President Obama and Canada's Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, at his arrival in Ottawa, for his first foreign trip.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
More Soon
I love this photo, from Canada's National Post.
President Obama and Canada's Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, at his arrival in Ottawa, for his first foreign trip.
President Obama and Canada's Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, at his arrival in Ottawa, for his first foreign trip.
Monday, February 16, 2009
AWP Conference, Chicago
I guess I shouldn't have spoken too soon about burrowing--clawing, carving, wrenching--my way out of the grave, because fresh shovel-fulls of reading material just keep falling, but I did manage to have an enjoyable weekend (a belated Happy St. Valentine's Day to all) at and around the Associated Writing Programs Conference, which took place in Chicago this year. The conference began on Wednesday and concluded on Saturday, and as always, it was overwhelming and invigorating (sooooo many panels, writers, books, conversations, etc.), though I would lean on the side of invigorating, since I woke up every morning exhausted but ready to head downtown to the Chicago Hilton for more. For me the highlight of these conferences is running into folks I haven't seen in years or since the last one or the last visit to their town or campus, and so while many of my friends and literary acquaintances didn't attend this year, many were in the house. Seeing fellow Cave Canem or Dark Room (or Kundiman or New York in general) writers always brings a smile of joy to my face, as does former colleagues and writers I've admired for years and never met or heard, or met and heard once, or met and heard many times. There were many such moments this year.
I was on two panels on Thursday, the first a noon assembly called "The City--Real and Imagined," with my very famous university colleagues Reg Gibbons (the moderator), Sasha Hemon, Alex Kotlowitz, and Stuart Dybek, and that discussion drew a huge audience, including several of my graduate students (Jen I said hello to, but Anna, it was great to see you out there), and friends like wonderful poet Jaci Jones LaMon, who came up afterwards to say hello. I had the opportunity to expatiate, briefly, on Morrison, Ellison, Paley, and Proust, in one answer, which I must say doesn't come along very often. The second panel, later that afternoon, which I organized and moderated, focused on "Post-racial Writing," and brought together scholars Dorothy Wang and Angelica Lawson, and poet and critic Prageeta Sharma. All three offered provocative critiques of the notion of "post-raciality," and I only wish that we'd had more time to unpack the idea even more, particularly in light of my opening comments about perspective, performativities and normativities. The audience was one of the most racially and ethnically diverse I witnessed at the conference, and it was particularly great to see poet Samiya Bashir (!) sitting in the front row.
Thursday evening I participated in a full and packed reading at Myopic Books (one of the best used bookstores in Chicago, BTW) sponsored by Litmus Press/Aufgabe, Saturnalia Books, and Nightboat Books. Afterwards a poet archly asked me, "And what is your connection to these presses?" and I reminded him that some of my work--among the first published poems from Seismosis--appeared in Aufgabe. Other readers that night included Nathalie Stephens/Nathanaël, one of my favorite contemporary innovators, whose marvelous new book-length essay, Absence Where As, is out from Nightboat; Jennifer Scoppottone; Cal Bedient; Sebastian Agudelo; Lytton Smith, whose first book Terrance Hayes selected for Nightboat's most recent annual prize; and Laura Moriarty, whose work I've admired for years. Jennifer and another poet read from Italian translation section in the new Aufgabe (#7), and I urge you to pick it up if you're at all interested in new Italian poetry.
On Friday, after going to hear Maggie Brown's tribute to her late father, Oscar Brown Jr., and Deedee Bridgewater and an ensemble (including original sidemen Julian Priester and Ray Mantilla) bring the late Max Roach's "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite" to new heights (thank you again, Dorothy!), I dropped by the Second Sun Salon, hosted by Krista, Duriel and Lisa Lee at Lisa's dream space. I'm not going to be able to list all the folks I saw, but it was great to run into people from the Chicago poetry scene like Erin Teegarden, as well as so many people I hadn't seen in a while, including Denenge Akpem, Christian Campbell, Kelly Norman Ellis, Ross Gay, Tyehimba Jess, Parneshia Jones, Dawn Lundy Martin John Murillo, Obike, William Perdomo, Hermine Pinson, Evie Shockley, Treasure Williams, Ronaldo Wilson, Avery Young, and to meet folks I've only know via the Net, like Lillian Bertram and Doc Brown, or via their work, like David Mura. I caught the second half of the Salon performances, which featured John and Duriel performing their poems, and Avery performing Averyness! I only wish there'd been live feed so that everyone could have enjoyed them as much as the people at the event.
On Saturday I popped into a few panels, ran into a lot more people, including many university colleagues (Eula Biss, Shauna Seliy, Brian Bouldrey, Ed Roberson) and students (Barbara, Eric and others), whom I was so glad to see out and about, and spent a great deal of time at the Bookfair. So many books, so little time! I must give shout-outs to Essay Press and Canarium Books, founded by my colleagues Eula (and others) and Robyn Schiff (and others) respectively; Seismosis's publisher 1913 Press, and its founders poets Sandra and Ben Dollar (whose stock was snapped up, yea!); Northwestern University Press, and editor Parneshia Jones, who hipped me to some great new books they're publishing; and the PEN table, where my college friend Stacy Leigh was representing with grace and wit only she can! So far I've been able to read just one of the many books I bought, Monica de la Torre's incisive and often hilarious Public Domain (Segue Books, 2008), but I'm determined to scale the K-2 peaks of books I've been setting aside and viewing with waxing anticipation since the relentless academic year began.
And now, some photos (my ability to document via photographs appears to be diminishing at the same rate as my ability to blog or do anything else, save teach and read for work, but nevertheless):
Writers gathering outside the Hilton (Smokers' walk)
Brian Bouldrey and University of Wisconsin Editor Raphael Kadushin
Stacy Leigh at the PEN American Center table
At the Bookfair
At the Bookfair
Tyehimba Jess at the Second Sun Salon
Avery Young and ensemble performing
Listening to the Salon performance (Christian Campbell at center)
Poet John Murillo performing at the Salon
Columbia College of Chicago window exhibit
The brilliant and beautiful Tayari Jones
Ron Kavanaugh and Toni Asante Lightfoot (this was the first time I'd seen her since her new daughter was born!)
Toni and Kate Rushin
After my noon panel, (l-r) Alex Kotlowitz, Bill Ayers (yep, that's him!), and Reg Gibbons
Max Roach's "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite" at Symphony Hall
I was on two panels on Thursday, the first a noon assembly called "The City--Real and Imagined," with my very famous university colleagues Reg Gibbons (the moderator), Sasha Hemon, Alex Kotlowitz, and Stuart Dybek, and that discussion drew a huge audience, including several of my graduate students (Jen I said hello to, but Anna, it was great to see you out there), and friends like wonderful poet Jaci Jones LaMon, who came up afterwards to say hello. I had the opportunity to expatiate, briefly, on Morrison, Ellison, Paley, and Proust, in one answer, which I must say doesn't come along very often. The second panel, later that afternoon, which I organized and moderated, focused on "Post-racial Writing," and brought together scholars Dorothy Wang and Angelica Lawson, and poet and critic Prageeta Sharma. All three offered provocative critiques of the notion of "post-raciality," and I only wish that we'd had more time to unpack the idea even more, particularly in light of my opening comments about perspective, performativities and normativities. The audience was one of the most racially and ethnically diverse I witnessed at the conference, and it was particularly great to see poet Samiya Bashir (!) sitting in the front row.
Thursday evening I participated in a full and packed reading at Myopic Books (one of the best used bookstores in Chicago, BTW) sponsored by Litmus Press/Aufgabe, Saturnalia Books, and Nightboat Books. Afterwards a poet archly asked me, "And what is your connection to these presses?" and I reminded him that some of my work--among the first published poems from Seismosis--appeared in Aufgabe. Other readers that night included Nathalie Stephens/Nathanaël, one of my favorite contemporary innovators, whose marvelous new book-length essay, Absence Where As, is out from Nightboat; Jennifer Scoppottone; Cal Bedient; Sebastian Agudelo; Lytton Smith, whose first book Terrance Hayes selected for Nightboat's most recent annual prize; and Laura Moriarty, whose work I've admired for years. Jennifer and another poet read from Italian translation section in the new Aufgabe (#7), and I urge you to pick it up if you're at all interested in new Italian poetry.
On Friday, after going to hear Maggie Brown's tribute to her late father, Oscar Brown Jr., and Deedee Bridgewater and an ensemble (including original sidemen Julian Priester and Ray Mantilla) bring the late Max Roach's "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite" to new heights (thank you again, Dorothy!), I dropped by the Second Sun Salon, hosted by Krista, Duriel and Lisa Lee at Lisa's dream space. I'm not going to be able to list all the folks I saw, but it was great to run into people from the Chicago poetry scene like Erin Teegarden, as well as so many people I hadn't seen in a while, including Denenge Akpem, Christian Campbell, Kelly Norman Ellis, Ross Gay, Tyehimba Jess, Parneshia Jones, Dawn Lundy Martin John Murillo, Obike, William Perdomo, Hermine Pinson, Evie Shockley, Treasure Williams, Ronaldo Wilson, Avery Young, and to meet folks I've only know via the Net, like Lillian Bertram and Doc Brown, or via their work, like David Mura. I caught the second half of the Salon performances, which featured John and Duriel performing their poems, and Avery performing Averyness! I only wish there'd been live feed so that everyone could have enjoyed them as much as the people at the event.
On Saturday I popped into a few panels, ran into a lot more people, including many university colleagues (Eula Biss, Shauna Seliy, Brian Bouldrey, Ed Roberson) and students (Barbara, Eric and others), whom I was so glad to see out and about, and spent a great deal of time at the Bookfair. So many books, so little time! I must give shout-outs to Essay Press and Canarium Books, founded by my colleagues Eula (and others) and Robyn Schiff (and others) respectively; Seismosis's publisher 1913 Press, and its founders poets Sandra and Ben Dollar (whose stock was snapped up, yea!); Northwestern University Press, and editor Parneshia Jones, who hipped me to some great new books they're publishing; and the PEN table, where my college friend Stacy Leigh was representing with grace and wit only she can! So far I've been able to read just one of the many books I bought, Monica de la Torre's incisive and often hilarious Public Domain (Segue Books, 2008), but I'm determined to scale the K-2 peaks of books I've been setting aside and viewing with waxing anticipation since the relentless academic year began.
And now, some photos (my ability to document via photographs appears to be diminishing at the same rate as my ability to blog or do anything else, save teach and read for work, but nevertheless):
Writers gathering outside the Hilton (Smokers' walk)
Brian Bouldrey and University of Wisconsin Editor Raphael Kadushin
Stacy Leigh at the PEN American Center table
At the Bookfair
At the Bookfair
Tyehimba Jess at the Second Sun Salon
Avery Young and ensemble performing
Listening to the Salon performance (Christian Campbell at center)
Poet John Murillo performing at the Salon
Columbia College of Chicago window exhibit
The brilliant and beautiful Tayari Jones
Ron Kavanaugh and Toni Asante Lightfoot (this was the first time I'd seen her since her new daughter was born!)
Toni and Kate Rushin
After my noon panel, (l-r) Alex Kotlowitz, Bill Ayers (yep, that's him!), and Reg Gibbons
Max Roach's "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite" at Symphony Hall
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Up From the Depths
Up, from the depths, but only temporarily. I was trying to think of the right word to describe this quarter, this January and February, the steep and suffocating mound of work, and the feeling of being buried and being unable to get out from under it, to imagine a way out of or around it, and I realized, when Chris was here a few weeks ago, that I'd mentioned it in a conversation with him: vivisepulture. Which, I reminded myself, will be a title of a new project. Slowly, surely, I'm climbing up out of it, eyeing my way out of it at least, but there's still a long, ascending incline to go. And blogging, which I love to do, unfortunately has to come last on the list. But rather than let this month (Black History Month, no less!), pass by without at least an initial post, here I go.
Blackboard work, after my lit class (one of the few fun things I do every week)
***
A weekend ago, Tisa Bryant and Duriel Harris were in town for the final week of Jennifer Karmin and Amina Cain's month-long festival at Links Hall, "When Does It or You Begin? (Memory as Innovation): Writing, Performance, & Video Festival." I caught the Friday night set, which brought together Tisa's and Duriel's performances, as well as video clips by father and son team Bryan & Jake Saner and Chi Jang Yin.
I've read Tisa's book, Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007) in various versions, but I'd never heard Tisa read from the book, and it was a revelation; she read from the Dido chapter, and the charged narrative, which gathers tremendous force all the way up through its final words, a figurative and literal gathering up of the disparate (black) voices she imagines in the London in which that story-essay is set, are still resonating for me. Duriel performed a selection from a new project, "Unquiet Borders & on the Air, a Gallows," which imagines the moment following Emancipation and preceding Reconstruction, in a way that only the multivocal, multivisional Duriel can. The two video pieces worked less well for me, in part because I thought both could have used a bit more context in the form of an introduction, and in the case of the Saner piece, The Inaudibles, which focused on young and older political activists, the divergent strands didn't really come together in the short sliver that I saw. In the post-show talkback, both Tisa and Duriel offered some cogent thoughts in response to the lively questions that moderator Tony Trigilio was asking, particularly in relation to how historical memory, cultural memories, and the lived, everyday experiences of regular people, could be viewed in relation to each other.
Here are some photographs from the event:
Amina Cain introducing the event
Tisa reading from Unexplained Presence
Duriel, performing her work
A still shot from the Saners' film, The Inaudibles
The talkback (l-r): Amina, Tisa, Tony, Jake and Bryan, Duriel, and Jen.
***
The following night, I went to a forum and community discussion, presented by The Silver Room and Tres, on the "Social Responsibility of the Artist" at the Silver Room, in Wicker Park. The panel featured artists Theaster Gates, Jon Bollo, Maritza Cervantes, Courtney Jolliff, and Krista Franklin, among others. Hector Rivera and Sandra Ivelisse Antongiorgi moderated. I won't attempt to recap the discussion and Q&A session except to say that the panelists and most of the audience came down on the side of social responsibility, while also agreeing that artists ought to have as their primary concern doing the best work possible. The l'art pour l'art crowd was a decided minority. Some photos:
The panel (Krista is wearing the white sweater)
Audience
The audience at the forum
The DJ getting ready for the post-forum party
Post-forum viewing and partying
I'll end there, and try to post photos from Tisa's, Krista's and my trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where we caught the Jenny Holzer and Theaster Gates exhibits, which were closing on February 1.
Blackboard work, after my lit class (one of the few fun things I do every week)
***
A weekend ago, Tisa Bryant and Duriel Harris were in town for the final week of Jennifer Karmin and Amina Cain's month-long festival at Links Hall, "When Does It or You Begin? (Memory as Innovation): Writing, Performance, & Video Festival." I caught the Friday night set, which brought together Tisa's and Duriel's performances, as well as video clips by father and son team Bryan & Jake Saner and Chi Jang Yin.
I've read Tisa's book, Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007) in various versions, but I'd never heard Tisa read from the book, and it was a revelation; she read from the Dido chapter, and the charged narrative, which gathers tremendous force all the way up through its final words, a figurative and literal gathering up of the disparate (black) voices she imagines in the London in which that story-essay is set, are still resonating for me. Duriel performed a selection from a new project, "Unquiet Borders & on the Air, a Gallows," which imagines the moment following Emancipation and preceding Reconstruction, in a way that only the multivocal, multivisional Duriel can. The two video pieces worked less well for me, in part because I thought both could have used a bit more context in the form of an introduction, and in the case of the Saner piece, The Inaudibles, which focused on young and older political activists, the divergent strands didn't really come together in the short sliver that I saw. In the post-show talkback, both Tisa and Duriel offered some cogent thoughts in response to the lively questions that moderator Tony Trigilio was asking, particularly in relation to how historical memory, cultural memories, and the lived, everyday experiences of regular people, could be viewed in relation to each other.
Here are some photographs from the event:
Amina Cain introducing the event
Tisa reading from Unexplained Presence
Duriel, performing her work
A still shot from the Saners' film, The Inaudibles
The talkback (l-r): Amina, Tisa, Tony, Jake and Bryan, Duriel, and Jen.
***
The following night, I went to a forum and community discussion, presented by The Silver Room and Tres, on the "Social Responsibility of the Artist" at the Silver Room, in Wicker Park. The panel featured artists Theaster Gates, Jon Bollo, Maritza Cervantes, Courtney Jolliff, and Krista Franklin, among others. Hector Rivera and Sandra Ivelisse Antongiorgi moderated. I won't attempt to recap the discussion and Q&A session except to say that the panelists and most of the audience came down on the side of social responsibility, while also agreeing that artists ought to have as their primary concern doing the best work possible. The l'art pour l'art crowd was a decided minority. Some photos:
The panel (Krista is wearing the white sweater)
Audience
The audience at the forum
The DJ getting ready for the post-forum party
Post-forum viewing and partying
I'll end there, and try to post photos from Tisa's, Krista's and my trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where we caught the Jenny Holzer and Theaster Gates exhibits, which were closing on February 1.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration (Barack Hussein Obama) Day!
I've had to teach from 11 am to 12:30 pm this morning, so I wasn't able to see or hear any of the Inauguration proceedings after--of all things--Rick Warren's invocation, but I'm reading and trying to catch video of everything (the swearing in, Elizabeth Alexander's poem, the inaugural address, etc.), and will post more later. Nevertheless,
CONGRATULATIONS
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN
and congratulations once again and a lifetime of thank yous to my fellow Americans, those who voted and those who couldn't but did what they could, to elect these two people to our nation's highest offices!
***
I'll be posting our new president's sober but moving speech in a new entry.
Some of my favorite ideas and lines include: his call to a duty and service beyond just ourselves or our country, but also to the world; the idea that military power alone is insufficient and doesn't entitle the US to do as it pleases, and that this country must display more humility and restraint; the statement that the market isn't not the ultimate arbiter of the nation's success; how his father could not have eaten at a Washington lunchcounter 60 years ago, and now he, Obama, stands before the nation and world as the new president; his remarks to the Muslim world, to foes, to the world's poor, and to other rich nations, about friendship, alliance, interdependence, and responsibility; the citation of Isaiah 52:1-2, "Arise, and shake off the dust" (which also made me think of Jay-Z's "Dirt Off Your Shoulders"), as we have been in an ever-deepening abyss these last 8 years; and one little echo of Winston Churchill's remarkable 1940 War Speech to the House of Commons, with the citation "that we did not turn our back nor...falter." While my cursory read-through didn't reveal any striking or unforgettable metaphors, rhetorically the few moments of anaphora ("On this day," "For us," "This is the price....This is the source.... This is the meaning") do convey real conviction. I think we can safely say that while this didn't match the poetry of Kennedy's only inaugural address, Franklin Roosevelt's first, or Lincoln's second, it was pretty thorough and pretty good.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Happy MLK Jr. Day
Happy Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day,
or, Happy Pre-Obama-Inauguration Day,
or Happy Last Day of the George Walker Bush Presidency Day!
Really, take your pick, though all three possibilities are conjoined in ironic ways. How fitting that the last day of George W. Bush's brutal, corrupt, destructive disaster of a presidency falls on the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s federally-recognized holiday, a day that the departing Vice President, Dick Cheney, and the most recent Republican Presidential hopeful, John McCain, like many in their party, both vigorously opposed up to the point that it became official. How telling also that they are now the contemporary face of the Republican Party, a party now centered in the Deep South, even though its chief founder and first presidential exemplar--before whose Memorial the President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama, our soon-to-be First Lady, Michelle Robinson Obama, his two children, Sasha and Malia, assorted family members, political and artistic stars, and hundreds of thousands of everyday people, celebrated joyously yesterday--stood on behalf of defeating the South's rebellion, its ongoing system, and the nation's division, and embodied a model of leadership and vision that President Obama has shown he will follow.
How fitting also that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and example, his words, his dedication and persistence, his courage and fearlessness, his profound sense of hope, his great love for his people and all people, and above all, his sacrifice, honored today and a beacon for all the world, hover over this inauguration, lead us right into it, and provide another model our new president has avowed, and against which the departing debacle of a president represented the ultimate antithesis.
His, George W. Bush's, was a government, a nation, a society built on lies, on faithlessness and bad faith, on chicanery and con-artistry and complete indifference to and defiance of the rule of law, the Constitution, what this nation supposedly has stood for since its founding, on giving those who had everything more and depriving those who had little anything, on torture and war and renditions and poisoning the environment and funneling tax dollars into the hands of the privileged few, corporations, banks, insurance companies, landowners, on religious fanaticism and provoking religious fanaticism and the misuse and abuse of religion, on finding the least qualified, most dogmatic and well-connected, more doctrinaire people for jobs and giving them a free pass, on destroying institutions not for the sake of reforming them, but out of a repeatedly failed ideology, on division, on sexism and racism and homophobia and classism and ethnocentrism, on tokenism, on domination and hierarchy and luxury for the few and consumerism pressed to an insane degree and fake credit and phantom assets and valueless derivatives and a ghost economy, on so utterly shattering this society and societies across the world, shattering this economy and the global economy, shattering our politics and the global political economy and balance, that a titanic shock-and-awe assault on it might be possible if his party could extend its lease on power and control, except that the result was the election of a pragmatic, center-left, young, charismatic, visionary Black junior Senator from Illinois with an unusual background and a platinum tongue to replace him.
We are complicit in what is passing, and what will come to pass; Bush's failures are our failures, and, as tomorrow promises, our gain.
As I've read it said of Franklin Roosevelt in the comments section of Glenn Greenwald's blog more than once, when visited by a group of supporters early in his tenure, he told them: "I want to do the right thing. Now you have to make me." Let's support our new president, and in the spirit of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and all who came before him and after him, let's make sure our new president does the right thing. He wants to, and we have to make him.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Links Hall: Memory as Innovation
I've been a little off the blogging grid of late, primarily because of work-related duties, but also because I've been preparing for a performance (as opposed to the usual reading) that I participated in, with Chris Stackhouse, at Links Hall this weekend. We were one of a number of people that Links Hall Associates Amina Cain and Jen Karmin invited as part of the second week of a four-week festival devoted to the idea of memory.
The first week included readings and performances by Judith Goldman with (my new colleague) John Beer; Nicole LeGette, Jenny Roberts, Timothy Yu; video by Abigail Child; and Lee Ann Brown, with Jeff Harms/A D Jameson/Toni Asante Lightfoot/Sarah Merchlewitz/Anni Rossi/Auroar Tabar/Rachel Tredon, and Roberto Harrison.
The lineup for this weekend was:
I'm usually wracked by anxiety over such things, but I have to say that a few years of teaching has done wonders for my shyness, and we were able to sync our readings, the images and projected texts, and stage entrances and exits properly after only a few rehearsals such that things went off without a hitch. (And we stayed pretty much within the requisite 20 minute framework!) The images, which we took from the pdf galleys as opposed to new scans, appeared immense and crisp on the rear white wall, while the texts pixillated a bit, and were probably harder for audience members to read.
We led off the first night, whose highlight I thought was the direct testimony in Lauri Jo's playlet, involving members of the TAMMS YEAR TEN project, by three men who'd served extended solitary confinement--TORTURE--in the horrific TAMMS CMAX "supermax" prison, in southern Illinois. Writer Terri Kapsalis led a talkback after the performance, and by common assent, the three ex-prisoners took the floor and spoke about how their experiences, and those of more than 200 others at TAMMS and countless others across the country, continued to pass under our society's radar. Mustafa Afrika, one of the men testifying as part of the playlet and talkback, eloquently related the experience to Abu Ghraib, and noted that while that international horror shocked the world, similar forms of torture, of US prisoners (one of the men spoke about having been in prison for 29 years, only to be released when the prosecutor and courts realized that they had no case against him), merits almost no commentary, protest or outrage. It was an emotional evening, to put it mildly, but I was glad that we were able to present in conjunction with the other artists and to have a little dialogue with them afterwards.
On the second night, we followed Jen Hofer and Dolores Dorantes, and Jen Karmin's polyphonic performance followed us, with the dancing duo of Tradeshow coming last, so the balance was different, but equally provocative, and got me thinking even more deeply about ideas around and the practice of collaboration, as well as future work to pursue.
As I was preparing for the event, I realized that you can easily movies with the newest version of PowerPoint (who knew?), so below is a short movie featuring images from Friday and Saturday. (There are none of us because I wasn't able to film us, but poet and composer Daniel Godston told me that he has both audio files and still photos, so when I get those I'll post or link to them.)
One of the coolest aspects of the event was the opportunity to experience collaboration in the moment, as we improvised at certain points with some of the texts--like "Geodesy"--while following a stricter set of directions with others ("Analysis I"). I told Chris that all my years of observing other poets freestyle on their own work had taught me some pointers about writing improvisatory possibilities into a work, and it's something I'm aiming to do in at least one new project.
Many thanks to Amina and Jen for inviting us, and thanks to all the wonderful artists we performed with!
The first week included readings and performances by Judith Goldman with (my new colleague) John Beer; Nicole LeGette, Jenny Roberts, Timothy Yu; video by Abigail Child; and Lee Ann Brown, with Jeff Harms/A D Jameson/Toni Asante Lightfoot/Sarah Merchlewitz/Anni Rossi/Auroar Tabar/Rachel Tredon, and Roberto Harrison.
The lineup for this weekend was:
Friday, January 16Originally Chris and I were going to present a new project, RAM (Revolutionary Access Memory), which we've been talking about and working on for several months, but because he's in NYC and I'm in Chicago, and I didn't have much free time this past fall, we decided to try out a new performative version of Seismosis. While we have co-read and delivered talks (to artists only) on the project, we'd never created a multimedia performance of it, though we'd spoken about this all the way back to the time we began collaborating, so we figured out how we would feature the images and texts, and then created two sets, which we performed on Friday and Saturday.
Patrick Durgin with Jen Hofer, the Seismosis Duo, Laurie Jo Reynolds with Amy Partridge, and video by Temporary Services
Saturday, January 17
Tradeshow, Jen Hofer with Dolores Dorantes, Seismosis Duo otra vez, and Jennifer Karmin with Mars Caulton/Joel Craig/Lisa Fishman/Krista Franklin/Chris Glomski/Daniel Godston/Lily Robert-Foley
Sunday, January 18
Tradeshow, Jen Hofer with Dolores Dorantes, Jennifer Karmin with Kathleen Duffy/Brandi Homan/A D Jameson/Lisa Janssen/Erika Mikkalo/Ira S. Murfin/Timothy Rey, and video by Laurie Jo Reynolds.
I'm usually wracked by anxiety over such things, but I have to say that a few years of teaching has done wonders for my shyness, and we were able to sync our readings, the images and projected texts, and stage entrances and exits properly after only a few rehearsals such that things went off without a hitch. (And we stayed pretty much within the requisite 20 minute framework!) The images, which we took from the pdf galleys as opposed to new scans, appeared immense and crisp on the rear white wall, while the texts pixillated a bit, and were probably harder for audience members to read.
We led off the first night, whose highlight I thought was the direct testimony in Lauri Jo's playlet, involving members of the TAMMS YEAR TEN project, by three men who'd served extended solitary confinement--TORTURE--in the horrific TAMMS CMAX "supermax" prison, in southern Illinois. Writer Terri Kapsalis led a talkback after the performance, and by common assent, the three ex-prisoners took the floor and spoke about how their experiences, and those of more than 200 others at TAMMS and countless others across the country, continued to pass under our society's radar. Mustafa Afrika, one of the men testifying as part of the playlet and talkback, eloquently related the experience to Abu Ghraib, and noted that while that international horror shocked the world, similar forms of torture, of US prisoners (one of the men spoke about having been in prison for 29 years, only to be released when the prosecutor and courts realized that they had no case against him), merits almost no commentary, protest or outrage. It was an emotional evening, to put it mildly, but I was glad that we were able to present in conjunction with the other artists and to have a little dialogue with them afterwards.
On the second night, we followed Jen Hofer and Dolores Dorantes, and Jen Karmin's polyphonic performance followed us, with the dancing duo of Tradeshow coming last, so the balance was different, but equally provocative, and got me thinking even more deeply about ideas around and the practice of collaboration, as well as future work to pursue.
As I was preparing for the event, I realized that you can easily movies with the newest version of PowerPoint (who knew?), so below is a short movie featuring images from Friday and Saturday. (There are none of us because I wasn't able to film us, but poet and composer Daniel Godston told me that he has both audio files and still photos, so when I get those I'll post or link to them.)
One of the coolest aspects of the event was the opportunity to experience collaboration in the moment, as we improvised at certain points with some of the texts--like "Geodesy"--while following a stricter set of directions with others ("Analysis I"). I told Chris that all my years of observing other poets freestyle on their own work had taught me some pointers about writing improvisatory possibilities into a work, and it's something I'm aiming to do in at least one new project.
Many thanks to Amina and Jen for inviting us, and thanks to all the wonderful artists we performed with!
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Amazing Spider-Man
So many stories, and comic book stores, in the naked (windy) city....
Three days and counting!
Three days and counting!
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