Michael Martin Shea
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immanentfields.bsky.social
Michael Martin Shea
@immanentfields.bsky.social
650 followers 470 following 82 posts
Poet, translator, scholar | Assistant professor, University of Louisiana at Lafayette | Writing a book about poetry, mysticism, and neoliberalism in the Americas | Also: infrastructure, translation, the seventies, cookbooks

www.michaelmartinshea.com
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immanentfields.bsky.social
Incredibly, incredibly honored that my translation of Liliana Ponce's THEORY OF THE VOICE AND DREAM has been named to the longlist for the 2026 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Grateful to the judges, to the @worldpoetrybooks.bsky.social team, and to everyone who has supported this project.
The covers of the books named to the longlist for the 2026 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
December 19, 2025 at 3:49 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Heading to MSA this weekend to chat infrastructure and residue. Bright and early Saturday morning✌️
Program text for MSA 2025, panel 69: Infrastructure, Residue, Residual Location: Clarendon Chair: Paul Jaussen, Lawrence Technological University Michael Martin Shea, University of Louisiana Lafayette, “Like a careening phantom ship: Frank Stanford’s Haunted Infrastructures” Claire Farley, UCLA, “Dams, Ports, and Railways: Residual Infrastructures of Canadian Modernism” Anna Zalokostas, North Carolina State University, “The Carceral Waterfront: Red Hook and its Fictions”
October 8, 2025 at 3:01 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
My latest chapbook of poems, I'M SORRY BUT NONE OF THIS IS MY FAULT, has a cover! Forthcoming later this summer from @essaypress.bsky.social, but you can pre-order it now at the link below!

www.essaypress.org/shea/
An emerald green book cover with white and dark green text. The whute text lists the title and author--I'm Sorry But None of This Is My Fault by Michael Martin Shea. The cover also includes the first line of each of the poems in this chapbook, which are rendered in darker green text.
June 2, 2025 at 7:21 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Four poems from Augusto Lunel's The Bridges in my translation at Digital Vestiges @blacksunlit.bsky.social! Thanks to @jareddanielfagen.bsky.social for hosting.

blacksunlit.com/2025/05/four...
A screenshot of the linked website
May 27, 2025 at 6:32 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Yesterday was the official release date for my translation of Liliana Ponce's THEORY OF THE VOICE AND DREAM, and it was such a joy to be able to celebrate this book with friends and colleagues here in Lafayette.

You can grab a copy direct from @worldpoetrybooks.bsky.social!
A photo of myself standing at a podium reading from the book Theory of the Voice and Dream.
May 21, 2025 at 3:54 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Rude.
A screenshot of the NYT Spelling Bee game showing that the game does not recognize the word "cathect" as a valid entry.
May 15, 2025 at 4:22 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Sorry but lmao
A screenshot from the linked article which shows that the professor using chatgpt was a business professor (not a real professor).
May 14, 2025 at 2:05 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Absolutely thrilled to receive this lovely review of THEORY OF THE VOICE AND DREAM in Publishers Weekly. They call it a "beautiful and meditative compilation" where "the mind’s intense presence in the world opens to radical possibilities." Book comes out 5/20!

www.publishersweekly.com/9781954218338
A screenshot of a review of Liliana Ponce's Theory of the Voice and Dream in Publishers Weekly. Full text of the review can be found at the link in the bottom of the post.
May 8, 2025 at 8:44 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Lol. Lmao.
A screenshot of the linked statement with the "Find" tool engaged, showing no matches for the word "Louisiana"
April 22, 2025 at 4:04 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
THEORY OF THE VOICE AND DREAM comes out next month from @worldpoetrybooks.bsky.social, and I'm so grateful to have these words of support from Kristin Dykstra, Alexis Almeida, Michelle Gil-Montero, and Cecilia Vicuña!

You can pre-order a copy here: world-poetry.squarespace.com/books/theory...
A blurb from Kristin Dykstra that reads "Liliana Ponce reaches for the most elemental things, the ones you can see only under blurry light. Her serial poems are vehicles for traveling toward a more enigmatic dimension of reality." A blurb from Alexis Almeida that reads: "Writing from ‘the ghostly passage,’ the negative core, Liliana Ponce weaves language into states of sublime condensation, where time churns and dissolves and language remains on the brink of collapse and rebirth. In this luminous translation from Michael Martin Shea, I feel pulled into the endless shaping of sensation." A blurb from Michelle Gil-Montero that reads: "This is a poetics of the beginning—not as an origin, but as an endless thrust of becoming and undoing; a state of turbulence, dread, and ecstasy, where identity dissolves and reassembles in unknowable ways. Here, we partake in the ‘anarchic joy’ of writing, the pleasure of language as its own revolution." A blurb from Cecilia Vicuña that reads: "A bolt of world-opening lightning."
April 21, 2025 at 4:18 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Five pages from DEMONS ARE REAL in the new Chicago Review ✌️✌️
Three copies of Chicago Review 68.1, a literary journal with a blue cover, held in a kitchen.
April 17, 2025 at 4:28 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
This week in Latin American Studies at UL with @pavelandrade.bsky.social!
A poster for a talk entitled "Modern Bourgeois Epic: On Social Class and the Novel Form" given by Dr. Pavel Andrade at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
March 12, 2025 at 3:23 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
My translation of Liliana Ponce's THEORY OF THE VOICE AND DREAM is now available for pre-order from World Poetry Books! I started this project almost ten years ago, can't believe it's finally going to exist in the material realm.

worldpoetrybooks.com/books/theory...
The cover of Liliana Ponce's Theory of the Voice and Dream.
February 15, 2025 at 4:01 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Absolutely thrilled to be a part of Splice's MLA Offsite Reading this Saturday night in the Bywater (w/ @aliciawright.bsky.social @amishtrivedi.bsky.social and so many others). 3067 St. Claude Ave--reading starts at 7 pm!
A flyer for the Splice Reading Series's MLA Offsite Reading, featuring Evie Shockley, Michael Martin Shea, Carlos Soto Roman, Whitney Devos, Clint Burnham, Alicia Wright, Amish Trivedi, Cate Peebles, William Hazard, Edgar Garcia, Laura Jaramillo, and Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez
January 9, 2025 at 5:56 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
Presenting two papers with terribly similar titles at MLA25 in New Orleans--I swear they're about different things!
Panel information for panel 248 at the 2025 MLA convention. Panel information for panel 445 at the 2025 MLA convention.
November 19, 2024 at 3:49 PM
immanentfields.bsky.social
I am co-editing a special issue of College Literature on "Infrastructural Poetics," centered on the under-theorized relationship between infrastructural studies and poetic form. Accepting abstracts until December 15th! More at the link:

www.wcupa.edu/arts-humanit...
A screenshot of the CFP for "Infrastructural Poetics," a special issue of College Literature.
November 11, 2024 at 5:59 PM