As a bit of an exercise, I wrote what amounts to two journal entries describing my weekend in heroic couplets. The content is a bit banal but I had enough fun writing these that I've put them up on the old dot-com. They will live in perpetuity here: rekgodin.com/diarism-001-002
YOU WANTED THE BEST? WELL YOU GOT THE BEST! (well, you will later this year, in any case)
Friends, strangers, and other people stalking my Instagram feed: I am thrilled to announce that the legends over at @cactuspresspoetry will be publishing MONDO TOMORROW, my second official-ass collection of poems. It’s way bigger than the last one, and you’ll be able to get your mitts on it later this year.
MONDO TOMORROW is made up of mostly science fiction-tinged poems I’ve written over the last five years about, among other things, hermits, old tech reborn, new tech malfunctioning, alien pornography, movie logic, various forms of transportation, and, inevitably, baseball. Also there’s something subtitled “an intergalactic love song in five parts” (iykyk). To paraphrase the Talking Heads, it’s more poems about dreams and transit. I had a blast writing these, and I hope you’ll have a blast reading them.
A billion thanks to Devon Gallant and Willow Loveday Little for taking on this project. I can’t wait for y’all to see these in print.
NOTE: Artwork obviously not final, this is just something I whipped up in Phonto for the occasion.
A few days ago, I was invited to a writing workshop led by local legend @willowloveday based around the “pecha kucha” form usually reserved for quick, dense PowerPoint presentations; 20 stanzas, 20 spoken seconds per stanza. I only got about 80% of the way there (turns out writing a poem that takes nearly seven minutes to read takes a while), but here are some choice nuggets I’d like to share.
Every now and again I'll photograph something and weeks later ask myself "what the fuck is this." Most of the time I'm taking a photo of the area under the couch or the bed looking for a pen or a fork or some knick-knack one of the cats tried to make disappear, but I really had to think long and hard about this one. Turns out it's the driver side front door of a Communauto I used some time ago that someone took their frustration out on. A Kia of some sort, I think. The moral of the story is—well there are two. One, don't key the rideshare sedans; save that for the Maseratis in the rich neighbourhoods. And two, take some more pictures that will confound you two weeks after you take them.
PS only key the Maseratis if the owner is an asshole
Earlier this year, the local legends at @thepitperiodical (who finally have an Instagram page, so I can now shout them out publicly and directly) saw it fit to include a short piece I wrote about the 1982 cyberpunk classic Burst City in their fourth issue. Man, I haven't had a piece of film writing in print since grad school! I am thrilled to bits to share space in this magazine with tons of cool people, a few of which I'm lucky to call my friends. Shout out to head honchos @chloemajenta and @marianajimenezar
So if you're in town and you know where to look, you can pick this baby up and read the whole thing.
The great thing about used record stores is that before going to Cheap Thrills this afternoon I had zero albums by cult German ambient synth band Software and now I have three albums by cult German ambient synth band Software
After almost three years of writing and rewriting and futzing and tweaking, I'm at a point where I'm happy enough with "Alex and Astrid," my long-gestating 2,500-word prog-rock sci-fi romance poem, that I'm officially in manuscript assembly mode. I'm sitting on enough sci-fi material that I can make a big chapbook out of it. Current working title is MONDO TOMORROW. Coming to a bookshelf near you soon 🤞
2024 was a great reading year for me (shout out to audiobooks). These were the ten best things I read this year; I wrote a bit about each one on my blog.
Roland Allen, The Notebook
Sarah Bakewell, How to Live
Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph
Roy Peter Clark, How to Write Short
Kyle Chayka, Filterworld
Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff
Jason Kirk, Hell Is a World Without You
Patrick O'Reilly, Demographics Report, November, 2023
Oliver Roeder, Seven Games
Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars
