Tess Taylor

TESS TAYLOR grew up in El Cerrito, California, attended Berkeley High School, and Amherst College. She holds degrees in writing from New York University and Boston University. Her chapbook of poems, The Misremembered World, was selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Boston Review, The Times Literary Supplement, Memorious, and The New Yorker. She was the the 2010-2011 Amy Clampitt Resident in Lenox, MA. After 17 years away, she lives in El Cerrito, California. Her book, THE FORAGE HOUSE is due out in 2013 from Red Hen Press.

To request more information on Tess's forthcoming book The Forage House from Red Hen Press, click here.

18th CENTURY REMAINS
—Albemarle County

A wooded ridge a mile from Monticello.
A pit cut deeper than the plough-line.
Archaeologists unearthed the site by scanning

plantation land mapped field
for roughage, ash, traces of human dwelling.
We stand amid blown cypresses.

Inheritors of absences, we peer
into a 10 by 12 foot ledge.
Unearthed painstakingly, these shards:

two pipe stems, seeds, three greening buttons.
Centuries-old hearthstones are still charred,
as if the fire is only lately gone.

“Did they collect these buttons to adorn?” No one knows.
“Did they trade them, use them for barter?”
Silence again.

Light, each delicate pipe stem,
something someone smoked at last
against a sill-log wall that did for home,

where someone else collected
wedges of cast-off willowware.
Between vines, a tenuous cocoon.

A grassy berm that was a road.
The swaying clue
faint as relief at finding something left

of lives held here that now vanish off
like blue smoke plumes I suddenly imagine--
which are not, will not, cannot be enough.

4/17: Spring is in the air, and that means it is time for the
Headlands Center for the Arts Spring Open Studios Reading Sunday, April 22 at 1:00pm at East Wing, Headlands Center for the Arts, 944 Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA 94965
Come and then let the sun off the ocean glaze your eyes glad.

2/27:
Spring Travel News!
For those who will be in Chicago at AWP, I wanted to urge you to come to IN WHITE: WHITE POETS & RACE, the beginnings of a conversation about writing whiteness in poetry, or how white poets can think about writing about race. It will be at 10:30 Am in Continental C, with Martha Collins, Michelle Boisseau, Kate Daniels and Jake Adam York.
More information about THE FORAGE HOUSE will also be available at the Red Hen Press table.

For those of you who may be in Washington DC for SPLIT THIS ROCK, some of that conversation will be followed up and begun a new and continued in WHITE POETS WRITING ABOUT RACE, a roundtable discussion from 2-3:30 on Saturday.

Hope to see you!

2/15:
I'm so delighted to announce that my book THE FORAGE HOUSE will be published by Red Hen Press in September 2013. I'll have more information about that soon! Stay tuned! Check out Red Hen Press here: http://redhen.org, and drop me an email under "contact" if you want to join my list for news and updates.

2/ 10:
Here's a poem I'm kinda fond of, published by the excellent magazine Shenendoah: shenandoahliterary.org

9/27: It's Litquake time! I do like to rave about events, but I especially, especially, especially like to rave about these.

On October 13, join the fabulous Hollie Hardy and me for Flight of Poets at the Hotel Rex. We'll team up with six poets and a sommelier to pair delicious poetry with delightful wine. Want to know what it tastes like to drink noir poetry or zen haiku or a deep red sonnet? In this event poetry and wine are paired- we talk about the poems in terms of the wine and the vines in terms of the verses. Get your tickets early at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/193193

And I'd be so delighted to see you also when I read with Daniel Handler and Matthew Zapruder at LitCrawl on October 15 at the Latin American Club. Details about that reading here: http://litcrawl.org/sf/events/event/mcsweeney%E2%80%99s-the-believer-present/

5/10: A couple of great things to share. First a piece from the NYTimes about the joys of farming with oxen: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/dining/04oxen.html
Then a three upcoming readings- two readings on May 13 in Salem, Massachusetts as part of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival:http://masspoetry.org/

Then one reading as part of the launch of BEST NEW CALIFORNIA WRITING! In the Bay Area, I'll read a love song to my home town, May 25. Stay posted.

4/5: It's my pleasure to share this review of the fabulous Maureen McLane, from this special poetry issue of the Boston Review: http://bostonreview.net/BR36.2/tess_taylor_maureen_n_mclane.php

2/1: Something fun and funny, courtesy of Daniel Nester:
http://wewhoareabouttodie.com/2010/11/19/getting-to-know-tess-taylor/

1/31: It's a bitter winter, but I'm looking forward to a few neat spring events. I've left the Berkshires, but I'm looking forward to this awesome panel on "first loves" with Leslie Harrison and Katie Peterson at the Edith Wharton's home, The Mount, in Lenox Massachusetts. Deets:
http://www.edithwharton.org/events-detail.php?record=68

And later this spring I'll be reading twice at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival: http://masspoetry.org/the-festival/. Stay tuned!

9/19: Fall readings announced, in California. On October 6, Tess pairs wine with great local poets as part of LITQUAKE at Hotel Rex. On October7, she's teaching and reading at Monterey Peninsula College. On October 9, she's reading with Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Robin Ekiss at a San Francisco Laundromat. Come on out.

6/14: Summer readings announced! July 25, 3:30 pm at the Mount, Lenox, MA, and August 23, 7pm, Bryant Park, NYC. Hope to see you there.

5/10: The reviews are in! Well, in the Articles section, that is. All the reviews back to 2000 are in there, with essays to follow next.

5/9: Launched the new website! It's very much under construction, but please check back daily and see all the new info!

Thanks to Jonah Schulz for the header and overall design.