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The balance of material contained within this site are works in progress, excerpts from poetry, prose and narratives of various format. Most of the selections originated as posts to my Disembodied Poetics Facebook Page and my Tumblr Page. Also featured are excerpts from The Speed at Which I Travel, Book One of the Gary Indiana Series. You can also view video excerpts of the book here. The book follows an existential, time-traveling, Midwest teenager in love and possibly in need of medication as he navigates the perils of growing up in different worlds, literally. Never quite sure if the things happening around him are real or if he’s just going crazy. It’s a coming of age story for whatever age you’re coming into.

I write in what i have come to loosely regard as disembodied poetics. If there is a strict form of this, that is not what I practice. For me, it means “real-time writing” with a minimal amount of editing, initially at least. I first heard the term when I was nineteen. I was on a cross country road trip and stopped in Boulder, CO to visit a friend. He was attending a summer writing program at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. I visited the campus, a college run by Tibetan monks, and was fortunate enough to meet Allen Ginsberg who ran the summer writing program. The idea of disembodied poetics has stuck with me ever since, as has the gaze of Mr. Ginsberg.

My informal process is to find a memory/idea and write about it as quickly as I can, before it hits the air and oxygenates, in an attempt to retain the spontaneity and true nature of the thought. I also liken it to pulling a string out of a bedspread, just to see how far it will go until it breaks off. Anyone who’s ever experienced a modicum of OCD will identify with what I mean. The rest of you can just take it in through osmosis.

I’ve read in various reading series and published in a handful of literary journals and anthologies, including The Rumpus. I sit on the board of the San Francisco literary organization Quiet Lightning and I co-founded the popular Pints and Prose reading series. Under the name, Disembodied Poetics, I maintain a daily Blog/Facebook Page/You-Tube Channel with several thousand loyal followers from dozens of countries who participate in hundreds of comments and interactions per week. It’s a beautiful thing.

I am represented by Movable Type Management

Thanks for caring,

chris cole