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chris cole

Photo by Amanda Cole

The balance of material contained within this site is work in progress and includes excerpts from poetry, prose and narratives of various format. Most of the poetry posts are selections I originally posted on the Disembodied Poetics Facebook Page. The site also features 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 or through the YouTube link that is on the right side of your screen.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 this world and the next, never quite sure if the things happening around him are real or if he’s just going crazy. It is 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.

This site is a place to promote and showcase my work. But I also hope that it will serve as collaboration tool to garner feedback and advice and for other artists to contribute and share their work in an interactive and collaborative manner. Writers, poets, painters, photographers, filmmakers, musicians and more will be able to cross-pollinate their material and share it with a broad, yet refined, audience.

Look forward to feeling you read my thoughts and hope you enjoy…

cc

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