AWP Chicago 2012: Where I'll Be

  

 I’ll be participating in the following events at AWP this coming week in Chicago. I hope to see you at any of them, or any of the number of other panels and readings that I’ll be attending.

Route 66 Off-Site Reading
Friday, March 2, 2012
3:30pm until 5:30pm
Buzz Café, 905 S. Lombard Ave., Oak Park, IL. 60304
  
This reading, coordinated with thanks to Grant Matthew Jenkins, features experimental/conceptual poets from states along Route 66. Get your kicks at 3:30pm!

Tentative lineup:
Grant Matthew Jenkins
Claudia Nogueira
K. Lorraine Graham
Mark Wallace
Bob Archambeau
Sloan Davis
Susan Briante
Farid Matuk
Greg Kinzer
Joseph Harrington
Simone Muench
Hadara Bar-Nadav
William J Harris
Dennis Etzel Jr.

To get there by subway:
Take the Blue line to Austin-Blue
Walk to 905 S Lombard Ave, Oak Park, IL 60304
1. Head west on Garfield St toward S Taylor Ave 0.1 mi
2. Turn right onto S Lombard Ave 0.1 mi
905 S Lombard Ave, Oak Park, IL 60304

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Saturday, 9:00 A.M.-10:15 A.M.
S117. Building and Surviving an Innovative Writing Program
(K. Lorraine Graham, John Pluecker, Anna Joy Springer, Janet Sarbanes, Mark Wallace)
Crystal Room, Palmer House Hilton, 3rd Floor

Participating in an interdisciplinary writing program committed to innovative pedagogies is exhilarating and confusing, especially if it’s a new program and you are a professor building the curriculum or a student in the inaugural class. A recent graduate, a current student, two tenured faculty members, and an adjunct professor discuss their experiences with innovative writing programs: the three-year old MFA at UCSD, the established MFA at Cal Arts, and the growing undergraduate BA at CSU San Marcos.

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Stop the Sentence: A Night of (Inter) Active Readings
Saturday, March 3, 2012
7:00pm until 12:00am
at Outer Space Studio
1474 N Milwaukee Ave.

FEATURE READINGS BY:
7:30 Matthew Klane
8:30 Cara Benson
9:30 Michelle Naka Pierce
10:30 Ronaldo Wilson
11:30 Tracie Morris

WITH READINGS, PRESENTATIONS & PERFORMANCES BY:

7:45 AWP SHOW AND TELL
Teresa Carmody, Feng Sun Chen, Gloria Frym, BJ Love, Mark Wallace

8:45 O.P.P./OTHER PEOPLE'S POETRY
Claire Donato, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Luis Humberto Valadez
Catherine Wagner, Tyrone Williams, Tim Yu
& a tribute to Akliah Oliver with a video by Ed Bowes & Anne Waldman

9:45 TAG TEAM READING
cris cheek, Laura Goldstein, MC Hyland, Tim/Trace Peterson, Michelle Taransky, Edwin Torres, Christine Wertheim

10:45 INSTANT READING
David Emanuel, Jennifer Karmin, Edwin Perry, Jai Arun Ravine,
Adam Roberts, Kenyatta Rogers

+ + PLUS + + AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
That means you!

Venue logistics --
doors open 6:45pm
in the Wicker Park neighborhood
near CTA Damen blue line
third floor walk up
not wheelchair accessible

Red Rover Series {readings that play with reading} is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin. Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers. The series was founded in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin.

 

Insert Blanc Press Benefit & Holiday Party: Los Angeles, Saturday Dec 17

I'm really looking forward to participating in this great reading and party in Los Angeles this Saturday night. Take a look at this amazing lineup. If you're anywhere nearby, I hope you'll join us.

Insert Blanc Press Benefit & Holiday Party
Saturday December 17 from 6-12pm
Weekend Gallery
4634 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Donation at the door of $10 or more



Insert Blanc editor Mathew Timmons says:

$10.00 or more donation at the door (all donations will help cover expenses for Insert Blanc Press future and current projects and operations). Additionally, throughout the month of December Insert Blanc Press will run various tempting discounts on the whole catalog of books, all of which will also be available at the Holiday Party—many authors will be on-hand to sign copies of their books.

Artists & Writers performing at the Insert Press Benefit & Holiday Party include: Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Brian Ang, Allison Carter, Brian Joseph Davis, Robin Dicker, Kate Durbin, K. Lorraine Graham, Daniel Hockenson, Jen Hofer, Garrick Hogg, Gabriel Loiderman, js makkos, Max Mayer, Joseph Mosconi, Adam Overton, Christopher Russell, Ara Shirinyan, Brian Kim Stefans, Mark Wallace, and our special guests Dodie Bellamy, David Buuck & Kevin Killian.

Insert Blanc Press has published and promoted the work of over 60 artists and writers since it's humble beginnings in 2005. The PARROT series alone will publish the work of 23 writers over the course of its run and features the design work of the brilliant printer Margaret Lomeli. Blanc Press has recently published the enigmatic project (!x==[33]) Book 1 Volume 1 by .UNFO and has garnered attention by publishing the three volume series Tragodía by Vanessa Place.

Over the course of December I hope to raise $5,000 for Insert Blanc Press in sales and donations to fund printing and press operations in 2012. I hope to raise $2000 of the goal at the party on Saturday December 17. $2000 will go principally to funding the printing of the remainder of the PARROT series, which, if that goal is met, I hope to have out by summer 2012. An additional $1500 will go to moving all of Blanc Press' publications to a new printer and distributor which will give us international distribution and access to sites like Amazon and actually lower the price of the books. Any additional money raised to meet our total goal of $5,000 will go towards publishing new projects in 2012, including Bruna Mori's Poetry for Corporations, Kate Durbin's E! Entertainment Diamond Edition, Joseph Mosconi's GRRR ARRRGH as well as a forthcoming project by Christopher Russell and many other projects I just can't tell you about quite yet.

Whether or not you can make it to the party, donations can be made to Insert Blanc Press anytime at the following link https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=XSKLUVBA2AFU4

Past and current Insert Blanc Press artists include: Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Will Alexander, Brian Ang, Stan Apps, Janine Armin, Gary Barwin, Guy Bennett, Gregory Betts, Amaranth Borsuk, Franklin Bruno, Amina Cain, Allison Carter, Teresa Carmody, Marcus Civin, Ginny Cook, Dorit Cypis, Brian Joseph Davis, Katie Degentesh, Michelle Detorie, Robin Dicker, Sandy Ding, Kate Durbin, Bradney Evans, Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, K. Lorraine Graham, Nicholas Grider, Daniel Hockenson, Jen Hofer, Gabriella Juaregui, Maxi Kim, Janice Lee, Margaret Lomeli, Michael Magee, Joseph Makkos, Donato Mancini, Elana Mann, Sharon Mesmer, K. Silem Mohammad, William Moor, Bruna Mori, Joseph Mosconi, Jeffrey Joe Nelson, Julie Orser, adam overton, Vanessa Place, Amar Ravva, Dan Richert, Stephanie Rioux, Christopher Russell, Kim Schoen, Ara Shirinyan, Rod Smith, Michael Smoler, Brian Stefans, Stephanie Taylor, Jason Underhill, Mark Wallace, Christine Wertheim, and Allyssa Wolf.

Currently on view at Weekend Gallery: Jay Erker - This Is So Much Better - Erker's work often manipulates subjects from readily available popular imagery which, in a simple and personal way, investigates the notion of identity in public space, hierarchies of dissemination, and the desire for meaning in contemporary life.



Full schedule for the evening ...

6:30-7:05
Brian Joseph Davis
Robin Dicker
Jen Hofer
js makkos
K. Lorraine Graham
Mark Wallace
Amanda Ackerman

7:30-8:05
Daniel Hockenson
Brian Kim Stefans
Allison Carter
Joseph Mosconi
Ara Shirinyan
Harold Abramowitz

8:30-9
Adam Overton
Christopher Russell
Brian Ang
Kate Durbin

9:30-10
Dodie Bellamy
David Buuck
Kevin Killian with the three piece band Garrick Hogg, Gabriel Loiderman and Max Mayer

My upcoming readings featuring The Quarry and The Lot

Hello Friends:

I have several readings coming up soon in Southern California, one in San Diego and one in Los Angeles. If you’re nearby, come on out.

Upcoming Southern California readings for The Quarry and The Lot

In San Diego:
Saturday, November 12, 7 p.m.
D.G. Wills Books
7461 Girard Avenue
La Jolla, CA

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In Los Angeles:
Saturday, November 19, 8 p.m.
The Empty Globe Literary Series
with readings also by Bruna Mori and Adam Novy
At:   
Pieter
420 West Avenue 33, Unit 10
Los Angeles, CA
$5 donation
*please park on the street, and not in the lot
The Empty Globe series is curated by Amina Cain

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Bruna Mori is a writer, and educator, preoccupied with peripatetics. Her books include Derivé (Meritage Press), with paintings by Matthew Kinney, and Poetry for Corporations (forthcoming from Insert Press), exploring the unregulated drift of people and commodities through cities. Since moving to La Jolla, she has turned her attention to the suburbs, with photographer George Porcari, in a collaboration titled “Beige.” She also teaches in the writing program at the University of California at San Diego, and writes for a nonprofit design and media firm called Lybba founded by filmmaker Jesse Dylan, dedicated to open-source health advocacy worldwide. She is also Lucien’s mom.

Adam Novy is the author of a novel, The Avian Gospels (Hobart). He lives in Southern California.

Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a novel, The Quarry and The Lot (2011), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008).

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On The Quarry and The Lot:

Joseph Klein was a brilliant boy, talented—and dangerous. When he dies, at age 32, under uncertain circumstances, a group of his former friends gather for his funeral and see each other for the first time in some years. How did Joseph change them and what does he mean to them? What do they mean to each other, and why have their lives come to be what they are? The Quarry and The Lot is a novel about love and its limits, memory and history. It explores whether any truth can be stable when what’s happening is changed by what people understand and where what passes for normal is something far more frightening.

Mark Wallace's The Quarry and The Lot is a big, complex, tender, angry, haunted charting of how each of us is many strangers, any past many pasts, our biographies always-already written by others. Ultimately, though, for me it's about that bland, dangerous medication called the American suburb--how, once you've had a taste of that stuff, it's almost impossible to kick, even as it turns you into a ghost, or a guerilla, or, sometimes, both at once.
        --Lance Olsen, author of Calendar of Regrets and Nietzsche's Kisses

For more details about the book, go to:

http://www.blazevox.org/index.php/news/the-quarry-and-the-lot-by-mark-wallace-34/

My May East Coast readings

 

I’ll be on the east coast for several weeks, giving readings from my new novel, The Quarry and The Lot (more information about the book can be found here), along perhaps with some of my poetry as well. Also featured will be a number of other interesting writers well worth hearing.

If you’re in any of these cities on any of these dates, I hope you’ll come out to the reading, and join us for whatever festivities may ensue.

Philadelphia, PA
Saturday, May 21
Whenever We Feel Like It series
3 p.m.
Jose Pistolas
263 S 15th St

featuring:
Mark Wallace
Debra Morkun
&TBA

http://wheneverwefeellikeit.blogspot.com/
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Washington, DC
Tuesday, May 24
7 p.m.
Bridge Street Books
2814 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
(202) 965-5200

featuring:
Mark Wallace
& Jennifer Fink

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New York, NY
Saturday, May 28
7 p.m.
Yardmeter Series
267 Douglass Street
Brooklyn, NY
(in the Gowanus neighborhood)

featuring:
Mark Wallace
& rest of lineup TBA

http://yardmeter.blogspot.com

Andrew Shields on The Quarry and The Lot / An Upcoming Reading in San Bernardino

 

On his blog, Andrew Shields (pictured above) explores some interesting questions regarding one aspect of my novel The Quarry and The Lot, that portion of the book which concerns the emotional and intellectual struggle of the character Luke Owen regarding whether to keep writing poetry or not, and why. As Andrew pointed out in a note to me, the issue is not the central one of the novel, or even in his own thinking, but he does feel it’s worth taking up.

Minor spoiler alert: although Andrew’s thoughts hardly exhaust the question of what happens in the book, he does take up at least one portion of the novel’s conclusion, so if you’d rather not know about that yet, here’s your chance to save his excellent insights for another time.

Meanwhile, I’ll be giving a reading this Thursday night, May 12, at Cal State San Bernardino. The reading will be at 6 p.m. on the Cal State San Bernardino campus in Room 4005 of Pfau Library (pictured above). If you happen to be anywhere nearby, feel free to come on out.

Maps and Directions for Cal State San Bernardino can be found here.

First Southern California readings for The Quarry and The Lot

My first two Southern California readings featuring The Quarry and The Lot are coming up a few weeks from now. I won’t be reading only from the book, most likely, although most of the reading will certainly feature the book, which I’ve never read in public before. If you’re nearby, I’d love to see you there.

Saturday, May 7
7 p.m.
The evening will also feature literature in performance by India Radfar and Simone Forti
Agitprop Gallery
2837 University Avenue in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn's
Market)
San Diego, CA 92104 * 619.384.7989

Thursday, May 12
6 p.m.
Pfau Library Room 4005
California State University, San Bernardino
5500 University Parkway
San Bernardino, CA 92407-2318
(909) 537-5000
Directions to Campus: http://www.csusb.edu/MapsDirections/Directions.aspx
Campus Map: http://www.csusb.edu/MapsDirections/img/CSUSB_Campus_Map_web.pdf

If you're in Detroit on Thursday night

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit Reading Series
Curated by K. Silem Mohammad, featuring Alli Warren and K. Lorraine Graham
Thursday, March 24th at 7PM

Please click this link for further details.

Laynie Browne and Joe Ross reading at Agitprop, Saturday Feb 12, 7 p.m.

We hope you can join us on SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12 at 7pm for a reading by Joe Ross and Laynie Browne. You can readmore about our series and view a list of upcoming events at
http://agitpropreadings.blogspot.com/

 LAYNIE BROWNE is the author of nine collections of poetry and one novel. Her most recent publications include: The Desires of Letters, from Counterpath and Roseate, Points of Gold, from Dusie Books (both
2010). Other recent publications include The Scented Fox, (Wave Books 2007), Daily Sonnets (Counterpath Press, 2007) and Drawing of a Swan Before Memory, (University of Georgia Press, 2005). Her honors include: winner of the National Poetry Series, of the Contemporary Poetry Series, two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Poetry, and a recent Pushcart Prize Nomination. With others she has co- curated various reading series including the Ear Inn reading series in New York, the Subtext Series in Seattle, and now the POG reading series Tucson Arizona. She has taught creative writing at The University of Washington, Bothell, at Mills College in Oakland and at the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona, where she is currently the Elementary Education Coordinator.


JOE ROSS is the recipient of a Gertrude Stein Poetry Award  and the author of numerous books, most recently Strata (Dusie, 2008) and EQUATIONS=equals (Green Integer, 2004). Ross was born in Pennsylvania and after university, moved to Washington, D.C.. In D.C., he worked at The JFK Center for the Arts, served as the President of the Poetry Board at The Folger Shakespeare Library and was the Literary Editor of the Washington Review, 1991-1997. He co-founded and directed the In Your Ear poetry reading series. In 1997 he received an NEA Fellowship for his poetry and moved to San Diego, where he worked for that city’s Commission for Arts and Culture. In 1999, he left that position to put his poetics into practice, and to work directly in politics serving as Chief of Policy for elected officials. He also co-founded the Beyond the Page reading series. In 2004, he and his wife moved to Paris, where their two children were born, and where he continues to publish while working as an educator.


Agitprop readings are free, but wine and donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward.

Agitprop Gallery
Saturday, December 4, Reading 7pm, Art Opening at 8pm
2837 University Avenue in North Park
(Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn's Market)
San Diego, CA 92104 * 619.384.7989

Nada Gordon and K. Lorraine Graham Burn Down Los Angeles: Sunday, January 2

Well, in fact they might just give a reading. But you never know, and whatever they do, this is going to be a fascinating, can't miss event.


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The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

NADA GORDON & K. LORRAINE GRAHAM

Sunday, January 2, 2011 at 7:30pm

The PRB@The Public School
951 Chung King Rd.
Los Angeles, CA

Doors open at 7:00pm
Reading starts at 7:30pm

$5 donation requested

Nada Gordon is the author of several poetry books: Folly, V. Imp, Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?, and foriegnn bodie-- and an e-pistolary techno-romantic non-fiction novel, Swoon. Her new book, Scented Rushes, is just out from Roof books. A founding member of the Flarf Collective, she practices poetry, song, dance, dressmaking, and image manipulation as deep entertainment. She blogs at ululate.blogspot.com.

K. Lorraine Graham is the author of Terminal Humming, (Edge Books), recent work has appeared in Eleven Eleven, the Zaoem International Poetry Exhibition at the Minardschouwburg, Gent, Belgium, and the Infusoria visual poetry exhibition in Brussels.  She lives in Carlsbad, CA, with her partner Mark Wallace and Lester Young, a pacific parrotlet. You can find her online at spooksbyme.org.

Kate Durbin reading at Agitprop in San Diego December 4

Agitprop Reading Series, in North Park, now has a blog where you can get information about past and future readings.

Kate Durbin, a fascinating young poet who has one of the most unique and stylish stage presences around these days, will be reading at Agitprop this Saturday night. Fans of the gurlesque should especially take note and come out. The evening also features an art opening celebrating a new website by Susy Bielak.

For more details, including how to sign up on the mailing list and receive future announcements directly, visit the Agitprop Reading Series Blog.

Agitprop Gallery
Saturday, December 4, Reading 7pm, Art Opening at 8pm
2837 University Avenue in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn's Market)
San Diego, CA 92104 * 619.384.7989 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              619.384.7989      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

See You in Portland?

I’m going to be in Portland this weekend, from Friday November 5th until Monday, and reading in the Tangent Reading Series on Saturday November 6th. If you’re anywhere near Portland, consider yourself invited.

Then, after traveling south to Eugene and Ashland during the week, I’ll be back in Portland for a second weekend, from Friday the 12th until I fly out on Monday the 15th.

I hope to see any of you who are there, and please be in touch.

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Poetry reading featuring K. Lorraine Graham, Kevin Sampsell, and Mark Wallace

Saturday, November 6  7:00pm - 10:00pm
Open Space Café
2815 SE Holgate
Portland, OR
  
The Tangent Press & Reading Series is pleased to host a cross-genre reading of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction on Saturday, 6 November at 7 PM. Portland-based writer and editor Kevin Sampsell will be joined by Southern California writers K. Lorraine Graham and Mark Wallace. The event will take place at the in Southeast Portland (2815 SE Holgate).

www.thetangentpress.org/readings.html
Admission is free.

Kevin Sampssell is the author of the short story collections, Beautiful Blemish and Creamy Bullets. His newest book is the memoir, A Common Pornography. He has been the publisher of Future Tense Books, a micropress, since 1990.

K. Lorraine Graham is the author of Terminal Humming (Edge Books), and her visual work has appeared in the Zaoem International Poetry Exhibition at the Minardschouwburg, Gent, Belgium, and the Infusoria visual poetry exhibition in Brussels. She lives in Carlsbad, CA, with her partner Mark Wallace and Lester Young, a pacific parrotlet. You can find her online at spooksbyme.org.

Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a short story collection, Walking Dreams (2007), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). Forthcoming in early 2011 is his second novel, The Quarry and The Lot. He teaches at California State University San Marcos.

My Cleveland-Chicago-Racine readings

For those of you in the Midwest, I’ll be giving several readings, some also featuring other writers, in the following locations at the following times and dates:

Cleveland, Ohio
Thursday, October 14
9 p.m.
Jean Brandt Gallery
1028 Kenilworth Ave in Tremont

Kate Zambreno and Amanda Rosanne Howland Davidson will also be reading.


Chicago, Illinois
Saturday, October 16
7 p.m.
Myopic Books
1564 N. Milwaukee Avenue, 2nd Floor


Racine, Wisconsin
Sunday, October 17
7 p.m.
Gallery B4S, 613 Sixth Street
event hosted by the Racine Public Library

Jennifer Karmin and Tom Orange will also be reading.



Notes on the other authors:

Cleveland:

Kate Zambreno lived, wrote and taught for many years in Chicago before moving to Akron last year. Her novel O Fallen Angel, which won Chiasmus Press' "Undoing the Novel" contest, depicts a triptych of an American family during wartime. A collection of theoretical essays stemming from her blog “Francis Farmer is My Sister” will be published by Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents series in Spring 2012. She is currently teaching creative nonfiction at Cleveland State this semester.

Amanda Rosanne Howland Davidson hails from Canton and now lives on the West Side with her husband Scott. She has just started the M.F.A. program in creative writing at Cleveland State. For many years she has also been active on the Cleveland underground music scene, playing guitar and singing in the band Dead Peasant Insurance, which has toured widely throughout the U.S. and since 2004 issued nearly a dozen limited edition recordings on cassette and CD-R releases, most recently Cleveland Scum Skulls on the Pizza Night.


Racine:

Jennifer Karmin’s text-sound epic, Aaaaaaaaaaalice, was published by Flim Forum Press in 2010. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya.  At home in Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools.


Tom Orange currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. A poet, critic, and saxophone player, his recent work appears or is forthcoming in Court Green, Primary Writing, The Word at Peek Review, Rock Heals, and The Poker, and in the Slow Poetry anthology that appeared on Big Bridge.

My Readings in Portugal and Galicia

If you just happen to be in Portugal or Galicia (northwestern Spain), I´d be as surprised about that as I would be about your ability to attend my readings there. But who knows? You can't make it if I don't invite you, so consider yourself invited.

On Tuesday, September 28 at 6 p.m., at the University of Coimbra (top picture), in Coimbra, Portugal, I'll be presenting my work at the Faculdade de Letras. My university, California State University, San Marcos, is celebrating its 20th anniversary (1991-2010) this year, which makes it almost exactly 700 years younger than the University of Coimbra (1290-2010), Portugal's first university. It's my second reading at the university in Coimbra. My first was in the 1995 Second International Meeting of Poets, which brought writers to Portugal from all over the world. For anyone who doesn't know, the University of Coimbra has long been a crucial European center for the study of literature.

On Friday, October 1 (time still to be determined; I'll update as I learn more), I'll be reading at the University of Vigo (seen from aerial distance; second picture) in Galicia, the northwestern edge of Spain, a region which has a very different history than the rest of Spain and sees itself as very much its own separate place. The University of Vigo is a new and highly energetic university and has a well-informed faculty very interested in contemporary literature. I've never been there before and I'm excited to be going there.

I'd end by saying that I hope I'll see you there, except that seems unlikely for most of you. So instead I'll say, so you there or somewhere else, some time soon, I hope.

Cati Porter, Jeanine Webb, and Louis M. Schmidt at Agitprop August 7

We hope you can join us this, Saturday, August at 7 p.m. for a reading by JEANINE WEBB and CATI PORTER. An opening reception for LOUIS M. SCHMIDT's "We're All in This Together for Ourselves," on display at the gallery, will follow the reading.


Jeanine Webb's work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Antioch Review, Louis Liard Magazine, the San Diego Writers' 2010 anthology A Year in Ink and online in the Summer 2010 issues of The Latent Print and WTF PWM. She holds a M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, where she taught workshops in making poems. Her manuscript Flash Paper was a finalist for the 2008 Cider Press Review Book Award. Her work concerns images of apocalypse in relation to late capitalism, sci-fi, connectivity, surf culture, historical realities as shaped by technologies, modern mythography, media spin and pop culture. Jeanine lives in San Diego. Look for the literary magazine she'll be editing, Greater Than Or Equal To, which should exist at http://www.greaterthanzine.com/ sometime late this summer or in early fall.


Cati Porter is the author of a collection of poems, Seven Floors Up (Mayapple Press, 2008), as well as the chapbooks small fruit songs: prose poems (Pudding House Publications, 2008), (al)most delicious, an ekphrastic series after Modigliani's nudes (forthcoming in 2010 from Dancing Girl Press), and what Desire makes of us, a series written during NaPoWriMo 2009 (forthcoming from Ahadada books as an e-book with illustrations by her sister, Amy Joy Payne). She is founder & editor of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry . In June 2010 she will receive her MFA in Poetry from Antioch University, Los Angeles.


Louis M. Schmidt is an artist currently based in San Diego, CA. His work addresses personal and societal unhappiness, the many failures of history and myths of progress and upward mobility. Schmidt's most recent body of work, "We're All in This Together For Ourselves," is an immersive, mixed-media wall drawing that presents itself as a cyclic fragment, a frozen section of negative feedback loop that evinces a dark pool of truths about humans, about Americans, about the now to which our ideologies have delivered us.


Please share this information with friends and any interested parties.

Agitprop readings are free, but donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward!

AGITPROP POETRY SERIES
Saturday, August 7, 7 p.m. reading (8 p.m. Art Opening)
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Ave in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn’s
Market).
San Diego, CA * 92104 * 619.384.7989

Unnatural Acts: Events at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions

I'll be participating in the Friday and Saturday events for Unnatural Acts, part of the Les Figues Press Not Content project (http://www.notcontent.lesfigues.com), which is described by its curators as "A series of text projects curated by Les Figues Press as part of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions year-long initiative Public Interest."

Here's the full list of events and participants for Unnatural Acts:

UNNATURAL ACTS
July 21-August 11
Los Angeles, California

Taking its name from the historic collaborative writing marathons led by Bernadette Mayer and others in NYC during 1972-73, Unnatural Acts will explore the themes of hunger, war, and desire through public acts of collaboration.

Beginning with two days of installation and performance by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin, a group of eleven writers/artists will gather on the third day to write together over the course of eight hours.  In a daily ritual inaugurated on the fourth day, the outline of a new person’s body will be traced onto the bodies of text until the exhibit closes on August 11th.

ALL EVENTS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - 6522 Hollywood Blvd
http://www.welcometolace.org/events/view/unnatural-acts

July 21: Amina Cain
Installation (12-5)
Hunger Texts Read in the Dark performance (5-5:30pm)

July 22: Jennifer Karmin
Installation (12-5)
4000 Words 4000 Dead street performance (5-6pm)

July 23: Unnatural Acts
8 hours of collaborative writing (12-8pm)
Collaborators include: Harold Abramowitz, Tisa Bryant, Amina Cain, Teresa Carmody, Saehee Cho, Kate Durbin, K. Lorraine Graham, Jennifer Karmin, Laida Lertxundi, India Radfar, and Mark Wallace.

July 24: Presentations
Artists’ Talk (2-3pm)
Collaborative Reading (4-6pm)
Readers include: Harold Abramowitz, Tisa Bryant, Amina Cain, Teresa Carmody, Kate Durbin, K. Lorraine Graham, Jennifer Karmin, India Radfar, and Mark Wallace.

AMINA CAIN is the author of the short story collection I Go To Some Hollow (Les Figues Press, 2009), and a forthcoming chapbook, Tramps Everywhere (Insert Press/PARROT SERIES).  A recording of her story “Attached to a Self” was included in the group show A Diamond in the Mud at Literaturhaus Basel in Switzerland in 2008; other work has appeared in publications such as 3rd Bed, Action Yes, Denver Quarterly, onedit, Sidebrow, and Wreckage of Reason: Xxperimental Prose by Women Writers.  She lives in Los Angeles.
http://aminacain.com

JENNIFER KARMIN's text-sound epic, Aaaaaaaaaaalice, was published by Flim Forum Press in 2010. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise.  Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. A proud member of the Dusie Kollektiv, she is the author of the Dusie chapbook Evacuated: Disembodying Katrina. Walking Poem, a collaborative street project, is featured online at How2. In Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools.  http://aaaaaaaaaaalice.blogspot.com

COLLABORATORS:

Harold Abramowitz's recent publications include Not Blessed (Les Figues Press) and A House on a Hill {A House on a Hill, Part One} (Insert Press). Harold writes collaboratively as part of SAM OR SAMANTHA YAMS and UNFO, and co-edits the short-form literary press eohippus labs.  http://www.eohippuslabs.com

Tisa Bryant is author of Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), co-editor, with Ernest Hardy, of the anthology War Diaries (AIDS Project Los Angeles, 2010), co-editor of The Encyclopedia Project's Encyclopedia Vol. 2 F-K, due out Fall 2010, and has work forthcoming in Animal Shelter 2 and Mixed Blood.  Her creative process demands she write longhand, one of her favorite words is 'autochthonous,' and she teaches in the MFA Writing Program at CalArts.  http://www.encyclopediaproject.org

Teresa Carmody is the author of Requiem (Les Figues Press, 2005), and two chapbooks:  Eye Hole Adore (PS Books, 2008), and Your Spiritual Suit of Armor by Katherine Anne (Woodland Editions, 2009). She lives in Los Angeles and is co-director of Les Figues Press.  http://www.lesfigues.com/lfp/24/requiem

Saehee Cho holds a BA in Literature/Writing from The University of California, San Diego and an MFA in Writing from Calarts.  She has just completed her first collection of short stories tentatively titled Form, Composite.  Her work has been featured in Shrapnel and Ex Nihilo. http://www.thesproutandthebean.com

Kate Durbin is a writer & fashion artist. Her full-length collection of poetry, The Ravenous Audience, is available from Akashic Books.   http://www.katedurbin.blogspot.com

K. Lorraine Graham is the author of Terminal Humming (Edge Books). Visual work appeared in the 2008 Zaoem International Poetry Exhibition at the Minardschouwburg, Gent, Belgium and the Infusoria visual poetry exhibition in Brussels and Ghent, 2009.  http://www.spooksbyme.org

Laida Lertxundi, (Bilbao, Spain) works on film making non-stories with non-actors that play with diegetic space and a particular sound and image syntax to create moments of downtime, of a time between events. Her work has been shown at MoMa, Lacma, Viennale and the New York Film Festival views of the Avant Garde among other places.  http://www.laidalertxundi.net

India Radfar is the author of four books of poetry: India Poem (Pir Press), the desire to meet with the beautiful (Tender Buttons Press), Breathe (Shivastan Publications) and most recently, Position & Relation (Station Hill/Barrytown Books) and one chapbook, 12 Poems That Were Never Written (Mind Made Books). She has lived in Los Angeles for the past 6 years.  http://www.stationhill.org/authors/profile/230-India_Hixon_Radfar

Mark Wallace is the author and editor of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Most recently he has published a collection of tales, Walking Dreams, and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion.  http://wallacethinksagain.blogspot.com

San Diego Museum of Art presents a reading by K. Lorraine Graham and Mark Wallace

San Diego Museum of Art Summer Salon Series
Thursday, June 24, 2010
7 pm

In conjunction with Agitprop Gallery, the Agitprop Reading Series is collaborating with the San Diego Museum of Art to present Thursday Summer Salons featuring contemporary artists and writers from Southern California. Museum admission is $12 for adults, $8 for students with college ID, and open to the public.

This Thursday, June 24, at 7 pm, writers Mark Wallace and K. Lorraine Graham will read from their recent work.

Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a short story collection, Walking Dreams (2007), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). Forthcoming in early 2011 is his second novel, The Quarry and The Lot.

K. Lorraine Graham is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Terminal Humming (Edge Books, 2009) and several chapbooks, including Large Waves to Large Obstacles, forthcoming from Take-Home Project. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Traffic, Area Sneaks, Foursquare and elsewhere. She currently lives in San Diego with her partner, Mark Wallace, and Lester Young, a pacific parrotlet.

During your visit will be able to explore the works of living artists and writers, participate in hands-on art making activities, enjoy a cocktail, and view the Museum's current exhibitions and collections. We invite the public to join some of the most exciting artists working in Southern California and immerse themselves in what's happening right now in our local art scene.


Artist Presentations will be occurring in the museum before and after the reading.

Judith Pedroza will recreate the block where she grew up in Mexico City in scale model with her work Marina Nacional 80.  Visitors will be invited to help her expand the work throughout the evening by adding additional buildings and roads.

And Michael Trigilio will present one of his video works.  Michael is a founding member of the independent radio project Neighborhood Public Radio, which was featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

Directions and parking information are available on the SDMA website.

For more information about the Summer Salon Series, please visit: http://sdma.balboaparkonline.org/programs-events/summer-salon-series

Some Tips for Students on Giving Readings

(Pictured: Cal State San Marcos Professor Sandra Doller (in blue) talking with now former Cal State San Marcos students Kevin Colpean (with backpack) and Jason Scheinheit after a reading)

Students in my creative writing classes are asked to read their work out loud to each other. My more advanced classes have more formal (though still relatively informal) in-class readings in which students not only stand and read in front of everyone, but also write an introduction for another student (we break into reasonably chosen pairs) and read that before the other student presents work.

These days, learning to give readings is a crucial part of being a writer for many people, and a key part of thinking of oneself as writing in the context of a community of others, however big or small the community in question might be. Some writers never give readings, of course, but beginning writers can often make better decisions about whether readings are for them if they have some experience of them. Classrooms are hardly perfect mini-representations of more public writing communities, yet as an approximation for learning, they’re not bad.

Some of my students, even advanced ones, have never read to a group of people before and are nervous about it, sometimes extremely. So this year I developed for the first time a series of basic tips about things to do and not do when giving readings. And I do mean basics. This list isn’t about how to be a virtuoso of the stage, but about how to think about being on stage in a way that might minimize stage fright or at least give the beginning reader some guideposts to focus on even when frightened (or not frightened, as the case may be).

This list is no more than the set of ideas I myself have used at various times. Some of them will be more applicable than others to any given individual. Some might seem idiosyncratic. Quite a few of them come from my reading of Erving Goffman and his ideas about the socially constructed and performative nature of the self. And the language here is maybe a bit more blunt than I would use in class, but not by much.

If you have other suggestions about how writers can give better readings, or stories or questions about how to read, I hope you’ll add them here, since they might be helpful not only to my students but to others.

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Remember that giving a reading is really just playing a role, a kind of acting. Think of it as a game even. Nothing requires that you have to “act like yourself” (whatever “acting like yourself” might mean, which is maybe not much).

It might help to imagine yourself as imitating someone who is giving a reading.

If you realize that you’re playing a role, you may also realize that you’re not in a situation in which your innermost soul (whatever you imagine that to be) is about to be exposed to a bunch of strangers.

Your innermost soul is in fact not about to be exposed to a bunch of strangers. People are actually going to learn less about you from your reading than you think. Most people listening are sitting there more worried about themselves than about anything you’re doing or not. When the reading is over, they’re going to go back to thinking about themselves.

In fact, almost everyone listening wants you to do well, because they’re sitting there thinking about how they would feel if they were in your situation.

If you don’t feel confident, try to fake being confident, or to act out a role of someone who’s confident. The difference between faking confidence and having confidence won’t be clear to anyone. In fact, having confidence often may be no more than faking confidence and having done it often enough that it feels comfortable.

Try to read your work as if you like your work. If you don’t like your work, pretend to be someone who does like it.

Don’t apologize for your work or for reading it, and try to avoid putting yourself down.

It’s okay to acknowledge that something you’re reading may still be in process and unfinished.

It’s often a good idea, at the start of a reading, to give a brief advanced description of what you plan to read. That will help your listeners follow along with the order or shape of what you’re reading, and it will help them know how the reading is progressing.

It might help to think of yourself as being in a conversation with others rather than as performing for them. Think of yourself as speaking with others, not as lecturing to them.

In the same way, try not to talk simply to yourself. That often happens because nerves make you want to pretend that no one is there. Again, remind yourself that you’re talking with people.

Fairly standard suggestions for readings and public talks include things like looking around the room and making eye contact with people. Those are good tips but I don’t think there’s too much need to worry about them. Still, try to look up from the pages you’re reading now and then if you can.

Mark Wallace May Atlantic Coast Readings

I'll be on the east coast giving two readings next weekend, so if you're nearby, come on out.

Saturday, May 22, 6 p.m.

Mark Wallace and Geoffrey Young

i.e. reading series
at: DIONYSUS
8 E. Preston Street
Baltimore, MD 21202
410-244-1020

 
Sunday, May 23, 7 p.m.

Mark Wallace and Brian Fitzpatrick

BRIDGE STREET BOOKS
2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20007
ph 202 965 5200
Bridge Street Books is located in Georgetown, next to the Four Seasons Hotel,
five blocks from the Foggy Bottom Metro, blue & orange lines.

 
Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a short story collection, Walking Dreams (2007), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). Forthcoming in early 2011 is his second novel, The Quarry and The Lot.



Geoffrey Young has been creating an astonishing body of work for well over thirty years while running a gallery & being the publisher of The Figures Press, one of the most provocative & influential presses of the late 20th century. He has been known as a poets’ poet & a painters’ poet, but these terms undermine the swath that his poetry has cut through our world. It is high time that we read him as the demands his work offers us . . . read & leap!.



Brian Fitzpatrick has been living in DC for 7 years. He has recently completed his Masters Degree in Literature at George Mason University, where he also teaches undergraduate English. He is a poetry reader for the literary journal Phoebe and will be pursuing his MFA in poetry beginning this Fall.

Agitprop Reading Series featuring Rozalie Hirs: Saturday, May 8, 7 p.m.

We hope you can join us this Saturday, May 8 at 7pm for a reading and performance by Rozalie Hirs, an interdisciplinary writer and musician from the Netherlands.

Rozalie Hirs (pictured above with Jaap Blonk) is a prolific interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates music, text and video. Her work has performed throughout Europe and the United States. Her three books of poetry are Locus (1998), Logos (2002) and Speling (2005, all Querido Publications). She also wrote the libretto for the opera The Cricket Recovers by Richard Ayres. Rozalie Hirs' recent composition "Roseherte," (2008) for full orchestra and electro-acoustic sounds was premiered by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and selected for the Toonzetters prize in 2009. Her electro-acoustic composition “Pulsars” (2006, 2007 rev.), commissioned by Café Sonore, VPRO Radio, Netherlands, received the distinction “Recommended work” at the 11th International Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music (IREM) in 2007. A CD, Pulsars, with electroacoustic music and text pieces by Rozalie Hirs will appear in 2010 as a co-production of Attacca records and Muziekcentrum Nederland. You can learn more about Rozalie Hirs’ work online at
http://www.rozalie.com/.

Please share this information with friends and any interested parties. Agitprop readings are free, but donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward!

AGITPROP POETRY SERIES
Saturday, May 8, 7pm
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Ave in North Park
(Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn’s Market)
San Diego, CA * 92104 * 619.384.7989

Beyond Baroque Presents Rod Smith, Mel Nichols, K. Lorraine Graham, and Mark Wallace: Saturday March 13

I'm very happy to be part of this hometown Washington, D.C. lineup that will be reading in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Now that Lorraine and I live in southern California (the very deep south of California, that is), we get up to L.A. more often. But west coast sightings of our longtime friends Mel Nichols and Rod Smith are much more rare, so if you're anywhere nearby, I hope you'll come out and join us.


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Beyond Baroque Literary Center presents Rod Smith, Mel Nichols, K. Lorraine Graham, and Mark Wallace

Rod Smith is the author of Deed, Music or Honesty, Poèmes de l'araignée (France), The Good House, Protective Immediacy, and In Memory of My Theories. A CD of his readings, Fear the Sky, came out from Narrow House Recordings in 2005. He is editor/publisher of Edge Books which has established an international reputation for publishing the finest in innovative writing. Smith is also editing, with Peter Baker and Kaplan Harris, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley, for the University of California Press. Smith is a Visiting Professor in Poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for the Spring 2010 semester.

Mel Nichols is the author of Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon (National Poetry Series finalist), Bicycle Day (Slack Buddha 2008), The Beginning of Beauty, Part 1: hottest new ringtones, mnichol6 (Edge 2007), and Day Poems (Edge 2005). Other recent work can be found in Poetry, New Ohio Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. She teaches at George Mason University.

K. Lorraine Graham is a writer and artist. She is the author of Terminal Humming (Edge Books, 2009) and several chapbooks, including Large Waves to Large Obstacles, forthcoming from Take-Home Project. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Traffic, Area Sneaks, Foursquare and elsewhere. She currently lives with her partner, Mark Wallace, and Lester Young, a pacific parrotlet. You can find her online at spooksbyme.org.

Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a short story collection, Walking Dreams (2007), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). Forthcoming in early 2011 is his second novel, The Quarry and The Lot. He teaches at California State University San Marcos.

Beyond Baroque
681 Venice Blvd.
Venice, California 90291
Phone 310-822-3006