*I didn't even know Brooklyn had a poet laureate, but hey, if it counts, she's got my vote.
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/25/32_25_gk_new_poet_laureate.html?comm=1
(...)
Ever the supporter of poetry in the borough, however, Hershon immediately suggested two more names for the short list: Indian-born poet Vijay Seshadri and Park Slope writer Sharon Mesmer.
Mesmer will get the vote of anyone who likes a randy dame who’s not afraid to write poems with titles like “Annoying Diabetic Bitch” and “Holy Mother of Monkey Poo.”
“If anyone is suggesting me [as poet laureate], it must be because I slept around so much,” she said. But she’s being modest: Mesmer, who studied under Allen Ginsberg, teaches at the New School and, this fall, at Brooklyn College.
She’s published three books of poetry and would love to do outreach to students.
“I’ll go into any school that doesn’t have a restraining order,” she said.
Mesmer is part of the Brooklyn-based Flarf Collective, whose members sometimes craft poems out of Google search results (hence “Annoying Diabetic Bitch” and her master work, “Juan Valdez Has a Little Juan Valdez (i.e., Energy Cannon) in His Pants”).
“I put ‘Juan Valdez’ and ‘energy cannon’ in Google and wrote a whole poem off the results,” she said. “It shows how much fun poetry can be.”
She said she has been writing poetry since she was 14. “I’m almost 50 now, so you do the math. No really, you should. I’m a poet, I can’t do math.” (...)
(((S. Mesmer, left:)))
*Looks like she's the hometown favorite already:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/25/32_25_gk_new_poet_laureate_chart.html/
