Myung Mi Kim feature at Jacket2

A crucial Myung Mi Kim feature just went live at Jacket2 thanks to C.J. Martin. It features writing by Susan Gevirtz, Divya Victor, Julia Bloch, and others. Check it out here. I should mention, too, that a festschrift I co-edited with Andrew Rippeon on Myung's work, featuring TONS of great material, is also available online here. Finally, if you still haven't purchased the Nightboat reissue of Dura or Omindawn's Penury, please prioritize that now for your own good...

Vital Forms Events

Thursday, April 18th:

Thom Donovan and Brent Cunningham
Woolsey Heights
doors 7pm/reading 8pm
1628 woolsey st apt c / berkeley


Friday, April 19th:
Eleni Stecopoulos
Beth Murray
Thom Donovan
Bhanu Kapil
7:00-9:30 pm talks & performances
general admission $10; low income $5
@ Subterranean Arthouse
2179 Bancroft Way, downtown Berkeley


Saturday, April 20th:

Constellation Work on Healing through/from/ in Crisis, facilitated by Beth Murray
Palmistry: A Short Workshop on the Healing Image, facilitated by Bhanu Kapil and Melissa Buzzeo
2:00-5:00 pm workshops integrating writing with movement/somatic work
general admission $10; low income $5
@ Subterranean Arthouse
2179 Bancroft Way, downtown Berkeley


Pavlos Stavropoulos
Margit Galanter
david wolach
Melissa Buzzeo
7:00-9:30 pm talks & performances
general admission $10; low income $5
@ Subterranean Arthouse
2179 Bancroft Way, downtown Berkeley

The 3rd Annual Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in Innovative Poetics

Hearts Desire #3

The Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights

Find the original call at The Relationship

2013 CALL FOR ENTRIES:

In memory of Leslie Scalapino, her extraordinary body of work, and her commitment to the community of experimental writing and performance.

The Leslie Scalapino Award recognizes the importance of exploratory approaches and an innovative spirit in writing for performance. It wishes to encourage women writers who are taking risks with the playwriting form by offering the opportunity to gain wider exposure through readings and productions. The award will also seek to increase public awareness for this vibrant contemporary field.

We are looking for a full-length work for live performance by a woman writer with an inquiring approach to language and content.


THE PRIZE:

The winner will receive a $2,500 cash prize, print publication of winning play by Litmus Press, and a staged reading of the piece this October at the The New Ohio Theatre in New York, by Fiona Templeton's company The Relationship.

Judges: Caroline Bergvall, E. Tracy Grinnell, Fiona Templeton.

In subsequent years, the prize will also include the opportunity for a full production by The Relationship or another theatre company.

The Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights is funded in part by the Leslie Scalapino–O Books Fund and is administered by The Relationship. Publication of award-winning works will be in collaboration with Litmus Press. For more information about Leslie Scalapino, please visit her website: www.lesliescalapino.com.


SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Potential applicants will find a familiarity with the works of Leslie Scalapino a useful reference – we are not looking for imitators or conventional playwrighting, but writing that is challenging, poetic and innovative.

Initial applications should consist of a cover letter*, a 10-page excerpt, and a 150 word (maximum) summary of the full piece. We will request full scripts from a shortlist of selected candidates.

The Award for Innovative Women Playwrights intends to support new writing by female-identified people, inclusive of transwomen.

The prize is open to international submissions in English.

Only one performance text / script may be submitted. The work should not have been previously produced, as the intention is to support new works.

*The play must be accompanied by a letter containing the writer's name, address, email address, and a short biography (one paragraph).


TIMELINE:

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MAY 30th 2013 11:59 pm

Shortlist announced: July 30th

Deadline for full scripts from shortlisted candidates: August 15th 11:59 pm

Announcement of winning work and reading details: September 30th, 2013

Reading and announcement of round 2: October 2013, details tbc

Ready to submit? Click Here

Paul Klinger's Alligator Suite || Rubble Paper, Paper Rubble

The Heidelberg at work...

Stephen Novotny is currently printing CJ Martin's new chapbook, titled 2012, on the Heidelberg at Compline HQ for his new press, Supersuperette. Here's a little video loop of the press at work...

Vital Forms: Healing and the Arts of Crisis

Sarah Rosenthal's Next Big Thing

 

Sarah Rosenthal asked if I'd host her "Next Big Thing" contribution here, and, of course, I'm delighted to see (and share) it. A new book by Sarah Rosenthal, especially a book called Lizard (!), sounds awesome!

Here's Sarah:

What is the title of the book?

Lizard.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I was teaching a class on the letter as literary form and in my reader I included an untitled poem by Sesshu Foster that begins with a gesture toward epistolarity and then veers into a captivating portrait of a (male) character named Lizard, which is at the same time an extravagant celebration of language. Half the students were enthralled with the poem and the other half railed against its slippery indeterminacy. The ruckus seemed vibrant, necessary. I wrote a response of sorts (a letter?) to Foster’s poem, about a female Lizard who, like Foster’s character, blends features of the human and the reptile. I continued to accrue poems featuring Lizard and after several months I realized it would be a book.

I don’t recall when in this process the notion of hybridity impacted my consciousness thanks to Bhanu Kapil, Donna Haraway, and others, but I’m glad for the impact.

I also strongly associate the germination of the project with the fact of my father’s sharp decline and death that same semester. It was a tumultuous time for me and out of that chaos Lizard was born.

 

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry.

 

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

If Kathy Acker were alive and an actress, she might be a good candidate for Lizard.

 

What’s the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Lizard transgresses the lines between imagination and documentation, between I and you and she, seeking moments of freedom from the repressive aspects of human consciousness and institutions.

 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The work in Lizard blends aspects of femaleness with scientific information about lizards. It also reflects my ongoing interest in the artistic process, poetry, and language.

 

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It’s currently under consideration by a few publishers.

Thanks to Jennifer Firestone for tagging me in this Next Big Thing game. In turn I'd like to tag Justin Chin, Erin Wilson, Rodrigo Toscano, and Mary Ellen Hannibal.

Nico Peck's "Imagination as Activist Tool"

Nico Peck finally posted her pretty brilliant and very funny contribution to the "Ecopoetics of the City" panel at her new online interface, "Queer City." Check it out here, and while you're at it, pick up Peck's The Pyrrhaiad, recently printed by Trafficker. Also, there's this awesome interview with Lauren Shufran for the Peck completest...

Jocelyn Saidenberg's Bartleby

Jocelyn Saidenberg gave an incredible reading of her "Bartleby" project on Saturday night, which got me thinking about her shipwreck, a chapbook printed nearly a year ago on the occasion of the exhibition "9 Balls: Alexis Knowlton New Work" thanks to Margaret Tedesco and her 2nd floor projects. I've been meaning to scan some pages from it since then, which should give you a sense of how far behind I am. I'm not sure if any of these are still available (I think it was printed in an edition of, like, 100), but you might check at the 2nd floor website just in case.

Jocelyn's Bartleby also got me thinking about Heriberto Yepez's new Chain Links text, The Empire of Neomemory (which I've been reading in anticipation of an interview with translators Jen Hofer, Chris Nagler, and Brian Whitener). Yepez makes the following argument about Bartleby:

"The scrivener arrived on the scene of capitalism melancholic, frustrated, disappointed with himself, skeptical of real communication, crushed, sunk in his interior world, separated from everything and everyone. The scrivener arrived into capitalism tormented by the loneliness caused by his failure. He could not communicate with us. His letters failed."

And later...

"As a failed technician of the sacred before taking on the form of renegade copyist of Wall Street, the Oxidental scribe (note: here I take it Yepez is referring to Bartleby and Charles Olson and American poets writ large!) is condemned to nihilism, to pure passive resistance, a being protected by the paternal State, an Oedipal being. The scribe is condemned to death, to dying among the ruins of his wavering between a metaphysical unemployment and a subservience to capitalism.
     Co-bodies of each other: scribe and New York attorney, writer and State, thought and capitalism, secret symbiosis, silent union of the apparently distinct, truncated relation and therefore not unreal. Since the union of the two is the most uncanny, the saddest and most disappointing, it is the very loop of the complete failure of the human project. All of us are Bartleby. Copyists, clandestine propagandists of capitalism with no exit" (44).

I'd LOVE to read Yepez's text next to Jocelyn's to see what would fluoresce...is it simply that Jocelyn's Bartleby is a body with desire?

Further Other Book Works

The Tumblr for Further Other Book Works is up and running, so folks can finally order copies of the Norma Cole and Rachel Blau DuPlessis broadsides (both in collab. with CJ Martin), and I'm especially partial to Julia Drescher's Hands Chalk the Walls figured above. Your collection needs this stuff, as mine certainly needs the forthcoming Paul Klinger project that includes prints of an alligator carcass (which Chris assures us is literally alligator carcass printed on paper) Um...looking forward...

COMPLINE PREORDER: NOW W/ HOLY GHOST!

We still need approximately 50 people to step up and support Compline by preordering David Brazil's the ordinary and Jackqueline Frost's The Antidote before they're released in May/June. As such, David and I collaborated to sweeten the deal. If you order both Jackqueline and David's books for $25, you'll receive a brand new Brazil chapbook entitled Holy Ghost III & Holy Ghost IV FOR FREE (along with an additional free Compline publication of your choice). That means you'll receive two long-players and two chapbooks for only $25 (not bad, huh?!). Holy Ghost III & Holy Ghost IV will not be available for purchase separately. You can only secure a copy through this preorder deal. If you've already ordered the books, rest assured: you will receive this chapbook in addition to your other books. If you haven't, we only made enough to cover the first 125 preorders, so get your order in NOW and support small press publishing! Click here to order and thanks for your support!

Morris / Saidenberg / Scappettone on Saturday!

Please don't forget to join us Saturday, 3/23 for an SPT "pop-up" reading featuring amazing poets and people Marianne Morris, Jocelyn Saidenberg, and Jennifer Scappettone. Scappettone is in town for the weekend, and it's been a good, long while since she's read in the Bay Area. Sharing the bill is newly local (maybe?) Marianne Morris (whose Iran Documents came out recently on Trafficker Press, a chapbook I quickly fell in love with) and Jocelyn Saidenberg (a crucial presence in the San Francisco Bay Area who needs zero introduction!). This promises to be a super fun reading, and we'll pass the hat around to raise a few bucks for SPT! Also, we've made it a 9 pm late show so we don't overlap with Julie Patton, Andrew Levy, and Mark Wallace earlier in the evening at the Poetry Center. Please help to spread the word, and I hope to see you all there!

Morris / Saidenberg / Scappettone
SPT Pop-Up
CCA Writer's Lounge
195 Deharo, San Francisco
Sat. March 23rd, 9pm

Marianne Morris is the author of several chapbooks including DSK (Tipped Press), Iran Documents (Trafficker Press), So Few Richards, So Many Dicks (Punch Press), and Commitment (Critical Documents). She was the 2008 holder of the Harper-Wood Scholarship for Creative Writing from St John's College, Cambridge, and has just completed a PhD in contemporary poetics in Cornwall, U.K.

Born and raised in New York City, poet and editor Jocelyn Saidenberg is the author of several poetry collections, including Negativity (2006) and Cusp (2001), which was chosen by poet Barbara Guest for the Frances Jaffer Book Award. Founding editor of the publishing collective Krupskaya Books and a founding member of the Nonsite Collective, Saidenberg has also served as director of Small Press Traffic and as curator for New Langton Arts.

Jennifer Scappettone is the author of the poetry collection From Dame Quickly (Litmus, 2009) and of several chapbooks: Beauty [Is the New Absurdity] (dusi/e, 2007), Err-Residence (Bronze Skull, 2007), and Thing Ode / Ode oggettuale (La Camera Verde, 2008), translated into Italian in dialogue with Marco Giovenale. Exit 43, an archaeology of the landfill and opera of pop-up pastorals, is in progress for Atelos Press, with a letterpress fragment forthcoming from Compline. She edited and translated Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli (University of Chicago Press, 2012), which won the Academy of American Poets' biennial Raiziss/De Palchi Book Award. Killing the Moonlight: Modernism in Venice, her study of the premodern city as a crucible for twentieth-century experiments across literature, politics, the visual arts, architecture, and urbanism, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

BRAZIL / FROST / KENNEDY TONIGHT!

This reading's going to be A LOT of fun! Come preorder the new books by Jackqueline Frost and David Brazil and support Compline!

Holy Ghost

I'm cooking up something special for the Compline fundraiser on Thursday with David Brazil, Jackqueline Frost, and Evan Kennedy. Take a look at the video for a preview! And don't miss the reading!

Jonathan Skinner's Advisory Board Roundtable Comments

Over the course of eco-weekend, folks kept referring to Jonathan Skinner's comments on the opening-night roundtable as if the conference could have ended there! I had the pleasure of running into him briefly at the Friday night Public School reading (the first time I've seen him in person since the Olson Now conference at Buffalo back in, like, 2007!), and I've been dying to see what he had to say ever since. And now the text is finally in hand! Download the PDF below, or peruse below using Scribd's terrible "reader" (not recommended!).

Jonathan Skinner's Advisory Board Roundtable Comments by

Nicky Tiso on the Ecopoetics Conference

I met Nicky Tiso briefly at the Halpern/Iijima/Williams reading at the Public School, and found later that he was sharing a panel with my boy Matthew O'Malley. An MFA student at Minnesota (I think?) and a onetime student at Evergreen (a student of David Wolach's? I think?). Anyway, he blogs at Grand Hotel Abyss, and his musing on the conference can be read here.

Gevirtz / Giles / Thomas-Glass

You should go to this on Friday!

CANESSA PARK READING SERIES

708 Montgomery Street (at Columbus)

San Francisco, CA 94111

3^rd Friday Nights (Yes it’s new!)

March 15^th, 2013

Susan Gevirtz/ Samantha Giles / Dan Thomas-Glass

Doors open at 7 pm. Reading at 7:30

Donation $6 (No one turned away for lack of funds).

Susan Gevirtz’s books include AERODROME ORION & Starry Messenger (Kelsey St., 2010), BROADCAST (Trafficker, 2009), Thrall (Post Apollo, 2007), Coming Events, Collected Writing, is forthcoming from Nightboat. She teaches at California College of the Arts and Mills College. Gevirtz has co-organized the annual translation and conversation meeting of The Paros Symposium with Greek poet Siarita Kouka, and guest organizers for eight years.

Samantha Giles grew up in an industrial section of Santa Monica, California and currently lives in the flatlands of Oakland, CA. She is a graduate of the School of Social Work at San Francisco State and holds an MFA from Mills College. She is the author of hurdis addo (Displaced Press, 2011)-- a winner of the Sexiest Poem awarded by CAConrad-- and the forthcoming deadfalls and snares from Futurepoem. Since 2009, she has been the Director of Small Press Traffic.

Dan Thomas-Glass lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Kate and their daughters Sonia and Alma. He is the author of The Great American Beatjack Volume I (Perfect Lovers Press 2012), Kate & Sonia (in the months before our second daughter's birth) (Little Red Leaves Textile Series 2012), Seaming (Furniture Press 2011), and 880 (Deep Oakland Editions 2010). He edits the journal of postindustrial poetics With + Stand, works as a school administrator, eats Mexican food joyously, is a devoted Warriors and 49ers fan, once wrote a dissertation on language poetry and rap music, and these days writes mostly about the musical dilation of time and faith that is being a parent.

Brian Teare's Ecopoetics Talk

Back to Ecopoetics material: Brian Teare was on a panel called "Environmental Dreamscapes and the Heedless Sublime" with Nathan Brown, Jed Rasula, and Evelyn Reilly. I especially wanted to hear what Teare and Evelyn Reilly had to say, and luckily, Brian sent over a draft. Enjoy!

Brian Teare's Ecopoetics Talk by