Nomy Lamm:badass fatass jew dyke amputee
July 14 (AGR)— On Wed., July 23, Nomy Lamm, “badass
fatass jew dyke amputee” will be coming to perform at the ACRC.
Nomy is a feminist, body-positive writer and performer; a punk rock
diva and prophet of the apocalypse; and the creator of Transfused, an
anti-authoritarian, transgender, rock opera. For the past decade, Nomy
has published her writings in zines, magazines, and anthologies, has
fronted a number of bands, and perfomed solo as a spoken word artist,
musician, and singer. In 1997 she was voted one of Ms. Magazine’s
“Women of the Year.”
On this tour, Nomy performs electronic dance pop and accordion tunes
that dismantle old paradigms and create new, more compelling options.
In “Not A Girl,” a catchy, liberating pop anthem, Nomy declares
“I’m not a girl the way you want a girl…I was made for
my own pleasure/I was made a free man, hell I’m a free agent, I’m
an agent of change.” As a performer, Nomy injects old forms with
new meaning by utilizing the specifics of her body’s insights.
In “Dr. Frockrocket’s Vivifying (Re-animatronic) Menagerie
and Medicine Show,” she performed an intoxicating fairy-princess
dance-of-mystery which culminated in the removal of her prosthetic leg;
at another point in the show whe wore feathered wings and a metal chain,
prophesizing: “On the Eve of the End, All Hearts Will Be Open.”
She will be joined by Sini Anderson, multimedia performance poet and
co-creator of Sister Spit; and by the new hip hop sensation Rigamortis,
with queer Mexican rapper Tre Vasquez.
The show is at the ACRC, 63 N. Lexingotn Ave., July 23
at 9:00. Admission is sliding scale, $5-$15, no one turned away for
lack of funds. It is sponsored by the Women and Transgender Health Project.
Poems from prison
Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison
Raegan Butcher
Crimethinc. Workers Collective, 2003
www.crimethinc.com
Review by Jason Powers
OK. First off, I have to admit that I don’t really
like much poetry.
When I first picked this book out of a sizable to-be-reviewed pile in
the Clamor office, Jason told me CrimethInc. (obviously well aware of
the seething masses of poetry-haters) had specially requested that somebody
who does not hate poetry review this book. Being one who finds the majority
of the poetry I have seen too lofty, uninspired, or just aesthetically
awful, I replied I probably wouldn’t be the best candidate for
reviewing this, and started curiously flipping through anyway. Needless
to say (I did end up reviewing this, after all), I ended up eating my
words. Maybe I’ve just been reading the wrong poetry...
Stone Hotel is the fist installment in CrimethInc.’s “Letters
Series” and is a marked departure from their last two books, Days
of Love, Nights of War and Evasion. It is their first venture into the
“literary realm,” as opposed to the agitprop/lifestyle anarchism
slant of their previous books and pamphlets, and also their first publication
by a specific, non-anonymous author. In their words, “This is not
direct propaganda, nor is it similar in most regards to previous CrimethInc.
publications. This is a new voice, a new form, a new idea, but born
of the same fires.” According to CrimethInc, the Letters Series
ultimately will be a series of publications in which “we rewrite
our histories and create our own cultures without the mediation of corporations.”
Sounds great to me. We could all stand for a lot more of that in our
lives.
The book consists of 96 poems written from prison by Raegan Butcher,
a 34 year-old convict incarcerated in Washington State since 1996 for
armed robbery. This is his first book, and a commendable one in many
ways. These poems are meaningful and strong, each one a stark glimpse
of an aspect of prison life, a bleak, raw snapshot of that reality and
the ponderings on life that spring from it. They cut directly to the
essential feeling underlying what they’re addressing. For example,
in “love is a clenched fist,” Raegan writes: “I am surrounded/
by men who live/ in cages/ and blink in the sun/ like psychotic moles/
connoisseurs of/ hatred/ disguised as racial pride/ the tattooed husbands/
of battered wives/ who think/ love is a clenched fist.” Others
detail being strip searched by guards, being caught by the police and
processed, the vibe in the mess hall, prison power dynamics, anxiety
about getting out, suicide attempts, unfulfilled sexual desires, time,
war, his childhood, and wage slavery. Each is a little piece of the
larger picture of both Raegan’s life and prison life as a whole.
Because of this, I think the book works better in its entirety than
it would just reading one or two of the poems. The poems, on the whole,
are simply written, direct, honest, and can stand on their own, but
are stronger and better experienced in context as pieces of the entire
book.
What initially drew me to the book is the cover, a beautiful mixture
of offset printing and letterpress by Pinball Publishing in Portland,
Oregon. It is more than something to stick the pages inside; it is an
artwork unto itself. The layout is simple and attractive, white, red,
and black text superimposed on a picture of a barbed wire fence. Apparently,
each cover ran through the presses five times and the graphics were
created with an experimental printing technique using varnish on unfinished
paper to stain it, rather than coloring it with ink. The result is a
darkening of the paper where the graphic is, a nice effect.
All in all, this is a great beginning for Raegan, and another well-executed
piece of work conceived of and assembled by the folks at Crimethinc,
one of their best yet in my opinion. The attention to all aspects of
the book and all of the processes it took to create it, beyond (of course)
the poetry itself, personalizes the book, making for something more
akin to an artifact than a mass-produced item for mass-produced consumption.
And, although I think that the hand-numbered limited edition of 2000
first pressing aspect is generally a little too collector-ish for my
tastes, especially since theses things are so often used as marketing
tools, I have to admit that it does also contribute to the personal
touch of the book. And it would be a bit cynical of me to thing that
marketing was the notice behind that, wouldn’t it?
Oh, and speaking of attention to detail, don’t miss the die-cut
prison bar endsheets and the myth, told on the final page, about the
typeface, Oolakat, in which the book is printed.
Source: Clamor Magazine
