Monday, June 22, 2020

jim leftwich, Biographical information, 2019

Biographical information provided upon request to the editor of the Lithuanian magazine of culture, Nemunas, in September, 2019:

born in Charlottesville, Va in 1956, jim leftwich is a poet and an essayist. he grew up in the farmlands of Amherst County, Virginia.

from 1974 until 1978 he attended Guilford College, a very small Quaker college located in Greensboro, North Carolina. he majored in English Literature, with a minor in Art History, and for two years he was music director of the college radio station (WQFS).

in the early 1980s he moved to San Francisco and enrolled twice at San Francisco State University, dropping out both times.

in 1986 he moved back to Virginia. in the fall of that year, in Charlottesville, he met his wife, Sue. they were married in 1987.

they are currently planning a long, slow trip around the American west and southwest, in a camper van.

Leftwich is the author of Dirt (Luna Bisonte 1995, edited by John M. Bennett), Doubt (Potes & Poets 2000 and Blue Lion 2009, both edited by Peter Ganick), Spirit Writing (Asemic Series 1998, edited by Tim Gaze), The Textasifsuch (writings from The Institute for Study and Application, in Kohoutenberg, including Ruhe Lucentezza, Retorico Unentesi, Augen Konne, Feito Zahlt, and others, Blue Lion 2005), Death Text (Books 1-6 cPress 2005, edited by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Books 7- 9 Vugg Books 2007, edited by Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen), Six Months Aint No Sentence (Books 1 - 187, 2011 - 2016) (Books 1 - 6, White Sky Books, 2011/12, Books 7 - 30 White Sky ebooks 2012, both edited by Peter Ganick & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen), Books 1 -187 Differx Hosting@Box 2016, edited by Marco Giovenale), Found Incoherents Trash: visual poems, collages, experiments, interventions, modifications: 2001 to 2010 (TLPress 2016), Containers Projecting Multitudes: Expositions on the Poetry of John M. Bennett (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019), three volumes of essays entitled Rascible & Kempt Vols. 1 - 3 (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2016-2017), I reMEmber petrOLeum (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019), and many other titles. 

collaborative works include Sound Dirt, with John M. Bennett (Luna Bisonte 2006), Book of Numbers, with Márton Koppány (Luna Bisonte 2011), Sound Rituals, with Bill Beamer (mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press 2018, edited by Olchar E. Lindsann), How To Dust A Bunny, with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (cPress 2006), Birdhouse Arc Plucker; be/ond seh flinges; & washing the sun, with Steve Dalachinsky (slowforward 2019, edited by Marco Giovenale), iTopia, with Scott MacLeod (Vugg Books 2007), THR3E, with Andrew Topel (White Sky Books 2010), Acts, with John Crouse (#s 1 - 9200, ongoing since 2002) (Volumes 1 & 2, Blue Lion Books 2007), and violent orchestra (postfluxpostbooklet Nr.62 2004) with Luc Fierens

Leftwich collaborated with John M. Bennett on BANGING THE STONE (2009, Luna Bisonte) a cd of noisic sound poetry, and in 2008 Jukka-Pekka Kervinen released Fare Ogs, a series of electronically destabilized frog songs, on his oretouKh netlabel. 

he has been involved in micropress publishing since 1994 (editing and publishing Juxta, the early email zine Juxta/Electronic, Xtant, xtantbooks, antboo, Vugg Books, and the blogzine Textimagepoem — with, as co-editors and/or contributing editors: Ken Harris, Thomas Lowe Taylor, Chris Daniels, Michael Peters, Scott MacLeod, Andrew Topel, Tim Gaze and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen). since 2010 he has been editor and publisher of TLPress, specializing in tacky little pamphlets, broadsides, fortune-cookie style bookmarks, and pdf ebooks. 

from 2008 to 2018 he was involved in organizing and/or documenting mail art, fluxus, sound poetry, visual poetry and noise events in Roanoke, VA USA. his Diaristic Reports on some of these events are published online by Marco Giovenale at slowforward.

his papers are archived in the rare books and manuscripts collection of the Ohio State University.