Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider
Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider is a writer and a clown. Her work has been published in Hanging Loose Press, Actually People Magazine, and Rad Families: An Anthology. She lives near the mother ditch of a river.
books
newname road
newname road roams Los Angeles in search of connection with body and land, from curbside gardens downtown to truckstops in the Inland Empire. In a world increasingly regulated by the rhythms of commercialization and productivity, these poems stay with the slow, surreal intimacies that unfold in a polluted landscape. What sanctuaries can we find against the flashing ads of capital? How does the body change shape in an urban landscape where grief and glee collide? Can tenderness survive, at the end of the world? With a cheeky wit and panoramic eye, weaving through Zen koan and the industrial sounds of the city, newname road reimagines a geography of Los Angeles where a deeper breath is possible.
praise
“annakai hayakawa geshlider’s newname road strikes me as that hot cup of coffee I’ve needed in predawn hours, at the start of long days. Via railroad allusion (“trackhoot”) and petrichor, newname road records the marvelous secret purpose of poetry, the transformation of the poet themselves, in anaphora, all caps, concretism, orthographic and typographic wordplay—the poet transforms. You too will find yourself moved, in the venn diagram of girlfriends at the edge of the desert, “in the heat that delivered you.”—Sesshu Foster, Atomik Aztex
“What a remarkable first body of work. newname road marks the arrival of a literary force that is annakai hayakawa geshlider. It is just what we need in these upside down times. Read it and let it teach you how to breathe all over again. In the spirit of punk, read it and break something where and when you find it necessary!” —Truong Tran, book of the other: small in comparison
“newname road takes our hand and walks with us into a world made uninhabitable: the “smile you’re on camera” surveillance infrastructure, the trashed railyards, the hottest summer on record, the garden glazed in smog, the twin octagon jails. Across this buried earth, these poems walk with us to show us where life grows. Into the cracks of the concrete, into the parking lot we go. Trust these poems. On our dying earth, there is so much that is living, so much that is precious. So much that survives, so much that comes back to us. Line by line the poems roam the rubble, rummaging the ruins. Mangoes, potato eyes, kumquats sprout wherever ak goes.” —basalt i.h.
“Somewhere between east Asia and Louisiana, at the intersection of ancient and modern trade lies the land presently, and perhaps temporarily, known as southern California. It’s on fire but despite the failings of the State, the library still provides some life-support and climate control. There a gorl poet examines cyclical dualities, dwells on monastic tasks, offers inner world as fruit to an ancestor’s wildest dreams unfolding against the thick backdrop of senseless desert urbanity. She watches the traffic with a keen eye and overlaid sense of history, the violence of semi-truck and freight, of dentistry, of prison and surrounding industries, sprawl, but there’s still that relentless light; the colors, smells, strange flavors, adaptable plants and small animals that make a place. Here lies music for deep listeners like AKHG, who translates the clanging mess of signals into a poetic frequency, somewhere between the public radio at sunrise and the death-themed boba shop that doesn’t exist when you go back to find it. Now thankfully transcribed into a book that you can return to as much as you want.” —Arthur K., ROT zine