5/7/2010: WILL EDMISTON & ANNA VITALE.

FRIDAY, May 7, 2010

10:00PM - MIDNIGHT

- ! - It's our last official pre-organized, two-poet-ed, "reading" reading of the season & of the famous Ed/Nicole 2009 - 2010 curitorial run -- Oh my. Come see us in our last official public display as coordinators of the Poetry Project Friday Night Reading Series, along with the wonderful poems of Will Edmiston & Anna Vitale. It will be worth it, you know. See below for a most beautiful digital broadside created by Will Edmiston specially for this event!

Will Edmiston is a poet and librarian living in Brooklyn. His writing can be found in The Tiny, the Agriculture Reader, EOAGH, The Boog Reader 4, and The Bridge. He serves as the volunteer archivist at The Poetry Project.

Anna Vitale is the author of Breaststa, a long poem published by Mondo Bummer (2010). Her writing has appeared in Model Homes, Shifter, and With + Stand, and more is forthcoming in Vanitas and The West Wind Review. A freeform DJ at WCBN-FM Ann Arbor, she also helped start the online audio publication textsound.

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4/30/2010: WE SAW THE LIGHT: CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN NEW AMERICAN CINEMA & POETRY -- TALK & SCREENING.

FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010
6:30PM

It's officially SPRING FUNDRAISING WEEK over at the Poetry Project & Friday night has been appropriately taken over for purposes of raising neccessary funds. This event will totally be worth your funds & definitely worth the $10 to get in. See you there -- !

Ed & Nicole

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In We Saw the Light: Conversations Between the New American Cinema and Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2009), Daniel Kane draws on correspondence and interviews with key figures in innovative cinema and writing of the 1960s to provide a fresh look at film’s influence on poetry. Please join us for a discussion amongst filmmakers and poets, and stay for a special screening of mainly 16mm prints.

Talk (6:30-7:30 PM) Ed Bowes, Jacob Burckhardt, Abigail Child, Cole Heinowitz, Jonas Mekas, Jennifer Reeves, and others TBA. Moderated by Daniel Kane.

Film Program (8 PM) A selection of short films by Ed Bowes, Stan Brakhage, Jacob Burckhardt, Rudy Burckhardt, Abigail Child, Christopher Maclaine, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, and more t.b.a.

- $10 Admission -

- PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE -

Thanks to the Filmmakers’ Cooperative, Jacob Burckhardt & Andrew Lampert at Anthology Film Archives.

4/23/2010: STILL TALKING: NEW FILM & POETRY.

FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010
10:00PM - MIDNIGHT

In conjunction with We Saw The Light: Conversations Between New American Cinema & Poetry (4/30), tonight’s event features readings, screenings and performance from five young Brooklyn-based poets and filmmakers: Jessica Fiorini, Derek Kroessler, Andrew Lampert, Dani Leventhal & Fern Silva.

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Jessica Fiorini is the author of the chapbooks Sea Monster at Night (Goodbye Better) and Light Suite (forthcoming from Pudding House Publications). She has been published in Lungfull!, Brooklyn Rail and the Poetry Project Newsletter. Jessica currently lives in Brooklyn.

Derek Kroessler originally hails from Providence, RI and is finishing up his senior year at NYU. His poems have appeared in Pleasure, and he has one homemade chapbook, Word/Turd.

Born in the mid-70s in the Midwest, Andrew Lampert has staged performances and exhibited his films at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Getty Museum, The British Film Institute, The Kitchen, The Rotterdam International Film Festival, Kill Your Timid Notion Festival, Light Industry, Mitchell Algus Gallery and many other venues here and abroad. He lives in Brooklyn.

Dani Leventhal’s videos are distributed through the Video Data Bank. She has screened her work at Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Gene Siskel Film Center, CineCycle and Anthology Film Archives. In 2007 she got an Astraea Visual Arts Award and a Women’s Studio Workshop Book Arts Grant. In 2003 she received an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Illinois at Chicago and in 2009 an MFA in film/video from Bard College.

Fern Silva’s work has been screened and performed at various festivals, galleries, and cinematheques including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Images Festival, IndieLisboa International Film Festival, Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Biennale Bandits-Mages Festival, Roulette Gallery, Millennium Film Workshop and White Box Gallery. He received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and is in the process of receiving his MFA from Bard College.

4/16/2010: HILLARY JUSTER & GREGORY LAYNOR.

FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 2010
10:00PM - MIDNIGHT

Hillary Juster has black hair and soon a BA in interdisciplinary studies from NYU as well. She won 1st place in a poetry competition in 8th grade, won the Lamont Younger Poet’s Prize at 15, but hasn’t won much since. As a compliment to reading poetry, she likes to engage members of audience with sculpture, lighting, photography, and touching. In her spare time, she edits the old college lit mag, The Minetta Review, or is about to do something pretty impressive. Check out her work in the forthcoming The Physical Poets Home Library.


Gregory Laynor has been teaching & studying at Temple University in Philadelphia. His reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans appears on UbuWeb. He does a blog at academicpoetry.com. He is co-editing for Chax Press the collected writings of the Philadelphia poet Gil Ott.

4/9/2010: JOEY YEAROUS-ALGOZIN & DIVYA VICTOR

FRIDAY 4/9/2010
10:00 - MIDNIGHT

Joey Yearous-Algozin is the author of Kensington Notebook (Lean-To Press) and BOSTON STREET/TREES (Lean-To Press). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming from Cannot Exist, Forage, and the Robert Walser Society of Massachusetts. He is currently a PhD student in Poetics at SUNY-Buffalo.

Divya Victor has lived and learned in India, Singapore, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Seattle. She has an M.A. from Temple University and is currently working towards her Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo. Her work has appeared in ambit, XConnect, The Ixnay Reader, dusie, President’s Choice, P-QUEUE, and Drunken Boat. Her chapbook SUTURES was just published by Little Red Leaves.

See you there -- !

LOVE,
Ed & Nicole

3/26/2010: A SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT QUALITY MAGAZINE READING.

FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2010
10:00PM - MIDNIGHT

A Similar But Different Quality is an experimental text-based journal unspecific to any genre. The sole parameter is that the work is text, which opens us to the surprise and poetry of language that is everywhere. Published occasionally, their manifesto reads:

Accidents. Words are everywhere and inevitably beautiful. What tries to be poetic is often not because true poetry is an accident. The poetry genre is paradoxically unpoetic, too narrow to contain the full beauty of language that permeates everyday conversation, movie dialogue, graffiti, theatre, song lyrics, notes, diary entries, grocery lists, receipts, rap, text messages, emails, spam, tweets, etc, etc. To poetry without boundaries, except the words. Not poetry, but words. To an immediate, unpretentious and zesty poetry.

3/12/2010: HEATHER CHRISTLE & ANDREW DIECK.

FRIDAY, MARCH 12TH, 2010

10:00PM - MIDNIGHT

WE ARE QUITE EXCITED & SO ARE YOU --

Heather Christle grew up in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. She is the author of the poetry collection The Difficult Farm (Octopus 2009), and a portfolio of her poems and other documents recently appeared in Slope. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is a Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University.

Andrew Dieck is originally from Philadelphia, PA. He now lives in Tivoli, NY where he works as a personal assistant. He has a BA from Bard College. His poems have appeared or will appear in The Bard Papers, Gerry Mulligan, and The West Wind Review.

SEE YOU THERE & THEN, OF COURSE --

E & N

2/26/2010: "THE GREEN DEATH"

Friday, February 26th, 2010
10:00PM - MIDNIGHT

coming on the 26th of this month of February, a new play from the dome theatre

'The Green Death' co-written by Ellis Isenberg and Forrest Gillespie, a story from the very center of presidential power, the death urge reaches its zenith and a tinted brain begats tinted thoughts and the face of Him, Mr. ronald wilson reagan emerges from the tea green smoke. a purple veil hangs across an eyelined sky and white days pass... Terror shakes at its very essence, fear grows afraid of fear... he plays the bongos, he has backup singers, there is a half of a child , a big and sexy, russian translations, a lone cosmos, a physical therapist and all is attended to by the circling of History's 4th Moon.

where!?

St. Marks Poetry Project
131 east 10th st.

feb. 26th at 10pm

and soup! if we can use the kitchen
and you can bring wine or beer if you like...

love

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The Green Death involves physical therapy, nutrition, and the afterlife. This will be be the final work of a trilogy exploring the coordinated mutation of subcultural language spheres.

Forrest Gillespie works in the non-profit environmental building industry in New York and writes about a play a month. Lately: Future Rickshaw, Ridin’ Dirt..Dirty, Merciless Shopping Spree, El Ojo Del Diablo, The Woman in the Mirror, The White and Yellow Spasms of Death, Baghdad Zookeeper, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, The Last Recorded Instance of the Paranormal, Rocky Mountain Rescue. Directed: most of the above, plus: Night of Pity (Ghelderode), Hamlet (Buñuel).

Ellis Isenberg is from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He used to write and print books of poetry but now he has been writing plays. There have been two so far: Csepian Tec is Going Public and Enormous Sun Group Therapy. He also writes science fiction.

HEY -- COMING THIS WAY -- FEBRUARY 5TH, 2010 / THE LEGENDARY ANDRE WILLIAMS & THE LEGENDARY NICK TOSCHES -- TOGETHER --

That is right. Previously unannounced on our Poetry Project Friday blog -- an early exclusive, really --

NICK TOSCHES & ANDRE WILLIAMS

FEBRUARY 5TH, 2010
10PM - MIDNIGHT

This is gonna be big. Real big. So be there or be a sucker --

"Join us as these twenty-first century titans appear together for the first time in recorded history to celebrate and enunciate, as The Poetry Project at St Mark's Church hosts the NYC launch of Williams' fiction debut, SWEETS AND OTHER STORIES." -- Kicks Books' blog

For more info about SWEETS AND OTHER STORIES, visit the Kicks Books blog here.

Also --Make sure to drop your radio waves in -- WFMU's Dave The Spazz to host the duo on his Feb. 4 radio show from 8-11PM! (WFMU 91.1 FM & online and archived at wfmu.org)

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Nick Tosches was born in Newark, New Jersey and is the author of three novels, eleven books of non-fiction,and three volumes of poetry. His books include: Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story, Dino: High Living In The Dirty Business Of Dreams, Where Dead Voices Gather, In The Hand Of Dante, and Chaldea. His latest, Never Trust A Living God, is a collection of poetry illustrated by Gravieur. He lives in New York City.

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Andre Williams was born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1936, migrating with his family to Chicago when he was a child. After the death of his mother in 1943, he was sent South to the care of his grandparents. The North-South transition was unbearable for young Andre, who was to return to live in the Windy City with his father, a steel mill worker.

With little parental supervision, Andre traded into a penny ante career as a juvenile delinquent, barely escaping Illinois State Reformatory by using his older brother’s ID card to enlist in the US Navy. His career in the Armed Forces came to a halt when it was discovered that he was underage.

As a civilian once again, he chose to avoid the pitfalls of Chicago and relocated to Detroit, Michigan, where his musical legend began, on joining the Five Dollars, and with writing and recording for the legendary Fortune Records label. Bacon Fat, Greasy Chicken, and the extraordinary Jail Bait would be the tip of the iceberg of Andre’s musical contributions. From his start at Fortune in the 1950’s, he went on to work at Motown with Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells and the Contours. He produced (and co-wrote) the Five Du-Tones’ 1963 hit “Shake A Tail Feather” ( #28 on BILLBOARD R&B charts) and wrote Alvin Cash’s 1965 R&B chart topper “Twine Time”. In the late sixties, he produced solo hits including the standout “Cadillac Jack” for Chess Records. He has composed several hundred recordings and continues to be one of the most widely collected and respected of original soul and rhythm & blues artists.

Hard drugs eventually took a toll on Andre, leaving him homeless and destitute. In 1995, his career was revived by George Paulus, who produced the acclaimed comeback album GREASY for Norton Records. Andre continued to record for Norton, as well as for In The Red, Bloodshot and Pravda, while touring internationally to great acclaim. The 2007 film AGILE, MOBILE, HOSTILE documented a year in Andre’s life.

With the return to constant touring and performing came a return to old vices. He was in and out of short-term rehabilitation, but always, there was the return to hard habits. Hitting the age of seventy without a permanent address and with his health rapidly deteriorating, Andre checked into a six week program at a Chicago substance abuse facility.

At a friend’s urging, he began trying to write fictional stories, in an attempt to keep his mind and hands busy. Writing became his self-imposed rehabilitation, and his hand scribbled no holds-barred tales evolved into a short set of various-length entries which he immediately began referring to as “The Book”.

This debut volume from 73 year old Andre Williams is Sweets (And Other Stories). The title story is a narrative novelette which takes you for a wild ride from Chicago to Houston, New Orleans, and New York City, as a teenage girl finds herself in a family way, without a family. Forced to fend for herself, she is taken under the wing of a local pimp who entices her into prostitution. The adventures that follow are a free for all foray through the fantastic world of pimps and their women, funeral directors, gangs and drug running, with sidebar anecdotes that are guaranteed to appall, alarm and astonish.

Extreme entries remain unedited, and none of Williams’ raw drawl storytelling style has been tampered with in this standout fiction debut. Sweets is the first hip-pocket paperback from New York publisher Kicks Books.

1/29/2010: "CRYSTAL PANTOMIME": AN UNPUBLISHED PLAY BY MINA LOY.

[Photograph: Stephen Haweis Papers, Rare Book and Manscript Library, Columbia University.]

Friday, January 29, 2010

10:00PM - MIDNIGHT

Mina Loy’s (1882 – 1966) unpublished play, “Crystal Pantomime”, currently housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, will be read live, from beginning to end, as produced by Kari Adelaide Razdow. The play is to be performed using the simultaneous braiding of several voices while individual performances by Marthe Ramm Fortun, Vanessa Albury, and Crystal Curtis accompany each of the play’s three acts.

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Vanessa Albury is a contemporary artist based in New York City. She received her MFA in Studio Art from New York University. Albury creates photographic and filmic installations and artworks using structuralist and intuitive tactics. She has exhibited her works in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including solo shows at the Charleston City Gallery (SC) and Silverman Gallery (San Francisco). Recently, Albury curated a film and video screening at the Chelsea Art Museum, as well as co-curated, and exhibited in, UN-SCR-1325 with Jan Van Woensel at the Chelsea Art Museum (NYC). Her most recent group shows include If Love Could Have Saved You, You Would Have Lived Forever at Bellwether Gallery (NYC); Bad Moon Rising at Silverman Gallery (San Francisco); Into the Atomic Sunshine at the Puffin Room (NYC), Hillside Forum Gallery (Tokyo) and Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum (Okinawa); HORIZON at Bloomberg LP in collaboration with Art in General (NYC); and My Memory Vid at ScalaMata Gallery (Venice, Italy) as part of the 53rd Venice Biennale Program. Albury is represented by Silverman Gallery and she teaches photography and digital media courses in NYC and in Boston.

Crystal Curtis is a Brooklyn-based visual artist who has exhibited her work in New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle. She received her MFA in Studio Art from New York University and was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Visual Arts and the Pacific Northwest Women’s Scholarship from the Pilchuck School of Glass. She has collaborated with musicians and dancers in New York and Florida. Recent exhibitions/performances have appeared at Galapagos Art Space, Chelsea Art Museum, New York University, Secret Robot Project, and the Atlanta Center for the Arts.

Marthe Ramm Fortun is a visual artist artist from Norway who received her MFA in Studio Art from New York University as a Fulbright Scholar. Marthe creates live works that sit uncomfortably between drawing, sculpture and performance. She is interested in reality and fiction. Most recently, her work was featured at Perform Williamsburg for NY State Parks, Markers VII at the ScalaMata Gallery as part of the Official Program at the 53rd Venice Biennale and the performance series “Its All Yours Now” at the SculptureCenter, LIC. Marthe divides her time between Oslo and Brooklyn.

Max Razdow (props and light) has a solo show in Belgium this spring.

Other artists and participants include Sӧrine Anderson, Juliet Jacobson, Alex McQuilkin, Kari Adelaide Razdow, and Mary Speaker.

1/22/2010: FRANCESCA CHABRIER & CHRISTOPHER CHENEY.

Friday, January 22, 2010
10:00PM - MIDNIGHT

Francesca Chabrier & Christopher Cheney are: Amy Adams.

They are in Glitterpony too.

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Francesca Chabrier is the assistant editor of jubilat. Her poems appear or will appear in places like notnostrums, Sixth Finch, Forklift, Ohio and Invisible Ear. Her collaborations with Christopher Cheney can be found in Glitterpony magazine. She was chosen by Thomas Sayers Ellis to receive the Deborah Slosberg Memorial prize for poetry, and currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

You should read Francesca's poems in notnostrums & Sixth Finch.

Christopher Cheney is the managing editor of Slope Editions. His poems have appeared or will appear in Subtropics, Forklift, Ohio, Konundrum Engine Literary Review, Shampoo, and other places. His e-book They Kissed Their Homes was recently published by Blue Hour Press.

You should really read They Kissed Their Homes too.