Photo by Michael Kleven - Click photo for Aesthetica site.

	A conversation with Peggy Shumaker, Vivian Faith Prescott, ZacK Rogow and Cirque editor, Michael Burwell. Go to the site, by clicking 49 Writers, below.    Join the poets in an on-line chat, covering Peggy Shumaker's role as the new Writer Laureate for Alaska,Vivian Prescott's nomination for a Pushcart award, Zach Rogow's work in translation,as a playwright and his way with the erotic and Michael Burwell,as editor of the journal Cirque now in its second year.  Also, news about the Andy Hope Literary Award.       49 Writers Alaska's new Writer Laureate, Peggy Shumaker Click photo for poet's personal website. Peggy Shumaker 49 Writers Click to order Whatever Shumaker touches is thick with life, death, and the blessing of her words.      —Alicia Ostriker on Gnawed Bones An entrancing meditation on absolution and memory.      —Kirkus Reviews on      Just Breathe Normally Peggy Shumaker has begun her projects as Alaska State Writer Laureate for 2010-2012.  She'll travel in the next few months to talk about Alaskan writing in Washinton D.C., Petersburg, Angoon, Iowa, Homer, Sitka, Pelican, Kansas, Fairbanks, L.A., Talkeetna, Palmer, Cordova, Skagway, Juneau... Her latest book of poems is Gnawed Bones.  Her lyrical memoir is Just Breathe Normally.  "With rare insight, clarity, and grace, Peggy Shumaker charts both the minutiaof miniature lives and the grand and cosmic movements affecting earth's moreimposing denizens. She tracks the profound and subtle dislocations orilluminations of self inspired by the closest regard of our natural world." -Maurya Simon Long Before We Got Here, Long After We're Gone         In the season blue-white sun barely lifts above the ridge, limps along the horizon then dives out of sight, we're changed each day by light. Someone who's gone before broke trail, set tracks. With the right kick wax, we make our way among birch breathing hard rare frosted light. We make of light arpeggio crystals, caribou dance fans, shush of bristles. One moment made alive, human, unafraid. All that's lost not gone. Gnawed Bones If language is bones, hard parts of speech, what do skulls of pack rats crushed into owl pellets have to tell us? If this delicate pelvis once balanced a gravid javelina, what word passes on to her stoats? If cicada shells hang on like single mothers starved for touch, what does hot wind whisper through them? If every day re-enacts creation, if we live here, now in the first world and the last let us speak in our bones languages of water from all skies, from deep underground. Let our bones quench the thirst of history, thirst for all we yearn to sip, marrow of each dry tongue.
	49 Writers Vivian Faith Prescott Click photo to go to poet's webpage Click for "Slick" Rare is the book of poetry whose message and whose craft are of equal excellence. "Slick" is exactly that.—Larry Thomas. Click for poet's blog Planet Alaska Vivian Faith Prescott was born and raised in Wrangell, Alaska and lives in Sitka, Alaska and Puerto Rico at the U.S.C.G. Borinquen Air Station. She holds a Ph.D. in Cross Cultural Studies. Vivian's the Co-Director of a non-profit called Raven's Blanket based in Wrangell, Alaska and she facilitates adult and teen writers' groups at the Air Station Borinquen. Her poetry has appeared in Drunken Boat, Permafrost, and Turtle Quarterly. Her first book of poetry The Hide of My Tongue will be published by Plain View Press in Spring 2011. Vivian says this about submitting her work, “As for myself, I was afraid to submit for years and years. I think the fear of rejection crosses all social, ethnic boundaries. Also, in small town Alaska, which is the entire state itself, there is a sense that you might offend someone by your words, so memoir and poetry are very vulnerable genres because they're so intimate. Our state may be big but it seems that everyone knows one another or knows one's cousin or cousin twice removed.” The new Andy Hope Literary prize sponsored by Raven's Blanket was recently announced in Cirque.  Hear more about this prize during the online discussion, January 30th.
	The Eternal Return She watched her husband’s troller chug from the harbor. Then she painted her fins, unpinned hairgrass from her head, dabbed river silt at her throat, clothes-pinned her red nightie to the porch-line. And my grandfather, the ‘other-man,’ on his boat tied at the dock, searched hillside homes with binoculars for the dot of her swaying fabric. She’s the Woman-at-the-Head-of-the-Stream, arms and legs open wide summoning him. And Grandfather, humped back and patchy scaled, headed up the walk, full of milt, switching his fins, the scent of her calling him towards the place where he was born. *First appeared in Off the Coast's Water: Something New to Say to the Sea.       Raven Child at the Koo.éex’ For my daughter, Mother-of-Humpy-Tail Gunalchéesh xá aaa. Adaanáx has wudanaagí yá kustií yá haa Lingítxsateeyí. Thank you, yes, for rising to it, to this culture, this our people.—George Davis, Kichnáalx Raven child listens to tapping sticks, drumbeat, and stories, sings naa yat xí: love songs. She passes out fire bowls, then moves through the room carrying a photo of the dead. Wrist deep in náayadi, she heaps fish onto paper plates filled with herring eggs, smoked salmon and gumboots; she serves bowls of hot deer stew and Pilot Bread.  Raven child sways with tubs of blueberries, salmonberries—laughing red and blue lips echo throughout the ANB hall. Raven child honors Eagles with cases of soda pop, striped blankets and abalone pendants. Raven child flies, arms flutter with beads, dancing the exit song. And at 4:00 a.m. she sleeps along a bench like a spent-winged bird, a button robe draping her shoulders.   *First appeared in Alaska Women Speak, Fall 2010.
	49 Writers Zack Rogow Click on photo for more about the poet. Click to buy the book Very few poets have the courage  to open themselves as fully as Zack Rogow does as he pours out, in passionate poetry, the story of a love affair and the family fallout it radiates. These poems are hot, honest..." — Bill Zavatsky Reading Zack Rogow’s The Number Before Infinity, I was reminded of young Neruda’s love poems; here is that passion, tempered and informed by the briars and grace of marriage and family. — Cornelius Eady Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of eighteen books and plays, including six collections of poetry, a novel, three anthologies, four volumes of translation, and a children’s book. His most recent book of poems is The Number Before Infinity published by Scarlet Tanager Books in 2008. He has written three plays, including La Vie en Noir: The Art and Life of Léopold Sédar Senghor, performed by the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. He teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the California College of the Arts and in the low-residency MFA in Writing at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He is the editor of a critically acclaimed anthology of U.S. poetry, The Face of Poetry, published by University of California Press; and editor of two volumes of TWO LINES: World Writing in Translation, distributed by University of Washington Press. His translations of George Sand, Colette, and André Breton have won numerous awards, including the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award and the Northern California Book Award in Translation. His children’s book, Oranges, was a Junior Library Guild Book-of-the-Month. OPENING I’m open so wide                                           so wide I don’t have any skin. Words overheard on the sidewalk jostle me left and right. Every breeze becomes a parade, every scratch a torrent. Even a dancer suddenly        lifted is enough to blank me out. And just a pebble of a country song on the radio rattles my fault lines: I’m in so deep Can’t think of gettin’ out I’m open so wide                                        so wide to take in each of your glances, all of your long, dark hair. IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA A pink garland of cherry blossoms rings the Tidal Basin. Fallen petals stick to the ground like price tags. One by one I hike up the wide steps of the Memorial. Today they’re waxing Jefferson. Two men steady the expandable aluminum ladder while another, hand over hand, mounts to the top of the giant bronze. I read the walls: WE MIGHT AS WELL REQUIRE A MAN TO WEAR STILL THE COAT WHICH FITTED HIM WHEN A BOY AS CIVILIZED SOCIETY TO REMAIN UNDER THE REGIMEN OF THEIR BARBAROUS ANCESTORS Near the last rung, the man dangles a bucket that steams with turpentine. the dome magnifies the noise of tourist helicopters to painful hammering like the blades of our gunships. Now the man up the ladder is stroking on the molten gloss, a valet brushing his master’s coat. INDEED I TREMBLE FOR MY COUNTRY WHEN I REFLECT THAT GOD IS JUST, THAT HIS JUSTICE CANNOT SLEEP FOREVER. Poems Copyright © 2011 by Zack Rogow   Michael Burwell  Burwell is the editor of CIRQUE JOURNAL - click here Click book to purchase Click for CIRQUE JOURNAL Mike Burwell has published two chapbooks of poetry; his full-length poetry collection Cartography of Water was published by North Shore Press in 2007. He manages to keep out of trouble by writing environmental impact statements for the Department of Interior, teaching poetry part time at the University of Alaska Anchorage, researching Alaska maritime history, maintaining a database on Alaska shipwrecks, and pursuing a master’s degree in anthropology. He is also editor of the new literary journal Cirque.

Link to CIRQUE @ AWP