handholding: 5 kinds by Tracie Morris

$22, 7 x 10", 128 pgs, perfect bound

with 6 digital audio files (17 tracks) for download

If you buy this book in person and it does not yet have an audio download sticker inside, please email us for a download code and we will gladly send it to you

The book & accompanying sounds files (in 17 tracks) are available together for order here; Digital album ($7) and

single tracks ($1) are also available

PURCHASE HERE

ISBN 978-1-888553-91-8

Purchases for the trade are

handled by SPD.

From the Foreword by Charles Bernstein

"For the last two decades, Tracie Morris has been transfiguring the relation of text to performance and word to sound. Such iconic Morris works as “Slave Sho to Video (a.k.a. Black but Beautiful)” and “Chain Gang” are scoreless sound poems, originating in improvised live performance. At the same time, Morris has published text-based work in Intermission (1998) and Rhyme Scheme (2012). Handholding is the first collection of Morris’ work to present a full spectrum of her approaches to poetry. This is not so much a collection of poems, as conventionally understood, as a display of the possibilities for poetry. Each work here is not just in a different style or form but rather explores different aspects of poetry as a medium: resounding, re-vising, resonating, re-calling, re-performing, re-imaginings. In handholding the medium is messaged so that troglodyte binaries like politics and aesthetics, original and translation, and oral and written go the way of Plato’s cave by way of Niagara Falls"

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Handholding: 5 kinds is a collection of experimental poetry as a creative response to 5 artistic works by innovative American, African diaspora and European–based artists’ work: Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate (recited by his son, Ernst), Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, John Akomfrah’s 7 Songs for Malcolm X, John Cage’s  4’33  and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Each of these pieces strongly contextualizes Morris' own work and practice, dealing with the undertones and overtones of race, sexuality, class, gender, ethnicity, power and art-making. Each sectionis introduced as a reflection of what each piece means to the author and how they came about. The collection contains experimental text as well as 6 audio files (17 digital tracks).  One is a “real time” response to the Kubrick film, the other is a collection of sound pieces inspired by the other artists, often recitations of the page-based texts. This is the first text and sound collection of Tracie Morris’ that is comprised of exclusively experimental work inspired by other innovative artists.

SAVE THE DATE: April 7, 2017

An Evening with Tracie Morris

Scottish Rites Cathedral, Tucson, 6pm

tickets on sale soon

"As anyone who’s gone to the movies or a poetry reading or church in a Black neighborhood or an Indian neighborhood knows, we *talk back*. We have to in order to make our own space in the performance, our own space in the world."

—Kazim Ali

Kore Press proudly presents NY poet, singer, critic, scholar, bandleader and actor, Tracie Morris, in performance on Friday, April 7, in the evening in Tucson. Morris will be presenting her poetic Talk-Back score to, or Neo-Benshi-inspired soundtrack of, Stanley Kubrich's "Eyes Wide Shut" in the grand hall of the Scottish Rites Cathedral on Scott Ave. Drinks, food, and conversation will be part of the evening's offering. As one of the few remaining artists who refused to come to AZ when SB1070 was made into law (it was recently dismantled), Tracie's April event marks 8 years since her last appearance in Tucson.

Morris's other events that week will be announced soon. Sponsors include UA Poetry Center, UA Art Museum, Tucson Noise Symposium, and private individuals.

Tracie Morris is a poet, singer, critic, scholar, bandleader and actor. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College, has studied classical British acting technique at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, American acting technique at Michael Howard Studios, is an alum of Cave Canem’s prestigious summer residency as well as residencies at MacDowell, Millay and Yaddo. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University. Her work has been presented at the Whitney Biennial, Ron Feldman Gallery, The New Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Dia:Chelsea and dozens of musical recording projects. Her books include Intermission, Rhyme Scheme and handholding: 5 kinds and is co-editor of Best American Experimental Writing (2016) with Charles Bernstein. Tracie is Professor and Coordinator of the MFA program in Performance + Performance Studies at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. 

As anyone who’s gone to the movies or a poetry

reading or church in a Black neighborhood or an

Indian neighborhood knows we *talk back*. We

have to in order to make our own space in the

performance, our own space in the world. Morris is

mighty in time and sound and this book is a score but

also an instructional manual for the creation of similar

art. Akomfrah, Stein, Kubrick, Schwitters and Cage may

be her starting points—Mullen, Bernstein and the art of

benshi her muses on the journey—but the power of

Morris’ mind and poetry happen in the *moment* and it

is entirely her own.—Kazim Ali