Ars Poetica
I'm fascinated by the shared and marginalized identities of poets who are disconnected from life in ways I am not. Like the poet Clark Coolidge, who is interested in geological rock patterns, absorbing the population is how I connect with nature. I'm interested in the chaos of communication as a journalist, artist and poet; and choose to spend my free time as a recluse immersed in the bizarre psychodynamics of social interaction because I'm better able to sort things out in my mind clearly while seeing how intricate everything is. How identity works itself into technical poetics is hard to articulate yet I believe there is a parallel between the components of a marginalized identity and the poetics of fragmentation.

The main theme of my poetry is the obstruction of communication. I am interested in the evolution of process by transforming banal language into poetic artifice, subverted into paradoxes as linguistically challenging as poetry. My writing sets out to subvert language that is meant to commodify different environments and mood sets into the illusion of a uniform experience. A common thread in my poetics is the way it transforms semantics to occupy a space between the tangible and fantastic, undermining the original source text by manipulating grammar and syntax as far from the original context as possible.

The struggle against the limits of symbolic representation in my art parallels the anarchist critique of political representation. There are thematic links between anarchy and the historical influences of art and poetic artifice that divert from the idea of fragmentation. The dialectic between two polar opposites provides a stimulus to revolt by engaging the spectator and poet in a process of change. My poetry essentially examines politics with the goal of subverting what is thwarting progress, and replacing its absurdity with ideas that have been marginalized through consumer complacency. The subversion is created in a way that brings acknowledgment of the world's disorder in the current structure as a step toward advocating both anarchism and poetry.

Reviews
"Chris Girard's poetry works with extremes: up against a sonic wall, emotively charged and furtively encrypted pieces of verses pushing out towards unforeseen continuities. A charged voice of Eros -- in the lucid call of one of these poems:

         Steeped with obsession
         from cross-over webs of railroad intellectuality
         to become simple dignity, lonely handwork.

The intricacies and radical game enacted in the poetry reaches into a hidden pocket and steals a live-wire current, stumbling into exacting and hermetic song. The poem knows what is said can only be said in poetry. A mystery place gets exposed briefly, where, to steal meaning from these lines (one can't help it),

         Mistakes insisting to one breath or one investigation
         in one organized work, tremulous seeking move
         take on a side trip here to the voice and present."

                                                                               Steve Dickison, Director
                                                                               The Poetry Center, 2006

Profile

Beginnings
  Born March 23rd, 1983 in Islip, Long Island, NY


Education
  MFA, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2010
        Major: Digital Arts & New Media
  MFA, Otis College of Art and Design, 2008
        Major: Writing
  BA, San Francisco State University, 2006
        Major: Journalism
        Minor: Studio Art


Publications
  2007
  TRY ME
  The Diagram
  Brown Paper

  2006
  SOMA Magazine
  Mirage Periodical
  [X]press Online
         I produced three documentaries focusing on Bay Area subcultures
         Strength Through Song
         Open Art Studios
         Tattoo Convention

  2005
  Fourteen Hills Issue 12.1
  The Space Between Doors
  San Francisco Chronicle (photos)
  Deerhoof (photos)
  The Route Throughout


Exhibitions
  2006
  Magnolia Editions, polyptic digital print, group exhibition

  2005
  Cafe Ruba, photographic prints, solo exhibition


Awards
  2006
  Frances Jaffer Poetry Award, The Poetry Center


Interests
  drama, cynicism, physics, poetry, radicalism, repetition, pines, vines, veganism, post-structuralism, detachment, surrealism, archaisms, thoughtfulness, white tea, green tea, pseudopsychology, fluidity, music


Quote
  "You're not punk, and I'm telling everyone. Save your breath, I never was one. You don't know what I'm all about. Like killing cops and reading Kerouac." - Jawbreaker

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