26 May 2015

BAPS needs your help...




The Bay Area Public is contacting our network of friends to let you know about our present financial situation, and ask for your support to keep this wonderful project going.

The Bay Area Public School has offered hundreds of free classes and events since we began in 2012, and we have provided a much-needed space for community gathering and organizing, first at 2141 Broadway and now at the Omni Commons (omnicommons.org), which we helped to found.  We're also proud to host some of the most important public intellectuals of our time -- people like Fred Moten, Silvia Federici and Frank Wilderson -- in public forums that are totally free of charge.

We've achieved all this through a pioneering community-supported financial structure, according to which 50 people paying $20 a month would make our monthly rent & expenses totalling $1000.  We never quite had fifty supporters, but we've kept the doors open for three years running, which is pretty incredible.

But with the transition to the Omni have come new challenges, most particularly financial challenges!  We were previously responsible for $1000 a month, but with the unexpected expenses attached to the Omni we have now committed to $1500 a month.

We can still pay this expense with community support & help sustain both the Public School and the Omni, but we need your help!  Right now there are 37 people who have committed to sustain the School with a repeating monthly donation of $20.  If 75 people would make this commitment, we'd never have to send another email like this.

Will you please consider a monthly $20 sustaining commitment to the Public School?  It's super-simple -- all you have to do is go to bayareapublicschool.org, click the button on the right that says "Donate to Bay Area Public School," fill in $20 (or whatever recurring donation you'd like to make), and check the box that says "I want to make this a recurring donation".  Then fill in the payment information & that's it!

We are so proud of what this project has accomplished to date and we know it has a bright future ahead of it, but it can only have that future if we come together as a community to make it happen.

Thank you so much for reading this letter -- please let us know if you have any questions, and thank you so much for your continued support of the Bay Area Public School!

Love & solidarity -- Publia Pigeon

06 April 2015

15 March 2015

Further Other Book Works Broadsides!







Our friends at Further Other Book Works has just produced these INCREDIBLE broadsides as a fundraiser for their forthcoming Helen Adams artist book. These feature unpublished poems by Jack Spicer, designed by Norma Cole, Kevin Killian, Paul Klinger, and Kyle Schlesinger. These are a must, obviously. Buy here please.

11 March 2015

House-Scrub, or After Porn




This is the cover of Rob Halpern's new pamphlet "House-Scrub, or After Porn," which represents a tiny section from his forthcoming Common Place (Ugly Duckling, soon?), beautifully produced as a solo, large-format number by Margaret Tedesco (who is responsible for the beautiful design work for many (maybe most) of the newest Nightboat books). These probably won't be around for long, so pick one directly from Margaret by clicking here.

And while we're on the subject, Sianne Ngai just published a killer essay on Rob's work called "Visceral Abstractions" for GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Check out the abstract here, and if you're really interested, I may be able to direct you to the full article if  you send an email...

09 March 2015

Selcer and Durback for Double Burst







New work from local powerhouses Lara Durback and Anne Lesley Selcer thanks to Stephen Novotny. I'm not sure if this series is still called Double Burst, but it is out in the world (and soon available as PDF here). First two pages are ALS; the final two are LD.


04 March 2015

The Louder the Room the Darker the Screen


Paul Ebenkamp's 'The Louder the Room the Darker the Screen' Media Statement from Timeless, Infinite Light on Vimeo.

This book is going to be so, so dope. Another big win for Timeless, Infinite Light. I took a peek at the proofs last week, and this might already be my vote for book of the year. It promises to slay. And also, just FYI, there is a very good chance that Paul and I (and maybe Ted Rees and maybe Stephen Novotny) are now in a band called Scythe Mouth. So, trademark or whatever. There will probably not be music, but there will certainly be t-shirts.

Also, I should mention that there are pre-order goodies if you buy the book now: check it out here.

03 March 2015

Laura Kilbride's In the Square








Whoa! This is the best thing I've read in forever. 1K lines of super dense, concise and beautifully labored writing. Totally essential and perfectly produced by Rich Owens' always on point Punch Press. I don't know much about Kilbride besides that she's my new favorite poet, and she lives in the U.K. I think Marianne Morris also printed something of her's with Morris's Bad Press (but I've never seen it). In short, get it (and everything else from Punch Press) here.

05 February 2015

Meet Hopper!


Ezra and I found this very sweet puppy abandoned at Dimond Park last week. His name is Hopper, and Family Dog Rescue is helping us find him a home. Perhaps you would like to make Hopper your new pal?! Spread the word, and learn more about this sweet little guy here.

04 February 2015

Silverlining: Cross, Mody, Proctor-Xu



I'm reading this Thursday, 3/5 with Monica Mody and Jami Proctor-Xu for Silverlining (at Melissa Mack's place). Doors at 7pm; Reading at 8pm. It should be a very relaxed and fun evening. Please send an email to michaelthomascross (@) hotmail for directions. 


01 February 2015

ON Contemporary Practice: Two New Essays on David Brazil



Head over to ON Contemporary Practice to read two new essays on the work of David Brazil. The first is the complete "Ordinary Weather," which collects a totally moving, serialized essay by C.J. Martin. The second, by local wunderkind Stephen Novotny, takes on the invention of "litter" and its transformation as a potentialized tool in Brazil's work. Both essays are totally worth your time!

And I suppose this is as good a time as any to announce that Thom Donovan and myself are hard at work on the next ON monograph, to be released in fall of this year. Very exciting details to follow... 

07 January 2015

Paranoid Histories Reader




The following reader features excerpts from short essays by Michelle Detorie, Julia Drescher, CJ Martin, and Kurt Newman. Folks planning to attend "Paranoid Histories" at the OMNI this Saturday, 1/10 might like to preview some of this material before the conversation. I'm looking forward to discussing these essays together then!

Heidegger for Mystics begins tomorrow!



Greetings all:

I'm looking forward to our first meeting of Heidegger for Mystics tomorrow evening (7pm) at the OMNI (4799 Shattuck). We'll spend the session getting to know each other a bit while more generally developing a reading list and plan of action together. Let's meet in the little sitting area at La Commune (enter at the corner of 48th and Shattuck), and we can find an appropriate place in the OMNI to set up shop. I'll bring a variety of resources and secondary material to inform the conversation. Hope to see you all then!

Michael

04 January 2015

Paranoid Histories at the OMNI



In his essay “For a Paranoid History, or, Bakersfield: Capital of the Twentieth Century,” historian and artist Kurt Newman writes, “My proposal is this: we should all become a little more ‘paranoid.’ In the process, we should think carefully about whether historiography can really do without the concept of ‘paranoia.'”

Join Newman, along with visiting poets Julia Drescher, Michelle Detorie, and CJ Martin, for a conversation about writing “paranoid histories,” including the composition of new critco-poetic essays about Jack Spicer, Robert Creeley, and feral poetics.

This event will take place at the OMNI (4799 Shattuck) on Saturday, 1/10 from 7-9 pm. See you there!