Happy Birthday James Joyce

New Philadelphia Poets at the Bowery Poetry Club, January 16th

Yes, I and the rest of the New Philadelphia Poetsare taking Manhattan, as per Leonard Cohen's suggestion. We'll be reading at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, NYC) on January 16th from 6-8pm. I hope to see you there as we launch a Redemptive Strike (the title of our piece) on the decade. Contiguous readings & collaborative poetry abound as we re-consider the decade that was.

Video from the MLA Off-Site (in which you can see me read)

Well, this was so much fun and such a wonderful night of amazing poetry. I believe videos of all the poets are available on You Tube (you'll see links to them on the right if you're looking at the You Tube page) I encourage you to watch all of them. However, in the interest of expediency (and self-promotion and laziness) I am only including the video which includes me in it (at around 2:01...which is not to say you shouldn't watch Mr. Toscano, you should...just sayin'.)

The first poem I read is from a series I'm writing, it's called "Aphasia (II)". The second is entitled "Nicotine Fit".

Enjoy!

2009 MLA Off-Site Marathon Reading in Philadelphia

I, and some of the other New Philadelphia Poets, will be reading at the Rotunda on Tuesday, December 29th some time between 7 and 10 pm as part of the MLA Off-Site Marathon Reading. Directions and further info can be found on the official blog for the MLA Off Site Reading and for the 5:15 panel at the Philadelphia Marriott, "Coming in from the Cold: Celebrating Twenty Years of the MLA Off-Site Poetry Reading" [speakers for the panel will include: Charles Bernstein, Univ. of Pennsylvania; Tisa Bryant, California Inst. of the Arts; Patrick F. Durgin, School of the Art Inst. of Chicago; Peter Gizzi, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; Laura Moriarty, Small Press Distribution; Bob Perelman, Univ. of Pennsylvania; Rod Smith, Bridge Street Books; Rodrigo Toscano, Labor Inst.; Tyrone Williams, Xavier Univ., OH; Elizabeth Willis, Wesleyan Univ.; Timothy Pan Yu, Univ. of Toronto].

So please come to the panel at 5:15 and then make the short walk over to the Rotunda for the off-site reading. Below you'll find a list of the readers thus far. I'm VERY excited to have the chance to read for and with such an impressive list of local and visiting poets and hope, if you have the time, you'll come out for a wonderful night of exciting and innovative poetry. Special thanks to Michelle Taransky (whose WONDERFUL fist book you should all buy here and to Julia Bloch for putting this great event together.

Readers thus far include the following:

CA Conrad
Frank Sherlock
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Ron Silliman
Gregory Laynor
Aldon Nielsen
Bob Perelman
Adrian Khactu
Danny Snelson
Bill Howe
Carlos Soto Román
Jamie Townsend
Laura Moriarty
Jenn McCreary
Chris McCreary
Lisa Howe
Tyrone Williams
Timothy Yu
Sueyeun Juliette Lee
CS Carrier
Ryan Eckes
James Shea
Eric Selland
Charles Cantalupo
Jennifer Scappettone
Thomas Devaney
Pattie McCarthy
Evie Shockley
Barrett Watten
Carla Harryman
Michael Hennessey
Ish Klein
Suzanne Heyd
Kim Gek Lin Short
Carla Harryman
Jason Zuzga
Nava EtShalom
Norma Cole
David Larsen
Julie Phillips Brown
Jacob Russell
Matthew Landis

[more coming...]

AUDIO OF NEW PHILADELPHIA POETS READING FROM HIGHWIRE GALLERY

This was a really fun and successful reading/art show that the New Philadelphia Poets did with Cuddle Magic [terrific band] earlier this month. You can find links to all of the readings [including my own; I read some new poems and the end of the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" chapter of Finnegan's Wake] and Cuddle Magic's spectacular musical performance. Do take a listen!

highwire gallery reading

NEW PHILADELPHIA POETS "IN(VISIBLE) KEEPSAKES" at PHILLY FRINGE FESTIVAL

Doing a reading September 4th at Isaiah Zagar's Magic Gardens at 1020 South Street in Philadelphia with the New Philadelphia Poets. More info below:

We're (the New Philadelphia Poets: http://www.newphiladelphiapoets.com) doing a performance as a part of the Philly Fringe Festival September 4th called In(Visible) Keepsakes. The performance is at Isaiah Zagar's Magic Gardens on South Street in Philadelphia. The performance is divided into two parts, the first part being a sort of poetic carnival, different strands and booths set up with members of the group and musicians staging various poetic works...conventional readings, found text verse drama, poetic "ambushes" (unwittingly engaging audience members in conversation which is actually pre-prepared poetry and the poets stick to the "script" regardless of responses). The second part is a collaboratively written poem by the group. The way we wrote this poem is we adopted a guiding theme or principle (inspired by various poems by Robert Kelly, Celan, Artaud, Pound and others): the theme being alchemy as a way of understanding poetic practice, a language community, and social change. We used source text, our own work, and work we submitted from poets and audience members at various readings we sponsored. We then typed out each poem and cut out these individual lines and in a sort of alchemical experiment we are, without any sort of script, each constructing verse or dialogue out of these strips of paper and spontaneously responding using this pile of source text on these strips of paper. We've also gotten some musicians (myself included) to compose a musical prologue and epilogue, with the middle section being a sort of counterpoint and "chorus" of this communally generated found text.

Here's the link for the tickets to the event: http://phillyfringe.com/details.cfm?id=9048

UND KRAFT UND SCHMERZ: a Celan translation

AND POWER AND PAIN
and what pressed on
and wavered yet embraced me:

echoing leap-
years,

sprucedrunk, once,

your typhoid, Tanja

the poaching conviction
that there should be another way of saying
so.

-Paul Celan
(tr. Matthew Landis)




UND KRAFT UND SCHMERZ
und was mich stieß
und trieb und hielt:

Hall-Schalt-
Jahre,

Fichtenrausch, einmal,

dein Typhus, Tanja,

die wildernde Überzeugung,
daß dies anders zu sagen sei als
so.


-Paul Celan

Ausgewählte Gedichte von Paul Celan
(alle zitiert nach: Celan, Paul (2003): Die Gedichte. Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe in einem Band. Hg. und kommentiert von Barbara Wiedemann. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp)