Modernism, Post-Modernism, Narrativity, Oulipo, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, Post-Colonial Literature, Feminist Critical Theory, Queer Theory, the Civil Rights Movement, and ancient lyrical poetry. Cummings. Eliot. Stein. The Chicago Manual of Style. Jeffery McDaniel. Dodie Bellamy. Kathy Acker. Jeanette Winterson. Nabokov. Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich and the fallen heroes of the second wave. Judith Butler, Jaques Derrida, George Bataille, Michele Foucault. Margaret Atwood, Linh Dinh, Akilah Oliver, Saul Williams, Sharon Olds, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez. And last but not least, those "indulgent" confessionals: Plath and Sexton.
My great mentors are Michelle Naka Pierce, Marilyn Chin, and Bhanu Kapil, author of "Incubation: a space for monsters."
Sounds Like
A rape victim screaming into a French horn being played by Donald Rumsfeld. A cool rain on the brain's sizzling summer patio. Hunter S. Thompson plus feminism = ? A kinder, gentler metal loofah. The stumbling meter of a Jehovas Witness leaving a house with an open copy of Mapplethorpe's portraits. A bitch with wheels. Overuse of the words genocide.
Anne Reynolds is a chronic writer who began her first novel at the bus stop in a blue spiral bound notebook at age nine. Born and raised in New Hampshire, she took the long way across the country (many times in cars with no ac and sweaty bandanna) to San Diego, where she currently pursues her MFA in writing.
Anne has been a performance poet for ten years, a scholar and activist for seven years, and a teacher for three years. She has been published in Bombay Gin, Tendril, and the book Two in Twenty. Her mission is to give voice to places traditionally silenced or oppressed, using poetry as a means of identifying and fighting white supremacy, violence against women and children, war, homophobia, and class discrimination. Anne also enjoys blurring the boundaries between poetry and prose, woman and man, gay and straight, and so forth. Given the rampant state of religious fundamentalism within the United States and her own lineage as a minister's daughter, she utilizes sacrilege as an ethical practice. She has been honored to share the stage with Anne Waldman, Andrea Gibson, and Saul Williams. Copies of her latest chapbook, "Omissions and Retellings", are available by request to azpublications@gmail.com.
