SEGUE READING SERIES
@ BOWERY POETRY CLUBSaturdays: 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. 308 BOWERY, just north of Houston $6 admission goes to support the readers
The
Segue Reading Series is made possible by the support of The
Segue Foundation. For more information, please visit
seguefoundation.com,
bowerypoetry.com, or call (212) 614-0505.
Curators:
February-March by
Nada Gordon & Gary SullivanApril-May by
Kristen Gallagher & Tim Peterson.
FEBRUARY 7 KENNETH GOLDSMITH and EDWIN TORRESKenneth Goldsmith is the author of ten books of poetry and founding editor of UbuWeb (
ubu.com). He is the host of a weekly radio show on New York City’s WFMU and teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania. A book of critical essays, Uncreative Writing, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Edwin Torres is a NYC born lingualisualist currently on hiatus from the apple, living upstate. A NYFA recipient and 2006/7 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Writer-in-Residence, he’s been widely published and taught his Brainlingo workshop at numerous venues & universities. His books include, The PoPedology Of An Ambient Language (Atelos Books), The All-Union Day Of The Shock Worker (Roof Books), Onomalingua: noise songs and poems (Rattapallax e-book), and Please (Faux Press CD-Rom).
FEBRUARY 14 STEVE BENSON and STEPHANIE YOUNGSteve Benson, formerly of the San Francisco Bay area, has lived in Downeast Maine since 1996. Transcripts of orally improvised performances appear in Blindspots (Whale Cloth, 1981), Reverse Order (Potes and Poets, 1989), Blue Book (The Figures/Roof, 1998) and Open Clothes (Atelos, 2005), along with written works. With nine other bay area language poets, he is preparing part 8 of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography (Mode A, 2006-present). Stephanie Young lives and works in Oakland. Her books of poetry are Picture Palace (in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni, 2008) and Telling the Future Off (Tougher Disguises, 2005). She edited Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006) and her most recent editorial project is Deep Oakland,
deepoakland.org. She blogs so rarely at
stephanieyoung.org/blog.
FEBRUARY 21 MELANIE NIELSON and SARA WINTZMelanie Nielson was born in Humboldt, Tennessee, grew up in Southern California, and lives in New York City. She edited Big Allis magazine for many years with Jessica Grim, and is the author of Civil Noir (Roof Books, 1991). Sara Wintz’s writing has appeared in Ecopoetics, Cricket Online Review, Interrobang?!, and on Ceptuetics. She co-directs, with Cristiana Baik, :the press gang:, publisher of Intricate Systems, by Juliana Spahr and One Might, by Karen Volkman. She lives in Brooklyn and works at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.
FEBRUARY 28 JOHN GIORNO and BRIAN KIM STEFANSJohn Giorno is the author of many books of poetry, which have been translated into several languages. Subduing Demons in America: The Selected Poems of John Giorno, 1962-2008, a career-spanning survey of his work, will be published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull in 2008. Brian Kim Stefans’ most recent books are What is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers (Factory School, 2006), Kluge: A Mediation, and other works (Roof, 2007) and Before Starting Over: Selected Writings and Interviews (Salt, 2006). He just moved to Los Angeles to take a position as professor of English and Digital Humanities at UCLA.
MARCH 7 JEROME SALA and RACHEL ZOLFJerome Sala has been described as an “honorable hysteric” by critic Peter Schjeldahl. His latest book is Look Slimmer Instantly from Soft Skull Press. Other books include cult classics such as Spaz Attack, I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent and The Trip. Rachel Zolf’s collections include Human Resources (Coach House, 2007), which won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, Shoot and Weep (Nomados, 2008), and Masque (Mercury, 2004).
MARCH 14 CHARLES BERNSTEIN and ADEENA KARASICKCharles Bernstein is the CFO of the Center for Avant-Garde Comedy and Stand-Up Poetry. His most recent book is Blind Witness: Three American Operas. Adeena Karasick is the 2008 winner of the MPS mobile award, poet media artist and author of six books of poetry and poetic theory. Forthcoming is Amuse Bouche Tasty Treats for the Mouth (Talonbooks, 2009). She teaches Film and Literature at CUNY.
MARCH 21 K. SILEM MOHAMMAD and LYTLE SHAWK. Silem Mohammad is the author Breathalyzer (Edge Books, 2008), A Thousand Devils (Combo Books, 2004), and Deer Head Nation (Tougher Disguises, 2003). Abraham Lincoln, which he edits with Anne Boyer, is the single most significant poetry magazine in North America that always features a large cat and a rainbow on its front cover. Lytle Shaw’s most recent books include The Chadwick Family Papers (a collaboration with Jimbo Blachly, Periscope, 2009) and Frank O'Hara: The Poetics of Coterie (University Of Iowa Press, 2006).
MARCH 28 JAMES SHERRY and CECILIA VICUÑAJames Sherry is the author of more than 10 books of poetry and prose. His most recent publication, Sorry: Environmental Poetics, is forthcoming from Factory School later this year. He is the editor/publisher of Roof Books and founder of The
Segue Foundation. Cecilia Vicuña performs and exhibits her work widely in Europe, Latin America and the U.S. Templo e’Saliva / Spit Temple, a collection of her oral performances, edited by Rosa Alcalá, is forthcoming by Factory School Press.
APRIL 4 RON SILLIMAN and JENNIFER BARTLETTRon Silliman has written and edited over 30 books to date. Silliman was the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts in 1998. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons. Jennifer Bartlett is the author of Derivative of the Moving Image (New Mexico Press). She was a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with the writer Jim Stewart and their son Jeffrey.
APRIL 11 JENA OSMAN and TAN LINJena Osman’s books include An Essay in Asterisks (Roof) and The Character (Beacon). Her book The Network is forthcoming from Essay Press. She co-edits the ChainLinks book series with Juliana Spahr and teaches in the graduate Creative Writing program at Temple University. Tan Lin is a writer, artist, and critic. His most recent book is Heath: Plagiarism/Outsource from Zasterle, and his new work Seven Controlled Vocabularies is forthcoming from Wesleyan
University Press. His visual and video work has been exhibited at the Yale Art Museum (New Haven), the Sophienholm (Copenhagen), and the Marianne Boesky Gallery (NYC).
APRIL 18 CHARLES ALEXANDER and AKILAH OLIVERCharles Alexander is a Tucson-based poet, publisher, and book artist. He is the director and editor-in-chief of Chax Press. Alexander’s recent books of poetry include Pushing Water: parts one through six (Standing Stones Press, 1998), near or random acts (Singing Horse Press, 2004), and Certain Slants (Junction Press, 2007). Akilah Oliver is the author of a new book A Toast in the House of Friends (Coffee House Press, 2008), and also the she said dialogues: flesh memory (Smokeproof/Erudite Fangs, 1999). She currently makes her home in Brooklyn, NY.
APRIL 25 POETRY and ARCHITECTURE EVENT:
featuring VITO ACCONCI, BENJAMIN ARANDA and ROBERT KOCIK What is the nature of the conversation between poetry and architecture today? In this event for the Segue Reading Series, poets and architects will present works exploring a dialogue between these two disciplines.
Vito Acconci will show an image-stream of built & unbuilt spaces & instruments as he reads: 1) about furniture & houses (80's), cities & landscape (90's); 2) from rules for assemblage & incursion (00's); 3) architecture in words only (00's).
Benjamin Aranda will present images and talk around the issue of self-assembly, where top-down methods for determining form and making decisions are complicated and sometimes replaced by bottom-up rules of formation. As in natural systems, the architectural structures up for discussion are not carved or composed in a traditional sense; they are grown through simple interactions to produce complex patterns that are both useful and buildable.
Robert Kocik will present a plan for the Prosody Building, a note on mercenary poetry (without which business is biocide), Missing Civic Services, and a few architectural plans made entirely of words.
PARTICIPANTS: Vito Acconci's design & architecture comes from another direction, from backgrounds of writing & art. By the late 80's he crossed over & joined with architects to form Acconci Studio. They mix poetry & math, computer-scripting & sentence-structure, narrative & biology as they range from plazas & parks to buildings & interiors to furniture & products to clothing &vehicles. They are currently working on a street through a building in Indianapolis, a building that twists from a courtyard in Milan, a makeover of a former strip-mall in Athens, Georgia.
Benjamin Aranda is architect and principal of Aranda\Lasch, New York, NY.
Robert Kocik, poet, essayist, artist, design/builder, lives in Brooklyn where he directs the Bureau of Material Behaviors. His architectural works are committed to the realization of 'missing' functions, services, organizations, or agencies. He is currently developing a building based on 'prosody' and poets' imagined importance to our society. With the choreographer Daria Faïn, he has initiated a field of research called The Prosodic Body. His publications include:
Overcoming Fitness (Autonomedia, 2001), and
Rhrurbarb (Field Books, 2007).
MAY 2 JULIAN BROLASKI and MAGDALENA ZURASWSKIJulian T. Brolaski co-curated the the New Brutalism series in Oakland from 2003-2005 with Cynthia Sailers and the Holloway Poetry Series at UC Berkeley from 2004-2006. Brolaski is the author of several chapbooks including The Daily Usonian (Atticus/Finch 2004), Madame Bovary’s Diary (Cy Press 2005), and Buck in a Corridor (flynpyntar 2008). Magdalena Zurawski was born in 1972 to Polish immigrants in New Jersey. Her first book, The Bruise, won the Ronald Sukenick Prize in2006, and was published by FC2 in 2008.
MAY 9 ERICA KAUFMAN and JOAN RETALLACKerica kaufman is the author of several chapbooks including Civilization Day and several installations of Censory Impulse, her book-length poem, which was published by Factory School/Heretical Texts in January. She co-curates and co-edits Belladonna/Belladonna Books and lives in Brooklyn. Joan Retallack’s most recent publication is her Gertrude Stein: Selections with an extensive introduction/discussion of Stein’s work, brought out by University of California Press. She is the author of seven volumes of poetry including Errata 5uite, which won the Columbia Book Award chosen by Robert Creeley. A collection of Retallack’s procedural poems is forthcoming from Roof Books.
MAY 16 NO READINGMAY 23 MEI-MEI BERSSENBRUGGE and JONATHAN SKINNERMei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing and grew up in Massachusetts. She is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, most recently I Love Artists: New and Selected Poems (University of California Press, 2006) and Concordance (Kelsey St. Press, 2006), a collaboration with Kiki Smith. Jonathan Skinner is a poet, translator and critic, as well as editor of the journal ecopoetics. Skinner completed his Ph.D. in English at SUNY Buffalo. In 2005, he published his first full-length poetry collection, Political Cactus Poems (Palm Press).
MAY 30 STACY SZYMASZEK and PATRICK DURGINStacy Szymaszek is the author of Emptied of All Ships (Litmus Press, 2005). Recent chapbooks include Orizaba: A Voyage with Hart Crane (Faux Chaps, 2008) and from Hyperglossia (Hot Whiskey, 2008). Hyperglossia, the complete poem, is forthcoming from Litmus Press in early 2009. Patrick Durgin has collaborated with Jen Hofer since 1998 to produce The Route (Atelos, 2008). On his own, Durgin has published Imitation Poems (Atticus/Finch, 2007) and Color Music (Cuneiform Press, 2002).
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