DEBRAH MORKUN & KIM GEK LIN SHORT READ IN CHICAGO!

Come to Myopic Books, Chicago, Illinois, to hear Debrah Morkun & Kim Gek Lin Short read their poems.  7pm.  If you happen to be in Chicagoland, come, come!!!

Stargazing Landis and Fullerton Moths

JUBILANT THICKET
poetry  +  artways  +  local spirits
at Molly’s Bookstore on second Sundays

Matthew Landis Chapbook Release Party!

with lovely chanteuse Liz Fullerton

featuring 3 local wines:
Pinot Noir 2005  :::  Briar Patch  :::  Solar Celebration
 from Stargazers Vineyard

Sunday, June 13th
7:00 pm
Molly’s Bookstore (1010 S. 9th St. Phila, PA 19147 in the Italian Market)
$5 (includes local wine)
Open reading to follow

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MATTHEW LANDIS is a poet, musician, and songwriter from the Philadelphia area. He is a graduate of U Penn’s MLA program, where his capstone was a collection of poems and as well as an experimental essay on poetics and cultural theory. Matthew’s poems & essays have appeared or will be appearing online/in-print in places such as Critiphoria, Try, Literary Kicks, & EOGAH. He has been playing music locally as a jazz musician, classical musician, session musician, sideman and singer-songwriter for over a decade and has toured Europe and the Northeast extensively as a keyboardist for Brooklyn cabaret-circus-punk band The World/Inferno Friendship Society.
LIKE A MOTH FROM HIS DEAD MOUTH is Matthew Landis’ first, self-published chapbook and is comprised of the first three parts of two related serial poems, “Glossolalia” and “Aphasia” which are bookended three separate, individual pieces (“Our Fathers Were All Thieves”, “Modern Priapeia in Pseudo-Middle English” & “Cresting”). The chapbook also contains an addendum which features Matthew’s translations of Rimbaud and Celan. The poems in the book all explore different textual strategies, limitations, and conditions deploying strategies as varied as diastic reading, acrostics, cut ups, textual collage, pastiche, & neologisms. The pieces all attempt to explore concepts such as personal & institutional memory, as well as the complicated and tenuous relationship between language & identity (specifically the construct of the author and sexual identity) in a posthuman(ist) age.

LIZ FULLERTON says: Acoustic music doesn’t mean much unless you’ve got a reason to listen. Liz Fullerton’s voice, intoxicating and sedate as it is without words, will force you to stop everything you’re doing to hear tales of slow journeys toward the center — the place where our hearts are filled, our minds put to ease, and our spirits brim with wholeness. She will grab your attention like a baby wolf, 
and it will be impossible to watch her leave when the songs are through. But you will be better for it.

STARGAZERS VINEYARD & WINERY are owned and operated by Alice and John Weygandt.  The Vineyard was first planted in 1979; the winery was established in 1996. The Vineyard overlooks the Brandywine Creek from its south facing slopes just north of Unionville, PA in Southern Chester County. Terroir, individuality and character represent traditional values which we at Stargazers cherish and which result in wine with elegance, complexity and depth of flavor, an intense mineral quality from our schisty Chester County soils, and a lingering finish.  

5/8 - Poetry Double Header

 

NPP PRESENTS:

Eric Ekstrand, Hannah Gamble & Sean Bishop

Poems @ Fergie’s Pub (1214 Sansom St) @ 6 pm 

+

Chapter & Verse Presents: 

Eugene Ostashevsky, Carolina Maugeri & Kyle Conner

Poems @ Chapterhouse Cafe (620 S 9th St) @ 8 pm


Sean Bishop graduates this May with his MFA from the University of Houston, where he is the managing editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. His poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, The Minnesota Review, Ninth Letter, Poetry, and elsewhere. In 2007 he was the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, awarded by the Poetry Foundation. He leaves Texas for Madison, Wisconsin this August, where he will be the 2010-‘11 Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Hannah Gamble: A postcard hanging in Hannah’s dining room reads “Hanna is mean.” Upon finding it in a box of old photos, Hannah hung the postcard, though she doesn’t know who wrote it. Hannah studies poetry at the University of Houston, where she teaches Intro. to Short Fiction and serves as the Reviews/ Interviews Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review,  Cimarron Review, Third Coast, Mid-American Review and others.

Eric Ekstrand is an MFA candidate at the University of Houston where he holds an Inprint/Brown Foundation Fellowship and teaches writing. He is a poetry editor at Gulf Coast. In 2009 he was the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, awarded by the Poetry Foundation.

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Eugene Ostashevsky is a Russian-born American poet from New York City. His poetry books include Iterature and The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, which employs characters such as MC Squared, Peepeesaurus, the Begriffon and, of course, DJ Spinoza, to explore the shortcomings of axiomatic systems with the insouciance and energy of Saturday-morning cartoons. He has edited an English-language anthology of Russian absurdist writings of the 1930s by such authors as Alexander Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms. His PhD dissertation was on the history of zero. He teaches at New York University.

Carolina Maugeri: Transcription, auto-correction, revision, & improvisation, & the personal-to-cultural tensions & histrionics that arise from such activities, make up her main poetic preoccupations. In addition to writing, she likes to make music, surveys, sketches, & explores sound & textures through vocal phonic utterances, typewriter taps, multi-instrumental manipulations within interrupted songscapes. She lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches writing & literature to visual artists at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Kyle Conner is a poet who works and lives in Philadelphia with his keeshond Sam. His chapbooks are: Songs for South St. Bridge (1996), The Pulverized Thing of Doubt (2002), Toward Belief (2005) and breaths for f l e s h (2008). He has been involved with the Philadelphia literary scene for over 15 years and has given numerous readings in various venues. He co-curated the Highwire Reading Series from 1998-2000 and is the nominal spokesman for the theory of “Oughtism” (because you Ought to know), which makes the obvious explicit: that art is never more or less than an extension of the way one chooses to live one’s life.

Get messed up on local wine at Molly’s

JUBILANT THICKET
poetry  +  artways  +  local spirits

at Molly’s Bookstore on second Sundays
INAUGURAL READING
Sunday, May 9th
7:00-9:00 pm
Molly’s Bookstore (1010 S. 9th St. Phila, PA 19147 in the Italian Market)
$4 suggested donation (includes wine)


A gritty Philadelphian lineup featuring

….and two lovely springlike wines from Penns Woods Winery  in Chadds Ford, PA: their 2008 Traminette and 2006 White Merlot

NPP Presents: Sueyeun Juliette Lee and Erica Kaufman

Saturday May 1st from 7-10 - Fergies Pub (upstairs), 1214 Sansom St. Philadelphia, PA

Sueyeun Juliette Lee grew up 3 miles from the CIA. She edits Corollary Press (www.corollarypress.org), a chapbook series devoted to multi-ethnic experimental writing. Her books include That Gorgeous Feeling(Coconut Press) and the recently released Underground National (Factory School). She is completing her doctoral dissertation at Temple, and is writing about the social geographies of Asian American avant garde literature.

Erica Kaufman is the author of the book-length poem censory impulse (Factory School), as well as several chapbooks. Kaufman’s poems can be found in LIT, Aufgabe, Jacket Magazine, The Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Her creative work has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese. Essays and reviews can be found in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Rain Taxi, Jacket Magazine, among other places. Kaufman is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Composition and Rhetoric at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include exploring the interstices between composing practices and non-linear poetics. Kaufman currently teaches at Baruch College, New York City College of Technology, and is a faculty member of both Bard College’s Institute for Writing & Thinking and Institute for Language & Thinking.

 More details and other events at: www.newphiladelphiapoets.com


NPP Presents Fletcher & Schomburg

This Friday, April 23

6:30 - 9:00 pm @ FERGIE’S PUB (1214 Sansom St)

Sasha Fletcher’s novella WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS & WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE CLOUDS is due out from ml press this June. In October the Greying Ghost will release his chapbook I AIN’T ASKED ANY PARDON FOR ANYTHING I DONE. His poetry manuscript EVERYTHING HERE IS OK was a finalist for Octopus Books. He is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Columbia University in the city of New York.

Zachary Schomburg is the author of Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean Press, 2009), The Man Suit (Black Ocean Press, 2007), and several chapbooks, including, most recently, collaborations with Emily Kendal Frey called Team Sad (Cinemathique Press 2010), Feelings Using Wolves (Small Fires Press, forthcoming), and Ok, Goodnight (Future Tense Books, forthcoming). His translations from the Russian of the poems of Andrei Sen-Senkov have been published in Circumference, Jacket, Harp & Altar, and Aufgabe among others. A DVD of his poem-films, Little Blind Things, is now available from Poor Claudia. He and Mathias Svalina co-edit Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

April 15th Poetry Party in a Warehouse Full of Books

So, I think this is going to be good. I think you should come to this poetry party! Poets in a warehouse on Frankford Avenue. Some of these poets live in New York City and are in a group called the Corresponding Society. Some of these poets live in Philadelphia and are in a group called the New Philadelphia Poets. Some of these amazing poets reside in Philadelphia, but claim no category. Let’s explore the possibility of correspondence. Between cities. Between people who live in cities and write things down.

Thursday, April 15, 7:00 pm -Readers feature: members of the Corresponding Society: Robert Snyderman, Christopher Sweeney, Lonely Christopher, members of The New Philadelphia Poets: Debrah Morkun, Patrick Lucy, Jamie Townsend, Gregory Bem, Carlos Soto Roman, Sarah Heady, Matthew Landis AND Brandon Holmquest, Hailey Higdon, Jeff Brennan, and Ryan Eckes. Hosted by Marion Bell & Debrah Morkun. Come to BookSpace (formerly Philadelphia Book Company), 1113 Frankford Avenue in Fishtown! Just a block from the Girard El Stop on the Market-Frankford Line. Starts at 7pm and goes until 11.

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.