Nicole Spencer
@sennin49.bsky.social
WRITING POETRY, MAKING ART, EXPLORING THIS EMBODIED EXISTENCE …
IN THE WORDS of the late Sam Hamill: "I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, 'I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry.' There's no separation for me …" Yeah, it's like that … ☯
IN THE WORDS of the late Sam Hamill: "I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, 'I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry.' There's no separation for me …" Yeah, it's like that … ☯
A well-deserved honor for a unique & essential presence in contemporary American poetry …
www.npr.org/2025/09/15/n...
www.npr.org/2025/09/15/n...
Arthur Sze named 25th U.S. poet laureate
Sze is a poet with a lot of acclaim — he's won the National Book Award, was a Guggenheim fellow and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. He aims to promote interest in translated poetry in his new role.
www.npr.org
September 16, 2025 at 4:52 PM
A well-deserved honor for a unique & essential presence in contemporary American poetry …
www.npr.org/2025/09/15/n...
www.npr.org/2025/09/15/n...
One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit … (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
September 8, 2025 at 4:21 AM
One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit … (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
My partner having passed a little over 4mo ago, I'm still deep in grief … While I'd hoped to write a piece touching on more collective concerns by way of the intimately personal, what came out insisted on its own idea & scale … It's true that my poems end up writing me as much as I write them …
August 31, 2025 at 7:39 PM
My partner having passed a little over 4mo ago, I'm still deep in grief … While I'd hoped to write a piece touching on more collective concerns by way of the intimately personal, what came out insisted on its own idea & scale … It's true that my poems end up writing me as much as I write them …
Take it from Joan, there's a lot more to this writing deal than mere "self-expression" … ✍🏼
August 17, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Take it from Joan, there's a lot more to this writing deal than mere "self-expression" … ✍🏼
New posting to my website *Projet 山川* – poetry & prose on grieving the loss of my partner … Ordinarily I'd want to maintain a yearlong ceremonial silence before opening up on such matters, but I've been moved instead to consecrate my bestie's memory by making art …
dai-shin-kokyu.com
dai-shin-kokyu.com
Projet 山川
Articulating the energetics of presence in poetry, poetics, performance, and visual art …
dai-shin-kokyu.com
August 17, 2025 at 2:32 PM
New posting to my website *Projet 山川* – poetry & prose on grieving the loss of my partner … Ordinarily I'd want to maintain a yearlong ceremonial silence before opening up on such matters, but I've been moved instead to consecrate my bestie's memory by making art …
dai-shin-kokyu.com
dai-shin-kokyu.com
How the body remembers as much as the mind – another poem dedicated to the memory of my late partner, all of 3½mo gone … Straight goods arriving practically readymade while I was working on a prose piece for my website 'Projet 山川' … Love
August 13, 2025 at 3:04 AM
How the body remembers as much as the mind – another poem dedicated to the memory of my late partner, all of 3½mo gone … Straight goods arriving practically readymade while I was working on a prose piece for my website 'Projet 山川' … Love
ANNOUNCING the renewal & renovation of my blogsite 'Projet 山川' on WordPress – a venue for posting both poetry and prose observations touching on poetics, consciousness, & the energetics of performance … Please feel free to check in periodically to see what's up in my poesi\verse!
dai-shin-kokyu.com
dai-shin-kokyu.com
Projet 山川
Articulating the energetics of presence in poetry, poetics, performance, and visual art …
dai-shin-kokyu.com
July 23, 2025 at 1:54 AM
ANNOUNCING the renewal & renovation of my blogsite 'Projet 山川' on WordPress – a venue for posting both poetry and prose observations touching on poetics, consciousness, & the energetics of performance … Please feel free to check in periodically to see what's up in my poesi\verse!
dai-shin-kokyu.com
dai-shin-kokyu.com
W/everything going on, both out in the world & in my personal life, I sometimes forget that I have an account on this platform … Here's a poem I wrote a month ago – another memorializing my late partner, Laura Renee Givens, 2mo after her passing …
July 23, 2025 at 1:39 AM
W/everything going on, both out in the world & in my personal life, I sometimes forget that I have an account on this platform … Here's a poem I wrote a month ago – another memorializing my late partner, Laura Renee Givens, 2mo after her passing …
LATEST POETICAL EFFORT, finished during the misty predawn just this morning … Memorializing my partner of 43yrs, who passed just a little over 3wks ago – posting on what would have been her 72nd birthday … Love
May 17, 2025 at 12:46 PM
LATEST POETICAL EFFORT, finished during the misty predawn just this morning … Memorializing my partner of 43yrs, who passed just a little over 3wks ago – posting on what would have been her 72nd birthday … Love
Not a single sentence or page I’ve ever written in my work was written out of anger … It’s not that I’m not angry, but I’m not useful – as a writer, as an artist – when I’m angry … (Ocean Vuong)
www.themarginalian.org/.../07/ocean...
www.themarginalian.org/.../07/ocean...
Ocean Vuong on Anger
“To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear and tear of living will not let you become a murderer,” Louise Bourgeois wrote in her diary as a young artist. “The poets (…
www.themarginalian.org
May 8, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Not a single sentence or page I’ve ever written in my work was written out of anger … It’s not that I’m not angry, but I’m not useful – as a writer, as an artist – when I’m angry … (Ocean Vuong)
www.themarginalian.org/.../07/ocean...
www.themarginalian.org/.../07/ocean...
First finished poem for the year, a long time coming … A bit "precious," perhaps, in view of the gross brutalities going on all around us; but registering, I hope, something intrinsically plaintive to our conscious condition as human beings …
April 10, 2025 at 4:29 PM
First finished poem for the year, a long time coming … A bit "precious," perhaps, in view of the gross brutalities going on all around us; but registering, I hope, something intrinsically plaintive to our conscious condition as human beings …
The state of birth, suffering, love, & death are extreme states: extreme, universal, & inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge … (James Baldwin) ❤️🔥
March 27, 2025 at 2:11 AM
The state of birth, suffering, love, & death are extreme states: extreme, universal, & inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge … (James Baldwin) ❤️🔥
WORLD POETRY DAY 2025
OFFERING IN OBSERVANCE this piece I wrote 8yrs ago, riffing off Jerome Rothenberg's "A Paradise of Poets" …
OFFERING IN OBSERVANCE this piece I wrote 8yrs ago, riffing off Jerome Rothenberg's "A Paradise of Poets" …
March 21, 2025 at 9:20 AM
WORLD POETRY DAY 2025
OFFERING IN OBSERVANCE this piece I wrote 8yrs ago, riffing off Jerome Rothenberg's "A Paradise of Poets" …
OFFERING IN OBSERVANCE this piece I wrote 8yrs ago, riffing off Jerome Rothenberg's "A Paradise of Poets" …
"Against the ruin of the world,
there is only one defense: the creative act …"
~ Kenneth Rexroth
there is only one defense: the creative act …"
~ Kenneth Rexroth
March 19, 2025 at 9:56 PM
"Against the ruin of the world,
there is only one defense: the creative act …"
~ Kenneth Rexroth
there is only one defense: the creative act …"
~ Kenneth Rexroth
"Live the Self that fills the whole Universe …"
~ Sawaki Kōdō
~ Sawaki Kōdō
March 19, 2025 at 9:32 PM
"Live the Self that fills the whole Universe …"
~ Sawaki Kōdō
~ Sawaki Kōdō
"Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination," according to Ishmael Reed … To be able to "move the perimeters of saying beyond one's own boundaries," as Jane Hirshfield proposes here, comes pretty close to the whole point of the craft, it seems to me …
March 15, 2025 at 9:07 AM
"Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination," according to Ishmael Reed … To be able to "move the perimeters of saying beyond one's own boundaries," as Jane Hirshfield proposes here, comes pretty close to the whole point of the craft, it seems to me …
A love poem framed in a meditation on impermanence … Written 4+yrs ago, but resonating all the more acutely now in light of my BFF's current medical struggles – & reflecting, if more obliquely, a more public grief over what is happening to our country …
March 11, 2025 at 4:26 PM
A love poem framed in a meditation on impermanence … Written 4+yrs ago, but resonating all the more acutely now in light of my BFF's current medical struggles – & reflecting, if more obliquely, a more public grief over what is happening to our country …
SHARING A POEM I wrote 9yrs ago … Even w/all the heated political rhetoric eating up the air at the time – maybe because of – I found myself writing a love poem to GOD, an expression of devotion to the Divine, riffing off the story of Psyche & Cupid … ❤️🔥
March 8, 2025 at 7:35 AM
SHARING A POEM I wrote 9yrs ago … Even w/all the heated political rhetoric eating up the air at the time – maybe because of – I found myself writing a love poem to GOD, an expression of devotion to the Divine, riffing off the story of Psyche & Cupid … ❤️🔥
Maintaining our seat in the face of civilizational collapse …
March 4, 2025 at 6:54 AM
Maintaining our seat in the face of civilizational collapse …
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, w/those crackpots & fools whose lack of intelligence & creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty … (Hannah Arendt)
March 2, 2025 at 2:15 AM
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, w/those crackpots & fools whose lack of intelligence & creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty … (Hannah Arendt)
ABHAYA MUDRĀ –"gesture of fearlessness" – w/the Ukrainian flag …
March 1, 2025 at 10:29 AM
ABHAYA MUDRĀ –"gesture of fearlessness" – w/the Ukrainian flag …
Reposted by Nicole Spencer
Ramadan Mubarak!
February 28, 2025 at 11:54 PM
Ramadan Mubarak!
TASHI DELEK! Celebrating Tibet's lunar New Year of the Wood Snake!
March 1, 2025 at 3:58 AM
TASHI DELEK! Celebrating Tibet's lunar New Year of the Wood Snake!
From an interview just months before his passing on this day in 1983 …
February 25, 2025 at 10:14 PM
From an interview just months before his passing on this day in 1983 …