This summer's tour culminated with two weeks in Vermont, for my second appearance at the Bookstock literary festival (along with some of my heros: Ocean Vuong, Carolyn Forché, Ilya Kaminsky, Vievee Francis & Matthew Olzmann, among others) and a reading at the Lamp Shop in Burlington. It was a fitting way to end the worldwind 3 months which took me and my girlfriend, Skye Jackson, through the Southwest of the U.S. and then all the way to Paris and back; Burlington is where I c

In lieu of an extremely tardy Part 2 in this blog series about my 2018 tour, here's the unexpurgated version of my rambling interview with Robert Greer at London Magazine, who recently ran a shorter version, along with several of my poems in their fall 2018 issue. Many thanks to Rob for setting this up, who I met several years ago while I was sleeping on the floor of Desperate Literature bookshop, in Madrid. (Originally published Sep. 4, 2018) Robert Greer A question most wri

This summer, I spent 3 months on the road, touring to 11 cities in 5 countries in 2 hemispheres. The first leg took me up the East coast of the U.S. with a mysterious Chilean documentary filmmaker named Jordi Goya. We started filming in New Orleans in mid-May, and then hit the road in my green '93 Capri convertible, which I bought in Slidell for $1600 and a case of beer, and which Jordi promptly christened, 'El Verde'. First stop: Asheville, North Carolina - a city I haven't

While on the road in Europe/USA this summer I've taken to using Instagram to tell stories and post photos and poems, almost daily. Follow me there at @Benjamin_aleshire for updates, details about readings, and occasionally some of my visual art - plus lots of bizarre tales from NYC, Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen, Vermont, and San Francisco. This fall, though, I'm going off-grid to work on a novel called POET FOR HIRE, so I'll be taking a much-needed break from the digita

I've been dreadful at blogging regularly...so for now here's an unexpurgated version of an interview I did with Nyles Pierrelouis, which is currently up at the Hamline University Lit Link. How did you decide you wanted to go out and perform on the street? I’ve been writing poems for strangers in the street for over five years now, but I’ve been performing in the street (busking) since I was a teenager, when I toured with a choral group and we sang in the street to pick up a l

For the first time, one of my poems was returned to me. Today in the mail, a big brown package arrives, plastered with stamps. Any package plastered with stamps is a subtle form of aesthetic justice—since in this digital era we live in, at the Post Office a computer will print a soulless bar-code sticker unless you specifically insist on using stamps, and then flip through their book of choices hurriedly while everyone waiting in line silently resents you for wasting 45 secon

photo by Robbie Quinn Photography A fallen-angel of academe who's crawling back up the ivory tower on his hands and knees, last year I won a poetry prize from the University of New Orleans. But then my mother died and my family and love life was ripped apart. I hid in the mountains of northern California, I hid in the mountains of Quetzaltenango, I hid in plain sight on Calle de Obispo in Havana, writing poems for pastry sellers to give to their girlfriends, and to fat touris