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Posted on Wed, Jan 26, 2011 : 10:37 a.m.

'Feral Citizens' of Ann Arbor: Young, dedicated and fantastically wordy

By Leah DuMouchel

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Is there anything better than a book that gets you thinking before you even crack the cover? “Feral Citizens” deserved some chewing over as a phrase before I ever got to its job as a title. Is that even logically possible? And if it isn't, then how come the image of unadulterated energy tenuously constrained by filaments of love and duty arrives so clearly?

Poetry, I guess.

The extent to which the well-documented literary talent of this town stretches down the age scale never fails to blow me away. Aimee Le and Fiona Chamness, the two formidable authors of this sometimes playful, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes just nakedly raw collection both grew up here and remain Ann Arbor WordWorks members (that's our collegiate poetry group) even as they attend Dartmouth and Oberlin Colleges, respectively. And publishing house Red Beard Press? That's run and staffed entirely with teens working through the Neutral Zone.

First, the poems: They're delicious. There's Le's giggle-provoking “Birds,” which reads in its entirety, “Fleshy hovertrons.” There is no laughter at all in “Theft,” a portrait of familial discord whose doleful ring of misery is nearly deafening.

Chamness' “To Texas High School Students, About Their Books,” is a pleading testament to the power of critical thinking from one who remembers “how utterly I placed my trust in ink/ before I found a document that wanted to excise me.” And the characterization of the specter of rape and ownership that shadows every woman in her “I've Overheard” is an image that snapped onto my lived experience with a click of finality, a vision with clear corners emerging from a long-term feeling of vague unsettlement.

Their two collections are separated in the book by an interview conducted by Red Beard Press, in which both authors point definitive fingers at Ann Arbor's superstar literary cultivator Jeff Kass as “where the magic began.”

“I kind of got introduced to this kind of poetry by Mr. Kass,” says Le by phone, home for her winter break. “He came to an assembly at Community, and he brought Ross Gay and Angel Nafis and Toniesha Jones. They all read their poems, and that was the first time I'd ever been moved by poems at all.”

After admitting in print that her relationship with the medium started from “an automatic place of hate,” she clarifies that she was mostly kidding about that: “I don't mean hatred; I mean more as in being a hater and being critical, basically. I guess my attitude toward it is that I've always liked words, but I've always felt constrained by what poetry was about. I thought it was supposed to be about prose that doesn't make sense. I've always liked stories and words, so I thought, 'You can either tell stories or you can string a bunch of adjectives together.' Over time I kind of was broadened by the possibilities of what poetry could be.”

Chamness approached from the opposite direction: “For me, it all started from believing that learning from books is like, the most important, the best thing. Ever. They make the world...and, I want to make the world.”

Her writing and her activism fused last year in a chapbook called “Poems for Casa Hogar de los Ninos,” drawn from the month and a half in which she worked at an orphanage in Oaxaca, Mexico. She published it herself in what she describes as “a kind of Kinkos-y situation,” and plans to send the proceeds back to the orphanage. “I'm really interested in a poetry that kind of addressed my ethical concerns as well as being interested in what poetry is traditionally is supposed to be interested in, like beauty and truth and stuff. I think poetry should be engaged with the larger world and working as a force for the larger good.”

The pair have diverged and intersected for much of their lives, becoming friends in first grade but drifting apart by the end of elementary school, headed down separate paths through much of their adolescence before reconvening over their common interest in writing. Solicited for a manuscript by Red Beard Press, they put together a collection of complementary pieces, copy edited each others' work, collaborated on the title and worked with an artist friend on the cover design: a highly stylized photo of a coat hanging from a tree against an Ann Arbor street scene.

“The coat was really ratty. It was a really ratty, gross coat,” Le laughs. “We wanted something feral that represented the contrast between the wild and the civilized. So the coat is this disgusting ratty fur coat, and we just experimented with it. The one thing we were trying not to do is have it look like a body — we didn't want anything too macabre.”

And the year-old Red Beard Press took it from there. Facilitator Karen Smyte, the Press' lone adult, says the first book came in conjunction with Poetry Night 2009, referring to the 10th anniversary of a signature Neutral Zone event which regularly draws several hundred people. “My husband, who runs the VOLUME (high school) poetry group” — oh, and also happens to be the Jeff Kass mentioned earlier — “had been been saying for years, 'If you sell books, the audience is so excited I'm convinced that people would want to have a souvenir and to have the words of the authors.' And I thought this might be a good way to encourage kids to read, so we decided we would do this test run,” from which a publication called “Three-Hole Punch” was born. “We made 100 copies and we sold out of them, so we thought maybe that's a good idea,” she concludes.

And they were off. Next came a book in conjunction with the Ann Arbor Bookfest, and then the manuscript of a collegiate poet who had passed away and whose work the literary community was interested in preserving. “That book was a big jump; the quality of that book was really fabulous,” says Smyte. “And we also decided to name (the Press) after him — he had a red beard, so that's where that came from. We just thought that was a nice way to honor him.”

Since then, the operation of roughly a dozen regular members has been on a steady march toward autonomy and diversity. Students lay out the pages, solicit blurbs, meet printer deadlines and spread the word. Smyte says that putting together a business plan last summer gave them a chance to think about their long-term goals and ask questions like, What roles do you have? How do you envision this happening? Where do you want to take this? They've worked with seasoned and emerging writers and put together focused showcases as well as broad anthologies. An upcoming project will collaborate with the University of Arizona and Kent State University for an examination of depression that includes the voices of doctors, patients and counselors.

One interesting thing that the press does is accompany many of its works with educational materials. Smyte notes that NZ writing workshop facilitator Scott Beal wrote five different lessons for use with “Feral Citizens,” hoping teachers will be encouraged to bring the books into classrooms in our community. “And I think realistically, you have to learn how to make it a viable press,” continues Smyte, “and I do think that if you can make it into academia, it helps. If there are 10 teachers in Ann Arbor that love it, that's a wonderful tool for them.”

But this is one press that isn't suffering the widely-storied woes of print. Between the volunteer labor from the kids and the support of local printing house Malloy Inc., Smyte says the math is pretty forgiving: “If we can get 55 copies sold, we can cover printing costs. And we've done that already, within a week.”

This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Toniesha Jones' name and the location of Casa Hogar de los Ninos.

"Feral Citizens" is available through the Neutral Zone Publication of "Feral Citizens" will be celebrated with a "Homegrown" poetry concert at 7 p.m. Thursday at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre. Admission is $12-$5. For information or to reserve tickets, email eyelev21@aol.com.

Leah DuMouchel is a freelance writer who covers books for AnnArbor.com.