Happy New Year and a new column – On The Cutting Edge by Marc Zegans
On The Cutting Edge : Marc Zegans Looks at New Work
Launching into 2025 I am thrilled to be able to announce that leading American poet and poetry filmmaker Marc Zegans (based out of Pacific Grove, Northern California) will be writing a regular column – On the Cutting Edge – on selected poetry books and films for Liberated Words. I can’t tell you how I have been looking forward to this, since I have admired Marc’s writing for some time now, and feel he will introduce a whole new tranche of writers into the fold.
For his first Cutting Edge deep dive he is writing an overview in brief on The Zombie Family Takes a Selfie by Ed McManis – Bottlecap Press, 2024. See: Cutting Edge 1 The Zombie Family Takes a Selfie by Ed McManis
Many of you may be familiar with his work and the essay I wrote (here on LW) on his evocative and palpable poetry collection / memoir of San Francisco – Lyon Street, published by Bamboo Dart Press. I was also really fortunate to recite from my forthcoming Tree publication and present on poetry film with him in San Francisco last year; and, with a well-trodden groove, feel no one could be a finer example of setting loose the melodies and cracks in the American voice.
He has published an impressive body of work – seven poetry collections to date: Lyon Street (Bamboo Dart Press, 2022), The Snow Dead (Cervena Barva Press, 2020), and La Commedia Sotterranea Della Macchina da Scrivere (Pelekinesis, 2019) being the most recent. He has also made spoken word albums; several immersive theatrical productions, including Sirens, Dreams and a Cat (co-written with D. Lowell Wilder, 2020), and many poetry films. Ghost Book (Kite String Press, 2024), a collaboration with fine art photographer Tsar Fedorsky, was released in April of this year. Marc’s work can also be found in a variety of anthologies including, Kerouac on Record, A Literary Soundtrack, edited by Simon Warner and Jim Sampas.
Marc lives near the coast in Northern California, where he can be found on the bluffs most evenings enjoying the gorgeous sunsets.
FURTHER DETAILS
Marc Zegans is a poet, spoken word artist, and creative development advisor who helps artists, writers and creative people thrive and shine, see: mycreativedevelopment.com
In addition to his broader creative advisory practice, Marc consults with emerging poets on the development of their craft. He writes periodically about creativity and innovation, and politics.
He is on Instagram @marczegans. He is listed as zegansmarc
He is also on LinkedIn and Facebook
Just to round things off, here is a recent review of Lyon Street by Richard Modiano, if you aren’t familiar with Marc’s work.
Marc Zegans’ Lyon Street is a unique contribution to the literature of the flâneur, that passionate wanderer keenly aware of the bustle of modern life, an amateur detective and investigator of the city. Zegans’ examinations of the conditions of urban life, joy, memory, alienation, class tensions, are not those of a solitary, dissociated urban observer. Instead Zegans turns flânerie into testimony, and he brings the city of San Francisco to life in a Proustian memory palace of pleasure and regret.
—Richard Modiano, Director Emeritus Beyond Baroque Foundation
