Recent Events
November 18, 2012 to May 17, 2013
April 11, 2013
Juliana Spahr
Joshua Clover
David Buuck
Details
February 09, 2013
Gabriel Saloman
Larissa Lai
Scott Inniss
Details
February 02, 2013
Donato Mancini
Details
January 19, 2013
Anahita Jamali Rad
Danielle LaFrance
Rachel Baumann
Jonathan Morissette
Details
December 01, 2012
Gustave Morin
Details
Juliana Spahr
Joshua Clover
David Buuck
Read at
The People's Co-Op Books
Thursday, April 11, 2013
David Buuck is a writer who lives in Oakland, CA. He is the founder of BARGE, the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics, and co-founder and editor of Tripwire, a journal of poetics. An Army of Lovers, co-written with Juliana Spahr, is forthcoming from City Lights. Publications, writing & performance samples, and further info available via davidbuuck.com
Joshua Clover is a poet and writer based in California, where he teaches at UC Davis. He is author of the collections The Totality for Kids (University of California Press, 2006), and Madonna anno domini (1997). Clover has also written cultural criticism, often under the pseudonym Jane Dark, for publications including the Village Voice and the Guardian, as well as on his own blog and in published books.
Juliana Spahr is a poet, scholar, and editor. She is the author of Well Then There Now (Black Sparrow, 2011); The Transformation (Atelos, 2007); This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (University of California Press, 2005); Fuck You—Aloha—I Love You (Wesleyan University Press, 2001); and Response (Sun & Moon Press, 1996). She is Professor of English at Mills College.
Gabriel Saloman
Larissa Lai
Scott Inniss
Read at
Kootenay School of Writing 2012
Saturday, February 09, 2013
I’m In You, You’re In Me A Kootenay School of Writing series of poets presenting poems / antipoems / language. Spoken; visually projected.
Each poet will read one short text, followed with open discussion.
All welcome.
Scott Inniss on Dorothy Lusk
Larissa Lai on Russell Hoban
Gabriel Saloman on bill bissett
Curated by Scott Inniss
*
bill bissett. “we suspekt each othr uv knowing how to spell th word informashun.” (Sailor. Talon Books, 1978).
aftr i didnt want to see th moovee on tv abt fall out sheltrs nd th 11 points for survival aftr nuclear attack n we wer writing our M L A s in victoria n ottawa
we watchd a show on th trident on channul 10 wch advocatid that th beleef b promotid that
th existence uv nuclear weapons b considerd a crime against intrnashunal pees ths made
sens to us until we faut abt th spelling in th lettr thn yu in yr room n me in mine i
think iknow why thr ar nuclear weapons or is it th xistence uv th weapons themselvs
that creates ths pressur i dont want to spell correctly for me thats anothr tyranny for yu
its xciting to spll th way th words ar in th dictionary bcoz yu dont know how so thats an
adventure for yu for me th adventures spelling them how they sound or feel at th time to dew
that bcoz i had correct spelling up to heer in school n i think it causes a lot uv hed
problems n inhibishuns with xpressyun nd also its for me too uniform thats only what i
feel 90% uv th world dusint spell correctly so why ar they calld illiterate its only
anothr way to spell now aftr sum yeers uv spelling so calld incorrectly
it hurts my hed to try it correctly i really have forgottn it alot uv it i can remembr
sum uv it if i have to but it hurts ths is fr sure anothr weird problem now what
dew we dew lets keep talking with each othr n get th lettr writtn ok
*
Russell Hoban. Riddley Walker. (Summit Books, 1980).
There come a man and a woman and a chyld out of a burning town they sheltert in the woodlings and foraging the bes they cud. Starveling wer what they wer doing. Dint have no weapons nor dint know how to make a snare nor nothing. Snow on the groun and a grey sky overing and the black trees rubbing ther branches in the wind. Crows calling 1 to a nother waiting for the 3 of them to drop. The man and the woman and the chyld digging thru the snow they wer eating maws and dead leaves which they vomitit up agen. Freazing col they wer nor dint have nothing to make a fire with to get warm. Starveling they wer and near come to the end of ther strength. The chyld said, ‘O Im so col Im afeart Im going to dy. If only we had a littl fire to get warm at.’
The man dint have no way of making a fire he dint have no flint and steal nor nothing. Wood all roun them only there wernt no way he knowit of getting warm from it. The 3 of them ready for Aunty they wer ready to total and done when there come thru the woodlings a clevver looking bloak and singing a littl song to his self:
My readings ben so hungry Ive groan so very thin Ive got a littl cook pot But nothing to put in
The man and the woman said to the clevver looking bloak, ‘Do you know how to make fire?’ The clevver looking bloak said, ‘O yes if I know any thing I know that right a nuff. Fires my middl name you myt say.” The man and the woman said, ‘Wud you make a littl fire then weare freazing of the col.’ The clevver looking bloak said, ‘That for you and what for me?’ The man and the woman said, ‘What do we have for whatfers?’ They lookit 1 to the other and boath at the chyld. The clevver looking bloak said, ‘Iwl tel you what Iwl do Iwl share you my fire and my cook pot if youwl share me what to put in the pot.’ He wer looking at the chyld. The man and the woman thot: 2 out of 3 a live is bettern 3 dead. They said, ‘Done.’ They kilt the chyld and drunk its blood and cut up the meat for cooking. The clevver looking bloak said, ‘Iwl show you how to make fire plus Iwl give you flint and steal and makings nor you dont have to share me nothing of the meat only the hart.’ Which he made the fire then and give them flint and steal and makings then he cookt the hart of the chyld and et it. The clevver looking bloak said, ‘Clevverness is gone now but littl by little itwl come back [...]
*
Dorothy Lusk. “Oral Tragedy.” (Oral Tragedy. Tsunami Editions, 1988).
Ordinance ‘distanced’ thus, called ‘desire’ – ‘I’ pass out eventually. Often this caught too once smothered discord.
Your hand’s nerves cut automotivation catching each OWN clasp all plunder all stud and stake position.
Can he finalize such fragments in said factitious bootybags? Well, Recovery and redistribution may not comply with proprietary dictates. OK. MORE property called pleasure.
It ever looks different if rain say hydro cuts or lightning graphs out strikes so hands dial but like that. A final voice in an ear like a promise.
Post is delivered at all hours even weekends & vanity anticipates though diurnally nonplussed or trust this recurrence.
SENTENCED—the guy who got stuck in a helicopter & a guy that got stuck in the house. All hunkering while down with glanders he WILL order others. Shiftless foci won’t observe an onus & left to OWN loss, drawl & stick up our chins. Do make distinct then but where’s the difference?
You are left with what you get and Your love is dross Well you remain whose world is none of mine I who lov’st well remain left.
& shall interference come between me? Jar down mine own gritty polish & wonder when saliva segues patina. You get what you are left. While distinctions make pleasures own device or fucking doesn’t—hitched to mine caboose maraud or don’t.
Appears far greater than all machinery yet always misses affecting more than a few monthes or paragraphs. Not usually called tragedy [...]
Donato Mancini
Read at
Kootenay School of Writing 2012
Saturday, February 02, 2013
You Must Work Harder: A Reading Workshop with Donato Mancini
Join Donato Mancini in a discussion on the major themes of his new book You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence, with particular focus on: poetry book reviewing in Canada, the discourse of craft in criticism, the idea of the common reader and the development and role of an “aesthetic conscience.”
Join Donato Mancini in a discussion on the major themes of his new book You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence, with particular focus on: poetry book reviewing in Canada, the discourse of craft in criticism, the idea of the common reader and the development and role of an “aesthetic conscience.” Participants only need to bring a copy of the book, and to have read at least one chapter. Participants' interests, questions, concerns, retorts will guide our discussion, which will be run like an informal seminar.
Space is limited to 15 (or so) participants*. To sign up, please write to: donatoma AT gmail com Admission is $0.00. (Free). Vegan snacks and coffee will be served. Copies of You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence can be obtained direclty from the author, through the People's Co-Op Books, through Pulpfiction Books or ordered online from BookThug. You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence
Anahita Jamali Rad
Danielle LaFrance
Rachel Baumann
Jonathan Morissette
Read at
Kootenay School of Writing 2012
Saturday, January 19, 2013
I’m In You, You’re In Me A Kootenay School of Writing series of poets presenting poems / antipoems / language. Spoken; visually projected.
Each poet will read one short text, followed with open discussion.
All welcome. Refreshments will be served!
Jonathan Morissette on Twitter Rachel Baumann on Judith Copithorne Danielle LaFrance on Lyn Hejinian
Curated by Anahita Jamali Rad
____
Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates 18 Oct A Tweet is a synaptic leap with no neuron awaiting. Expand
Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates 28 Oct Profound fact of a Tweet is that, by the time you've reached the end you have not (yet) forgotten the beginning. Expand
--
A Light Character It's to give back kindness strangers, gifts If kids see pleasure they are pleased A white horse with wings children’s songs A sequence required no mistakes. It’s too late to stop. The day is late. Power as in skill etc. old saws. The typing book says: If you keep your back straight and your feet on the ground you will succeed. Death, she looks like. A fool rattles his bones. A mind requires answers. Reading my mind home from the marina Regionalism, desire. Necessity stylized utterance. A true romance. Meanwhile time passes, some people, those people They all know The yellow, canary colour showed a light character He knew how to tell a real story His lips were full of a story she wanted to be in. She touched his lips but the story eluded her. She didn’t want to steal but she wanted to open what was in him.
- Judith Copithorne
-
from The Maddening of Connections
The madman does not notice that he is changing subjects. He grasps a piece of shining yellow straw and shouts that he is holding the sun.”1 Denis Diderot makes this observation to his beloved Sophie Volland in a letter dated October 20, 1760. That was more than 250 years ago. If anything were to last forever it would have to exist in a universe entirely invulnerable to temporal blows. I can hear the sound of the wind sweeping across the walls of the building, a distant dispiriting helicopter, a sequence of unpromising phrases running through my mind. I label myself discouraged, ebullient, angry, satisfied—or perhaps dissatisfied; I’m defiant, excited, tired, eager to understand (or, more likely, eager to unburden myself of) my feelings. The self-involvement of intellectuals of my social background is its own kind of madness. I tell myself I only have the machine, I’ll only halve the machine, I’ve only half the machine. Everyday life is going on pretty much as usual. But there are vagaries of context and sometimes turmoil, even sometimes states of perpetual upheaval. It’s not only art that can intensify everyday life. In my opinion, we are currently living under siege, but the situation is so pervasive that it has come to feel natural, as do the forces by which we are besieged. Nonetheless, their pressure is increasing. We can apply an allegorical supplement to the situation. It can appear in the form of a caption—whether or not it is visibly present as an inscription, as a title, legend, heading, name, or as an interpretive or critical thought, a mental addendum. We want it to point to a way out of the situation. The beholder declares to herself or to her companion, O, it isn’t just a poem about a girl petting a swan, it’s a picture of innocence—remember what it was like before we knew what exploitation was? A good reader will, in time, open a poem to de-allegorization: O, she will say, this isn’t an allegory, it’s a poem about a girl running her fingers down the surprisingly warm—almost hot—and thorny soft breast feathers of a real swan. The good reader continues, distributing (and sometimes dispensing with) her intentions. Literary language can’t escape reality, it’s vivaciously additive, and it is with an addition of language that an object, image, or situation becomes allegorical and also still real.
- Lyn Hejinian
Gustave Morin
Read at
Kootenay School of Writing 2012
Saturday, December 01, 2012
gustave morin is a writer, artist, performer, publisher and small time filmmaker who has been making concrete, found, collage, lettriste, zaum and typewriter poetries ("a few poetry" is how he's chosen to describe it) for over 20 years. He is the "author" of eleven (or seventeen?) volumes of such material, most recently A Psychowestern (2010, Media City Editions) and Small Fry (Stained Paper Archive, 2012). His hat is hung in politically remote Windsor, Ontario where he also runs an art gallery called Common Ground, works for The City, and most recently, works as a roadie for monolithic stadium acts rolling through town. from the author: gustave morin's transparent concrete slideshow =======================================
YOU are cordially invited to attend an informed yet informal survey of 20 plus years of the spoils of my not-so-fruitless toil in the ghetto of concrete; featuring representative examples of texts, acts, poems, pieces, polemics and provocations drawn from a cross section of several of my books, replete with tabletalk, sidebar anecdotes, slices of life and many (rarely seen) noteworthy failures which canvass my own lifelong struggle to survive the gangplank of life whilst slowly building up a body of work too solid to be routinely dismissed, ignored or otherwise marginalized (as is concrete's customary fate ever since a narrow (albeit widespread) 60's kneejerk appraisal relegated it to the status of a has-been fad gadget).
While not exactly fun for the whole family, this engagement makes the attempt to explore and present "difficult" works, in as honest and forthright a manner possible; an approach sure to stimulate thoughtful discussion and lend an air of much-needed legitimacy to several oft-misunderstood strains of literary activity, including (but not limited to): lettrisme, graphisme, found, collaged & cut-up text, typewriter poetry, paper films, sui generis artist books, zaum and zen cartoons.
Presented in two parts, with an extremely civilized intermission between acts.
* As a bonus, this KSW presentation is also being made to double as the official launch of gustave morin's newest book, Zoot Suitcase: 13 concrete poems from South Detroit -- so hot off the press it does not yet exist as of this writing... (!)
Don't care about recondite text(s), alternative writing strategies, radical aesthetics, literary pranks or the future of either small press publishing or its historical avant garde? Then stay at home: something suitably mediocre and right up your alley oughta be on the telly.
|