection Aurealities at Coach House Books. Dutton's novel Several Women Dancing was published by The Mercury Press in 2002.