Diane Ward
WHEN YOU AWAKE
$6.50 ppd. (sold out)
BIO:
Diane Ward was born in 1956 in Washington, DC and currently lives in Santa Monica, California. She attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. She has published ten books of poetry including, most recently, Flim-Yoked Scrim, Factory School, 2006, When You Awake, New York: Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Portrait As If Through My Own Voice, Los Angeles: Margin to Margin, 2001 and Portraits and Maps (with Michael C. McMillen), Italy: ML NLF Editions, 2000. She has been included in numerous anthologies, among them: MOVING BORDERS: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women, edited by Mary Margaret Sloan (New Jersey: Talisman House, Publishers, 1998) and OUT OF EVERYWHERE: Linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America & the UK, edited by Maggie O’Sullivan (London: Reality Street Editions, 1996). She has read widely in the United States, including: District of Columbia Arts Center, The UCLA Hammer Museum, Otis Art Institute (Los Angeles), University of Pennsylvania, Small Press Traffic at New College (San Francisco), The Bowery Poetry Club and The Poetry Project of St. Mark’s Church (both in New York City), among many others. Her work has appeared in dozens of small press publications, including: The New Review, Tripwire, Crayon, Conjunctions, How(ever) Reality Studios, The Paris Review, Sulfur, The World, Raddle Moon, among others. She has received the California Arts Council Artists Fellowship in Literature, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, San Francisco State University Poetry Center’s Book of the Year Award and is listed in the Poets and Writers Directory of American Writers. Several of her poems have been set to music by the Los Angeles composer Michael Webster, including “Fade on Family” which was performed in 2005 as part of The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound series at the Schindler House in West Hollywood. She is currently working on a text for avant-garde sound performer and musician, Emily Hay.
EXCERPT:
well, it's not just passion fading now. watch the image,
the long line of ourselves, wait. our eyes' place on the
lateral horizon, as if on target, the pattern our bodies
should fold into, this time as a strategy. we're told sight
runs stagnant, cells were created when one bacteria
surrounded and overtook another. we should be
whispering if our mouths move this way: what if the
language doesn't do it anmore, if atom means that which
can't be split. whose roadside has grown this? it's pin-
drop quiet in here, even your voice stripped to yellow
stain. it's the sun that keeps coming up. when we talk,
even a fraction of evacuation is an endless chain.
common sense screams what to feel, the proctors approve
of specific meaning effects. completely surrounded by
cues. get your fur up
Diane Ward was born in 1956 in Washington, DC and currently lives in Santa Monica, California. She attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. She has published ten books of poetry including, most recently, Flim-Yoked Scrim, Factory School, 2006, When You Awake, New York: Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Portrait As If Through My Own Voice, Los Angeles: Margin to Margin, 2001 and Portraits and Maps (with Michael C. McMillen), Italy: ML NLF Editions, 2000. She has been included in numerous anthologies, among them: MOVING BORDERS: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women, edited by Mary Margaret Sloan (New Jersey: Talisman House, Publishers, 1998) and OUT OF EVERYWHERE: Linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America & the UK, edited by Maggie O’Sullivan (London: Reality Street Editions, 1996). She has read widely in the United States, including: District of Columbia Arts Center, The UCLA Hammer Museum, Otis Art Institute (Los Angeles), University of Pennsylvania, Small Press Traffic at New College (San Francisco), The Bowery Poetry Club and The Poetry Project of St. Mark’s Church (both in New York City), among many others. Her work has appeared in dozens of small press publications, including: The New Review, Tripwire, Crayon, Conjunctions, How(ever) Reality Studios, The Paris Review, Sulfur, The World, Raddle Moon, among others. She has received the California Arts Council Artists Fellowship in Literature, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, San Francisco State University Poetry Center’s Book of the Year Award and is listed in the Poets and Writers Directory of American Writers. Several of her poems have been set to music by the Los Angeles composer Michael Webster, including “Fade on Family” which was performed in 2005 as part of The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound series at the Schindler House in West Hollywood. She is currently working on a text for avant-garde sound performer and musician, Emily Hay.
EXCERPT:
well, it's not just passion fading now. watch the image,
the long line of ourselves, wait. our eyes' place on the
lateral horizon, as if on target, the pattern our bodies
should fold into, this time as a strategy. we're told sight
runs stagnant, cells were created when one bacteria
surrounded and overtook another. we should be
whispering if our mouths move this way: what if the
language doesn't do it anmore, if atom means that which
can't be split. whose roadside has grown this? it's pin-
drop quiet in here, even your voice stripped to yellow
stain. it's the sun that keeps coming up. when we talk,
even a fraction of evacuation is an endless chain.
common sense screams what to feel, the proctors approve
of specific meaning effects. completely surrounded by
cues. get your fur up