Marina Gipps is a writer, poet, artist, photographer, and researcher. Born in Chicago, writer and filmmaker, Marina Pilar Gipps, daughter of an Argentine mother and British father was awarded a Master of Arts Degree from the English/Writing program at The University of New Hampshire-where she worked with Charles Simic in an independent study. Prior to her studies in New Hampshire, she attended the summer MFA Writing and Poetics program at The Naropa Institute (aka. The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where she studied with Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Jackson MacLow, Anselm Hollo, and Andrei Codrescu among others.
Her most frightening Naropa experience was giving a poetry reading immediately after Ginsberg in a coffee shop…thinking to herself…My God, how do I top that?
In 2004, Ms. Gipps had a film short in the Phoenix Film Festival entitled, A Twist in Time. It was there that she had the opportunity of meeting several directors in the Sundance Channel Theatre of Harkins Cinemas where her film was shown. Most of her film work is Art Direction (Curdled 1991-student film directed by Reb Braddock that later was made into a feature produced by Quentin Tarrantino.) She feels directing and writing are oftentimes interlinked, that the best films are oftentimes poetic-often citing Ray Guerra’s Erendira based on the fiction of Marquez. ‘Having been raised in a bilingual household…my grandmother who did not speak a word of English would introduce me to different poets on a weekly basis. Neruda and Vallejo set the standard. College, however, opened an entirely different bag of worms: It was there that I started reading James Tate and Charles Simic. I was feeling quite alienated at the time and Tate’s poem, The Lost Pilot, just resonated within me. Actually, the entire book was both a blessing and a downfall. I know that sounds crazy, ‘
Her poetry has appeared in Abraxas (Vallejo Edition ed. Ingrid Swanberg and Warren Wossener-her first publishers) , Aegis (literary journal of UNH) , Bombay Gin (Literary Journal of the Naropa Institute) , Exquisite Corpse, Rambunctious Review, Potato Eyes, Main Street (Magazine at UNH) , Poetry, Tray Full of Lab Mice, Tusitala (Undergraduate Magazine of Lake Forest College where she served as the Editor in Chief) , Willow Springs-among other publications. She has work forthcoming in Other Voices, Cross Roads Press Anthology of Works in Progress 2007 edited by Norbert Blei.
‘Sometimes I slip away. Floating between persons and places, I search the migratory waves of existence for words: musical notes, brushstrokes, perhaps celluloid clips of memory-attempting to portray more than the ordinary in this extraordinary world. As a writer, I feel that bizarre turns on the street are worthy of investigation -and that your ‘typical’ souls are not your usual suspects.’ The following 300 poems are from her currently unpublished collections: Hell With Three Dog Heads, The Hackneyed Road Narrows, Peace and Bridges: War Poems for Congress,13 and The Bad Book. A collection of sixty poems has been accepted for publication by Insomniattic Press of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Now this sounds snotty but fan mail should be addressed to mjgipps at aol dot com with subject heading indicating where you saw my poems. I only want to hear from fans and prospective (non-vanity) serious publishers. If you don’t like me as a poet, please do not bother contacting me as my life is sad enough as it is. Thank you.
