michael leong's poetry blog

Michael Leong’s poetry career began in the sixth grade when he won his first poetry prize in Mr. Harrison’s class for a haiku about a snake. Since then, he has received degrees in English and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Rutgers University and was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Interim, jubilat, Lana Turner, Marginalia, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Seattle Review, Tin House, Verse Daily, and The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing (Lake Forest College Press, 2013). He is the author of four volumes of poetry, e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009), Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012), Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? (Fence Digital, 2017), Words on Edge (Black Square Editions, forthcoming), as well as a translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat, I, the Worst of All (BlazeVOX [books], 2009). Excerpts from a new manuscript in progress is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing 2018. He is Assistant Professor of English at the University at Albany, SUNY.

Contact: michael.c.leong@gmail.com

Who Unfolded My Origami Brain? (Fence Digital, 2017)

Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012)

[“Leong’s glowing hieroglyphs show that the poetic Word emerges––as irony from iron––from the whirled atoms of the World itself. Indeed, Leong redefines the space-time of the page as a furnace of pure imagination, where the cadaver of modernist poetics is smelted with black humor…” -Andrew Joron]

[“…a periodic table of poetic koans rife with miraculous nutation.” -Will Alexander]

e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009)

[“smart, witty poems that are deceptively philosophical!”
-Eileen Tabios]

[“Leong goes his own way: Open to trying out all kinds of modes and methods, he is beholden to no one.”
-John Yau]

[“He’s got a wonderful sense of humor, combined with a magician’s ease and the biggest wand in three counties.” -Kevin Killian]

I, the Worst of All (blazeVOX [books], 2009) by Estela Lamat, translated by Michael Leong

[“Leong’s translation of Lamat’s book…should be read.”
-Johannes Göransson, Exoskeleton]

[“Recalling the poetry of Ginsberg, Lamat knows how to set words free.”
–Handbook of Latin American Studies]

Li Po Meets Oulipo (Belladonna*, 2015)

Fruits and Flowers and Animals and Lands and Seas Do Open (Burnside Review Press, 2015)

[Winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest]

[“Michael Leong’s vocabulary is totally stuffed/ multiplying in mirrors/ scattered over hillsides/ bubbling right over the top, and he’s going to give it all to you—he’s generous. He’s generous and funny and a little troubled—and “a little troubled” is, of course, the most logical and authentic response we could hope for anyone who’s examining life and poetry and personhood and artist-ness. This book is so enjoyable—like I said, giving and funny, but also very unlike anything I’ve read lately. It promptly wins the reader over.” – Hannah Gamble]

Words on Edge (Plan B Press, 2012)

[Winner of the 2012 Plan B Press Poetry Chapbook Contest]

[“This is work that rubs the found language of the web up against the language of the everyday world. Many of the forms are precise, inventive, and informed.” -Rob Fitterman]

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DECOMPOSITION / RE-COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION (Delete Press, 2011)

[“A more felicitous and compelling commingling of voices/texts would be hard to imagine. This is mash-up done with a surgeon’s skill.” -Evie Shockley]

The Hoax of Contagion (Naissance, 2010)

[“Michael Leong puts the oooh! into Oulipo in this constraint-based suite of pieces.” -Naissance]

Midnight’s Marsupium (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2010)

[Editor’s Pick of 2010, Stride Magazine]

The Great Archivist’s / Cloudy Quotient: Experiments with N+7 (Beard of Bees Press, 2010)

[“…what particularly satisfies about Leong’s book is that the ‘cover version’ poems he produces, almost without exception, are really kind of beautiful and interesting in their own right, and go way beyond wacky or quirky into something rather pleasing and oddly profound.” -Chris Goode]