poetry

publications | objects | investigations & performances | exhibitions | past readings | future readings

publications

books

Kaia Sand is the author of three books of poetry: interval, Remember to Wave, and A Tale of Magicians Who Puffed Up Money that Lost its Puff.

poems in print

print magazines such as McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Submit Literary Magazine, Damn the Caesars, Peaches & Bats, Primary Writing, Westwind, Eyes Monthly, Lipstick 11, The Poker, Cypress Magazine, and Hat, Pom2, Ecopoetics, Lungfull! Magazine, Antenna, Bivouac, Kenning, Phoebe, DC Poets Against the War, Washington Review, and West 47.

Anthologies include Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, & Stories for Children, (Black Radish Press, ed Dana Teen Lomax, forthcoming), The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets, (ed. Dominic Luxford, 2007) , These Pages are Marked by Women, Anthology of the Contemporary Experimental Women’s Poetry Festival), 100 Days (Ed. Andrea Brady and Keston Sutherland, Barque Press).

poems online

“afire with purpose” The Poetry Project

“air the fire.” Unlikely Stories.

Excerpt from Progeny, Sort of Like Santa Monica, wedding lyric, the amphitheater, Self Portrait in the Reflection of a Watch Face, obsolescence, feedback, appellation, forecast, and prologue, all archived in DC Poetry.

“Beggining With Lines By Allen Ginsberg.” Summer Stock

“at least four gallons per second,” a poem-ledger of oil contamination from the Deep Water horizon explosion, Poets for Living Waters.

Remember to Wave” poetry map, Wheelhouse Magazine (downloadable as pdf), Evergreen State College

“Letter to Layla Al-Attar.”  Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice.

“letter to Layla al-Attar.” Dusie Magazine, Issue 1.
excerpts from “progeny” ixnay no. 6 and “not only everything alive” in ixnay reader no. 2 (downloadable as pdfs) (ed. Jenn & Chris McCreary)

lotto. Tool: A Magazine

“She had her own reason for participating.” (excerpt). Everyday Genius

“There are these old fires.” Academy of American Poets ( This poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant.)

“tiny arctic ice” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Audio

“Song from a Beached Music Box (for Jessi)” from Kindergarde (Black Radish 2013)

“Autograph Page” from Remember to Wave. Recorded by Adam Aitken at the Susan M. Schultz 10-10-10 Birthday Celebration, Honolulu, Hawaii, 10 October 2010

“Uptick” from Remember to Wave. Poetry Project. NY, NY. December 9, 2009

“the president probably talks.” Recorded as part of Wave Books “State of the Union” blog, 2008.

‘Best Regards,” ” ‘Lotto,” “introduction to ‘Family Album of Earthen Estrangement,” “Family Album of Earthen Estrangement” and “The President Probably Talks.” Contemporary Women’s Experimental Poetry Festival, organized by Emily Critchley. Cambridge, UK 6-8 October 2006

“Cognitive Dissonance” from interval  (1:31:50 – 1:37:40); “Prologue” from interval (1:37:44 – 1:39:12); “suppose the future” from interval (1:39:13 – 1:39:49) The Social Mark Poetry Reading, Philadelphia, 28 February 2003.

“feedback,” “appellation,”Letter to Layla Al-Attar,” “forecast,” “obsolescence” all from from interval (Edge Books 2004). Philly Sound: New Poetry Weekend. Philadelphia. 9 August 2003.

Video

Air the Fire. Á Reading Series. Valentines, June 1, 2015.

So He Raised His Hand. (excerpt). Tuscaloosa, Alabama. May 2014.

She Had Her Own Reason to Participate. The Switch Reading Series. The Hazel Room. August 9, 2013

“Beware the Fury of the Financier,” via Human Microphone. Portland waterfront rally for Shut Down the Banks as an extension of Occupy Portland,  17 November 2011

“Gates Close at Dusk” from Remember to Wave. Nye Beach Writers Series, Newport, Oregon. 19 September 2009

DA du DA sie reading at the historic Cabaret Voltaire, curated by Susana Gardner in Zürich, Switzerland, with Jules Boykoff, Maria Damon, Kathrin Schaeppi, Susana Gardner. 30 June 2009

Contemporary Women’s Experimental Poetry Festival, organized by Emily Critchley introduction by Susana Gardner; “Best Regards,” selections from “Lotto”as well as  “Family Album of Earthen Estrangement” and “The President Probably Talks” Cambridge, UK. 6-8 October 2006

There are These Old Fires. (filmmaking by Hannah Piper Burns). Creative Mornings. PNCA, Portland, Ore. 27 January 2017

poetry objects

Tiny arctic ice is an experiment in recasting. Rather than drafting this poem toward a final draft, I write as an act of recasting, again and again, to slow down my attention and consider how context itself might matter to the poem.

I wrote the first version of the poem in 2007 when I built a book out of a teabag for the Dusie Kollektiv (at that time, the world’s population was 6.6 billion; I update this number as I recast the poem). I recast it through performance in 2009 at Caberet Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland, curated by Susana Gardener, when Swiss poet Katherin Schaeppi helped me translate lines into Swiss and jot them onto paper airplanes. Jessi Wahnetah and Stella Gockenbach launched the planes into audience, who then read the lines aloud.

In a similar action, I wrapped lines around flowers from the adjacent farmer’s market, and handed these to audience members who then read lines, when I performed at St. Johns Bookseller’s Market Day series in 2009. Other recast versions have appeared as a broadside created by Mel Nichols for the Ruthless Grip series, in the journal Capitalism, Nature Socialism, and in the Pacific Poetry Project anthology. Jim Dine recast the text for one of his books in his Hot Dreams series.

By staying with this poem and accruing details about contemporary conditions, from global warming to labor to global trade, I hope to learn something. Meaning through accretion.

publication history
2007 teabag poem created for Dusie Kollektiv
2008 Jacket Magazine
2009 paper airplane performance at Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich for DA du DA sie
2009 flower giveaway performance at Market Day Poetry Series, St. Johns Book Store, Portland, Oregon
2010 Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
2012 Financial Times newspaper accordion performance, Hi Zero poetry reading in Brighton, UK
2013 E-Waste performance at Ecopoetics Conferences at Berkeley
2013 Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (anthology by Ooligan Press)
2016 A Tale of Magicians Who Puffed Up Money that Lost its Puff (poetry collection, Tinfish Press 2016)