Cross Worlds: Transcultural Poetics

Cross Worlds engages cultural hybrids, trans-cultural alliances and associations, and the vital practice of poets working across borders.

Cross Worlds refers to cultural hybrids, transcultural alliances and associations. Contributors are from a range of places and disciplines and their work reflects the Jack Kerouac School’s unique zone of interaction, which runs parallel to more mainstream academic institutions. This fascinating compendium of documents, in essays, conversations, and Socratic raps, the vital work poets perform when they write across borders.

Publication date: June 23, 2014

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 366 pages

ISBN: 9781566893589

Featuring work by Sherwin Bitsui, Nicole Brossard, Cid Corman, Bei Dao, Samuel R. Delany, Monica de la Torre, Linh Dinh, Allen Ginsberg, C.S. Giscombe, Lyn Hejinian, Jen Hofer, Anselm Hollo, Pierre Joris, Bhanu Kapil, Myung Mi Kim, Joanne Kyger, Haryette Mullen, Eileen Myles, Akilah Oliver, Tom Pickard, Eleni Sikelianos, Cecilia Vicuña, and Nina Zivencevic

Anne Waldman is an internationally renowned poet, performer, and Distinguished Professor of Poetics at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She is the co-editor of Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action and the author of over forty books, including In the Room of Never Grieve and Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos.

 Laura Wright, co-editor of Beats at Naropa (Coffee House Press, 2009), is a poet, map librarian, volunteer firefighter, and graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. For a number of years she curated the Left Hand Reading Series in Boulder. She is the author of Part of the Design as well as various chapbooks. Her translation of Henri Michaux’s La vie dans les plis is forthcoming from Action Books.

“Equally attentive to the voices of those who have left us and those still around to ‘put fire on this crazy world,’ editors Anne Waldman and Laura Wright have herein beautifully gathered a host of high-voltage talks, panels, interviews and razor-sharp asides whose collective brilliance out burns anything this side of the sun.”

—Laird Hunt

“Filled with a variety of useful riches that traverse a dizzying array of languages, geographies, and political realities, Cross Worlds: Transcultural Poetics—like previous volumes Civil Disobediences and Beats at Naropa—continues to deliver the goods stored in the Archives of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.”

—Ammiel Alcalay

“Contemplative, illuminating, unusual, and global, Cross Worlds is an excellent compilation of the confluence of global systems and renowned workers/players/experimenters of language and culture.” 

—Tracie Morris

“This collection presents an excellent snapshot of contemporary international poetry.” 

—Cultural Weekly

“A firm belief in poetry’s inherent transformative principle properties is pervasive throughout this collection. From continents to languages, there’s a diverse offering of perspective both historical and contemporary.”

—Jacket 2