The Poetry Project
Program Calendar
Jalal Toufic: Two Or Three Things I’m Dying To Tell You About The Thousand And One Nights
| February 3, 2010 | ||
| 8:00 pm |
Wednesday
Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He is the author of Distracted (1991; 2nd ed., 2003), (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003), Over-Sensitivity (1996; 2nd ed., 2009), Forthcoming (2000), Undying Love, or Love Dies (2002), Two or Three Things I’m Dying to Tell You (2005), ‘Âshûrâ’: This Blood Spilled in My Veins (2005), and Undeserving Lebanon (2007). Several of his books are available for download at his website. He has taught at CalArts, the University of California at Berkeley, USC, and, in Lebanon, Holy Spirit University; and he currently teaches at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. “Two or Three Things I’m Dying to Tell You about The Thousand and One Nights” will be followed by a Q&A.
Nick Tosches & Andre Williams
| February 5, 2010 | ||
| 10:00 pm |
Friday
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.
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.
Mina Pam Dick & Franklin Bruno
| February 8, 2010 | ||
| 8:00 pm |
Monday
Mina Pam Dick (aka Hildebrand Pam Dick, Nico Pam Dick et al.) is a writer, artist and philosopher living in New York City. She’s a native New Yorker. She received a BA from Yale and an MFA in Painting as well as an MA in Philosophy from the University of Minnesota. Her writing has appeared in Tantalum, BOMB and The Brooklyn Rail, and is forthcoming in The Portable Boog Reader 4 and Aufgabe #9; her philosophical work has appeared in a collection put out by the International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria). Her first book, Delinquent, was published by Futurepoem in late 2009.
Franklin Bruno is the author of two chapbooks, MF/MA (Seeing Eye) and the recent Policy Instrument (Lame House), as well as a critical monograph on Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces, published in Continuum Books’ 33 1/3 series. His poetry has appeared in Vanitas, The Hat, With + Stand, The New Review of Literature and other periodicals, and the anthology Intersections: Innovative Poetry in Southern California (Green Integer). His essays and critical writing appear in The Nation, The Believer, and Oxford American, and online at the Poetry Foundation website and Bookforum. As a musician, he has released a dozen albums of original songs since 1990 as a solo artist and with the bands Nothing Painted Blue, The Extra Glenns, and (currently) The Human Hearts. His most recent CD is Local Currency: Solo 1992-1998, which collections four-track recordings from vinyl 7″s and compilation albums. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from UCLA and has also taught at Northwestern University and Bard College. A native Southern Californian, Franklin now lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, where he just barely maintains the blog Nervous Unto Thirst.
Simple Text(S): Poetry In And Around Prose – Sharon Mesmer
| February 9, 2010 | ||
| 7:00 pm | to | 9:00 pm |
Sharon Mesmer will be teaching a ten-week long Tuesday evening workshop, beginning February 9, 2010. The class will meet in the Parish Hall from 7-9 pm.
You’ve heard it before: why is it that poets can write prose, but prose writers can’t write poetry? Maybe it’s because prose writers haven’t fully explored the places where poetry and prose effectively come together — the textural artus points that hinge and pivot to access the strengths of both forms. In this workshop (open, of course, to poets who want to bring narrative intentionality to their work without sacrificing imagery), we will look at prose that blends narrative with idiosyncratic language (Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star; Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept), prose that includes poetry (Ki no Tsurayuki’s The Tosa Diary), prose vignettes (16th and 17th century Chinese “hsiao-p’in”; Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet), prose-poem essays (Nelson Algren’s Chicago: City on the Make) dream stories (Kafka’s The Bucket Rider), flarf fiction and cut-ups. The above texts and many others will serve as examples for beginning, extending and finishing hybrid poem-stories.
Sharon Mesmer has published several books of poetry and short fiction and teaches both forms at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the New School. She is a two-time NYFA fellow in poetry, and a member of the flarf collective.
Jim Carroll Memorial Reading
| February 10, 2010 | ||
| 8:00 pm |
Wednesday
Poet, autobiographer and musician Jim Carroll (1949-2009) was a consistent and brilliant presence around the Poetry Project since he first read here in 1968. We will never forget his kindness, his generosity or his humor. Please join us as some of his closest friends pay tribute to him. With Bill Berkson, Todd Colby, Anselm Berrigan, Richard Hell, Lenny Kaye, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Patti Smith, Anne Waldman and others TBA. FREE
This event will take place in the Sanctuary.
Longer Poems, Or The Present As Illogical Complication – Anselm Berrigan
| February 12, 2010 | ||
| 7:00 pm | to | 9:00 pm |
Anselm Berrigan will be teaching a ten-week long Friday evening workshop, beginning February 12, 2010. The class will meet in the Parish Hall from 7-9 pm.
This workshop will focus heavily on the reading and discussion of longer poems and the visible and invisible strategies for creating and sustaining shape and momentum evident within their reading. “Longer” may run anywhere from ten to fifty pages, as things move, but there can be exceptions on the shorter side depending on a work’s density. The aim on the writing side will be to initiate a process through which one may develop a longer work, while asking a hopefully expansive set of questions about what there may be to know through the experience of reading and writing longer poems. We will read a selection of longer things by, among others, Douglas Oliver, Harryette Mullen, Allen Ginsberg, Kevin Davies, Philip Whalen, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Stephen Rodefer, Claudia Rankine, Alice Notley, Will Alexander, Ann Lauterbach, Robert Fitterman, and Marcella Durand. The starting point in most cases will be to read the work aloud in the church and go from there. Bring your throats and stamina.
Anselm Berrigan is author of four books of poetry, the most recent being Free Cell, published recently by City Lights. Works of his which fall into the longer range include “Have A Good One”, “To Hell With Sleep”, “Zero Star Hotel”, and possibly “Trained Meat”.
Poem As Project: Project As Poem – Dan Machlin
| February 13, 2010 | ||
| 12:00 pm | to | 2:00 pm |
Dan Machlin will be teaching a ten-week long Saturday afternoon workshop, beginning February 13, 2010. The class will meet in the Neighborhood Preservation Center from 12-2 pm.
When poets or artists create work as part of some greater artistic or social project, this context dramatically impacts the way that we read or perceive their work. In this workshop, we’ll look beyond individual poems and examine writing that exhibits a strong project-based sensibility. We’ll read and try experiments based on diverse writing projects such as Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets, Brenda Coultas’ The Bowery Project, Jill Magi’s Threads and Dodie Bellamy’s Vampire-inspired epistolary novel: The Letters of Mina Harker. We’ll also look at examples of projects from other genres —Chris Marker’s film La Jetée, the work of artists Sophie Calle and Robert Smithson, and playful endeavors from the world of music like Sufjan Stevens’ Fifty States Project. By inhabiting other artist’s projects, we will strengthen our own. We will compose or refine existing project statements for our own work, begin to write poems to populate those projects, and map out new directions and possibilities for our projects both on the page and beyond Guests for this workshop will include Brenda Coultas, Jill Magi plus other surprise guests.
Dan Machlin is a native NYC poet, performer and publisher. His books include Dear Body (Ugly Duckling Presse), 6×7 (Ugly Duckling) and This Side Facing You (Heart Hammer). Dan is the founder and senior editor of Futurepoem books.
Joel Bettridge & Geoffrey Olsen
| February 15, 2010 | ||
| 8:00 pm |
Monday
Joel Bettridge is the author of two books of poetry, That Abrupt Here (2007) and Presocratic Blues (2009) as well as the critical study, Reading as Belief: Language Writing, Poetics, Faith (2009). He co-edited, with Eric Selinger, Ronald Johnson: Life and Works (2008). Currently he is an Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University.
Geoffrey Olsen is the author of the chapbook End Notebook (Petrichord Books). He lives in Brooklyn and works at The Cooper Union.
Reading for The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Writing
| February 17, 2010 | ||
| 8:00 pm |
Wednesday
Join us as we celebrate this landmark volume of Cuban poetry edited by Mark Weiss, The Whole Island (University of California Press, 2009). It makes available the astonishing achievement of a wide range of Cuban poets over the past 60 years. The translations, almost all of them new, convey the intensity and beauty of the accompanying Spanish originals and constitute an essential source for understanding the literature and culture of Cuba, its diaspora, and the Caribbean at large. With poet Lourdes Gil and translators Chris Brandt, Mónica de la Torre, Jason Weiss and Mark Weiss.
Lourdes Gil came to the United States from Cuba in 1961. Her poetry collections include El cerco de las transfiguraciones, Empieza la ciudad, Blanca aldaba preludia, Vencido el fuego de la especie and Neumas. Her poems and essays have been widely published and included in numerous anthologies. She teaches in the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program at Baruch College of the City University of New York.
Chris Brandt is a writer, translator and political activist. He teaches poetry and Peace and Justice at Fordham University. His poems and essays have been widely published. His translations of Cuban fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, and his translations of two volumes of Carmen Valle’s poetry were published by the Instituto de Cultura PuertorriqueZa. Seven Stories published his translation of Clara Nieto’s Masters of War, a history of U.S. interventions in Latin America.
Mónica de la Torre is the author of the poetry books Talk Shows (Switchback, 2007); Acúfenos, published in 2006 in Mexico City by Taller Ditoria; and Public Domain (Roof Books, 2008). She is co-author of the artist book Appendices, Illustrations & Notes, available on Ubu.com and co-edited the multilingual anthology Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon Press). She is a 2009 NYFA fellow in poetry and senior editor at BOMB Magazine.
Jason Weiss is the author of, among other books, The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris. He is currently completing a book on music, Always in Trouble: An Oral History of ESP-Disk’, the Most Outrageous Record Label in America. He recently translated Silvia Baron Supervielle’s latest book of poems, Around the Void.
Mark Weiss’ most recent poetry collection is As Landscape (Chax Press, 2009). He edited, with Harry Polkinhorn, Across the Line / Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California (2002). Among his translations are Stet: Selected Poems of José Kozer (2006) Cuaderno de San Antonio / The San Antonio Notebook, by Javier Manríquez (2004), Notas del país de Z, by Gaspar Orozco, and the ebook La isla en peso/ The Whole Island, by Virgilio PiZera ( www.shearsman.com ). His anthology The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry was published in 2009 by the University of California Press.
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Program Calendar
Unless otherwise noted admission is $8 / Students & Seniors $7 / Members $5 or Free
Latest News
- Screening of The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg at Theatre 80
September 8th, 2010 - The Project participates in the 3rd Poetry Turn On for HOWL!
September 8th, 2010 - SISTER SON/JI at Theatre 80 – HOWL! Festival
September 3rd, 2010 - HOWL Opens in NYC September 24th
September 1st, 2010 - An Afternoon with the Arts Projects of St. Mark’s
September 1st, 2010