Month: April 2022

Anonymous Grocer 24/30: [Last to it]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Day 24 has arrived, and here I am with another multimedia episode for you! If you’ve ever listened to track four, “Shadow Journal,” of Max Richter’s symphonic 2004 marvel, The Blue Notebooks, then you’ll likely be familiar with today’s poem. The poem sampled in the Richter piece is none other than “At Dawn” by the radical Polish poet and translator, Czesław Miłosz (a poet whose own whirlwinding history could be the basis for multiple marvelous albums). After you enjoy listening to Tilda Swinton’s velveteen voice recite the poem forwards, I hope you enjoy witnessing the sepulchral brick dust resurrect itself in reverse.
Discover more about this poet here. 
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 23/30: [Leaves its unfurl]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
I first was introduced to the poetry of climate activist Kathy Jitñil-Kijiner when the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) shared her poem-video of “Anointed,” which explores the nuclear testing legacy in the Marshall Islands and the disastrous effects of nuclear fallout and waste on the people and environment. [After World War II, the United States tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands.]
Kathy, whom Vogue named a “Climate Warrior” in 2015, continues to use her written, spoken, and video poetry to educate global communities about her island country and its dangerous nuclear history, and to spark conversations about environmental action, particularly with Marshallese youth. 
Discover more about this poet here.
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 22/30: [Gloves. Silk her removes eventually]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend!
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Today, I share with you two short poems from one of my most beloved collections of translated poetry. (It was so difficult to only pick two!) Chika Sagawa is often described as the “Japanese modernist poet you’ve never heard of” and oh my, every one of her poems is a blade-edged mollusk: little encapsulated swirl worlds of shocking beauty, sublime opalescent imagery, and exquisite bone-wracking horror. Translator Sawako Nakayasu’s collection of Chika’s poetry — ranging from poetry written from 1930-1935 — is a portal to return to again and again.
 
Discover more about this poet here. 
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 21/30: [Born was I]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
April is also Arab American Heritage Month, and so today, we celebrate the poetry of Kazim Ali. Kazim’s most recent book is called The Voice of Sheila Chandra, and is inspired by and named after the British singer who was rendered almost completely voiceless in 2010 due to a rare syndrome. I am particularly drawn to writing that is in conversation with another artist, even across mediums; poetry like Kazim’s is a reminder that we are molecules in something more, something beyond vacuums; we converge and diverge and converge again, always creating (living) in the wake of others. 
Discover more about this poet here.
Watch Kazim and Sheila in conversation.
Listen to Sheila Chandra’s drone music for the rest of your day!
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 20/30: [Again. Beginning to end from story]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Today, we ring in Day 20 with the Diné poet-painter and painter-poet, Sherwin Bitsui. I once heard Sherwin begin a poetry reading with a rippling invocation of water — each sound, each word that arose from his throat was a bead on the lip of a faucet — oh, I will never forget such a sonic reverence for earthlife.
 
Discover more about this poet here. 
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 19/30: [Was I world? The taken.]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
On this Day 19, enjoy the enchantment of Anne Carson, a poet, translator, Classicist, and perennial brainstainer whose book, Autobiography of Red, has become a forever bedside holy text for me. 
 
Discover more about this poet here. 
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 18/30: [Outgrabe, raths mome]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Today is a backwards reading of the classic ‘nonsense’ poem by Lewis Carroll: “Jabberwocky” (1871), which was first included in Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Always for the love of weirdening things, I figured: why not add an extra dose of nonsensicalism to an already eccentric piece?
 
Discover more about this poet here. 
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 17/30: [Apart falling still is body]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
This Sunday, we celebrate Day 17 with the ever wise and ethereal Ocean Vuong, whose latest poetry collection, Time is a Mother, was recently released on April 5th. 
Discover more about this poet here.  
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 16/30: [Things of family, the in place]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Today’s episode gives space to the soul and spirit of Mary Oliver‘s “Wild Geese,” a poem that is sage, balm, bandage, courage, hug, friend — all at once. If there’s a poem out there that could save lives, this one is probably it. 
 
Discover more about this poet here.
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 15/30: [Looked I. Stopped I.]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Can you believe it? We’re already halfway through Poetry Month! I hope you’re enjoying our time together! Today, I present you with the research scientist-poet, Angelo Mao, whose poetry dissects the ethics of mouse labs, mythologizes the human/mouse divide, and interrogates these funded relationships of hierarchy, violence, guilt, and embodied metaphors.
 
Discover more about this poet here.  
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam