Hope you are ready for 2010. While you get ready, & while SPLAB’s writer’s critique circle gets ready to resume on Tuesday, February 2 at 7PM, here are a few items of a mostly literary nature for your perusal:
From Phoebe Bosche:
For those who knew/know poet Roberto Valenza. It seems I have been the bringer of bad news (or, depending on your philosophy, news of life changes) lately.Margareta Waterman talked to Agnes, Roberto’s mother, with whom he is living, and he appears to be in a later stage of terminalliver cancer. His weight is down to 98 lbs.Cards and letters have cheered him up recently, his mother reports, so if you knew him (or know his friends from Seattle, San Francisco, New York, please pass on this e-mail), you can write to him:
Roberto Valenza
7298 Holiday Drive
Spring Hill, Florida 34606
From Subtext:
WHAT: POETRY PERFORMANCE – Charles Bernstein and the attack of the difficult poems
WHERE: Henry Art Gallery, Seattle
WHEN: 7-8:30 PM, Thursday January 7, 2010
INFO: http://www.henryart.org/events/show/201
Charles Bernstein takes us deep into the world of his new work in a command performance–trailing commentary, thought, poetry.
Born in 1950 in New York City, Bernstein is the author of over forty books of poetry and poetics, and is a key figure in the Language Poetry movement started in the 1970’s. The Donald T. Regan Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Bernstein is famous for his brilliant avant garde work in diverse sites–in texts, in the university, on the internet, and on the streets.
Forthcoming in spring in 2010 is All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Other titles include Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006); My Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999); Content’s Dream (Sun & Moon, 1986); Islets / Irritations (Jordan Davies, 1983). Bernstein is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim and a NEA.
Among Bernstein’s many poetry projects are his co-founding of the Poetics Program (Ph.D.) and the Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY, Buffalo; his co-editorship of the Modern and Contemporary Poetics series at the University of Alabama Press; his hosting of multiple LINEbreak and Close Listening poetry interviews; and his development of the internet audio poetry archive, PENNSound.
In addition to his Henry Art Gallery reading, Charles Bernstein will be reading in the Writing For Their Lives reading series at the University of Washington, Bothell, on Wednesday, January 6 at 4:00 p.m.
From Jerome Rothenberg:
The most recent posting on Poems & Poetics (poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com), the blog/magazine/anthology that I’ve been composing over the last year and a half, is a poem, “Coyote,” by Hiromi Ito, with an extended commentary by her translator Jeffrey Angles. Ito has emerged over the last twenty-five years as a truly major figure in Japanese poetry, although her primary residence since 1993 has been up the block from us in Encinitas, California. The posting here is in celebration of the publication by Action Books in Notre Dame, Indiana, of KILLING KANOKO, the first ample presentation of her work in English. Of this I wrote in tribute: “The appearance of this generous and beautifully rendered translation of Hiromi Ito’s poetry is a significant and memorable event for American letters. For Ito is poet of truly international stature, whose work breaks down barriers of language and gender, bringing an unprecedented erotic energy and eruptions of transgressive and domestic excess into areas of deep myth and shamanistic performance. It is a poetry of her world and of our worlds as well, the gift of a supremely intelligent and relentlessly exuberant mind, situated somewhere between bliss and nightmare. That she has now chosen to live among us is a still further cause for celebration.” And Anne Waldman from a diffeent vantage: “KILLING KANOKO is a powerful, long-overdue collection (in fine translation) of poetry from the radical Japanese feminist poet, Hiromi Ito. Her poems reverberate with sexual candor, the exigencies and delights of the paradoxically restless/rooted female body, and the visceral imagery of childbirth leap off the page as performative modal structures–fierce, witty, and vibrant. Hiromi Ito is a true sister of the Beats.”
From Allison Durazzi:
Allison invited you to “Gabrielle’s Dirty Haiku Fuck Cancer Brunch” on Sunday, January 24 at 9:00am.
Event: Gabrielle’s Dirty Haiku Fuck Cancer Brunch
What: Fundraiser
Start Time: Sunday, January 24 at 9:00am
End Time: Sunday, January 24 at 12:00pm
Where: Daemond & Inti’s Home
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=175316031732
From Susan Schultz:
Subject: Call for Work for Tinfish 20 (late 2010)
I am especially interested in works of innovative translation from Hawai`i and elsewhere in the Pacific, as well as poems about ageing. As Tinfish never has “theme issues,” other materials are also welcome.
Remember, we publish experimental work from the Pacific region only. Please feel free to send word around, but encourage prospective authors to read some Tinfishes first.
Our website is at tinfishpress.com
The blog is at tinfisheditor.blogspot.com
aloha, Susan
Please send to 47-728 Hui Kelu Street #9, Kaneohe, HI 96744
From the Tacoma Art Museum:
Local Coastal Native Traditions Shine on Day of Celebration
Performances and hands-on activities link public to area’s native heritage
(Tacoma, WA) – Tacoma Art Museum invites you to immerse yourself in the history and traditions of Northwest Coastal Tribes. Saturday, January 9, 2010, from noon to 3:30 pm, the museum will be bustling with cultural performances and hands-on activities for all ages, giving participants the chance to watch, listen, and engage in the museum’s Coastal Native Celebration. As a tribute to the occasion, the museum is offering free admission with tribal identification.
“Tacoma Art Museum is honored to celebrate the heritage of the Pacific Northwest as we bring the Joe Feddersen exhibition, Vital Signs, to a close. It’s exciting to bring together so many elements of the South Sound’s diverse Native community,” said Stephanie A. Stebich, Director of Tacoma Art Museum.
Cultural performances will include Nooksack wooden flute musician Roderick Harris, a performance from a K’lallam drum and dance group, and Master Artist Al Zantua performing with Quileute Dancers. Known as the Northwest Coast Dancers, they will perform social songs and dances from Northwest Coastal Tribes.
Hands-on activities will be available for all ages and range from weaving cedar hearts and mask painting to making necklaces inspired by Coastal traditions.
Also joining the Coastal Celebration is Makah wood carver Alex Swiftwater McCarty who will showcase his skills with a live wood carving demonstration. Dedicated to honoring ancestral wood carving traditions, his current works include carved wall panels, masks, rattles, paddles, totems, drums, serigraphs, and mono-type prints. Alex McCarty’s carvings will be available for purchase alongside an array of items from local vendors who will be selling custom jewelry, music, and other wooden carvings.
Jonz Catering and The Workz Café will offer a modern take on Coastal cuisine by providing Northwest Native lunch specials all day. The specials will be prepared from locally-grown products and include dishes such as Alaskan salmon burgers, seafood chowder, corn bread muffins, and more.
# # #
CONTACT – 253.272.4258, www.TacomaArtMuseum.org, info@TacomaArtMuseum.org