Tonya M. Foster and David Buuck: October 22, 2015

David Buuck presents a series of photos of urban landscapes throughout San Francisco and Treasure Island, while discussing how these places inform his poetry and work with the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-Aesthetics (BARGE). He then reads from "Taking A Reading," "Soil Sampling (2018)," and "Notes on Method: Pre-enactments (2008)" from his work "Buried Treasure Island: a detour of the future," in Cite, Site, City, concluding his performance with the pirate song, "Dead Men Don't Bite." He later takes questions from the audience, along with Tonya Foster.

Tonya M. Foster reads from a prose work in progress, alternately titled "Pay Attention To Where You At: A Mathematics of Chaos," a.k.a. "Its Difficult Subjects: Jamming Between Misery and Majesty," a.k.a. "Its Difficult Subjects. Talking Shit. At the Crossroads." Interspersed through her reading she discusses her hometown, New Orleans, then reads her "New Orleans Bibliography," before reading "Harlem Nocturn/e/s," "In/Somnia," and a portion of "In/Somniloquies" from her book A Swarm of Bees in High Court. She and David Buuck then converse and take questions from the audience.

CAConrad asks the poets about their motivations for writing about particular places. Foster talks about New Orleans, and Buuck discusses how elements of poetry can chart places in a way that's different from non-fiction per se. A student asks about Foster's use of slashes dividing the words in her poetry, leading to comments on "the work pronouns do" and bodies being marked by gender. Both Foster and Buuck discuss how place and displacement, ideas of the native and nativity, among other issues, form identity and shape their writing, concluding with Foster responding to a student's question as to how her recent move to the Bay Area has affected her.