'Roots and Routes' gathers essays, talks, interviews, statements, notes, and other prose writings by poets who studied and/or taught at the New College of California's Masters in Poetics program over the course of its nearly 30-year existence. The collection evokes a much-needed anti-hierarchical, even anarchic, pedagogy in poetry, poetics, and the literary arts, and is part of a general reevaluation of standard higher education models on Creative Writing. As such it will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars interested in America's recent literary history, as well as to poets outside the academy and the general reader interested in US poetry and poetics.
Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson Library for the University of San Francisco. He received his MA/MFA in Poetics from New College in 2001. His books include the critical study The Duncan Era: One Poet's Cosmology (Spuyten Duyvil) along with volumes of poetry: Sketch of the Artist (fsmbw), Drops of Wine / Drops of Rain (Spuyten Duyvil); from Book of Kings (Bird and Beckett Books); Das Gedichtete (Ugly Duckling); and "There Are People Who Think That Painters Shouldn't Talk" A GUSTONBOOK (Post-Apollo).
Marina Lazzara received an MA in Poetics from New College of California and has published in various literary magazines and with Two Way Mirror Books. She is a vocalist and guitarist for the San Francisco band, The Rabbles. Teaching Creative Writing and Health Education to seniors by day, she can otherwise be found hosting salons at her home where for over three decades she has supported the literary and music underground of the Bay Area.
Nicholas James Whittington is a poet, scholar, educator, editor, printer, and publisher living in Oakland, CA since 2012. Born and raised in San Francisco, he continues to edit and publish the roughly annual AMERARCANA along with the occasional small book under the auspices of his family bookshop, Bird & Beckett Books, in the city, while completing his dissertation at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on the original incarnation of the Masters in Poetics Program at New College of California. At Impart Ink, an errant studio, he designs, typesets, and prints books both digitally and via letterpress - www.impartink.com. Recent chapbooks include Provisions (2017, PUSH Press) and Indefinite Sessions (2016, Gas Meter Books). His first full-length collection is Resolution of the West (2020, Bootstrap Press).
