Photo: an illustration from O.B.B.
This week we welcome former Queens Borough Poet Laureate (2010-2014), Paolo Javier. Javier was born in the Philippines and grew up in Las Piñas, Metro Manila; Katonah, Westchester County; El-Ma’adi, Cairo; Burnaby and North Delta, Metro Vancouver. He’s produced three albums of sound poetry with Listening Center (David Mason), including the limited edition pamphlet/cassette Ur’lyeh/ Aklopolis and the booklet/cassette Maybe the Sweet Honey Pours. The recipient of a 2021 Rauschenberg Foundation Artist Grant, Paolo Javier was a featured artist in Greater NY 2015 and Queens International 2018: Volumes.
Avenue Someday
His fifth full-length book of poetry, O.B.B., a (weird postcolonial techno dream-pop) comics poem that also includes illustrations by Alex Tarampi and Ernest Concepcion, has just been published by Nightboat Books. You can order it here.
Sardines & Oranges
“The spirit of questing, innovation, and hybridization across genres and cultural boundaries runs throughout my work—a postcolonial echolalia sounded within the margins, from inside the hyphen’s generative and po(e)tential space. Or: English is/as an occupation, the Immigrant Dream is/as a fevered language moment/imminent. A poetry generated sometimes in transit, under time constraint. Thus, a hybrid work created through a varied praxis: chance procedures, collaboration, collage, comics, cut-up, diary, ekphrasis, English(es), translation, personality tests, political theory, pop music, film edits, private and public languages, the occult, Tagalog, Mandarin, Arabic.”
