About

Michael Leong is the author of the critical study Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2020) and the poetry books e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009), Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012), Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? (Fence Digital, 2017), and Words on Edge (Black Square Editions, 2018). His creative work has been anthologized in The &NOW Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing (Lake Forest College Press, 2013), Best American Experimental Writing 2018 (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), and Bettering American Poetry, Volume 3 (Bettering Books, 2019). His co-translation, with Ignacio Infante, of Vicente Huidobro’s long poem Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven was published by co•im•press in 2020. His wide-ranging essays on poetry and poetics have appeared or are forthcoming in A Contracorriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America; ARCADE: Literature, the Humanities, & the World; Contemporary Literature; Denver Quarterly; The Hopkins Review; Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures; Interim; Jacket2; Journal of Modern Literature; Modern Language Studies; Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics; and Verge: Studies in Global Asias. 

Leong is co-editor of Journal of Modern Literature. He is currently working on a long poem called “Disorientations” and a critical book tentatively entitled “Post-Craft: Essays on Pedagogy, Poetics, and Experimental Literature.”

Education

PhD, MA, Rutgers University

MFA, Sarah Lawrence College

AB, Dartmouth College

Blog Posts

    Publications

    Books

    Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2020).

    Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven by Vicente Huidobro (co•im•press, 2020). Co-translation of Temblor de cielo/Tremblement de ciel with Ignacio Infante.

    Words on Edge (Black Square Editions, 2018).

    Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? (Fence Digital, 2017).

    Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012).

    e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009).

    I, the Worst of All by Estela Lamat (BlazeVOX [books], 2009). Translation from Spanish.

    Selected Poetry Chapbooks

    Police Lineups (Epigraph, 2018).

    Li Po Meets Oulipo (Belladonna *, 2015).

    Fruits and Flowers and Animals and Seas and Lands Do Open (Burnside Review Press, 2015). Winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest (Judge: Hannah Gamble).

    Words on Edge (Plan B Press, 2012). Winner of the 2012 Plan B Press Poetry Contest (Judge: Robert Fitterman).

    Articles

    “Curating Japanese/American Memories of World War II in Twentieth-Century Poetry.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 15.2 (Fall 2019). Special “Field Trip” portfolio, eds. Tina Chen, Josephine Park, and We Jung Yi.

    “Conceptualisms in Crisis: The Fate of Late Conceptual Poetry.” Journal of Modern Literature 41.3 (Spring 2018).

    “How Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? Unfolded.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures 18 (Winter 2018).

    “Towards a Disorientalist Poetics.” ARCADE: Literature, the Humanities, & the World. November 21, 2017.

    “‘Poetry Homework’: Pedagogy, Memory, and Politics in the Visual Poetry of Juan Luis Martínez.” A Contracorriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America 14.2 (Spring 2017).

    “‘Work itself is given a voice’: Labor, Deskilling, and Archival Capability in the Poetry of Kenneth Goldsmith and Mark Nowak.” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 14.4 (Winter 2015).

    “Neo-Surrealism’s Forked Tongue: Reflections on the Dramatic Monologue, Politics, and Community in the Recent Poetry of Will Alexander and John Yau.” Contemporary Literature 55.3 (Fall 2014).

    “Notes toward an Interventionalist Conceptualism.” Modern Language Studies 41.2 (Winter 2012).

    Book Chapter

    “Oulipo, Foulipo, Noulipo: The Gendered Politics of Literary Constraints.” The Oulipo, eds. G. N. Forester and M. J. Nicholls (Verbivoracious Press, 2017).

    Selected Book Reviews

    “Forms of Asian Americanness in Contemporary Poetry.” Review of Dorothy J. Wang’s Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American PoetryContemporary Literature 57.1 (May 2016).

    “Poetry for the Apocalypse.” Review of Christian Bök’s The Xenotext. American Scientist 104.4 (July/August 2016).

    “Root Work.” Review of Nathaniel Mackey’s Blue Fasa. Boston Review. August 4, 2015.

    “Rats Build Their Labyrinth: Oulipo in the 21st Century.” Omnibus review of Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, Lauren Elkin and Scott Esposito’s The End of Oulipo? An Attempt to Exhaust a Movement, and Louis Bury’s Exercises in Criticism: The Theory and Practice of Literary Constraint. Hyperallergic Weekend. May 17, 2015.

    “After Translation.” Los Angeles Review of Books. Review of Ignacio Infante’s After Translation: The Transfer and Circulation of Modern Poetics Across the Atlantic. February 5, 2015.

    “Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo’s V: Vniverse.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures 10 (Fall 2013).

    “Geography Lesson: Lytle Shaw’s Fieldworks: From Place to Site in Postwar Poetics.” Hyperallergic Weekend. October 13, 2013.

    “Reading the ‘Nothings that Are’: Craig Dworkin’s No Medium.” Hyperallergic Weekend. June 8, 2013.

    “Archive and Appropriation.” Review of Laura Mullen’s Dark Archive. e-misférica 9.1 (Spring 2012).

    Selected Literary Translations

    “Excerpts from Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven” by Vicente Huidobro. Co-translated from the Spanish and French with Ignacio Infante. Boston Review. April 20, 2016.

    “From Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven” by Vicente Huidobro. Co-translated from the Spanish and French with Ignacio Infante. Asymptote (April 2016).

    “Selections from Pulverized Canine” by Estela Lamat. Translated from the Spanish. Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas/Neuva escriture de las Américas 15 (2012).

    “Three Prose Poems” by Estela Lamat. Translated from the Spanish. Action, Yes: Online Quarterly 15.1 (Winter 2011).

    “How to Make a Corner” and “La Llorona, I Endure for the Purpose of Crying” by Estela Lamat. Translated from the Spanish. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation 17.1 (2009).

    Memberships

    Modern Language Association

    American Association of University Professors

    Michael Leong

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