Nick has put up a mention of Liao Yiwu’s The Corpse Walker, an incredible collection of interviews by a Chinese writer and dissident. I first came across Liao’s work in an issue of the Asia Literary Review, while I was traveling in Southeast Asia. I vividly remember traveling by bus from Bangkok to Khorat, in slow, gradual pursuit of the temple of Phanom Rung, reading this article. Each time my eyes drifted out the window, within seconds they came back straight back to the page: not just because of the interviews themselves, but because of the lengths to which they went to make the book. They’re nothing short of extraordinary. And a reminder of how much we, in the West, take for granted: the ease with which we write and publish, the carefree assumption there will be no knock on the door once a book has gone to print. Unlike Nick, I’m not in a position to comment on the translations, but he’s right: the interviews in The Paris Review are worth the time regardless.

There’s a fine interview with Win Riley, director of the new Walker Percy: A Documentary Film, over at Room 220. The site is a brand-new arm of Press Street, itself a publishing house of no small repute; earlier this year they published the excellent How to Rebuild a City: A Field Guide from a Work in Progress, and threw a cracking launch party to boot. (For those not from the area, Press Street is a street that runs along the railroad tracks downriver from the French Quarter; it’s the traditional divider between the Faubourg Marigny and the Bywater neighborhoods. Bywater residents know it best as the place where you get stuck in traffic, staring at the broad iron flank of a train.)

I’ve just heard from the editors at Dark Mountain that they’ve taken several poems for their upcoming journal, Dark Mountain Volume 2. The first issue of the journal was as beautifully produced as it was powerfully imagined; I’m honored to be included in the second. In May of last year I attended Dark Mountain’s first festival, as did Abbie Garrington; their interest in narrative time, local knowledge, and political and philosophical communitarianism continues to strike a chord. They’ve just announced a call for ideas about their next festival — if you’re anywhere nearby, keep your August open. I know I will.

I have two poems up at Horizon Review, as well as a synopsis of a reading last night by Robert Hass, long an inspiration — I’ve had his poem ‘Meditation at Lagunitas’ above my desk for well on a decade. Expect it will stay there for at least another.

I’ve added a few new pages to the site: pages with information about some of my writing, most of which comes from the past few years, and a page of friends whose work I admire immensely. No doubt the latter list is sure to grow; there’s never any telling about the former.

I’m still tinkering with the layout of the site: if anyone out there in Internetland knows how to make the top window in this theme larger, I’ll write you a poem in thanks. Bear with me if it undergoes a few tweaks here and there.