Tucson, Arizona, EE.UU.

Adam and I have been wondering what saint deserves some prayers every time we almost completely screw up on tour. For example, when we leave $5,000 worth of equipment sitting just off of 4th Ave. in downtown Tucson at midnight on a Sunday. What saint was responsible for us turning the van around and finding it there before anyone else did?

Tour with Verbobala (and all its applicable tech) is a grime ballet of one thousand swirling details. Everyday, very specific and small tasks have to get done in order for everything to line up correctly. Sending ahead press releases, booking parties to fill in dates, buying 100’ VGA cables, catching the shuttle, updating the website, etc. The good news is that by and large tour is going great. But it’s easier to notice the near-disasters, for example, realizing in Portland that I forgot my passport in Arizona.

This happened last week at 2 A.M., hours before we were scheduled to pick up the rental car and drive to Vancouver. Ensuing panic. What are the border rules? What’s up with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative? Was it pushed back again? Spring and I swung by to pick Adam up at 8 A.M. When I told him, he started laughing, much to his credit. But it was the Nervous Laugh, the one that sounds like homicide waiting to happen. We went anyway, my Dad spent his Sunday morning scanning my birth certificate, and we stopped in Seattle to print it out. Long story short, we made it into Vancouver on Sunday, April 20th.

YOU: CITY NEAR THE WIERD COAST WITH BIG MOUNTAINS AND FIVE DOWNTOWNS. YOU WERE WEARING BROKEN SKIES AND READING IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH AT THE SAME TIME. ME: MOHAWK’T VERBSPITTER CON CUATES IN THE RENTAL CAR, BLOWING OUT BASS IN RENTAL SPEAKERS. I DIDN’T MIND YOUR BASEMENT APARTMENTS, HEROIN DISTRICTS OR ICE COLD APRIL. I KNOW WE JUST SAW EACH OTHER ONCE, BUT I THINK I LOVE YOU A LITTLE BIT. CAN WE SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN?

Among the few upsides of the whole incident was the opportunity to feel fear of a border again. I hadn’t had that feeling since traveling in Central America and the Caribbean in 2006. The way that borders do that thing, oscillating between being Ports of Entry and Border Walls. Borders are like the surface of water. They can let you pass right through, or they can kill you. We’re taught to fear borders, and to think it would be easier to Just Stay Home.

Meanwhile, Moisés is having to deal with all of that on a constant basis. He flew from Mexico City to Mérida, Yucatán last week, in order to get a quick interview with the U.S. Embassy there. Since the Tucson Poetry Festival had passed while his artist work visa was still officially “pending,” he decided that it was time to cut our losses and apply for a tourist visa. Last Monday it was denied, and he was not told why. Maybe because the Festival had applied the work visa. Maybe because of an incident when he was a kid. Probably because the U.S. government is afraid that he will sneak away to pick strawberries or clean our toilets, nevermind that he’s an established international video artist. Apparently, US burrocracy has now driven Moi nuts and he has run off into the Yucatán jungle with some Irish girls that he met. We haven’t heard from him in days. Who could blame him?

We are a three-person group, missing our third member. Adam and I get along famously, and there are a lot of good times, but they’re always tinged with a certain bitterness that Moi Isn’t Here, that Moi Would Love This, that This Would Be Perfect With Moi. Sure, he’s been working hard in Cuernavaca, uploading pieces to our server so that we can use them in performance (and thus manifest his presence, a digital illegal immigrant). But he’s not getting to hear the applause, do the interviews, meet the people, travel. We have been told by crowds that the legal situation adds a certain urgency to our shows, which maybe it does. But Moi Isn’t Here. We talk about this a lot, and Adam called it Mourning Moi. I called it Moining. A-haha. Sin llorar, cabrones, como dice él.

So Moi lights candles to San Judás, Saint of Lost Causes. Adam and I keep up on the grime ballet, bouncing between airports and venues. Good things are happening. It looks like we’ll be touring from here on out. And we’re figuring out who to pray to.

After years of people asking, I finally have a email list. It’s focused on Verbobala, which makes sense since that’s just about all I’m focused on these days. We’ll send along tour dates, news, and spanglish albures. If you’re interested, drop me a line with your email address and I’ll send you an invite.

Also, if you want to be emailed when this site is updated, you can subscribe to dirtyverbs.com.

More soon! It’s all happening!

Great news, internetters. After more than two years, I have books available for purchase online again! Since living in Mexico, I’ve not been able to keep up with my D.I.Y. method of sending out merch bought online, until I got down with my friend Mo Browne and her company PoetCD.com. They’re a clearinghouse for indy poetry publishing, and you’ll have no problems whatsoever ordering from them. I have received tons of requests for this, so here you go!

Coming soon for the first-ever Verbobala Spoken Video US tour: new stickers, new shirts, new DVD’s, lucha masks (!), new posters and more. The tour dates are on NuestroSpace, hope to see you soon!

Merch currently available online:
All items are sold through my friends at PoetCD.com, which is SSL secured and completely safe. I vouch for them 100%.

• This Line Drawn Across Footprints, book, 2007. Second printing.
  16 poems, including 4 in both English and Spanish. Some of my best-known work from the last few years, written mostly in Flagstaff.
• Where Do Airplanes Build Their Nests?, book, 2007. Second printing.
  23 poems, all in English (except one). Work from the 2006 world travels: London, Spain, Guatemala, the Carribean, Ireland, Mexico, etc.
• Jiutepunk in the Solspace, DVD, 2007.
  Verbobala Spoken Video’s first DVD, containing highlights from nearly every performance in 2007, in the US and México. Hours of Spanglish video performance art!

Últimamente el periódico mexicano Milenio a través de su suplimentario “Laberinto” ha publicado un par de notas que son—por lo menos a mi aparecer—bien interesantes, las dos acerca de las nuevas tendencias de la poesía aquí en México. La primera, entitulada “Poesía al limite,” de Rocío Cerón, echa una miradita hacia las “nuevas” formas literarias: el spoken word, los slams de poesía, performance, etc. (Y también, por cierto, incluye una foto de nuestro grupo Verbobala Spoken Video, tomada durante el festival Poesía en Voz Alta.07 de la Casa del Lago) Después viene otra nota, “Di no al spoken word,” por Heriberto Yepez, atacando la validez de lo que se llama spoken word. Obviamente no estoy muy de acuerdo con ese infeliz, pero su comentario sí trae unos puntos interesantes y hasta ciertos.

A mí, me parece poco útil entrar en cualquier debate de cuales formas de arte si son validos y cuales no, aunque estoy seguro de que escribir de este tipo de polémica está bien para vender periodicos. Prefiero pasar mi tiempo creando mi propio arte, en vez de intentando de quitar el derecho del próximo de hacer lo suyo, solamente porque su arte no es lo que yo considero “arte.” ¿Qué es arte? ¿Qué es cultura? ¿Quién tiene derecho de inovar, jóvenes o adultos? ¿Indígenas o estadounidenses? ¿Español o inglés? Son todas cuestiones sin respuestas, y aunque es interesante considerarlas de vez en cuando, yo creo que hay espacio suficiente en este mundo para que cada quien tiene la oportunidad de crear su arte como le da la gana.

Lo que sí está muy bien es que ya la poesía está tomando una nueva fuerza en la sociedad mexicana actual—la poesía en todas sus diversas formas.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SUBJECT:
Tucson Poetry Festival 26—Poetry and Voice

OVERVIEW:

The year 2008 marks the 26th Anniversary of Tucson Poetry Festival, the longest running event of its kind in Arizona!  Tucson Poetry Festival (TPF) was founded in 1981 with the mission to celebrate—and expand the audience for—contemporary poetry. TPF has provided people with the opportunity to hear over 150 superb visiting poets in this unique annual experience, including some of the most celebrated poets of our time, as well as talented local and emerging poets.

This year, poets from Tucson and beyond join us to celebrate all aspects of Voice in poetry, as a stylistic convention and a performance tool.  This festival showcases a broad and diverse range of poetic voices—written, spoken, and signed.

This year, we have partnered with The University of Arizona Disability Resource Center who, as co-sponsors of the Festival, will provide accessibility services including ASL translation for all Readings and the Panel Discussion. 

DATES:
Thursday, April 10, 2008—Sunday, April 13, 2008

TICKET INFORMATION:
All tickets are available at The Historic Y the day of the event; no advance tickets.
Individual readings—$10
With student ID—$5
Small group sessions—$10
Festival Pass good for all events—$50
20% off groups of 10 or more

SCHEDULE:

Read the rest of this entry »

Regular readers of the site will have noticed that I’m not posting new material nearly as often as in the past, and that most of the posts in the last few months have been videos. Signs of the times, amigos.

Hola a tod@s,

well, we’re two months into jamming on the new Verbobala piece, whose working title is, well, “WORK.” This will be the first piece that we’ve created completely from scratch, rather than a combination of our solo work. We wanted to give you a glimpse of it now.

The piece will premier at the finale of the 26th Annual Tucson Poetry Festival on April 12th, 2008––US visa gods willing. After that, we’ll be touring throughout the US: to the Pacific Northwest, the East Coast, and Texas. There are also plans for the UK this fall. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please let them know.

This video shows off a bit of the shooting we’ve been doing for the piece. Lots of interviews and time spent in unusual pieces: pulque farms, mesoamerican observatories, illegal mezcal bars. Most of the work thus far has been done in Mexico, though once we start traveling the piece will take on a much more global feel. The video doesn’t include any original poetry yet… but imagine pantoums of remixed interviews, Lorca meets Eduardo Galleano meets Cummings, Mexican slam poetry, etc. etc.––this video is just a taste.

Here’s the link

There is also higher quality available.

And of course a compilation of some of our 2007 performances.

The audio is a Verbobala remix of the Zizek crew from Argentina. Jacob Cooper of Bark Bark Bark has recently agreed to collaborate on WORK’s score. The Tucson premier will also feature a collaboration with spectacle experts Flam Chen.

We have lots of tricks up our collective sleeve, and hope to see you soon.

Ink & airplanes,

Adam, Logan & Moisés

Here’s little videoart piece that I made a few weeks ago. All this time spent with Adam and Moisés is wearing off on me big time. Here’s the ‘official’ dish:

The zócalo has served as the symbolic center of Mexico City since Aztec times. Now at the heart of one of the largest cities on earth, hundreds of thousands of people walk across the huge plaza each week.

Also presented is Cochise County—-an area just over the border—-in the southern extreme of the state of Arizona, USA. The stark, depopulated landscape serves as a setting for countless illegal border crossings each year.

“Zócalo Cochise” is a short meditation on the author’s twin environments: the thriving city near where he has made his home, and the deep desert where he was born.

Video by logan phillips, 2008

Additional Camera:
Moisés Regla

Audio:
“Como Yo Soy Tan Raro”
Vargas Vil via Sonido Martines

“The Anta Project”
Sound sculpture using the US border wall as a musical instrument.
Glenn Weyant

Business / organizer stuff: This may or may not be of interest to general readers of this site, but if you’ve participated in the Slab City Slam / spoken word festival at Arcosanti in Arizona over the last seven years, you might be interested in these two letters explaining why the festival won’t be held in 2008. Not what I had hoped for, but así es. The letters are here: Read the rest of this entry »

Well chavos, we’re on the other side. 2008 already feels different, doesn’t it? It feels great. As do this year’s rhyming opportunities. Don’t be late. Or irate.

I’m in Arizona on vacation. Basically been AWOL for the last month. Sleeping, riding my bike, hiking, meditating. Trying to catch up with myself after an autumn that kept me running for months straight. Verbobala is taking off, and I didn’t have much time to dedicate to this site or Radio Dirtyverbs or many other side projects. That will be different in 2008, as I’m giving up being a professor for now. Time for going full-time again.

Adam is coming back to Cuernavaca with me, and we’ll be entering a 40 day residency at my place with Moisés. The idea is to develop an entirely new, hour-long show, which we’ll be taking on the road off and on throughout the year with Verbobala. I’ll be on the road a lot throughout the year. I’d love to come to whereever you’re living. Let me know if you have ideas.

Some random things:

• New and old poems online, previously only available to people who shelled out the clams for a book (I love them people)
  

  The Boy’s Pockets
  Arizona Freeway Sunrise
  Arnold Duncan Doesn’t Live Here
  Tell Me You’ll Never See Her Again
  I Confuse the Dead Man,
  Michael’s Fever

• Slam Revolution, a great new documentary about the worldwide poetry slam movement by Rolf S. Wolkenstein. They were in New York City at the same time I was last summer, and I make an appearance in the first few minutes of the film. Cool stuff, watch it online here, or below.
  
  
• Spoken Circus trailer. We just finished it this morning. Spoken Circus will be Verbobala’s tour partner for the fall ‘08 US university tour.
  
• I had the blessing of ringing in this here TwoThousandGreat by helping out my friends Flam Chen with a show in Bisbee, AZ. They’re heros of mine, and it was amazing to see them make several hundred people scream for minutes on end. They’re professionals at that. I also got to spend some of the first minutes of the new year flying above Brewery Gulch on those balloons. Coolest thing I’ve done so far this year. Check it out:
  

The grasses are always dancing in the median,
headbangers, seed sowers, dry spines twisting.
Freeway flowers face early decapitation—
guillotine tirewind, lit by skyfire:

here the sun is literally a star,
made of beaten copper, sharp, imperfect.
As the star pulls itself up again,
the sky goes streaked, the improbable
pattern of yellow-red, vivid.

The radio stations are just murmurs in the Spanglish static.
The cities hide behind the horizons.
The tires break grass necks.
The flowers throw themselves
like colorful, suicidal philanthropists
into the eastbound, into the westbound.

Saguaro shadows are twirling sundials
on the clock face of burning sand,
they tick, they spin, they speak
until they’re spoken to, torn down,
paved over, left in piles, sold.

The rush, the hush,
the hiss of wind and the
immutable silence of light.
The piston explosions,
the cellphone syllables.

Two realities in the same moment.
Two landscapes that never touch.

Arizona freeway sunrise.
A breeze blowing through barbwire.
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