Francesco Levato - Poetry, Creative Writing

Francesco Levato - "Semi-peripheral: Spaces of Deviation, Abjection, Madness"

Abstract
"Semi-peripheral: Spaces of Deviation, Abjection, Madness" is a mash up of critical theory, poetry, science, and an examination of the works of H.P. Lovecraft as an (other)world-system, through the theoretical frames of world-systems analysis (Immanuel Wallerstein), heterotopic spaces (Michel Foucault), and abjection (Julia Kristeva). The work is a move towards blending creative and critical texts into a more seamless whole; creating resonances between different texts, paratexts, practices and entities, while simultaneously attending to creative, critical, and materialist concerns. The poems are based on chance operations (a variation/combination of Bernstein’s Acrostic Chance method and John Cage’s Mesostics) that use (other)world texts (fictional books located in Lovecraft’s mythological system) as seed texts, and a series of source texts including the Collected Works of H. P. Lovecraft, and a combination of obscure books referenced in Lovecraft’s stories. Language from the source texts is collected via procedure, then reworked to shape the final poems. The prose sections blend critical theory with quotations from Lovecraft’s short story, The Call of Cthulhu."


Presenter Bio
Poet, translator, and filmmaker Francesco Levato is the author of four books of poetry: Endless, Beautiful, Exact (Argotist, 2011); Elegy for Dead Languages (Marick Press, 2010); War Rug, a book length documentary poem (Plastique Press, 2009); and Marginal State (Fractal edge Press, 2006). He has translated into English the works of Italian poets Tiziano Fratus, Creaturing (Marick Press, 2010), and Fabiano Alborghetti, The Opposite Shore. His work has been published, or is forthcoming, in Drunken Boat, Versal, Otoliths, The Progressive, OmniVerse, Opon, Lightning’d Press, Certain Circuits, Moria, VLAK Magazine, Slope, SpringGun, Ping Pong, E-ratio, Poets & Artists, Another Chicago Magazine, Poetry International, Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics, On Barcelona, Cordite Poetry Review, and LA Review. He has collaborated and performed with various composers, including Philip Glass, and his cinépoetry has been exhibited in galleries and featured at film festivals in Berlin, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere. He is the founder and director of the Chicago School of Poetics, holds an MFA in poetry from New England College, and is pursuing a PhD in English Studies at Illinois State University.

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