Thylias Moss
Professor
PROFILE:
THYLIAS MOSS's most recent volume is Tokyo Butter, a
collection of poems written during the gestation of Limited Fork
Poetics, her theory of interacting language systems. In this sense, Tokyo Butter though
arriving in 2006 (from Persea) arrives as artifact; its content reveals
the history of LFP, not its current status. For if it did, it would
not contain "poems"; following Tokyo Butter, she has not written "poems"; instead, makes Poams (boundary products of an act of making) and poams (contained
products of an act of making), and these boundary and contained
products are both boundary and bounded at the same time until reaching
some Uber limit at each irreducible and unexpandable end. Not that these Uber limits are reachable or real (even within the imagination).
Before this (what she considers "welcomed" and "invited") upheaval in
her work, she published nine other books including: Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse (Persea Books, 2004; a Village Voice best book of 2004), the memoir, Tale of a Sky-blue Dress (William Morrow, 1998), and the poetry collections: Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler (Persea Books, 1997; finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems (Ecco, 1993), Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky (Persea, 1991; winner of the 1991 National Poetry Series Open Competition and of the Ohioana Book Award), Pyramid of Bone (University of Virginia, 1989; finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award), and Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman
(Cleveland State University, 1983; finalist for the Best of the Great
Lakes First Book Prize). A 1996 Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and
a recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, she has also received grants
from, among others, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment
for the Arts, and the Kenan Charitable Trust.
Thylias Moss on the poetry reading : Reading
may be part of the event; that is, there will likely be visual systems
(of which text may be a part), sonic systems (whether or not brought to
a range of human audibility), perhaps virtual systems, digital systems,
and tactile systems, all of which may be "read" or perceived or
interpreted by those experiencing them.
Thylias Moss on the workshop :
So perhaps I can't dodge a notion that a workshop is the carpenter's
delight; I want us to make things there, things whose making maybe
isn't supported in other locations, things that can come out of
explorations of the science of the impossible, things made of
interacting language systems (visual [including text], sonic, tactile,
virtual, architectural, digital systems may be language systems) in
various stages of collapse, growth, and regrowth; I want to make with impunity until the limits of making are remade each time there is an act of making.
Sample of work by Thylias Moss:
Here is a P(p)oam by Thylias Moss.
It is not offered as a way to define her work. It may not even provide
a clear sense of her work. Better if there is no clear sense, if there
remains something that needs resolving. Resist considering it
representative (though it may be representative, of any number of
things). This language system appears as undercurrent in Tokyo Butter .
Click here to go to the Quick Muse website and read dueling poems by Thylias Moss and Paul Muldoon.
Publications:
Limited Fork Theory websites (2010): 4orkology, 4orked, (2011): The Midhudson Taffy Company, Lexicon 97; Limited Fork Theory weblogs (2011): Moxie Supper (blogspot), Moxie supper (wordpress); Limited Fork video: The Forkergirl Channel, Limited Fork podcasts on iTunes (2006): Limited Fork, Limited Fork Music, Limited Fork Video Anthology; conventional books: Tokyo Butter (2006), Slave Moth (2004); Last Chance For The Tarzan Holler (1998); Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress (1998); Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems (1993); Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky (1991); At Redbones (1990); Pyramid of Bone (1989); Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman (1983); I Want To Be (1993).
Reasearch Interests:
Department Areas of Study: Creative Writing; Disability and Trauma Studies; Ecocriticism; Material Culture; Modernism; Poetry and Poetics; Science and Literature; Technology and the Humanities; Visual Culture
Primary: Limited Fork Theory: the study of interacting systems (including visual, sonic, tactile, and olfactory systems), poetry as a complex adaptive system, creativity science, the science of the impossible --especially as related to interacting language systems, digital interfaces in language systems, experimental poetry, poetry of the avant-garde, poetry as a communication tool, access studies in interacting language systems, the nature of container and contained in continuously shifting structures, three-dimensional iterations of outcomes of interactions in language systems (poams), simultaneity studies, information configuration. Examples of LFT poams (products of acts of making) are available on The Forkergirl Channel, in Limited Fork Theory websites: 4orkological Studies, 4orkology, The Mid-Hudson Taffy Company, and Lexicon 97; LFT Blogs: Moxie Supper (blogspot) and Moxie Supper (wordpress) and from Limited Fork podcasts on iTunes: Limited Fork, Limited Fork Music, Limited Fork Video Anthology
Secondary: Defining and redefining the boundaries of print objects, especially as related to poetry; presentation platforms for poetry and other poams (products of acts of making), including the acquisition of dimensionality; transitional stations in metaphor, ladders and lattices in interacting language systems, filmmaking, the application of LFP principles in multiple fields of inquiry toward the making of poams that draw from the interaction of input from multiple fields of inquiry, the poam as organism, the poam as evidence of community activity on multiple scales.
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