DanielNester.com

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

This Friday: Yes, Reading!

FRIDAY, APRIL 10th
(promptly) @ 7 p.m.:
YES, READING!
@ Townshend Park Bakery/Cafe
238 Washington Avenue
(between Henry Johnson and Lark)
Albany, NY

SHANE JONES is the author of Light Boxes, a novel in which a team of balloonists fight a war against February, and of the chapbook I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands. He lives in Albany.

JULIANNA SPALLHOLZ's prose poetry and short fiction has appeared in journals including Caketrain, Gargoyle, Sleepingfish, and Trickhouse. She's an assistant editor at Tarpaulin Sky press, and lives in Malta.

Labels: Albany, Poems, poetry

# 5:43 PM

Just up on Linebreak: "Caddyshackesque."

"Caddyshackesque," a sonnet of mine written several eoins ago and that centers around my Shakespeare studies critique on my favorite movie of all time, is just up on Linebreak, a super online literary magazine. It's read by Shin Yu Pai.

As a special bonus: I just came across this video: Caddyshack in 30 Seconds (and Re-Enacted by Bunnies). Their Titanic in 30 Seconds (and Re-Enacted by Bunnies) remains my number one Bunnies production. But this one comes close.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 8:46 AM

Monday, April 06, 2009

April 11: The Caffe Lena Poetry Festival in Saratoga.

[I will be in Long Island for this, but if you're around the Greater Capital District, this is way worth checking out. And if you're a student of mine, ahem, there's extra credit in it for ya. Please forward!]

Caffe Lena Poetry Festival:
an all-day festival
of poetry performance
and workshops
See info here along with ticket information.

The program will feature twenty-minute readings throughout the afternoon by twelve stylistically varied, widely read poets from NYC, Rhode Island, Maine, the Capital District and the Adirondacks. Included will be Bernadette Mayer, Joseph Bruchac, Cara Benson, Michael Brown, Lyn Lifshin, Alan Catlin, Steven Huff, Miriam Axel-Lute, Barbara Ungar, Nancy White, M. Miriam Herrera and Jordan Smith. Workshops will be offered by Joe Bruchac, Michael Brown, Barbara Ungar, Jordan Smith, Miriam Axel-Lute and Steven Huff.

Afterward, we'll gather for conversation and a meal of appetizers, salads and main course dishes. Bring a dish for 10 people and eat for free, or pay $10 and fill your plate at the eclectic buffet. RSVP to sarah at caffelena.org or 583-0022

Headlining our first Caffe Lena Poetry Festival is Ed Sanders, famed counter-culture figure of the 60s, who built a bridge between the Beatnik and Hippy generations.

A full schedule of readings, workshops and poet biographies is pasted below or check www.caffelena.org.

Day Pass: $10
Tickets available at door. No advance reservations.

Workshops: $10 each (must have day pass to participate)
Tickets available at door. No advance reservations.

Evening performance with Ed Sanders:
$10 for day pass holders, $15 without
Tickets available at door or through Brown Paper Tickets:

POETRY READINGS
12:00 - Miriam Axel-Lute
12:30 - Alan Catlin
1:00 - Cara Benson
1:30 - Joseph Bruchac
2:00 - Lyn Lifshin
2:30 - Michael Brown
3:00 – Nancy White & Barbara Ungar Collaborative Reading: "I Can Always Substitute Other, Angrier Poems Later: A Dialogue on Divorce"
4:00 – M. Miriam Herrera
4:30 - Steven Huff
5:00 – Jordan Smith
5:30 – Bernadette Mayer

WORKSHOPS
1 to 2 PM
Miriam Axel-Lute - Poetry Performance
As soon as you step up to an open mic, you have become a performer as well as a writer. How do you reach an audience with something as complex as a poem, on the first try? We'll cover three steps to good poetry performance. Please bring a short (under 40 lines, roughly) poem or piece of a poem (yours or someone else's) to practice with.

Barbara Ungar - Poetry in Performance, Poetry on the Page
Some of us excel at reading our work aloud, but find that on the page, the work is less effective. Others write beautifully for the page, but do not do justice to the work in performance. This workshop will attempt to address both sides of the coin, improving both skills. Please bring at least one poem to perform aloud, and to have the group critique on the page. Please bring with you either 6-12 copies of your poem, or plenty of change for the copy machine at the library.

3 to 4 PM
Steven Huff - Consider the Line Break
Often line breaks are a poet's last consideration. Yet to treat line breaks arbitrarily may mean the poem loses shades of meaning. In this workshop we will examine four simple lines in a variety of breaks, with various emphases and foci. If you bring a poem to the workshop, you will have a chance to rework your line breaks, which may change the direction of the poem, or carry it into unexpected drafts.

Jordan Smith - Honoring & Disguising the Autobiographical Impulse
This workshop will be a discussion of how to both honor and disguise the autobiographical impulse in poetry. Participants should bring a noteboook (or whatever they are comfortable using for writing). We'll do a couple of brief exercises designed to investigate the gray area between the actual and the represented self. The instructor is Jordan Smith, author of five books of poetry and professor of English at Union College.

5 to 6 PM
Joseph Bruchac - Editing, Feedback & Ideas for Generating New Work
Attendees are encouraged to bring in one or two of their poems in progress--to be read and discussed in the workshop. Attention will be given to work from each person in the group. The workshop will also include at least one writing exercise, as well as further suggestions for generating writing.

Michael Brown - Critic! Using the Good to Drive Out the Bad Without Chasing People Away
Critic! It can be the ultimate insult, but if you run a venue, publish a journal or just hang out with poets, there are many ways to use the good to drive out the bad without chasing people away.

FEED THE MUSE
Potluck for Poets and Their Friends
6 to 7:15 PM

Biographies:
Miriam Axel-Lute (www.mjoy.org/poetry) is a performance-oriented poet who writes about politics, religion, sex, love, urban living and the human condition. She loves giving people who didn't like poetry in high school a different experience of the genre. Her work has been published in various journals, including The Ledge and the Paterson Literary Review and anthologies, including You Are Here: New York City's Streets in Poetry and Hunger Enough: Living Spiritually in a Consumer Society. She was a finalist in the 2000 Allen Ginsburg Awards. Miriam has given featured readings at venues from pulpits to bookstores to living rooms all over the Northeast, and has two chapbooks, Souls Like Mockingbirds and Packing to Stay.

Alan Catlin was a bartender for thirty-four years before retiring to work on his fictional memoirs under the working title Chaos Management. His work in bars also informed his recent collection Suffering Bastards, winner for the fifth and last Evil Genius Chapbook Contest. He’s published several collections of poems related to art, including chapbooks on Turner, Our Lady of the Shipwrecks (Finishing Line Press), The Impressionists, Effects of Sunlight on Fog (Bright Hill Press) and more extreme art forms in chapbooks Self-Portrait of the Artist Afraid of His Self-Portrait (March Street Press) and Men in Suits (Madman Ink). Two poems from Alan’s collection The Effects of Sunlight in the Fog have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Cara Benson's book of poems, (made), is forthcoming from BookThug. She is guest curator for the Belladonna Elders Series with Jayne Cortez and Anne Waldman. Her poem "perhaps the festivities are what they seem" and a conversation with Anne Waldman called "Welcome to the Anthropocene" are forthcoming in the book for the event. Benson edits the online text and art journal Sous Rature (http://www.necessetics.com/sousrature.html) and EDNA, the print journal of The Millay Colony for the Arts. Her chapbook, "Quantum Chaos and Poems: A Manifest(o)ation," co-won the bpNichol Prize. Benson teaches poetry every Tuesday at Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility.

Joseph Bruchac draws on the Adirondacks, where he lives, and on his Native American heritage (Abenaki) for storytelling and writing. His poems, articles and stories have appeared in more than 500 publications, from American Poetry Review to Smithsonian magazine. He has written more than 70 books for adults and children, including his latest, March Toward the Thunder (Penguin/Dial, 2008). His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Cherokee National Prose Award, the Knickerbocker Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. He has taught creative writing at Skidmore College, Columbia University, and Hamilton College, as well as teaching poetry workshops on Indian reservations, in prisons, schools, libraries, and at writing conferences.

Lyn Lifshin's poetry appears in almost every literary and poetry magazine, from American Scholar, Christian Science Monitor and Yankee to Ms., Rolling Stone and Ploughshares. She has edited 4 anthologies of women's writing including Tangled Vines (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) now in its second enlarged edition and chosen by Ms., magazine as one of the 60 best books of the year. Forthcoming books include a book about the courageous and riveting race horse, Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness from Texas Review Press, Nutley Pond from Goose River Press, Lost in the Fog from Finishing Line Press, Persephone from Red Hen. She is a poet of substance, range and invention with writers as diverse as Robert Frost, Ken Kesey, Richard Eberhart, and Ed Sanders having praised her work.

Michael R. Brown, author of four books of poetry, was the founding Boston slam master. Now living in Robbinston, Maine, he and his partner Valerie Lawson host a monthly reading and publish the poetry quarterly Off the Coast. Brown reports for the local newspaper, works in theater, and is writing a book on American education.

Nancy White’s first book, Sun, Moon, Salt, won the Washington Prize for poetry. Her poems have appeared in journals including Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Diner, FIELD, Harpur Palate, New Letters, New England Review, Rattle, and many others. She works as associate editor at The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review and teaches at Adirondack Community College.

Barbara Louise Ungar is an Associate Professor at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, where she has taught poetry, literature, and the performance of literature for twelve years. She has read widely, in NYC, upstate NY, and further afield. Her most recent poetry collection, The Origin of the Milky Way, won the 2006 Gival Press Poetry Award, and several other awards, including the Adirondack Literary Award for Best Book of Poetry 2007. She is also the author of Thrift, and the chapbooks Sequel and Neoclassical Barbra, as well as Haiku In English. Further information is available at www.barbaraungar.com.

M. Miriam Herrera is a graduate of the Program for Writers (MA) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and has published poems in New Millennium Writings, Nimrod, Blue Mesa Review, Albatross, Earth's Daughters, and Southwestern American Literature. Her new chapbook, Kaddish for Columbus, is available from Finishing Line Press. Miriam has taught creative writing and Chicano/Latino Literature at University of Illinois, University of New Mexico, and Russell Sage College. She has lived in the Midwest, Southwest, and Israel, and today makes a home with her mathematician husband in Malta, New York. Miriam is on the Board of Directors of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild and serves as their Webmaster.

Steve Huff is the author of two books of poetry, The Water We Came From (2003) and More Daring Escapes (2008), and a collection of stories, A Pig in Paris (2008). He teaches at RIT and in the Pine Manor College low residency MFA program, and is director of adult education at the Writers & Books literary center in Rochester, NY.

Jordan Smith is the author of five books of poems, the two most recent from the University of Tampa Press: "For Appearances" and "The Names of Things Are Leaving". He recently completed a new collection, "The Light in the Film". The recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenhiem Memorial Foundation, he is chair of the Department of English at Union College.

One of the most eminent experimental poets of our time, Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1945. A most prolific poet, her first book was published at the age of twenty-three. Many texts later she continues to write progressive poetry from her home in East Nassau, New York her latest publication being Poetry State Forest (New Directions). For many years Mayer lived and worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where she was the Director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project from 1980-1984. Bernadette Mayer has received grants and awards from PEN American Center, The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art, the NEA, The Academy of American Poets, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Labels: Albany, Poems, poetry

# 11:26 AM

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Two poem-erific events in Albany area: A Best of Fence and Yes, Reading!

[Two readings while I teach or am out of town. These are both super event put on by Colie Collen from Fence. If you're in the area, you should make your way out there.]

TONIGHT, March 19th @ 7 pm CELEBRATE the upcoming release of A BEST OF FENCE: THE FIRST NINE YEARS with readings from area contributors:

SAM TRUITT is the author of six books in the Vertical Elegies series, including most recently Street Mete, Three Works and The Section. Regarding Fence, he writes: “I recall in Tale of Genji, which is the best and perhaps only book ever written, the prince writing (Arthur Waley translation), ‘Now like a traveler who has tried two ways in vain I stand perplexed where these sad seasons meet.’”

CHRISTIAN PEET is the author of Big American Trip (Shearsman Books, 2009) and the first installment of an ongoing project, The Nines, which appears as chapbook from Palm Press (2006) and is available from Small Press Distribution. He is also the publisher and founding editor of Tarpaulin Sky Press. He stood by Fence during the “Summer Fiction Tits” debate and still does, even in an election year.

LAURA DIDYK "I felt like I’d lifted up a floorboard and discovered some secret that were it to leak could, possibly, affect the state of the union, and get me into a heap of trouble if I let it. Eight years later, I’ve come to welcome trouble like that. Fence and the conversations it houses are something all writers in America should be grateful for—whether or not you are a devoted reader or a naysayer. It has that kind of force."

FREE: wine and refreshments will follow

TOMORROW, March 20, Robert Strong and Raurri Jennings @ YES, READING!

"And sometimes linebreaks are stupid."

Robert Strong, poet, teacher, and editor of the anthology Joyful Noise: American Spiritual Poetry will read and talk about his work.

Raurri Jennings, local poet and fiction writer, will also read.

Friday, March 20, 2009 6:00pm
Townshend Park Bakery Cafe
238 Washington Ave (between Lark and Henry Johnson)
Albany, NY

Again, Free! Again, Pizza! Again, BYOB!

Labels: Albany, Poems

# 12:51 PM

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Tonight: I am reading at the Live From The Living Room reading series.

Live From The Living Room, a featured reading series with an open mic afterward, is held on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at the super Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Center, 332 Hudson Avenue, Albany, NY. Tonight's reading features yours truly.

Sign up is at 7pm with 7:30 start time. The series is hosted by poet and host Don Levy and a $2.00 donation is suggested. For more info call (518) 462-6138. As Mr. Levy says, "This is a straight-friendly reading."

Labels: Albany, Poems, poetry, Shameless self-promotion

# 12:27 PM

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Just up on Linebreak: my reading of Kerry Krouse's "Fire on the Mount."

Another reading for Linebreak, where they pick just excellent work: Kerry Krouse's "Fire on the Mount." Thanks to reading her poem for Linebreak, she is another new discovery, along with Michelle Bitting.

Labels: Poems, poetry, Shameless self-promotion

# 4:36 PM

Thursday, February 19, 2009

New reading series in Albany.

Come on over if you're in town or if you're curious!

Labels: Albany, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 10:32 PM

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Just up on Linebreak: my reading of Michelle Bitting's "Mother's Day Omen."

Linebreak is a great journal with one of those simple but elegantly executed ideas: Publish one poem at a time, and feature a reading of that poem read by another poet. Last year, an old poem of mine, "Stardust Memories," got new life breathed into it with poet Amanda Auchter's reading it in a way I hadn't thought about before.

When you get in the journal, part of the deal is to contribute those readings of other poets' poems. Thing is, I had flaked for so long in getting it done that I was too embarrassed to even email them back. Then, in Chicago after a panel I was on, none other than Johnathon Williams, one of Linebreak's editors, introduces himself. We go up to his hotel room, set up a digital recorder, and I do readings of two poems. No big whoop. We were in bidness.

A couple days later, the first of the two readings I did, Michelle Bitting's "Mother's Day Omen," appears the front page of the site. It's a super poem. I am now going to check out Michelle Bitting's work.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 11:19 AM

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Just up on Shampoo Poetry: Adagia excerpts and "Traci Lords is on NPR!"

More entries from the Adagia project and a poem about National Public Radio are on the fabulous Ronald Palmer-guest edited section of Shampoo Poetry Issue #35. Issue link here; direct link to my stuff here.

Labels: Creative Nonfiction, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 12:35 PM

Friday, January 02, 2009

John Betjeman and David Brent on "Slough"/Slough.

Slough

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

--John Betjeman

Link to the BBC Big Read here; an answer-record poem by a Slough schoolgirl in 2006 here.

Labels: Beyond Camp, Poems, poetry

# 8:44 AM

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Alice Fulton is reading tonight in Albany.

Labels: Albany, Frequency North, Poems, Saint Rose

# 1:26 PM

Friday, October 31, 2008

Just up on Spooky Boyfriend.

"The Day Paul Bunyan Cried" and "Adagia, 1-50" are just up on the new issue of Spooky Boyfriend. Just in time for Halloween. Direct link to my work here.

Labels: Creative Nonfiction, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 6:52 AM

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Tonight! Dan Wilcox and Daniel Nester reading.

Friday, October 24 2008, 6:30pm

Daniel Nester & Dan Wilcox
Albany Poets and Jawbone '08 Reading Series

Upstate Artists Guild, UAG Gallery, 247 Lark St., Albany, NY

I will be reading all new work, just in case you're interested.

Labels: Albany, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 9:16 AM

Monday, October 13, 2008

Just up on the Pank website.

Excerpts from two new projects, "Adagia" and "Queries," are up on the Pank magazine's October online issue. See them here.

"The Talk Box Reveries," an essay, is coming out in Pank's print issue next year.

Labels: Creative Nonfiction, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 10:57 PM

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Just out in Issue 1.

My new poem, "Turning times with darkness," is just out in Issue 1, a huge collection with many of my bestest, bestest buddies the Poetry Community.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 8:18 AM

Monday, September 08, 2008

KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Serie, Fall 2008.

[a fan-made ad I found online.]

KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series
Hosted by Michael Quattrone, Laura Cronk & David Lehman
Mondays @ 7:30 PM
Admission is FREE

September 15 Janice Erlbaum & Kevin Young

September 22 Caroline Knox & Danielle Pafunda

September 29 Nicole Cooley & Kimiko Hahn

October 6 Michael Lally & Terence Winch

October 13 The Why And Later anthology reading, with Jan Beatty, Laure-Anne Bosselaar,
Teresa Carson, Harriet Levin, Amanda McGuire, Erin Murphy, Kiely Sweatt, and editor Carly
Sachs

October 20 Jordan Davis & Katy Lederer

October 27 Rick Barot & CAConrad

November 3 Jill Bialosky & D. Nurkse

November 10 Jim Cummins & David Lehman

November 17 Brenda Shaughnessy & John Yau

November 24 Paul Muldoon & Jim Richardson

December 1 Star Black & Daniel Nester

December 8 Heather Christle & Maurice Manning

KGB Bar • 85 East 4th Street • New York, NY 10003 • (212) 505-3360 • www.kgbbar.com

Labels: Beyond Camp, New York City, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 10:15 AM

Friday, September 05, 2008

Frequency North 2008-2009 press release.

[poster for the first event on September 25]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, September 3, 2008

CONTACT: Lisa Haley Thomson, Benjamin Marvin
Phone: 518-454-5102 E-mail: marvinb@strose.edu Web: www.strose.edu/news

"FREQUENCY NORTH" WRITERS SERIES AT SAINT ROSE BACK FOR FOURTH SEASON

"Frequency North," the visiting writers reading series at The College of Saint Rose, returns for its fourth season with another aggressively eclectic mix of award-winning poets, authors, essayists, a MacArthur Award "genius" and one satirical cartoonist.

The 2008-09 series kicks off Thursday, September 25, with David Rees, creator of the Internet phenom "Get Your War On," and playwright, writer and sometime performer Rachel Shukert. Saint Rose writing faculty get into the act in October for a one-time event, with readings by authors Daniel Nester, William Patrick, Kenneth Krauss, Hollis Seamon, Gary McLouth, Rone Shavers and Barbara Louise Ungar. Award-winning author, poet and Troy native Alice Fulton follows in November. March will bring Taylor Mali, a former teacher who uses his slam poetry to turn people to the teaching profession. The series concludes in April with an evening of poetry read by Marilyn Nelson, former Poet Laureate of Connecticut, and Deborah Ager.

"This year's lineup is special because all of these authors have been on my dream list for years," said Daniel Nester, assistant professor of English and creator of the Frequency North series. "They're funny, riveting, thought-provoking, entertaining, bombastic, spell-binding and great reminders of the importance of literature in our lives. They will all rock."

The complete Frequency North schedule follows. All readings are free and open to the public. For more information, visit the series website at www.FrequencyNorth.com.

--Thursday, September 25, 2008, 7:30 p.m.: David Rees and Rachel Shukert
Events and Athletics Center, Second Floor, 420 Western Ave., Albany
(Note: this program recommended for ages 18 and older only)

--Thursday, October 16, 2008, 7:30 p.m.: Saint Rose Faculty Reading
Auditorium, Saint Joseph Hall, 985 Madison Ave., Albany

--Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 7:30 p.m.: Alice Fulton
Events and Athletics Center, Second Floor, 420 Western Ave., Albany

--Thursday, March 26, 2009, 7:30 p.m.: Taylor Mali
Events and Athletics Center, Second Floor, 420 Western Ave., Albany

--Thursday, April 23, 2009, 7:30 p.m.: Marilyn Nelson and Deborah Ager
Events and Athletics Center, Second Floor, 420 Western Ave., Albany

David Rees was working a crummy magazine job when Operation: Enduring Freedom inspired him to create his cartoon "Get Your War On." The satire about the war on terrorism became an Internet phenomenon. "Get Your War On" now appears in every issue of Rolling Stone, and an animated version is featured on www.236.com. Get Your War On was published in book form in 2003 (Soft Skull Press), followed by Get Your War On II in 2004 (Riverhead Books). This fall, Soft Skull Press publishes Get Your War On: The Definitive Account of George Bush's War on Terror 2001-2008. Sales of the first two Get Your War On books have raised almost $100,000 for land mine removal in western Afghanistan. Rees also is the author of My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable (Riverhead Books, 2003), Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear and My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable (Riverhead, 2004), which appeared as a regular feature in The Guardian of London. Rees lives in Beacon, Orange County.

Rachel Shukert is the author of Have You No Shame?: And Other Regrettable Stories (Random House/Villard), a memoir collection that chronicles, among other high jinks, the writer-performer-provocateur's experience growing up in Omaha, Neb., in that city's only Jewish elementary school. Her most recent theatre project, "Wasp Cove," is a "Dallas"/"Falcon Crest"-type soap opera, which she co-created and co-wrote with Julie Klausner. In it, Shukert plays the actress Pamela Ann Windchime, who plays the character of Donna Kettering. Her writing has appeared in Nerve, Babble, Salon, Heeb Magazine and McSweeney's, and anthologized in 2033: The Future of Misbehavior. Shukert lives in New York City with her husband and her cat.

A native of Troy, Alice Fulton's first fiction collection, The Nightingales of Troy: Connected Stories, was published this year by W.W. Norton. Her most recent book of poems is Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems. Her 2001 poetry collection, Felt (W.W. Norton), was awarded the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. Her other books include Sensual Math (W.W. Norton); Powers Of Congress (Sarabande Books reissue 2001); Palladium (University of Illinois), winner of the 1985 National Poetry Series and the 1987 Society of Midland Authors Award; and Dance Script With Electric Ballerina (University of Illinois reissue 1996), winner of The 1982 Associated Writing Programs Award. Fulton has received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award and fellowships from the The Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Michigan Society of Fellows, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been included in five editions of The Best American Poetry series and in the 10th Anniversary edition, The Best of the Best American Poetry, 1988-1997. Fulton is currently the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English at Cornell University and lives in Ithaca.

Taylor Mali is a former teacher who now makes his living as a professional poet. Through poetry, passion and perseverance, he wants to turn 1,000 people to the teaching profession. He is considered the most successful poetry slam strategist of all time, having led six of his eight national poetry slam teams to the finals stage and winning the championship itself a record four times before anyone had even tied him at three. A native of New York City, Mali was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO original series "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry." Mali is a vocal advocate of teachers, having performed and lectured for education professionals all over the world.

A former Poet Laureate of Connecticut, Marilyn Nelson's most recent books are Carver: A Life in Poems, Fortune's Bones, and A Wreath for Emmett Till, a book-length narrative poem about the 14-year-old black youth lynched 57 years ago in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The book made national headlines last year when two teachers were fired from a Los Angeles charter school because they planned to have students read a poem about Emmett Till. Nelson's other books include The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (1997), which was a finalist for the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the 1997 National Book Award, and the PEN Winship Award; Magnificat (1994); The Homeplace (1990), which won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award; Mama's Promises (1985); and For the Body (1978); all published by Louisiana State University Press. She also has published two collections of verse for children: The Cat Walked through the Casserole and Other Poems for Children (with Pamela Espeland, 1984) and Halfdan Rasmussen's Hundreds of Hens and Other Poems for Children (1982), which she translated from Danish with Pamela Espeland. Nelson's honors include two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts., a Guggenheim fellowship, three National Book Award Finalist medals, the Poets' Prize, the Boston Globe/Hornbook Award, a Newbery Honor medal, two Coretta Scott King Honor medals, the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, the Lion and Unicorn Award for Excellence in Poetry for Young Adults, and the American Scandinavian Foundation Translation Award. Nelson is an emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut and founder/director of Soul Mountain Retreat.

Deborah Ager's first book, Midnight Voices, a finalist for BOA Editions' A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize (judged by Edward Hirsch) will be published in March 2009 by WordTech. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2006, Best of the Tigertail Anthologies, Writing Poems (2007), The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, The Bloomsbury Review, The Georgia Review, New Letters, Quarterly West, among other places. She has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Jenny McKean Moore workshop, and was a Tennessee Williams scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Since 2004, she has edited and published 32 Poems magazine, which publishes 64 poems per year. Poems from 32 Poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Best New Poets 2005 (edited by George Garrett), Best New Poets 2006 (edited by Eric Pankey) and online at Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Ager works as a search engine optimization expert, owns her own search engine marketing company, and lives in Virginia with her husband and child.

Labels: Albany, Creative Nonfiction, Don Johnson, Frequency North, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 9:44 AM

Friday, August 22, 2008

The 2nd Annual Welcome to Boog City Poetry and Music Weekend: The Line-Up

SEPTEMBER 18-21 2008

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 6:00 PM:

d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press

Who:
minor/american
(Durham, N.C.)

Where:
ACA Galleries
529 W.20th St., 5th Flr.
NYC

Price:
Free

Event will be hosted by minor/american editors Elise Ficarra and Kathryn Pringle

featuring readings from:
Samar Albuhassan
David Need
Andrea Rexilius
Ken Rumble
Diane Timblin

and music from:
Compass Jazz

There will be wine, cheese, and crackers, too.

Directions:

C/E to 23rd St., 1/9 to 18th St.

Venue is bet. 10th and 11th avenues

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 19, 7:00 PM:

Where:
Sidewalk Café
94 Ave. A
NYC

Price:
Free with a two-drink minimum

What:
Readings, musical, and poets’ theater performances,
and Lou Reed’s New York album live

7:00 pm: Jim Behrle
7:15 pm: Daniel Nester
7:35 pm: Dibson T. Hoffweiler (music)
8:05 pm: Arlo Quint
8:20 pm: Bob Holman
8:35 pm: Verse Theater Manhattan (doing a reading of Frank O'Hara's verse drama)
9:35 pm: Gillian McCain
9:50 pm: Lou Reed, New York. Performed live by:

*Babs Soft
Romeo Had Juliette
Halloween Parade

*The Rabbits
Dirty Blvd.
Endless Cycle

*Dibson T. Hoffweiler & Preston Spurlock
There Is No Time
Last Great American Whale

*Liv Carrow
Beginning of a Great Adventure
Busload of Faith

*Prewar Yardsale
Sick of You
Hold On

*Wakey Wakey
Good Evening Mr. Waldheim
Xmas in February

*Todd Carlstrom and The Clamour
Strawman
Dime Store Mystery

11:20 pm: Todd Carlstrom and The Clamour
12:10 am: The Rabbits

Directions:

F/V to 2nd Ave., L to 1st Ave. Venue is at E. 6th St.

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 20, 11:00 AM:

Where:
Cakeshop
152 Ludlow St.
NYC

Price:

What:
5th Annual Small, Small Press Fair

Featuring readings from authors of the exhibiting presses

11:30 am: Celena Glenn, Bowery Books
11:40 am: TBD, Cy Gist Press
11:50 am: Ariana Reines, Fence/Fence Books
12:00 pm: Adam Golaski, flim forum press
12:10 pm: Damian Weber, House Press
12:20 am: Virna Teixeira, Litmus Press/Aufgabe
12:30 pm: Jaye Bartell, little scratch pad
12:40 pm: Jeff Downey, Octopus Books
12:50 pm: Melissa Christine Goodrum, Other Rooms Press
1:00 pm: Ric Royer, Outside Voices
1:10 pm: Austin Alexis, Poets Wear Prada
1:20 pm: Tom Savage, Straw Gate Books

-----------------

1:30 pm: Stephanie Gray
1:45 pm: Bill Kushner
2:00 pm: Oak Orchard Swamp (music)
2:30 pm: Ryan Eckes
2:50 pm: Eric Gelsinger
3:10 pm: Douglas Manson
3:30 pm: Heart Parts (music)
4:00 pm: Elise Ficarra
4:20 pm: Kristianne Meal
4:40 pm: Kathryn Pringle
5:00 pm: Maureen Thorson
5:20 pm: Carol Mirakove
5:35 pm: A Brief View of the Hudson (music)
6:05 pm: Jen Benka
6:20 pm: Todd Colby
6:35 pm: Kyle Schlesinger
6:55 pm: David Hadbawnik
7:15 pm: Sharon Mesmer
7:30 pm: Casey Holford (music)

Directions:

F/V to 2nd Ave.
Venue is bet. Stanton and Rivington sts.

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 21, 1:00 PM:

Where:
Unnameable Books
456 Bergen St.
Brooklyn

Price:
Free

Schedule:
1:00 p.m.-Julia Cohen
1:15 p.m.-Tisa Bryant
1:30 p.m.-Ana Božičević
1:45 p.m.-Yoko Kikuchi (music)
2:05 p.m.-Corrine Fitzpatrick
2:20 p.m.-Nick Piombino
2:35 p.m.-Stacy Szymaszek

2:50 p.m.-3:00-break

3:00 p.m.- Race and Poetry: Integrating the Experimental

Amy King (curator and moderator)
Tisa Bryant
Jennifer Firestone
Timothy Liu
Mendi Obadike
Meghan Punschke
Christopher Stackhouse
Mathias Svalina

4:30 p.m.-4:40-break

4:40 p.m.-Yoko Kikuchi (music)
5:00 p.m.-Lee Ann Brown
5:15 p.m.-John Coletti
5:30 p.m.-Rachel Levitsky
5:45 p.m.-Eileen Myles
6:00 p.m.-Yoko Kikuchi (music)
6:20 p.m.-Edward Foster
in conversation with Simon Pettet
6:50 p.m.-Simon Pettet
7:10 p.m.-Edward Foster

Directions:

2, 3 to Bergen St.; 2, 3, 4, 5, M, N, Q, W, R, B, D to Atlantic
Ave./Pacific St.; C to Lafayette Ave.
Venue is bet. 5th/Flatbush aves.

**Welcome to Boog City 2 Bios and Websites**

Thursday:

minor/american
http://www.minoramerican.blogspot.com
minor/american is a small-edition, themed, hand-made poetry journal first
released in the summer of 2007. An offshoot of the minor/american blog,
originated by Maggie Zurawski in 2004, minor/american prints the work of
not-so minor Americans, with a preference for longer selections. The theme
for issue two, due this fall, is citi. Issue three's theme will be
evolution.

Samar Abulhassan
http://www.jacketmagazine.com/35/dk-abulhassan.shtml
Samar Abulhassan recently left San Francisco, where she taught poetry to
children, to live among many creatures at a Zen center in New Mexico, where
she wakes early, brews soups, and hears and sounds many bells. She is
finishing a second chapbook for Dusie and recently collaborated with a Butoh
dancer in San Francisco on a movement/text piece that was performed at Yerba
Buena Center for the Arts last spring. She waits for the night to surface
words and is looking for a watery landscape to write into.

Compass Jazz
http://www.purevolume.com/compass
Compass, a jazz quartet, whose performances feature original compositions as
well the works of many of America's greatest jazz legends. The quartet is
made-up of Rick Lawn (saxophones), Joel Chace (keyboard), Tom Ives (bass),
and Albert Colone (drums). The band self produced their album Compass Rises
in 1971, which featured original compositions written and arranged by Lawn
and Ives. Compass was one of five musical groups on a promotional program
that opened the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in 1972. Ives, with Lawn,
wrote and arranged "What is Man?" an ecumenical jazz service with an
accompanying slide presentation which was performed in New York City and
later produced for television by Iowa Public Broadcasting. A revival of
"What is Man?" took place last year.

David Need
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Archive?author=oid%3A18317
http://www.mipoesias.com/2006Volume20Issue1/needcolumn.html
David Need is a Massachusetts boy who has lived in North Carolina since
1994. He teaches South Asian Religions at Duke University. Excerpts from
recent projects "St. John's Rose Slumber" and "Places I've Lived" are
forthcoming in Hambone, Effing, and minor/american. Previously his poetry
has been published in Fascicle and Ocho, and essays and memoirs have
appeared in Talisman and on Mipoesias. He is working on "Voicing St. Mark's"
and a further section of "Places I've Lived," as well as an academic study
of Kerouac and Buddhism. As he writes this, he sits among the dead in a mall
in Raleigh (but they are quiet).

Andrea Rexilius
http://www.parceljournal.org
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/08/the_era_of_video_poetics_is_
im_1.html
Andrea Rexilius is working toward her Ph.D. in literature and creative
writing at the University of Denver. Her poetry and essays have appeared or
are forthcoming in Bird Dog, Coconut, Colorado Review, How2, minor/american,
P –Queue, and Volt, among others. She is the editor of the online journal
PARCEL and assistant editor of the Denver Quarterly.

Ken Rumble
http://www.desertcity.blogspot.com
http://www.coconutpoetry.org/rumble2.htm
Ken Rumble is the author of Key Bridge (Carolina Wren Press) and the
forthcoming President Letters (Scantily Clad Press). His poems have appeared
in the tiny, Cutbank, One Less Magazine, Talisman, Parakeet, and others. He
lives in Greensboro, N.C.

Dianne Timblin
Dianne Timblin lives in Durham, N.C. Her work has appeared in
minor/american, Phoebe, So to Speak, Rivendell, and other journals. She has
been featured as a reader for the Poetry at Noon series at the Library of
Congress, and one of her poems was a finalist for the Brenda L. Smart Prize.

Friday:

Babs of Queens
http://www.myspace.com/babssoft
Babs Todras is a songwriter from Queens. A child of two classical musicians,
she has been in training since before she could form sentences. After a long
mid-youth rebellion against her folks, she returned to music in high school
and college where she teamed up with Seth of Dufus and Jeffrey Lewis on
various musical projects, and she can be found on several of their albums.
She plays mostly short songs about love and science, and also likes to crash
Huggabroomstik tours.

Jim Behrle
http://americanpoetry.biz
Jim Behrle lives in Brooklyn.

Todd Carlstrom and The Clamour
http://www.myspace.com/toddcarlstrom
After Todd Carlstrom recorded his solo album, Gold on the Map, it was clear
to him that the songs deserved more than to simply remain a studio project.
He set about recruiting members of the band that would become Todd Carlstrom
and The Clamour. He managed to entice drummer Eric Shaw of The Domestics
into moonlighting. Guitarist Brian Elmquist, a singer/songwriter from
Georgia by way of Nashville, came on in early '08. Their show expertly
intertwines the poppy wrath of The Pixies, the classic rock nods of Built to
Spill, the rumbling slink of Sleater-Kinney, and, occasionally, the odd
stoner jam a la Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Liv Carrow
http://www.myspace.com/livcarrow
Liv Carrow’s songs are like the little animals that your 4-year-old nieces
and nephews make out of Play-Doh—lumpy yet distinguishable in form,
rudimentary to the point of psychedelic complexity, dry and crumbly on the
outside but "all kinds of squishy" on the inside. The mysterious and oddly
lovable bassist from ecstatically weird Huggabroomstik and Griffin and the
True Believers takes the scenic back road to your heart with her clever-ish
observations on life, death, love, health food, human reproduction,
geography, the unseen world of the earth spirits and cosmic currents,
awkward crushes, metaphysics, and everyone's favorite-despair. Liv plays
frequently in NYC and the surrounding area as a solo acoustic act and
accompanying Huggabroomstik and the burgeoning alternapop collaboration Feel
The Feelings. She is also available for Tarot readings which can be obtained
for a song

Dibson T. Hoffweiler
http://www.dibson.net
http://www.myspace.com/dibson
Dibson T. Hoffweiler is the latest in a long line of quirky anti-folk
ingénues, among them Beck, Adam Green, and Jeffrey Lewis. With a low voice
that’s sweet and deadpan, and a guitar-style that’s virtuosic and sloppy,
Hoffweiler carves out a space of compassion and intelligence in a landscape
of boring love songs and thinly veiled songwriterly misogyny. Known for his
work in anti-folk flagship bands Cheese On Bread, Huggabroomstik, and Urban
Barnyard, Dibs began his musical career generating buzz with his old band,
Dibs & Sara. Eventually he established himself as a solo artist, including
several month long tours of Europe and North America. Dibs has proved (to
himself, and to others) that his bizarre, ramshackle aesthetic is palatable
outside the freaky comfort zone of New York anti-folk.

Dibson T. Hoffweiler and Preston Spurlock
http://www.myspace.com/prestonspurlock
Dibson and Preston have been friends and artistic collaborators since
meeting at the Sidewalk Cafe in 2005. The two forged a tight bond over their
common love of oddball lo-fi music. For a while they performed together as
Dibs With Machines, and were both members of one-off anti-folk supergroup
Old Hat. They now share a stage as the guitarist and keyboardist of
Huggabroomstik.

Bob Holman
http://www.bobholman.com
Bob Holman is working on a documentary on the poetry of Endangered Languages
and another on Allen Ginsberg. His most recent book, A Couple of Ways of
Doing Something (Aperture), a collaboration with Chuck Close, is en route
from the Tacoma Museum of Modern Art to the Museo in Santiago, Chile. The
Awesome Whatever, his new CD is out from Bowery Books. He is the founder of
the Bowery Poetry Club and teaches at NYU and Columbia.

Gillian McCain
http://www.limpwristmag.com/conwaymccaintrinidad.html
http://www.epoetry.org/issues/issue8/text/poems/trinidad1.htm
Gillian McCain is the author of two books of poetry—Tilt and Religion—and is
the co-author, with Legs McNeil, of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral
History of Punk (Grove Press), which has been translated into 10 languages.
They are currently working on a new oral history. McCain is also
collaborating with David Trinidad and Jeffery Conway on Descent of the
Dolls, a book-length poem inspired by the film Valley of the Dolls and the
book the Inferno, among other projects.

Daniel Nester
http://www.danielnester.com
Daniel Nester is the author of The History of My World Tonight (BlazeVOX
Books), as well as God Save My Queen and God Save My Queen II (both Soft
Skull Press), two collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. He
lives in upstate New York with his wife Maisie and their daughter Miriam.

Prewar Yardsale
http://www.myspace.com/prewaryardsale
http://www.olivejuicemusic.com/prewaryardsale.html
Prewar Yardsale started in the year 2000 under the influence of the Moldy
Peaches and Schwervon!. Prewar Yardsale are husband and wife duo Mike
Rechner (guitar, vocals) and Dina Levy (bucket, tin can, vocals). Prewar
Yardsale, called post-techno, post-punk, post-machine, post-soul,
post-anything by the zine Antimatters, recently performed at
Huggabroomstock, and their latest release is Prewar Yardsale Peel Sessions
(Olive Juice Music).

Arlo Quint
http://www.puppyflowers.com/9/quint.html
Arlo Quint is the author of Days On End (Open 24 Hours) and Photogenic
Memory (Lame House).

The Rabbits
http://www.myspace.com/deadrabbitmusic
The Rabbits are an indie rock band from Staten Island. They sound like David
Bowie, Jefferson Airplane, and ABBA having a crazy orgy weekend.

Verse Theater Manhattan
http://www.versetheater.org
Verse Theater Manhattan is the preeminent theater company in the English
speaking world devoted exclusively to verse drama. Verse Theater Manhattan
focuses on discovering important contemporary plays in verse and working
with active poets and playwrights to promote this significant form. In
addition to producing plays and reading regularly in New York City for the
last decade, the company has toured the Midwest and England to rapt
audiences and enthusiastic critics. They’ll be performing a wickedly comic
tale of love and lust in a time of war from the prototypical New York School
poet Frank O’Hara.

Wakey!Wakey!
http://www.wakeywakeymusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/wakeywakeymusic
Wakey!Wakey! is Michael Grubbs (songwriting/vocals/keys), an NYC native who
blends gorgeous songcraft with a potent sense of humor to create original,
heartfelt songs that cause listeners to stop what they are doing and turn
themselves over completely and totally to his storytelling. Wakey!Wakey!
features the boundless talent and energy of Gene Back (violin/guitar), and
the unique stylings of their female rhythm section—Anne Lieberwirth (bass)
and Kristin Mueller (drums). In 2007 Wakey!Wakey! released the live album
Silent As a Movie (Family Records) and launched an ingenious covers project,
available for download on the band's website and later released as a
compilation. The band has shared bills across New York with the likes of
indie darlings Rouge Wave, I'm From Barcelona, Someone Still Loves You Boris
Yeltsin, AA Bondy, and Heloise and the Savoir Faire.

Saturday:

A Brief View of the Hudson
http://www.myspace.com/abriefviewofthehudson
The duo Nick Nace and Ann Enzminger met through chance meetings. Now the two
make up an indie folk band, including the record Go North to Find Me (CD
Baby).

Austin Alexis, Poets Wear Prada
http://home.att.net/~poetswearpradanj/AustinAlexis.html
http://www.poetswearprada.blogspot.com
Austin Alexis's poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in a variety
of anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Barrow
Street, The Journal, The Writer, The Pedestal Magazine, and online at
Poetz.com. His plays have been performed in New York City, and one was
selected for the Samuel French Short Plays Festival. Alexis has taught
creative writing at Hunter College’s continuing education program, and has
taught and tutored at various universities and college in New York state. He
lives in Manhattan and teaches at New York City College of Technology (CUNY)
in Brooklyn.

Roxanne Hoffman is the founder of Poets Wear Prada, also known as PWP Books,
a small press based in Hoboken, N.J. and devoted to introducing new authors
through limited edition, high-quality chaplets. She is a former Wall Street
investment banker and runs the press with her husband Herbert Fuerst, a
retired Hollywood agent. Their first offering, released in October 2006, was
the 12-page poetry chapbook Your Infidel Eyes by Brant Lyon, host of NYC's
Hydrogen Jukebox Jazzoetry Series. Since then, they have released 12
additional titles with plans to release 10 new chapbooks annually. Authors
include well-established New York poets Peter Chelnik and Susan Maurer, as
well as promising newcomers like Jee Leong Koh, Laura Vookles, and Austin
Alexis.

Jaye Bartell, Little Scratch Pad Editions
http://www.housepress.org/bartell.html
http://www.myspace.com/oakorchardswamp
Jaye Bartell was born in Massachusetts; has lived in Asheville, NC; San Juan
Island, Wash.; and lives in Buffalo. He’s the author of Acres Ourselves
(House Press) and Ever After Never Under (Little Scratch Pad Editions).
Other work has appeared in Capgun, A Sing Economy (Flim Forum Anthology),
and Cutbank.

Douglas Manson began Little Scratch Pad Editions in 1997 with the chapbook
Snack Size, a collection of his own poems. It remained a self-publishing
effort until 2005, with the publication of Aaron Lowinger's Autobiography
(co-produced with House Press). It became a press with a mission, to publish
poetic works by younger writers, often their first chapbooks. Lowinger's
chapbook was followed in 2007 with Kristianne Meal's TwentyTwo: first
pallet, Tom Yorty's Words in Season, L.A. Howe's NTR PIC E ST R, Michael
Basinski's Of Venus 93, Nick Traenkner's Accidental Thrust, and Manson's At
Any Point. Recent books are Liz Mariani's Imaginary Poems for My Imaginary
Girlfriend Named Anabel, and Jaye Bartell's Ever After / Never Under.

Jen Benka
http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-932360-84-0
Jen Benka was born in Cudahy, Wisconsin, and lives today in Brooklyn. She is
the politics co-editor of Boog City with Carol Mirakove. Benka is the author
of A Box of Longing with 50 Drawers (Soft Skull), an earlier version of
which was issued as a limited edition artist book under the title A
Revisioning of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States
(Booklyn). She also wrote Manya, comic books drawn by Kris Dresen, and in
the 1990s performed with the rock-art band Mook, who launched into their
audience larger and cleaner tampons than L7.

Todd Colby
http://www.gleefarm.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/lovetoddcolby
Todd Colby is the author of Tremble & Shine, Riot in the Charm Factory,
Cush, and Ripsnort (all Soft Skull Press).

Jeff Downey, Octopus Books
http://www.realpoetik.blogspot.com/2008/02/jeff-downey.html
http://www.octopusbooks.net
Jeff Downey is from the panhandle of Nebraska and is studying in the M.F.A.
program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His poems have
appeared in journals including Octopus, RealPoetik, and Handsome.

Octopus Books is a small press founded in 2006 by the editors of Octopus
Magazine. It has published hand-made, limited edition chapbooks by Genya
Turovskaya, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Jonah Winter, Matthew Rohrer, and
Sueyeune Juliette Lee, among others. Their first two full-length book
releases are Eric Baus' forthcoming Tuned Droves and Julie Doxsee's
Undersleep, which is now available.

Ryan Eckes
http://www.phillysound.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html
Ryan Eckes lives in South Philadelphia. His poetry can be read in XConnect,
Fanzine, Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry, PhillySound, and his chapbook when
i come here (Plan B Press). He has an M.A. in creative writing from Temple
University, where he currently teaches. He hosts the Chapter & Verse reading
series in Philadelphia.

Elise Ficarra
http://www.geocities.com/iunyper/rifeone/ficarra.html
http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry
Elise Ficarra is a Bay Area poet and writer. Swelter, her first book of
poems, came out in 2005. A second book, be(g)one, is in progress. A
contributor to hinge: a boas anthology of experimental women writers,
Ficarra’s work probes impossibilities’ evolution, investigating how
linguistic signs—mundane and mythic—recalibrate memory and bodily experience
within the crush of nation states. She is co-editor of the journal
minor/american and associate director of The Poetry Center at SFSU.

Eric Gelsinger
http://www.housepress.org
Eric Gelsinger is from Old Buffalo, N.Y. and currently lives in New Buffalo,
Brooklyn. He is a member of House Press, and his poems can also be found in
the smooth books of Flim Forum. He trades for a heavy-hitting avant-garde
finance firm near Times Square.

Celena Glenn, Bowery Books
http://original.bowerypoetry.com/bowerywomen
Reading for Bowery Books is Celena Glenn. Celena Glenn is Poet
Fashionista-in–Residence for the Bowery Poetry Club, producing fashion
poetry shows, spinning, free-styling, and just spitting nearly every week
when she’s in town. She ranked second in the 2004 World Poetry Slam, and is
a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and former host at the Nuyorican
Poets' Café. She is featured in a number of poetry anthologies and
magazines, including Spoken Word Revolution, Serum, Composite, and Bullets
and Butterflies. Her work can also be seen in the documentaries Slam
Channel: War of Words and Urban Scribe. She has performed from Princeton to
Rivington Synagogue, from Berkeley to basements in Soweto. Her book Black
Cracker (Bowery Books) is forthcoming this fall.

Bowery Books is the press of the Bowery Poetry Club, with Bob Holman and
Marjorie Tesser as its editors. The press has published essential
anthologies, such as Bowery Women: Poems and Estamos Aquí, poems by Migrant
Farmworkers, as well as works by unique poets like Taylor Mead, the
octogenarian Andy Warhol intimate who appeared in the film Coffee and
Cigarettes, to Poez, a performing street poet. Forthcoming is the new Bowery
Voices series, including Black Cracker by Celena Glenn and Body of Water by
Janet Hamill, with photographs by Patti Smith, both in fall 2008, and Touch
by Cynthia Kraman in spring 2009. Bowery Books is grateful for the support
of the New York State Council on the Arts and is a member of the Council of
Literary Magazines and Presses.

Adam Golaski, Flim Forum Press
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/issue/december-green
http://www.flimforum.blogspot.com
http://www.flimforum.com
Adam Golaski is the author of Worse Than Myself (Raw Dog Screaming Press)
and Color Plates (Rose Metal Press). Adam's poem "Green"—a translation of
Sir Gawain & the Green Knight—appears in installment on Open Letters.
Upcoming publications include fiction in The Lifted Brow 4 and Exotic Gothic
II, and poetry in Moonlit and Little Red Leaves. He edits for Flim Forum
Press.

Flim Forum Press, founded in 2005, provides SPACE to emerging poets working
in a variety of experimental modes. It has published two poetry anthologies,
Oh One Arrow and A Sing Economy, with Brandon Shimoda’s The Alps,
forthcoming this fall.

Melissa Christine Goodrum, Other Rooms Press
http://www.nyqpoets.net/poet/melissachristinegoodrum
http://www.otherroomspress.blogspot.com
Melissa Christine Goodrum has an M.F.A. in poetry from Brooklyn College. Her
work has been published in The New York Quarterly, The Torch, The Tiny,
Rhapsoidia, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Transmission, and Bowery Women:
Poems, and by Other Rooms Press. She was co-president of the Cambridge
Poetry Awards, administrative director of Bowery Arts & Sciences, and the
recipient of a Zora Neale Hurston Award from the Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. She wears many, many masks—poet,
translator, scholar, editor, photographer, and writing teacher in the New
York City Public School system.

Ed Go and Michael Whalen, graduates of Brooklyn College's M.F.A. program,
founded Other Rooms Press (ORP) in January 2007. “We got tired of seeing
good, innovative poetry go unpublished, ignored by ‘mainstream,’ ‘accepted’
venues, and created ORP in hopes of providing alternative spaces, ‘other
rooms’ in which quality, experimental poetry that might not otherwise find
an audience can flourish,” they said. “Our goal with our website chapbooks
and readings is to publish and promote the kind of experimental,
linguistically innovative, playful poetry that we love; we hope you enjoy
it.”

Stephanie Gray
http://www.leafscape.org/StrawGateBooks/gray.html
Stephanie Gray is a poet and experimental filmmaker whose super 8 films
often have poem voiceovers. Her first poetry collection, Heart Stoner Bingo
(Straw Gate Books) was published this past December. Her films have screened
at festivals and venues including Millennium Film Workshop, Ann Arbor,
Oberhausen, Viennale, VIDEOEX, Cinematexas, Antimatter, Chicago Underground,
and Madcat. She has received funding for her films from the New York
Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

David Hadbawnik
http://www.habenichtpress.com
David Hadbawnik is a poet and performer who lives with his wife in Buffalo,
N.Y. Recent publications include the books Translations from Creeley
(Sardines), Ovid in Exile (Interbirth), and SF Spleen (Skanky Possum);
essays in Big Bridge and Chicago Review; and poems in the Marlboro Review
(in which his poem “The Gods” was chosen by Heather McHugh as a finalist for
the Poetry Prize) and Damn the Caesars. He is the editor and publisher of
Habenicht Press and the journal kadar koli. He begins studying toward his
Ph.D. in poetics at the University at Buffalo this fall.

Heart Parts
(see Damian Weber for bio)

Casey Holford
http://www.caseyholford.com
http://www.myspace.com/casey
Casey Holford started playing piano at 12, picked up his mother's guitar for
coffeehouse and DIY shows at 14, and was performing regularly in the
Boston-Providence songwriter circuit by 18. Now living in Brooklyn, he has
recorded three self-released solo albums, two EPs, and a recent 7-inch on
RiYL records. Along the way Holford’s managed to tour on the east and west
coasts multiple times as well as in Europe, sharing bills with like-minded
songwriters such as Erin McKeown, Diane Cluck, Regina Spektor, Kimya Dawson,
and Matt the Electrician. He currently moonlights in the bands Outlines,
Urban Barnyard, Dream Bitches, and Art Sorority for Girls, playing bass,
electric, 12 string, and baritone guitars. He is also a prolific producer,
working on projects with fellow bands and songwriters, most recently pop
riot Cheese on Bread, visionary Dave Deporis, and upstart Creaky Boards.

Bill Kushner
http://www.rattapallax.com/ebooks/DreamsWaters_sample.pdf
Bill Kushner is a poet residing in Chelsea. He is the author of In
Sunsetland With You (Straw Gate Books), In the Hairy Arms of Whitman
(Melville House Publications), He Dreams of Waters (Rattapallax), and That
April (United Artists Books) among others. He has twice received a New York
Foundation for The Arts fellowship. His work has been published in the Best
American Poetry 2002.

Douglas Manson
http://www.dougfinmanson.blogspot.com
http://www.starcherone.blogspot.com/2008/07/doug-manson-interview-on-having-
fallen.html
Douglas Manson was born in Akron, Ohio and many years later earned an M.A.
in English from Kent State and a Ph.D. in English from The University at
Buffalo. He lives in Buffalo as a poet and writer, and publisher of Celery
Flute: The Kenneth Patchen Newsletter and little scratch pad editions. He
hosted a weekly poetry radio show for a community-based AM station,
Inkaudible Poetry Radio from 2004-06. He is a songwriter and guitar player.
Amid an ongoing series of chapbooks, he has most recently published a
full-length book of poems, Roofing and Siding (BlazeVOX Books), and the
expanded chapbook At Any Point (2008).

Kristianne Meal
http://www.artvoice.com/issues/v6n49/guts_guns_and_gusto
Kristianne Meal operates Rust Belt Books in Buffalo, N.Y. from 4D
frequencies. Her book TwentyTwo, first pallet (Little Scratch Pad Editions)
was published last year.

Sharon Mesmer
http://www.thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/2008/0
5/getting-to-kn-1.html
http://www.jacketmagazine.com/30/fl-mesmer.html
Sharon Mesmer is the recipient of two New York Foundation for the Arts
fellowships in poetry. Her two recently released poetry collections are The
Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose Press) and Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo
Books). Her other works include Half Angel, Half Lunch (Hard Press), Vertigo
Seeks Affinities (Belladonna Books), and Crossing Second Avenue (ABJ Books).
Her work is internationally known including translations and collaborative
works. Her work has recently appeared in New American Writing, The Brooklyn
Rail, Van Gogh’s Ear, and Hanging Loose. Her fiction collections are In
Ordinary Time and The Empty Quarter (Hanging Loose Press) and Ma Vie à
Yonago (in French translation from Hachette Littératures, France). She
teaches at the New School.

Carol Mirakove
http://www.factoryschool.com/pubs/heretical/vol2/mirakove/index.html
Carol Mirakove was born in Queens and lives in Brooklyn. She is the author
of Mediated (Factory School), Occupied (Kelsey St. Press), and, with Jen
Benka, 1,138 (Belladonna). Her love of poetry began with deterrence to
reading, where the vast space on the page provided comfort. Her favorite
things include The Cliks, Caravan of Dreams, and math. Carol is a dog
person.

Oak Orchard Swamp
(see Jaye Bartell for bio)

kathyrn l. pringle
http://www.dusie.org/pringle.html
http://www.42opus.com/v6n2/harmony2
kathryn l. pringle is the author of The Stills (Duration Press) and Temper &
Felicity are Lovers (TAXT). Her poems can be read in the Denver Quarterly,
Fence, Cold Drill, Dusie, 14 hills, small town, string of small machines,
and 580 Split, among others. She edits the literary magazine minor/american,
and curates the minor/american reading series in Durham, N.C. She has also
been known to blog at minor/american, too.

Ariana Reines, Fence/Fence Books
http://www.fence.fenceportal.org
http://www.fencebooks.fenceportal.org
Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, Fence Books) and
Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar). Two volumes of translation, of works by Charles
Baudelaire and Grisélidis Réal, will appear next year from Mal-O-Mar and
Semiotext(e), respectively. New York's Foundry Theatre will produce her
first play in February 2009. She'll be Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at the
University of California at Berkeley this coming spring. Her next Fence book
is MERCURY; it will come out sometime.

Fence is a biannual journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism that has
a mission to redefine the terms of accessibility by publishing challenging
writing distinguished by idiosyncrasy and intelligence rather than by
allegiance with camps, schools, or cliques. It is part of our press's
mission to support writers who might otherwise have difficulty being
recognized because their work doesn't answer to either the mainstream or to
recognizable modes of experimentation. Launched in 2001, Fence Books
publishes poetry, fiction, critical texts and anthologies, and prioritizes
sustained support for its authors, many of whom come to us through our two
book contests and then go on to publish second, third, and fourth books.

Ric Royer, Outside Voices
http://www.ricroyer.com
http://www.looktouch.com/press
Ric Royer is a writer, performer, writer of performances and performer of
writings. Other works of literature include Hystery of Heat (Publishing
Genius), There Were One and It Was Two (Narrow House Records), and
Anthesteria (Bark Art Press). The Weather Not The Weather is forthcoming
from Outside Voices Press. He is also a founding editor of Ferrum Wheel.

An imprint of Bootstrap Productions (Cambridge, Mass.), Buffalo N.Y.-based
Outside Voices publishes poetry & experimental text-based art.

Tom Savage, Straw Gate Books
http://www.leafscape.org/StrawGateBooks
With Brainlifts, Tom Savage has published nine books of poetry, his latest
arriving this July via Straw Gate Books. After receiving his B.A. at
Brooklyn College, Tom then went to India for four years. In 1986 he
accompanied Allen Ginsberg and fellow guest poets on a reading tour of
Nicaragua. He has been awarded grants from the Fund for Poetry and the
Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines.

Straw Gate Books, founded by Phyllis Wat in 2005, publishes poetry and
occasional related texts. Straw Gate is particularly interested in works by
women and non-polemical writing with an underlying social content. They also
feature new and long-established authors whose work is under-served. Its
books are The Rorschach Factory by Valerie Fox, In Sunsetland With You by
Bill Kushner, Heart Stoner Bingo by Stephanie Gray, and Brainlifts by Tom
Savage. Forthcoming books include work by Lydia Cortes and Merry Fortune.

Kyle Schlesinger
http://www.kyleschlesinger.com
Kyle Schlesinger is the author of two books of poetry, Hello Helicopter
(BlazeVOX Books) and The Pink (Kenning). He is the co-editor of Mimeo Mimeo
with Jed Birmingham and ON with Thom Donovan and Michael Cross. He will be
curating the Monday night reading series at the Poetry Project in 2008-09.

Virna Teixeira, Litmus Press/Aufgabe
http://www.papelderascunho.net
http://www.litmuspress.org
Virna Teixeira was born in Fortaleza, Brazil and has lived in São Paulo for
many years. She is the author of Visita and Distância, and has three books
of translations published—Na Estação Central Central, a selection of poems
of the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan; Ovelha Negra, an anthology of Scottish
poetry; and Livro Universal by Chilean poet Héctor Hernandez Montecinos.
Selections of her poems have been translated and published abroad—Distancia
(México, Lunarena Editorial) and Fin de Siècle (Editorial Universidad de La
Plata, Argentina)—and she has participated in anthologies of Brazilian
poetry in the U.S., Latin America, and Portugal.

Litmus Press is a nonprofit literature and arts organization dedicated to
supporting innovative, cross-genre writing, with an emphasis on poetry and
international works in translation. Litmus press publishes two or three
single-author works a year, in addition to Aufgabe, an annual journal of
poetry, translations, essays, reviews, and art.

Maureen Thorson
http://www.reenhead.com/mole/mole.php
Maureen Thorson lives in Washington, D.C., where she practices law and runs
the smallest press in the world, Big Game Books. She is the author of two
chapbooks, Novelty Act (Ugly Duckling Press) and Mayport (Poetry Society of
America). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Exquisite Corpse,
Octopus, a Handsome Journal, and the Yale Anthology of Younger American
Poetry.

Damian Weber, House Press
http://www.housepress.org
http://www.housepress.blogspot.com
Damian Weber has published 18 books with House Press, including his newest
Barkeater, which he will be reading from at the Welcome to Boog City
festival. He thinks there should be more readings like this one, and is so
excited to see Eileen Myles because he thinks she's the coolest ever and
that Chelsea Girls is how more people should write. He met her once at Susan
Howe's class and she told a story about reading a Kobainer poem at a poetry
slam in Seattle and totally losing. Apparently they're no fun.

House Press came together in Buffalo in 2002 as poets inside and outside the
University at Buffalo started daily and nightly collaborations. That year,
they began a workshop at 149 Lisbon, a reading series at Spot Coffee, minted
the first issue of the magazine Drill, and published their first book, an
our-man collaboration/collection. Since then, some members have scattered to
Chicago, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Albany, St. Louis, and Charlottesville,
Va., while others have held down the fort. Drill has morphed into String of
Small Machines (S.F./Chicago), and two other magazines, Spell (Chicago) and
Source Material (Brooklyn), have arisen. Meanwhile, House has put out over
two dozen books and a half-dozen CDs. In addition to poetry and music,
they've also worked with prose, street art, book art, and film.

TBD, Cy Gist Press
http://www.cygistpress.com
Editor Mark Lamoureux started Cy Gist Press in 2006. The press' focus is on
ekphrastic poetry, or works that have a strong visual sensibility. Volumes
are handmade in print runs of 100-150, with all design work and printing
done in-house by Lamoureux.

Sunday:

Ana Božičević
http://www.quoileternite.blogspot.com
Ana Božičević is a poet living in North Massapequa. She's the author of
Document (Octopus Books).

Lee Ann Brown
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Brown.html
http://www.epc.buffalo.edu/authors/brown
Lee Ann Brown loves to perform. Her books include The Sleep That Changed
Everything (Wesleyan University Press) and Polyverse (Sun & Moon Press), the
latter of which included earlier chapbooks such as a museme (Boog
Literature) and Crush (Leave Books). She loves to sing and play with her
daughter Miranda, who is beginning kindergarten this fall at The Blue Man
Creativity Center, as well as collaborate with her husband, Tony Torn, with
whom she has started The French Broad Institute (of Time and the River) in
Marshall, N.C. During the school year she lives in NYC, goes to lots of
readings, and teaches poetry at St. John's University.

Tisa Bryant
http://www.themagicmakers.blogspot.com/2007/03/tisa-bryant-authorscholar-tis
a-bryant.html
Tisa Bryant makes work that often traverses the boundaries of genre,
culture, and history. Her first book, Unexplained Presence (Leon Works), is
a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from
eurocentric film, literature, and visual arts and zoom in on the black
presences operating within them. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming
in a number of places, including Abraham Lincoln, The Believer, 1913: A
Journal of Forms, Sustainable Aircraft, and with the paintings of visual
artist Laylah Ali. She is also author of the chapbook, Tzimmes (a+bend
Press). She is assistant professor of writing at St. John's University,
Queens; lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; and is a founding editor/publisher
of the hardcover annual The Encyclopedia Project.

Julia Cohen
http://www.onthemessiersideofneat.blogspot.com
http://www.pshares.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-voice-1-julia-cohen.html
Julia Cohen is the author of three chapbooks, If Fire, Arrival (horse less
press), Who Could Forget the Sensational First Evening of the Night (H_NGM_N
B__KS), and, with Mathias Svalina, When We Broke the Microscope (Small Fires
Press). Her chapbooks The History of a Lake Never Drowns (Dancing Girl
Press) and, also with Mathias Svalina, Chugwater (Transmission Press) are
forthcoming. Poems have been published in Denver Quarterly, Copper Nickel,
Bird Dog, Spinning Jenny, the tiny, MiPOesia, GutCult, and Forklift, Ohio,
among others.

John Coletti
http://www.fewfurpressrainbow.blogspot.com
John Coletti is the author of The New Normalcy (Boog Literature), Physical
Kind (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and the forthcoming Same Enemy Rainbow
(fewer & further). He is the editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter.

Jennifer Firestone
http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_2/mentoring/interview_
firestone_myles.html
Jennifer Firestone is the co-editor of Letters To Poets: Conversations About
Poetics, Politics, and Community (Saturnalia Books), forthcoming in October.
She is the author of Holiday (Shearsman Books), Waves (Portable Press at
Yo-Yo Labs), and From Flashes and snapshot (Sona Books). Her work has
appeared in HOW2, LUNGFULL!, Xcp: Streetnotes, Fourteen Hills, Dusie, 580
Split, and Saint Elizabeth Street, among others. She is an assistant
professor teaching poetry at Eugene Lang College at The New School for
Liberal Arts, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their infant twins.

Corrine Fitzpatrick
http://www.chax.org/eoagh/issue3/issuethree/fitzpatrick.html
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2006/11/poetry/poetry-by-corrine-fitzpatrick
Corrine Fitzpatrick is the author of Zamboanguena and On Melody Dispatch.
She is in the M.F.A. program at Bard College and is the program coordinator
for The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church.

Edward Foster
http://www.stevens.edu/provost/academics/undergraduate/faculty_profile1.php?
faculty_id=905
http://www.lightmillennium.org/2005_15th/edfoster_fbingul_interview.html
Ed Foster’s recent books include What He Ought To Know: New and Selected
Poems (Marsh Hawk Press) and A History of the Common Scale. Described by one
critic as "the epitome of the poet/scholar," he is the author of numerous
volumes of literary criticism and history but is better know for his poetry,
characterized by "sureness of register, intelligence of arrangement,
delicacy of emotional patterning, elegance of effect" says Verse magazine.
The founding editor of Talisman House Publishers, he is a professor of
history and an associate dean in the College of Arts and Letters at the
Stevens Institute of Technology.

Yoko Kikuchi
http://www.yokokikuchi.com
http://www.dreambitches.org
Yoko Kikuchi writes songs to play solo, as well as being the main songwriter
for Dream Bitches. She has one solo release, Songs I Wrote For You, and is
working on releasing a solo triple-album in the fall. Dream Bitches has two
albums—Sanfransisters (Olive Juice Music) and Coke-and-Spiriters
(Recommended If You Like Records). As well as recording her own projects,
Kikuchi appears as a backing vocalist/harmony composer on a number of
recordings by talented artists including Dan Fishback, Phoebe Kreutz, Dibs,
Casey Holford, Josh Malamy, and Andrew Phillip Tipton. She also
performs/guest stars in a number of groups, most notably the Kreutzenjammer
Kids, Piaf the Eiffel Tower, and The Leader.

Amy King
http://www.amyking.org
Amy King is the author of I'm the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an
Alibi (BlazeVOX Books), and, most recently, Kiss Me With the Mouth of Your
Country (Dusie Press). She is the moderator for the Poetics List and the
Women's Poetry Listserv, and teaches English and creative writing at Nassau
Community College. She is currently editing an anthology, The Urban Poetic,
forthcoming from Factory School.

Rachel Levitsky
http://www.delirioushem.blogspot.com/2008/02/dim-sum-rachel-levitsky.html
http://www.chax.org/eoagh/issue3/issuethree/levitsky.html
Rachel Levitsky is the author of Under the Sun (Futurepoem books) and five
poetry chapbooks. She has written several poetry plays, three of which (one
of them with Camille Roy) have been performed in New York and San Francisco.
Recently her work was translated into Icelandic for the anthology 131.839
Slög Med Bilum by Eiríkur Örn Nordahl. Online poetry and critical essays can
be found at Delirious Hem, Narrativity, Duration Press, How2, and Web
Conjunctions, among others. She is the founder and co-director of
Belladonna*, an event and publication series of feminist avant-garde
poetics.

Timothy Liu
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/114
Timothy Liu has two new books of poetry forthcoming, Bending the Mind Around
the Dream’s Blown Fuse (Talisman House Press) and Polytheogamy (Saturnalia
Books). He lives in Manhattan.

Eileen Myles
http://www.eileenmyles.com
http://www.eileenmyles.net
Eileen Myles was born in Cambridge, Mass. in 1949, and moved to New York
City in 1974 to be a poet. Since then she has written produced, performed,
and edited more than 20 plays, libretti, films books of poetry, and fiction,
most recently Sorry, Tree. Importance of Being Iceland (essays) and The
Inferno, a poet's novel, are forthcoming. She lives and writes in New York.

Mendi Lewis Obadike
http://www.blacknetart.com
Mendi Lewis Obadike is the author of Armor and Flesh: Poems and the libretto
for the internet opera The Sour Thunder. The Whitney Museum of American Art,
Yale University, and the New York African Film Festival and Electronic Arts
Intermix, are among the institutions that have commissioned her text-based
new media art. She received a Rockefeller New Media Award to develop
TaRonda, Who Wore White Gloves, an opera which explores black codes of
conduct. She developed Four Electric Ghosts (an opera based on Amos
Tutuola's novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and the video game Pac-Man) in
Toni Morrison's Atelier at Princeton in the fall of 2005. Mendi lives and
works with her husband Keith in the New York metropolitan area.

Simon Pettet
http://www.jacketmagazine.com/29/leddy-pettet.html
http://www.jacketmagazine.com/25/pett-berr-iv.html
Simon Pettet is an internationally renowned English-born poet and long-time
Lower East Side resident. His most recent book of poems is the
much-acclaimed More Winnowed Fragments (Talisman House Press). Hearth—New
and Selected Poems is due from the same publisher later in the fall. He is
also the author of two classic collaborations with photographer-filmmaker,
Rudy Burckhardt, Conversations About Everything and Talking Pictures, and
edited the Art Writings of the Pulitzer-prize-winning New York School poet
James Schuyler. "Like Beethoven's Bagatelles", John Ashbery has written,
“Simon Pettet's short poems have a great deal to say, and their seeming
modest dimensions help rather than hinder his saying it.”

Nick Piombino
http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Piombino%20interview.htm
http://www.nickpiombino.blogspot.com
Nick Piombino guest edited OCHO 14. He opened his ongoing weblog fait
accompli in February 2003. His latest books are fait accompli (Factory
School) and Free Fall (Otoliths), a collage novel containing over 150
full-color images. Contradicta, with illustrations by Toni Simon is due this
fall from Green Integer.

Meghan Punschke
http://www.megpunschke.com
Meghan Punschke is the author of Stratification (BlazeVOX Books). She
resides in New York City, and has an M.F.A. in poetry from The New School.
She is the curator and host of Word of Mouth, a reading series dedicated to
poets and fiction/non-fiction writers. She is also the managing editor for
the literary journal Oranges & Sardines. Her poetry was nominated for a
Pushcart Prize in 2007, and it can be found in MiPO, No Tell Motel, Coconut,
Sawbuck, and OCHO, among others.

Christopher Stackhouse
http://www.readab.com/cstackhouse.html
Christopher Stackhouse is the author of the poetry collection Slip
(Corollary Press) and co-author of Seismosis (1913 Press), which features a
collaboration of Stackhouse's drawings with text by writer/author/professor
John Keene. He is a Cave Canem Writers Fellow, and, a 2005 Fellow in Poetry
from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has recently successfully
completed studies, granting him an M.F.A. in writing/interdisciplinary
studies from Bard College in 2009.

Mathias Svalina
http://www.mathiassvalina.blogspot.com
Mathias Svalina is a co-editor of Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. He is
the author of the chapbooks Why I Am White (Kitchen Press), Creation Myths
(New Michigan Press), and The Viral Lease (Small Anchor Press). He is the
co-author of the collaboratively written chapbooks Or Else What, Asked the
Flame, with Paula Cisewski (SC Press), When We Broke the Microscope (Small
Fires Press), and Chugwater (Transmission Press), which were both written
with Julia Cohen. His first book, Destruction Myth, is forthcoming from
Cleveland State University Press next year.

Stacy Szymaszek
http://www.lemonhound.blogspot.com/2008/04/autoportraits-conversation-with-s
tacy.html
Stacy Szymaszek is the author of Emptied of All Ships and the forthcoming
Hyperglossia (both Litmus Press). She recently published her faux
coming-of-age tale Orizaba: A Voyage with Hart Crane (Faux Press). Her
passion for Crane is so real. She is the artistic director of the Poetry
Project at St. Mark's Church.

Labels: Bee Gees, New York City, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 10:20 AM

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

John Ashbery's Library of America.

Coming this Fall!

Labels: Poems

# 2:24 PM

Friday, June 27, 2008

Just booked: Welcome to Boog City Festival, September 19, New York City.

I would like to live here.

Friday September 19, 7:00 p.m.-1:00 a.m. The second annual Welcome to Boog City Festival
Sidewalk Café, 94 Ave. A, New York City
Free with a two-drink minimum

Readings from Jim Behrle | Bob Holman | Gillian McCain | Daniel Nester | Arlo Quint
Poets’ Theater performances curated by Rodrigo Toscano

more info on the Readings page

Labels: New York City, Poems, Shameless self-promotion, website updates

# 2:38 PM

Friday, May 23, 2008

I'm guest blogging over at The Best American Poetry Blog.

That's from May 26-30.

But don't worry, four or five regular readers of this website. I'll still put the same missives up here, but over there I'll post mildly more substantial stuff. Like some interviews and couple other things I will have been working on.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion, website updates

# 9:51 AM

Monday, April 28, 2008

The earliest sonnets' line endings: Your pedantic post for the day.

Wilkins, Ernest H. "The Invention of the Sonnet." Modern Philology. 13(8) Dec., 1915), 463-494.

Over the weekend, I finished a review of a book of sonnets for one of the magazines I write for, and although I have all the requisite knowledge of what sonnets are and the different types, I still wanted to have scholarly stuff around me. Maybe it was to give me the gravitas I won't ever have; maybe I genuinely wanted to know how the sonnet was invented. Or maybe I just like tables about line endings in medieval Italian sonnets.

Anyway, so what you're looking at here is a table the outlines the way lines end in the first eight lines, or octaves, in the first 31 sonnets every written in Italy in the early 13th Century. There's a couple theories out there that the octave is in fact a vestige of an earlier form, with the sestet as a kind of extended mix version or add-on. It was a pretty fascinating afternoon of light research, even though it was beautiful out in Albany and I should have gotten outside.

Labels: Albany, Johnny Depp Tribute videos set to Whitesnake songs, Poems

# 9:40 AM

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Ally C, Wilcox, and MC.

OK, just a couple more photos from the Flickr page.

That's Ally C on the left, who can say that MFing word like no other and whose audioblog reading of Gregory Pardlo's tour-de-force "Soundtrack" still blows my mind; Dan Wilcox, who paid each Shoutin' Rosebud a dollar from the door for their hard work (each paid poet, in turn, returned it to Dan as a donation to the Social Justice Center), and MC, who I just notice is wearing a Kermit the Frog shirt, which, along with ponytails, makes for a perfect nerd-friendly outfit for her piece that evening.

Labels: Albany, Poems, Saint Rose

# 11:44 AM

Alan Catlin.

Alan is one of my favorite poets from the Albany scene. His poems are dry, wry, smart, and a little grumpy; in other words, he's just my type. Oh, and he's also humble and always nice to me, which always helps.

I just ordered his Drunk and Disorderly: Selected Poems (1979-2000) from Pavement Saw Press. And you should, too.

That's Christina T. in the background on the left. More Shoutin' Rosebuds pictures coming soon.

Labels: Albany, Poems, Saint Rose

# 11:28 AM

Portrait of the artist as series curator.

Dan Wilcox, who forgot one pair of glasses, used another to read the sign-up sheet. Not recommended for those at home.

Another factoid, not captured in this snapshot: He's not wearing any pants.

Just checking to see if you're reading.

Labels: Albany, Poems, Saint Rose

# 11:19 AM

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Meet the Shoutin' Rosebuds!

Shoutin' Rosebuds shout it out at Social Justice Center [link]

Sisters 4 Ewa, "Dancers."

Shit, I Crashed My Land Speeder, "Inspiration."

Group 5, "The Governmenty One."

Four Easy Payments, "Real Beauty."

The Saint Rose Difference, "Superman Without the Phone Booth."

Katie V., "AC/DC Cento."

Labels: Albany, Poems, Saint Rose

# 4:22 PM

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

This Thursday at Albany's Social Justice Center: It's the Shoutin' Rosebuds of Saint Rose!

Yes, people of the Internets. The Shoutin' Rosebuds of Saint Rose will make their downtown Albany debut this Thursday night. These dynamos of performance poetry are, in fact, the students of my English 218: The Oral Interpretation of Literature Class, and for their final project, they will have a public performance at Dan Wilcox's Third Thursday Poetry Night as the featured reader/act.

For those New Yorkers out there, Dan Wilcox is sort of the Jackie Sheeler of Albany (she of Poetz.com and New York City Poetry Calendar fame) one of those tireless literary boosters and performers who, in a perfect world, would get six-figure grants for being such an arts entrepreneur. As it stands, he's one of those people who builds the fields, gets phone calls from poets for gigs, hosts them, and lets people do their thing. At any reading in the greater Capital District, you're bound to see Wilcox, flash camera in hand, handing out his quarter-page flyers for his events.

The students themselves act like they're nervous, but they shouldn't be. They've put together a total of five group poetry pieces--a little like a team slam poetry pieces--and they've gotten some coaching from Shappy and Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz two weeks ago. Some old students will be coming, reading and supporting, and I will read some things as well. We're basically going to raise the roof. Did I really just type that?

Labels: Albany, Poems, Saint Rose, Shameless self-promotion, teaching

# 9:05 PM

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Just up on Linebreak.

"Stardust Memories," an old poem of mine, is up on a great new online journal called Linebreak. The journal features other writers' recorded readings of the poems featued there. Amanda Auchter, an excellent poet, reads my poem better than I ever could. The direct, archived link to my poem is here.

Labels: Beyond Camp, broad comedy, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 8:52 AM

Monday, February 11, 2008

Shafer Hall is coming to Albany again.

He will be reading for my students. And my students in turn are audioblogging his poems from his debut collection Never Cry Woof. Check their performances out here.

Labels: Poems, Saint Rose, teaching

# 5:16 PM

Reading Between A and B, January 31.

Photo by Thomas Sayers Ellis.

Labels: AWP2008, Creative Nonfiction, New York City, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 12:58 PM

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Just out in Coconut.

Seven--count 'em, seven--new poems and prose pieces out in Coconut 10. Direct link to my stuff is here.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 10:16 AM

Monday, December 03, 2007

Just out in Time Out New York.

My review of Matthea Harvey's Modern Times is just out in Time Out New York. Read it online here.

Labels: Creative Nonfiction, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 11:20 AM

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Just out in failbetter.

Five new poems just out in the new issue of failbetter, a journal I've long admired. Here are the individual links:

"Chicago XXXVII"
"To speak of his woe"
"Walton's Mountain"
"Gary Colemanesque"
"Handsome Hal's Blue Star Basically Sells Everything"

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 1:09 PM

Monday, October 15, 2007

[This is adapted from a talk I presented about audioblogging poems in English 218 for a series of talks about the practice of teaching at the College called ProVisions. Since many of my students in the class are future teachers, I thought it might be useful to share my talk with my students. And the world.]

"Phoning it In": Audioblogging Poem Performances in English 218

I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born. It's a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents. It puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, Lucky Pierre style, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it.

--Frank O'Hara, "Personism: A Manifesto"

Materials and Methods

For the past few years, I have been using blogging technology in my classroom for a variety of reasons and in a variety of classes (links to current classes here, here, and here). Before a semester begins, I set up a Class Blog for each of the courses I teach. There are a variety of blogging technology websites (WordPress, LiveJournal); I use Blogger.com. I may use a Class Blog as a virtual blackboard, with students posting up informal writing or work from an in-class exercise. I may assign students to use a Class Blog to complement an oral presentation with media elements, such as a photo or a clip from YouTube.

My talk today centers around a particular blog-based activity I use in one of the classes I teach, The Oral Interpretation of Literature (English 218, class descriptions attached): audioblogging performances.

Using audioblog technologies, I have found, has helped students interact with each other and the class material in a new way, as well as setting up a second, online conversation, one that it is often very different than the one we have in person. Using blog technology, a medium familiar to many student's everyday life but perhaps less familiar in the classroom, has demystified the learning experience and can make it, I daresay, fun.

About one-third of my English 218 class sessions, which is taught as a once-a-week marathon session on Thursday evenings (6-9:30pm) are composed of field trips to public readings of published poets, both on- and off-campus. To prepare for these readings, I assign students to read a sampling of a poet's work, the links to which I place on the Class Blackboard site. Students then select a poem to perform and chronicle their performance on our Class Blog.

A screen capture of the blog setup page from Hipcast.com

They do this, as the title of my talk indicates, by literally "phoning it in," using audioblog technology. This technology is fairly simple. Before the semester begins, I will have connected an audioblogging service to our Class Blog. In Spring 2006, I used the free Audioblogger service, which is now defunct; last Spring, I used Hipcast.com, which requires a small annual fee. Both services post a mini-player for each students' performance.

All the complicated technology stuff happens in the background. Students follow the directions and call into the service and leave what is essentially a voicemail message as their performance. Their performance/voicemail message is then converted into a small mp3 file and is posted online to Class Blog, usually in a matter of seconds.

A screen capture of an audioblog post from the English 218 Class Blog.

Why Audioblog?

The rationale for having students audioblog performances, at least at first, was a logistical one: having 18 students line up to read 2-3 poems each week would take up a huge chunk of our class time.

But then other reasons emerged. In the beginning of my first semester teaching English 218, it was immediately evident that many students needed to really wrap their heads around how to read a poem aloud. In this instructor's opinion, students hold poetry on too high of a pedestal and regard it as some hidden code that cannot be unlocked with their own voices.

Audioblogging gives students some time to deal with reading a poem in more concentrated way, while also giving them some time to deal with their nervousness from public speaking.

Students' audioblogged readings as the semester went on, I would say, helped build their confidence in their in-class readings and public performances. I also started to notice that many students' audioblogged readings, often performed from home or work or a dorm room, took on a more intimate quality. They had much more control over their speed, volume, and voice inflection, with just their voice and a phone receiver to deal with.

In the process, students also learned how reading in front of people requires one set of performative qualities, while reading for electronic media requires another, more subtle approach--much the same as stage acting works with different skill sets as film acting.

One Case Study: Marilyn Nelson's "Mama's Promise"

Before our class attended a reading at Sage College by Marilyn Nelson, an award-winning poet and emeritus professor of English at University of Connecticut, I posted links to her poems online in a folder on our Class Blackboard site. Students selected a poem by Nelson and posted an audioblog reading. The thinking behind this and other readings was to have students inhabit a poem and read it in their own way, then go and see and hear the author herself read the poem.

Many students selected Nelson's "Mama's Promise" (student performances here). The title poem, from the award-winning poet's 1987 book of the same name, looks at the idea of dying child on the news, the poet's own imagined death, and a mother's lullaby.

Attending the reading and meeting Nelson in person brought the online experience full-circle. Before the reading and after students audioblogged their performances, I emailed Nelson, a former teacher of mine, and sent her links to the student's performances. After the Sage reading, Nelson was kind enough to come to our section of the Bush Auditorium and compliment the student's performances, bringing the online experience full circle to face-to-face contact with the writer.

How Do We Assess a Performance?

From my vantage point as a teacher, tracking a student's progress with audioblogged performances was fairly straightforward. I tag each post with a student's name, pull up a their audioblogged performances over the course of a semester, and review the performances. In conference, I can play excerpts to demonstrate a point I am trying to make, or to compare different readings.

We also use a rubric. Many of my students are future educators, so using some sort of assessment tool resonates with them. For the past two years, I have served as one of the three New York State judges for Poetry Out Loud, a nationwide high school poetry recitation contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation. We use a version of the rubric given to the judges to assess performances, rating each category (examples include Volume, Speed, Voice Inflection, Level of Difficulty, Overall Performance) on a scale of 1 to 4, from Weak to Excellent.

In class, students use form to assess each other's performances, while for some of our more important audioblogged performances, I use the applicable criteria and return to the student. I also encourage students to use the rubric for their own self-assessment.

Pros, Implications, and Challenges of Audioblogging

Some issues still need to be ironed out, and not all of them technical. In the interest of online privacy, I have been stressing to students to use their first name and last initial. Student compliance in this regard has been sometimes spotty. Some students have told me the phone number they call turns up as long-distance on their parents' phone bill, and so I have thought about stipulating in my Class Syllabus that students should budget a couple of dollars for phone calls as part of the class expenses. I also have to label all the audioblog posts myself, which is labor-intensive unless I am making assessment notes at the same time.

All in all, however, assigning audioblog readings has been successful. I plan on continuing the practice next Spring, and have been trying to figure out new ways to have students phone in performances in other classes. My initial fears of students wrapping their heads around the technology usually dissipate after the first week of audioblogging.

Even the most Luddite student isn't scared off from leaving a high-tech voicemail message. For others, using the old-school phone technology humanizes the whole enterprise. Reactions from students has been mostly positive: They enjoy getting to practice their readings from home or their dorm, and also to listen to other students' performances to get ideas. There is also the novelty of the technology, their being able to showcase their performances with friends and family.

One Last Thought

I bring up my Case Study of many students--4 out of 16--selecting a particular Marilyn Nelson poem one that is emotionally charged, because it leads me to mention to another, unintended pedagogical result: Students tend to take more chances, both in poem selection and performance, when audioblogging their readings.

This, I would say, is very much an online phenomenon. As Susan Hum and other education researchers note, students construct partially seperate identities online. Perhaps the armor of solitude or a measure of online anonymity leads to more daring on some students' part.

What tends to happen in English 218, then, is a two-part conversation: I gradually posted up more daring poems, subject- and language-wise, for the students to select to read online. Some students will perform from this group online, and choose perhaps tamer material for their in-class and public performances.

This makes for more work on my part--I have a working anthology of audioblog poems and another for public performance. This side conversation online has given the more shy students a chance to shine, which has made some extra work it worthwhile.

Works Cited

Hum, Susan. "Performing Gendered Identities: A Small-Group Collaboration in a Computer-Mediated Classroom Interaction." Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. 18(2) Summer 1992: 19-38.

Nelson, Marilyn. "Mama's Promise." Marilyn Nelson's University of Connecticut Faculty Page. 13 October 2007 <http://web.uconn.edu/mnelson/poem9.htm>.

O'Hara, Frank. "Personism: A Manifesto." The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara. D. Allen, ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.

Labels: Poems, Saint Rose, teaching

# 11:10 PM

Friday, August 24, 2007

Behind the Egg: A Reading Series.

The other reading series I do with Erik Sweet is shaping up for the Fall. Check it out!

All readings are held at The Capital District Federation of Ideas, 383.5 Madison Avenue, Albany, NY, USA.

September 18, 7pm: Dana Spiotta and Matthew Lippman, with music from King Vidor

Dana Spiotta grew up mostly in California. Scribner published her first novel, Lightning Field, in 2001. The Los Angeles Times called it "The hippest, funniest, most urbane and heartfelt account of life west of the 101 and north of the 10 to come along in years." It was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West. Her second novel, Eat the Document (Scribner 2006) was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award. The New York Times called Eat the Document "stunning" and described it as "a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel." Spiotta now lives in a small rural village in upstate New York. She and her husband have a daughter, Agnes Coleman. When she isn't writing, Spiotta and her husband run their small country restaurant.

Matthew Lippman is the author of the poetry collection The New Year of Yellow (Sarabande Press), and his poetry has appeared in such journals as The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The Best American Poetry of 1997 and Tikkun. In 1991 he was the recipient of the James Michener/Paul Engle Poetry Fellowship from the University of Iowa; in 2004 he won a New York State Foundation of the Arts grant for his fiction. He holds a BA from Hobart College, an MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa, and an MA in English Education from Columbia University. Currently he teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at Chatham High School in upstate New York, and has been a member of the faculty, Writing Division, in Columbia University's Summer Program for High School Students, as well as an instructor at The Gotham Writers' Workshop.

From King Vidor's MySpace page: out now: Dirty Little Millionaire CD (call me and I'll play it for you over the phone, or message me for a copy). recorded in the winter of '06 in the town of Cherry Valley, NY, Dirty Little Millionaire is the first record out of Clandestine Labs. auto-destruct is on the menu. King Vidor was born out of a series of bands named Wildlife, Coptic Zoo and Mark Twain, each formed by songwriter Clem Coleman. broke down and busted, the remnants of these projects gathered to make a record. a host of guests was brought in to embelish the songs, making Dirty Little Millionaire as much a product of the Village of Cherry Valley as the product of a quaint little "Rock and Roll Band." much chaotic fun was had while achieving the platter you now hold. combining backwoods country pop with non-sequitous lyrics and straight love songs and fight songs, mixing celestial Hammond organ with dirty Gibsons, throwing down folksy 12-strings and chiming 12-strings into the same stew, King Vidor presents Dirty Little Millionaire as an at-once familiar but at-twice mysteriously unfolding tale of hope and danger set to a bouncy beat.

Saturday, October 6, 4pm: Cara Benson, Carol Graser, and Randall Horton

Cara Benson currently believes in the accessibility of the inaccessible poem. Her work has, is, or will appear in 88, pom2, HOW2, EOAGH, Sentence, and BoogCity. Her wee-e-chapbook "Bound" is forthcoming from Dusie. She is editing a collection of writing for Chain Magazine, and her "Quantum Chaos and Poems: A Manifest(o)ation" is forthcoming from BookThug. Benson makes poems every Tuesday afternoon with male inmates at Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility in upstate NY.

Carol Graser the author of The Wild Twist of Their Stems (Foothills Publishing 2007), which reflects on the "absolute artistry of raising children well" and serves as a "rough chronicle of the birth of the poet's fourth child, from just before pregnancy, thru birth and toddler hood and, finally, to a young boy protesting the invasion of Iraq." She is an alumnus of Binghamton University, where she studied under Milton Kessler. She is the founder and host of a monthly poetry reading series at Saratoga's historic Caffe Lena, which happens on the first Wednesday of every month. Her work appeared in regional journals such as Chronogram, Salvage and Metroland, as well as national publications such as Lullwater Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, The Worcester Review, The MacGuffin, and Eureka Literary Magazine. She performs her work at poetry venues around the state as well as at anti-war rallies and other community events. Originally from Plattsburgh, NY, she lives with her family at the southern end of the Adirondacks in Galway.

Randall Horton, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, resides in Albany, New York. He is a former editor of Warpland: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas (Fall 2005) and co-editor of Fingernails Across the Chalkboard (Third World Press, 2006). He received his undergraduate education at both Howard University and The University of the District of Columbia (B.A. English). He has a MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from Chicago State University, and is now a doctoral student at SUNY Albany. He received an Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation Summer Scholarship to attend Fine Arts Workcenter at Provincetown in 2005. He is also a Cave Canem fellow.

Saturday, October 27, 4pm: Aaron Belz, Peter Davis, Daniel Nester, and Michael Schiavo

Aaron Belz writes poetry in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. His work has appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Painted Bride Quarterly, Black Clock, and other places, and his first full-length book, The Bird Hoverer, was published by BlazeVOX in 2007. Another of his manuscripts, Clementines, was selected as a runner-up for the 2006 Marsh Hawk Press contest by Denise Duhamel, who writes: "Aaron Belz is a gravely hilarious poet . . . his ferocious intelligence, his love of glitz, and his wry take on relationships (both human and animal) are irresistible. Belz's voice is bold, wise, inimitable."

Peter Davis' book of poems is Hitler's Mustache. He edited Poet's Bookshelf: Contemporary Poets on Books that Shaped Their Art. His poems have appeared in places like Octopus, Court Green, McSweeney's, and La Petite Zine. His music project, Short Hand, is available through Collectible Escalators records. He lives in Muncie, Indiana, with his sweet wife and sweet children. Find more about him as well as his other projects--such as his paintings, one of which appears at your left--at artisnecessary.com.

Daniel Nester, along with Erik Sweet, is co-curator of Behind the Egg: A Reading Series. He is the author of God Save My Queen: A Tribute (Soft Skull, 2003) and God Save My Queen II: The Show Must Go On (2004), as well as The History of My World Tonight (BlazeVox 2006). His work has appeared recently in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock 'n Roll, 32 Poems, Gulf Coast, among other places. He writes essays and articles for Poets & Writers, Bookslut, Time Out New York, and PoetryFoundation.org. He is assistant professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany. Find too much about him at danielnester.com.

Michael Schiavo's poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The Yale Review, Tin House, Seneca Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Believer, LIT, 1913: A Journal of Forms, and Forklift, Ohio, among other publications. He is a contributing editor to CUE: A Journal of Prose Poetry and is currently the Writing Coordinator at the Vermont Studio Center.

Sunday, December 1, 4pm
Readers and bios TBA.

Saturday, December 22, 4pm
Event and Readers TBA.

__________________
There is no open reading. Sponsored by Unpleasant Event Schedule and Tool a Magazine. All readings are free with a suggested donation to benefit the readers and CDFI. For more information, contact series curators Erik Sweet (at esweet01 at nycap dot rr dot com) and Daniel Nester (at danielnester at gmail dot com).

Labels: Albany, Behind the Egg, Creative Nonfiction, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 10:13 PM

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Third Rail launch party in New York tomorrow.

If you're around New York City, stop by the Bowery Poetry Club tomorrow/Wednesday night for the launch party for Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll, a new anthology from MTV Books/Simon & Schuster edited by Jonathan Wells (and designed by Reading Between A & B reading series Mary Austin Speaker, pretty cool, eh?).

I'll be reading my two pieces that are in the anthology--or should I say comp? Plus, my friend and sometime collaborator Gene Cawley will be playing a couple songs as part of the set. He will act as a sort of opening act for Paul Muldoon's band Racket. Or is it The Racket. The Rackets? Racket, Lake, and Palmer?

Perhaps I'll see you there. It's a great excuse to come down to New York City at semester's end. And during the day, perhaps I'll see you here, here, or here.

Labels: New York City, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 9:42 AM

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

All LIT up in Hudson, NY (with Karaoke + Poetry = Fun).

On May 5th Hudson is ALL LIT UP! all events free and open to the public

On April May 5th in Hudson, NY, join us for the 3rd Annual Hudson Valley Literary Festival: All LIT Up. The daylong festival, produced by CLMP, with The Hudson Opera House, Spotty Dog Books & Ale, and Hudson Wine Merchants, celebrates literature and literary publishing:

11 AM - 4 PM: Bargains! Bargains! Bargains! Literary Magazine & Small Press Fair Hudson Opera House, 327 Warren Street:
Featuring hundreds of books and magazines published by regional and national independent literary publishers on sale for only $2 an issue and $4 a book. Many of the editors and publishers will be present. Don't miss this opportunity to discover literature you are unlikely to find in a single store--everything from 1913 Press to Zone 3 Magazine.

5 PM: Lynne Tillman, Lydia Davia, Paul LaFarge, and Thisbe Nissen: A Reading & Chat Hudson Wine Merchants, 341½ Warren Street:
Join us for a frank discussion of the state of American fiction in the marketplace, followed by short readings from each of the participating writers and a wine and cheese reception.

8 PM: Karaoke + Poetry = Fun
Spotty Dog Books & Ale, 440 Warren Street:
All are welcome to participate: read a poem, sing a song! Daniel Nester of Unpleasant Event Schedule recreates his infamous NYC K+P=F series in upstate New York.

For more info, please email Jamie Schwartz at jschwartz@clmp.org. For directions to the Hudson Opera House, please visit: http://www.hudsonoperahouse.org -- or call 518-822-1438. Brought to you by CLMP, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (www.clmp.org), serving the community of independent literary publishers since 1967. This event made possible in part through support from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency

Labels: Albany, Poems, Shameless self-promotion, Unpleasant Event Schedule

# 7:53 AM

Friday, March 23, 2007

Marilyn Nelson at Sage College.

Marilyn Nelson was my first teacher at NYU, and she not only put up with my craziness--I has just moved to New York, was in this new strange place called an MFA program, and I was so excited about writing poems I was like one of those kids from Fame, running out of the school and jumping on cars--she taught me a lot about writing and life as well. Now, some years later, Marilyn is reading her excellent poems at Sage College.

I am bringing my Oral Interpetation of Literature class over there tonight. You can hear some audioblog readings of Nelson's poems at the class website. I will be adding titles to the posts later today. Just hit those little players, and you will hear some great Marilyn Nelson poems read by my students.

UPDATE: Marilyn's reading was strong, strong enough to fill up the Bush building's 100-foot ceilings. She finished by reading A Wreath for Emmett Till, a heroic crown of sonnets that addresses and memorializes the lynching of that 14-year-old African American.

The book is marketed as a young adult book, which is probably why I didn't buy it when it came out, but it's really a book for everyone. The book has also made national headlines, just in the past couple of days, and rather perversely so, when two teachers in Los Angeles were fired for collaborating with students who, after reading and being taught the book, wanted to make a Till presentation for Black History Month. Read more about that recent event here.

Listen to an NPR piece when the book came out, as well as Nelson's reading the book, here.

+++++++

Last week, we went to the Fence and Fence Editions reading at SUNY Albany's New York State Writers Institute. Scroll down the same page to hear some great audioblog readings of Fence poets, most notably Prageeta Sharma and Michael Earl Craig (above).

Labels: Poems, Saint Rose, teaching

# 10:33 AM

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Helen Adam, from Poetry in Motion documentary.

Labels: Beyond Camp, Poems

# 8:26 AM

Monday, March 12, 2007

Just up on taint magazine.

Two new poems are up and out in what evidently the final issue of taint magazine.

Sad to see it go. The taint archive will live on, I hope, what with lots of work from Anthony Robinson, John Cotter/Shafer Hall collaborations, and David Barringer, who said some very nice (and, let's face it, correct) things about God Save My Queen II a year or two back.

Labels: Poems, Riffs, Shameless self-promotion

# 9:28 AM

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Coming April 2007: Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll.

Description

"The poets who fill these pages have come to testify, to bear witness to the mysterious power of Rock and Roll." -- from the Foreword by Bono

"The thread or the theme That holds this tune Together is the same One that rips it open...." -- from Gimme Shelter by Bill Knott

"Chunky on the shag rug, I'm looking for my anthem, I'm looking for my headphones, I'm looking for the bare spot on the rug to wallow, side-stepped on the chair-stopped door. I blast my ears out." -- from The Prophet's Song by Daniel Nester

"Drums, Whatta lotta Noise you want a Revolution? Wanna Apocalypse? Blow up in Dynamite Sound?" -- from Punk Rock You're My Big Crybaby by Allen Ginsberg

As revolutionary as the music it celebrates, the poetry in this electrifying anthology -- by poets such as Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Paul Muldoon and Philip Larkin -- turns rock upside down with indelible images and powerful expressions of the music that changed our lives.

Product Details

MTV, April 2007
Trade Paperback, 224 pages
ISBN-10: 1-4165-2489-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-2489-2

Labels: God Save My Queen, Poems, Queenspotting, Shameless self-promotion

# 8:35 PM

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Hairstyles, Audioblog readings: Let the class blog exhibits begin.

Scroll down and around on the English 105 page for this semester for some pretty sweet Autobiographies in Hairstyles essays, a fave assignment of mine to give. More students included pictures this time around.

And on the Oral Interpretation of Literature page: audioblog cover version performances of Todd Colby, Sharon Olds, Wallace Stevens, Chuck Wachtel, Jennifer L. Knox, and more. I am hurriedly labeling the links now, but go ahead and click on all of them. You won't be disappointed.

Labels: Creative Nonfiction, Poems, Saint Rose, teaching

# 10:01 AM

Monday, January 15, 2007

Just up on Amazon: The History of My World Tonight!

The folks over at BlazeVOX have put up their whole catalog at Amazon! I am very happy to pass along the word. Buy from this link below, and it goes into my Amazon Associates Account as well.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 7:11 AM

Monday, January 01, 2007

Just announced: Reading in NYC for 2nd Avenue Poetry this Friday.

Labels: New York City, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 5:18 PM

Monday, December 18, 2006

"After Schubert's Sad Cycle of Songs" is up on Sharkforum.

Dr. Simone Muench over at Sharkforum is featuring a poem of mine as the Poem of the Week. I first got on the Muench/Sharkforum radar through my use of the word "maffick" in another poem of mine, "Late Anniversary Madrigal."

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 12:20 PM

Just up on 2nd Avenue Poetry.

There's a bunch of poems out from a gaggle of great writers in the next issue of 2nd Avenue Poetry.

Oh, and as you can see, I'm in there, too, with a chapbook-length "Alley" feature called Demos and B-Sides.

Labels: New York City, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 8:29 AM

Friday, November 17, 2006

Just up on Dead Horse Review.

Four new poems, two found and two not-found. Front page here, direct link to my pieces here.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 1:45 PM

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Just out: Tales from Johnsonia.

Big Game Books, poet-barrister Maureen Thorson's micropress concern operating out of our nation's capitol, is publishing a series of Tinysides, a tinier, more portable spin on the broadside, and yours truly is included in this thought experiment as Tinyside #8. Four new and strange poems are included therein. Order now while you can. Permalink here on this site.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 6:31 PM

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Just up on H_NGM_N.

Yours truly has two new poems and an essay on Williams I've been working on for, like, 10 years

Labels: Creative Nonfiction, Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 8:20 AM

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Just up on Siren, a literary and arts journal.

Four new poems of mine -- yes, I actually have new poems -- on the premiere issue of Siren.

My work appears alongside with writing from Amy "The Queen Bee" King, AnnMarie Eldon, David Hernandez, Glenn Ingersoll, Jenny "The Body" Boully, Kathryn "The Snow Monkey" Rantala, Laurel Dodge, Matt "The Hitman" Hart. I only gave professional wrestling nicknames to people I know and kinda know, just so ya know.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 11:19 AM

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Just up in The Cortland Review.

"Semi-Insane Arietta," a relatively recent poem, is just up on The Cortland Review, guest-edited by the suspicious and fabulous Ernest Hilbert, here. It's my third go-around at TCR, which is one of the longest-running journals on the web. I am psyched every time something of mine goes up, especially since you can hear other people read their work.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 9:44 AM

Monday, April 03, 2006

More song links, upcoming readings with song poem performances.

The book is out; please buy it.
As you may already know, The History of My World Tonight (THOMWT), a book of poems old and new--and really, my first book of poems and only poems--is now available from BlazeVox Books. Please buy the book here.

The song poems; please listen to them.
The book's minisite is here, complete with some advance praise, and three sample poems with song poem settings by none other than Gene Cawley. I may be biased because I wrote the words, but I think they're just great. And to appropriate Alec Baldwin's imitation of Tony Bennett, I like things that are great.

The two upcoming readings and performances this weekend; please attend one.

I have two readings coming up this weekend, and Gene has graciously agreed to perform these song poems at my readings this weekend in New York City. Please come. It's only my second trip back to the city since moving up to Albany, and I'll have copies of THOMWT on hand to sell as well as other goodies to give away.

Christopher Connelly has also agreed to appear to help read our collaborations from Percapella; rumor has it Gene will also perform the now-classic setting of "Skanky Tots," one of our poems. Listen to that song poem at the Percapella mini-site, now online here.

Here are the reading dates and information, my friends.
Friday, April 7, 2006, 6pm
Featured reader at Pink Pony West, hosted by Jackie Sheeler
Cornelia Street Cafe 29 Cornelia Street, between Bleecker St. & 6th Avenue New York, NY
any subway to West 4th or Christopher; sign up for open mike at 6pm
$6 admission gets you a free drink

Saturday, April 8, 2006, 2pm
Frequency Reading Series with Ada Limon, Michael Costello, and Andrew Michael Roberts
The Four-Faced Liar, 165 West 4th Street (between 6th & 7th Ave) New York, NY

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 10:02 AM

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Three false-start poems up at The Highest Number.

The mission statement of this blog-powered journal is "one-offs, false starts, and brilliant mistakes." Don't know if my three poems qualify for that last category, but check out "Out to the moon which is not there," "Right Joke, Wrong Bar," and "Modified From Original Version."

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 9:35 AM

Monday, February 13, 2006

Just up on Alice Blue.

"A Lovely Day for a Motion Picture"; "This Onus Cannot Be Cool"; "Some Are Outside of Myself/Some Stretch of the Imagination" all in this new issue of Alice Blue.

Labels: Poems, Shameless self-promotion

# 10:19 AM


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