Free dinner, free friends, just $10

Sunday, March 28, 7:00-11:00 pm

* BYOB DINNER PARTY * POETRY READING * OPEN MIC *
to benefit the legendary MOLLY’S BOOKSTORE

featuring
JOE ROARTYLUIS HUMBERTO VALADEZ


PLUS: Free Body Painting by Stephanie Stoner!

“There is no canvas more magnificent than that of living human flesh.” Images and text from beyond the imagination, custom for anyone.


WHEN: Sunday, March 28th, 7:00-11:00 pm (reading begins at 8:00, open mic to follow)
WHERE: Molly’s Bookstore, 1010 S. 9th St. (between Carpenter and Washington, in the Italian Market)
WHY: You love poetry and people! You want to support local, independent bookstores and build strong communities around them!
COST: $10 gets you a delicious vegetarian/vegan dinner cooked by Molly herself! Proceeds go to support renovations of Molly’s Bookstore.

This is a casual event—please remember to BYOB!
(The most convenient Wine & Spirits is on South Street between 7th and 8th).


JOE ROARTY, by way of bio:
born on a mountain
raisd n a cave

fukkn & fiten
is all i crave

LUIS HUMBERTO VALADEZ writes poetry and plays music and is from Chicago Heights, IL. He received his B.A. from Columbia College Chicago, where he studied Sound Recording and Poetry, and an MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.  His influences range from Frank O’Hara, Anne Sexton, Harryette Mullen, Sonia Sanchez, and Amiri Baraka, to Chino XL, Saul Williams, Anne Waldman, Federico Garcia Lorca, Alice Notley and Ted Berrigan.  His first collection of poems, “what i’m on,” was published by the University of Arizona Press in March of 2009. His first CD “wat ahm on (ep)” was released in conjunction with the book by Last Minute Records.  He currently works as AmeriCorps VISTA Leader for Chicago Public School Students in Temporary Living Situations Program, leading the management of their homeless shelter based after-school tutoring program Chicago HOPES.

Haiti Benefit This Sunday

Sunday, February 28th

5 pm, $10.00 donation (to OIC International)

@ The LAFF House (221 South Street)

BLEND, NPP & Light of Unity Association team up to host a benefit show @ The LAFF House. All proceeds go to OIC International.

Featuring readings and musical performances by:

Allegra Fletcher, Angel Hogan, Asttarte Deva, Jaz, Ish Klein, Peter Baroth, Elliott Levin, Alla Vilnyanskaya, Greg Bem, Sarah Heady, Courtney Bambrick, Debrah Morkun, Francesca Costanzo, Iain Pollock, Tamara Oakman, & Nate Graham

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who made it to the Magic Gardens yesterday for NPP’s poem and chapbook making event.

Together we added bunches of poems & nearly thirty chapbooks to the world. Be proud.

They were weird & wonderful &, more often than not, about cats.

Special thanks to the Garden’s staff for making the afternoon happen!

Jan 16: NPP to NYC

REDEMPTIVE STRIKE:  RECKONING THE DECADE

At the beginning of the century, we found ourselves in a dark wood.  The past ten years saw the collapse of the Twin Towers, the marriage of religious fundamentalism and global politics, and the rise of digital communities.  With this in mind, The New Philadelphia Poets launch a redemptive strike on the past decade.  Join us for a reconsideration of this yet unnamed era.

Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery)

Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010

6:00 pm, $6.00

Featuring: Gregory Bem,  Sarah Heady, Debrah MorkunPatrick Lucy, Angel Hogan, Matthew Landis, Carlos Soto Román, and Jamie Townsend.

Audio: 12/8 Highwire Gallery

Audio from the 12/8/09 reading at the Highwire Gallery is up. The night includes music by Josh Carrigan, two sets by Cuddle Magic, and readings by Greg Bem, Patrick Lucy, Sarah Heady, Debrah Morkun, Matthew Landis, Carlos Soto Román, and Jamie Townsend.

The recording is available for download at Greg Bem’s blog »

Tues, Dec. 15: Erotic Literary Salon

Philadelphia’s Erotic Literary Salon. Featuring- Debrah Morkun, a Philadelphia-based poet whose work travels through the realms of love, confusion, illusion, hyper-meta-cognition and metaphor.  She will read her most brazenly erotic pieces while Asttarte Deva, sacred healer, will engage in tantric breathing & chanting. The forces of poetry and tantra will combine to create a unique evening of tantra-poetics -Along with New Salon Erotic Readings.

Where: TIME (The Bohemian Absinthe Lounge) 1315 Sansom Street, Center City, Philadelphia.

When: Tuesday, December 15, 7:30 pm

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. (limited seating), for cocktails, food and conversation. The event begins promptly at 8:00 p.m. Admission is $10, discounted for F/T students and seniors (65+) – $8. Salon attendees ages 21+ are invited to recite original erotica, words of others, an extemporaneous narrative or poetic work; share distinctive authors, books, and websites; and join in friendly discussions — all pertaining to this most intimate and human of literary genres.

More information and audio of past salons at the Erotic Literary Salon’s website »

Poetry, Wool & Music: Tues @ 7 PM

Join NPP for an evening of music, poetry and visual art, featuring Cuddle Magic and singer/songwriter Josh Carrigan, and fiber art by Wool Mammoth on Tuesday, December 8th from 7-10 at the Highwire Gallery (2040 Frankford Ave., Fishtown, Phila.) 5$ cover

Cuddle Magic (pictured above) is a large ensemble with members from Brooklyn, Philadelphia & Boston that performs lush, whimsical songs with wide-ranging instrumentation including strings, percussion, vibraphone, trumpet, clarinet, keyboards, guitars, and sweet vocal harmonies. The ensemble, which sometimes swells to 12 or more, plays deftly crafted arrangements of their complex and varied set of original music. They are as friendly and inclusive as their name might suggest — after forming as a quintet over a year ago, they have gradually come to incorporate more and more of their musical friends into the band, constructing intricate soundscapes that include elements of folk music, avant-garde classical music, world music, and urban music.

Josh Carrigan is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer living in Philadelphia. His music admires and incorporates musique concrete, tape music, free improvisation, electronic sounds, vocal musics, percussion ensembles, field recordings, erotic psychedelia, drone maps, old radio programs, and pop classics from Seoul to Memphis. He has recorded hundreds of cassettes, using and re-using these as sound material for future tapes, accumulating and overdubbing humming networks of aural references & their sonic sources. Live performances feature these sounds juxtaposed with electroacoustic orchestrations and vocal aromatics.

Wool Mammoth: A fiber artist living in Philadelphia. Involving organic creations; animals, plants, a personal mythology emerging from the movement of eyes and hands. Works in various materials; whatever breathes, shrinks, and stretches itself to fit. Small things, big things, installations, knitted musculature. Like in long-legged dreams, an assemblage of seeing. Her creatures appear (sporadically) in various Philly venues, online, and at home roosting in Kensington. Sleeping cats keeping wool warm.

Poets include Debrah Morkun, Patrick Lucy, Jamie Townsend, Sarah Heady, Carlos Soto Román, Greg Bem, and Matthew Landis

Dec. 5: Bell, Sims & Massey

On Saturday, December 5th at 7 PM the New Philadelphia Poets will host a poetry reading featuring guests Laura Sims and Joseph Massey, as well as NPP member Marion Bell, at Fergies Pub (upstairs), 1214 Sansom St. Philadelphia, PA. Patrick Lucy and Jamie Townsend will MC.



Laura Sims is the author of two books of poetry: Stranger (Fence Books, 2009); and Practice, Restraint (Fence Books, Alberta Prize, 2005); and of four chapbooks, including Corrections (Bronze Skull Press, 2006) and Bank Book (Answer Tag Press, 2004). Her work was included in the anthology, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2007), and individual poems have appeared in the journals: Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Aufgabe, Crayon, CAB/NET, Octopus, First Intensity, 26, How2, Parcel, 6X6, La Petite Zine, Columbia Poetry Review, jubilat, LIT, andFence, among others.

Joseph Massey was born in 1978 in Chester, Pennsylvania, and has spent the last seven years in Humboldt County, California, where all of the poems in Areas of Fog—his first full-length collection—were written, as well as the chapbooks Minima St. (Range: 2003), Eureka Slough (Effing Press: 2005),Bramble (Hot Whiskey: 2005), Property Line (Fewer & Further Press: 2006), November Graph (Longhouse: 2007), Within Hours (The Fault Line Press: 2008), and Out of Light (Kitchen Press: 2008). His work has appeared in various journals and magazines, including The NationNorthwest Review, andAmerican Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, among many others.