SY Which Middle English, or Medieval writers, informed your work? I then moved into exploring this text-speak meets Middle English idea when I was trying to figure out what I wanted the word and language to exactly look like. In terms of people who have similar projects- maybe Renee Gladman or Cathy Park Hong. There is something in feeld that is akin to Clockwork Orange-a colloquial language that is distinct from ours. Then I started thinking about language, and the question of what kind of language I want the world to have. I set out to construct a world with a language adjacent to ours that would reveal things about our world with a focus on transness. Jos Charles My initial attempt was to think of something speculative- something like speculative fiction, or adjacent to speculative fiction, in a poetic world. Yarberry How did you first conceive of this project? Against a neopastoral landscape overgrown with “swolen leef” and “boyish nectre,” Charles explores the permutations and perforations of identity- how “a folde squyshes or colapses a membraine” to make “struktur / or gendre or tellavision or a united stats.” We recently met for coffee to talk about the conception of feeld, influential texts, and the craft of poetry. “Jim shortes” share a line with “tragick shaydes.” In so doing, humor offsets and dramatizes the long darknesses of history and culture. Charles creates a completely original vocabulary that blends Middle English and text-speak, which leads to poems ladened with brilliantly placed homophones and puns.

Subscribe to the PEN Poetry Series mailing list and have poems delivered to your e-mail as soon as they are published (no spam, no news, just poems).Jos Charles’ new collection, feeld (Milkweed Editions), is not only a reexamination of language, but a reinvention- words become unique, tricky, and wondrous, once again. Once a week, the PEN Poetry Series publishes work by emerging and established writers from coast to coast. Theirs is an unabashedly beautiful poetry of unflinching attention coupled with delight.”Ī riben in mye hare / undre the principldĪ hole if not a thynge 2 emptie / wee laybore

It is a sincere investigation of the singular multiplicity of each and every body – if not a celebration, at least a loving insistence. Their work never fails to bring me newly alive to the world. About Charles’s work, Tolbert writes: “As a trans person, I’m always searching for trans poets who utterly rearrange how I experience the word and Jos Charles does just that. This week in the PEN Poetry Series, guest editor TC Tolbert features three poems by Jos Charles.

2023 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony.

Feeld by jos charles