This year I have been nominated by Mr. Catfish McDaris for the Pushcart Prize. The nomination is a great honor I would like to thank Catfish and all of my supporters!!
http://alternativereel.com/includes/poets-corner/display_review.php?id=00091happy to be here, in with very good company so be sure and check out the other writer’s when you stop by.xoDebbie
My DNA screams Harvard Material.
On telling my
Whose afraid of Virginia woolf child
Advice as they are going off to
“college”
Ivy league more than likely…
I think I’d say something
To burn deep
And replace
The naïve freckles
And replace them with
Knowledge
Whose baggage is of course
Memories
And how they haunt me
Better than any ole’ ghost
I’ve ever conjured up
On your floor
With an Ouija board
Listen here (insert name)
If your mommy ain’t there
To answer the phone
A phone call from you
It’s going to be
A bad day.
Answer the phone
Even on the days
When the sky is falling
So, be prepared
For worlds of reasons
Parted
And take notes
All along the way.
So, ration your weed
And exploit it fully
When you indulge
But you must keep enough
Sane days for yourself.
Routine is important
And
It’e never too early
To get a shitty job
And hey kid
Don’t take any wooden pussy
Or allow any
Emotional vampires
And maybe you’ll even
Have some hours left over
To laugh
Enjoy life
And
Be still.
http://catfishgringoriver.blogspot.com/
would love comments and feedback!
DOPE Magazine Issue 2 is seeking submissions!
This is a one time ALL FEMALE issue.
This will be a perfect bound book with Glossy cover.
What we want:
Poetry, art, Prose, Sex, drugs, rock and roll, photography, erotica, music, burlesque, bondage, smut, any experimental art forms…pretty much anything goes.
Unlike the last issue the subject matter is not confined to drugs. Anything that is good, gets in.
I would really, really prefer only snail mail submissions, however I’ll make exceptions
email submissions must be sent in word Doc or attachment to: sinncity66613@yahoo.com
mail submissions to:
Please send as much work as you want with a S.A.S.E.
to: Dope Magazine c/o Debbie Kirk
15 Bowen Avenue
Watsonville, CA.
95076
also, send along an email in case I need to communicate with you.
I will review poetry books, however at this time I am not reviewing novels.
Thank You, spread the Word!
Debbie Kirk
Brian Fugett has very kindly offered to reprint DOPE #1. I’m thrilled to announce this! Also, I’d like to announce that I am making DOPE a yearly magazine. I am currently working on a small website with details, but it WILL be print and I’m going old school on this shizzit. I want only snail mail submissions. After putting together the first DOPE and guest editing for POESY I realized that if my cat walks across the keyboard, poems are totally gone.
The second issue of DOPE will be all female writers. I want the best of the best of the best. I don’t care if you’ve been published a million times or never. I’m looking in every nook and cranny, and under every rock for the best female writers in the small press. And I have a year to search!
It will once again be a perfect bound book with glossy cover from Tainted Coffee Press/Pink Anarchkitty Press.
This will all be explained on the upcoming website. But just because the subject matter of the first matter was strictly “dope” (sic), the magazine is not gonna roll that way. I want hard hitting, gut splitting, knife holding, holding back tears Poems, short stories, and photographs. I would like the subject matter to be whatever you can make rock. I’ve seen the best make this happen with a number of different angles.
I’m going to be soliciting lots of women, and men who KNOW women who I have been watching and know have the DOPE in their veins. Please help me by spreading the word.
Details on the re-release of DOPE 1 as I get them!
In the meantime, let the second issue submissions begin. Open until April 1st of next year. (Yes, the deadline is a year but I expect from experience that the second half of the year I will focus on editing and layout. So, don’t wait to send me your best!) Again, any kind of art will be considered with emphasis on poetry and art. As I said, women submissions only. Guys, this is a one time deal…you will have a shot at the next DOPE. If I get male subs I’ll TRY and set them aside, but I’d prefer you wait until I announce submissions for DOPE 3.
Snail mail submissions to:
Dope Magazine c/o
Debbie Kirk
15 Bowen Ave.
Watsonville, CA.
95076
S.A.S.E. Please…
Highly prefer mail submissions, but acceptions will be made and email submissions accepted only at: sinncity66613@yahoo.com
ALL FORMS OF ART CONSIDERED!
I want smut
I want fuck you love poems
I want erotica
I want Photography
I want Prose
I want music
Burlesque pinups
Bondage
Experimental
Art
Anything goes.
more info and website soon.
Here’s a review of the first release of DOPE, more reviews will follow: http://www.cherrybleeds.com/bitches1/dec07.html
Thanks for all the support I have gotten, and stay tuned if you’re jonesing for more DOPE.
XO Debbie TNT Kirk
Mary Baldwin
Professor Castellarin
English 236
16 March 2010
Literary TNT:
The Poetry of Debbie Kirk
In the first few lines of Charles Bukowski’s poem so you want to be a writer? Bukowski says that “if it doesn’t come bursting out of you/in spite of everything, /don’t do it” (Bukowski). Debbie Kirk’s poetry follows this advice, each line a straightforward verbal jab. Many critics have mentioned Kirk in the same breathe as Bukowski. For example, John Bennet, the founder of vagabond press, even went so far as to say that “Bukowski didn’t have a crown, but if he did, if he had, Debbie Kirk is who should be wearing it, not all these limp-dick pretenders to the throne” (Bennett). That comparison seems to be the only one that can be made concerning Kirk’s work, as she is pushing boundaries with her art in a way that no other female poet does, even today. Kirk herself has said “I follow no particular school in writing and if I get labeled or pigeonholed in one I quickly get myself out. . .” (Kirk Interview). Still, her work effectively explores addiction, abuse, and the harsh truths of the human condition, which gives the comparison to Bukowski credence. Her work is characterized by her free form, brash language, pop culture references, and the attention she gives to the art of writing itself.
Kirk writes almost universally in free verse. Nonce form is the only venue that is appropriate for the defiant messages and direct language that hallmark her work. She relies heavily on the natural flow of language and the strength of her lines to impart her messages. The images and word choices she uses are so direct in their portrayal of the violence of reality that they seem almost dreamlike to the reader. In her poem, Behind me Now, there is a good example of this.
I stood on my sand pail
and tried to hang myself with the jump rope once,
but all I got was a scratched knee
and failure and sadness
that would stay with me forever (Kirk, Behind me Now 25)
Kirk manages in these few lines to paint a picture that is completely abhorrent, yet compelling to the average reader. The concept of a child feeling sorrow over a failed suicide attempt is merely one of many examples of this arresting language that marks Kirk’s work. Kirk uses this device to create urban epics that provoke a feeling of mythical significance in the reader using straightforward language. A powerful example of this is Kirk’s poem The Fucking Desert in which the persona of the poem takes a journey across a desert with the goal of homicide or salvation, or possibly both.
I was a traveler
Never a tourist
But the tourists rest stops
Were statistically more dangerous
Because of travelers like me,
The traveler I was in that van
With no fucking AC (Kirk, Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 7)
This poem turns the minutia of a trip across the desert in a poorly equipped vehicle into the pilgrimage of a morally ambivalent character whose nonchalant references to hiding a body (Kirk, Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 7) create an atmosphere of surrealism.
Each of Kirk’s poems takes form as either a confessional purge, or a plea to impart hard won wisdom to the masses. To do this she incorporates popular culture references to great effect. Whether those references are to popular figure, songs, as in USEd caRs (Kirk, Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 6), or to television in general as in Kill Your Television or it Will. . . (Kirk, Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 6) they give the reader something to sink their fingers into that gives the poem place and time. I am the skeleton of Burrough’s bullet mourns the violent death of the wife of William S. Burroughs, a famous writer saying,
And it still makes me sad that
Joan went out
The same goddamn way Eve did.
Nailed with an apple by a fruit. (Kirk, I Hit Like a Girl)
This poem also uses the death of Burrough’s wife and Burrough’s own sordid life as comparisons for the persona’s own existence. Kirk uses pop culture references to great effect, using them to flesh out deeper meanings while keeping the writing relevant to modern readers.
Another theme that Kirk addresses quite a lot is that of her own calling. Several of her poems directly attack the whole issue of what writing is, and what it is to be a poet in the small press. Even poems that are not totally dedicated to the art of writing often have mention of it, such as in Ain’t no cure for suicide where at the very end of the poem, the act of writing is mentioned, saying,
And every time I think of my calling
I cry
Because I sold out resurrection
And there ain’t no cure for suicide. (Kirk, Underground Voices/Debbie Kirk)
To Kirk the act of writing itself is exploring the brokenness in the world, and in oneself. In her work, The Obligatory Masturbation Poem, she states explains her views of poetry very succinctly.
What makes the poem beautiful
To me
Is its imperfection. (Kirk, Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 5)
Truly, Kirk excels in cooking up a unique brand of beauty by writing about the imperfections she observes in herself and her surroundings. Not only does Kirk emphasize the beauty of writing being in its imperfections, she imparts a great amount of animism to writers in her work. Perfect examples of this are Subject matter of a love song I would write and I bit the mailman. In I bit the mailman Kirk explains the intricate relationship the small-press writer has with the mailman, saying that
If we evolve
surely we’ll be on all fours
Barking as soon as we see them
Walk into our territory (Kirk, Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 6)
This introduces Kirk’s view of the poet as an elemental creature. This logic seems consistent as Kirks work seems to put forth that there is a lot of dirt that needs to be exposed, and that such imperfection can only be expressed by a creature (A poet) who can sink to that level and truly understand it. In Subject matter of a love song I would write, Kirk references “A morbid kinda intimacy/ Only capable by poets and animals.” (Kirk, Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 7). This animalistic intimacy is what Kirk delivers in her poetry that imbues it with such power.
Though Kirk’s writing will never be understood by all readers, nor will it be universally palatable, she has built herself a reputation with her words. By using an anarchistic form, strong lines, relevant references, and daring word choices, Kirk continues to push people’s notions of what poetry should be. Kirk took Bukowski’s advice to heart, and as a writer she allows all those words, which come bursting out of her in spite of everything, to hit with page with a vengeance. Consequently, her poetry hits the reader just as hard.
Works Cited
Bennett, John. Debbie Kirk Hits Like A Girl - Interview by Billectric. 16 January 2005. February 2010 <http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1849>.
Bukowski, Charles. so you want to be a writer? 2003. February 2010 <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16549>.
Kirk, Debbie. “Behind me Now.” Powell, C. Underground Voices: Stories from the Asylum. Lincoln: iUniverse, 3007. 24-25.
Kirk, Debbie. “I am the skeleton of Burrough’s bullet.” Kirk, Debbie. I Hit Like a Girl. UK: Feel Free Press, 2004.
—. Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 5. 2004. January 2010 <http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVKirk5.htm>.
—. “Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 6.” 2005. Underground Voices Magazine. January 2010 <http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVKirk6.htm>.
—. “Underground Voices Magazine/Debbie Kirk 7.” 2005. Underground Voices Magazine. January 2010 <http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVKirk7.htm>.
—. Underground Voices/Debbie Kirk. 2007. January 2010 <http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVKirkDebbie.htm>.
Kirk, Debbie. Mary Baldwin’s Interview With Debbie Kirk Mary Anne Baldwin. 16 February 2010.
Martha Stewart recommendations
Fuck therapy
Get a dog
Fuck meds
Exercise
And please please please
Rip the beating heart
Out of the Buddha
Who stands before you
And eat it like
You’re serving 18 to life.
