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Poetry Center Calendar: SPRING 2008

FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL | MAY |

February

Thursday FEBRUARY 7
EILEEN MYLES and SARAH ROSENTHAL

7:30 pm @ the Unitarian Center
1187 Franklin (at Geary), $5

• Eileen Myles was born in Cambridge, Mass. in 1949, graduated from U. Mass. (Boston) in 1971 and moved to New York City in 1974 to be a poet. She gave her first reading at CBGB's, and then gravitated to St. Mark's church where she studied with Jim Brodey, Bill Zavatsky, Alice Notley and Ted Berrigan. In 2007, she published Sorry, Tree, the latest of more than a dozen volumes of poetry and fiction including Chelsea Girls, Not Me, Skies and Cool for You. She wrote the libretti for Hell, an opera with music composed by Michael Webster which was performed on both coasts in 2004 and 06. She contributes to many journals including Art in America, Book Forum, The Nation, and The Believer. In 2007 she received the Warhol/Creative Capital art writing grant. She just finished directing the writing program at UCSD for five years and now she just writes and lives in LA.

• Sarah Rosenthal is the author of How I Wrote This Story (Margin to Margin, 2001), sitings (a+bend, 2000), not-chicago (Melodeon, 1998), and Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil, 2008). Her collection of interviews with Bay Area writers, A Community Writing Itself, is currently being considered by several publishers. She writes curricula on writing and reading for the Developmental Studies Center, a nonprofit publishing house, and teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University.

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Wednesday FEBRUARY 13
SFSU Faculty reading
DANIEL LANGTON

12:00 pm @ the Poetry Center
HUM 512, SFSU, free

• Daniel J. Langton began teaching at San Francisco State University in 1967. For forty years he’s divided his time between the English Department and Creative Writing. Over those years, his poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Paris Review, and Iowa Review, among many journals. His recent books of poetry include Daniel Langton’s Greatest Hits and Life Forms. For this rare appearance at the Poetry Center, he will read from a newly published book entitled The Sonnets (2007).

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Thursday FEBRUARY 14
SFSU Faculty reading
TONI MIROSEVICH and FRANCES PHILLIPS

4:30 pm @ the Poetry Center
HUM 512, SFSU, free

• Toni Mirosevich’s first collection of nonfiction, Pink Harvest: Tales of Happenstance, recently in print, received the First Series of Nonfiction Award from Mid-List Press. She is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including Queer Street and My Oblique Strategies, winner of the Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award. She is a Professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University and former Associate Director of the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives here at SFSU.

• Frances Phillips is the author of three collections of poetry: The Celebrated Running Horse Messenger (Kelsey Street), For a Living (Hanging Loose) and Up at Two (Hanging Loose). From 1982–88, she worked for The Poetry Center at San Francisco State, serving as its director from 1985–88. She was executive director of Intersection for the Arts from 1988–1994, and then became a program officer for the arts at the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, a position she holds today. She continues to teach creative writing and grantwriting at SFSU.

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Thursday FEBRUARY 21
F. S. ROSA and BRUCE BOONE

4:30 pm @ the Poetry Center
HUM 512, SFSU, free

• F. S. Rosa, author of the book of stories Post War (Ithuriel’s Spear, 2006), was a long-time student in Robert Glück’s writing workshops in San Francisco. She is a rank and file member of the San Francisco Labor Council representing SEIU Local 1021. In Fall 2003, she went to the West Bank for six weeks with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a trip which might not have happened had it not been for her education in the corner grocery stores of San Francisco. She is writing a novel about the afterlife of Italian American anarchist Carlo Tresca, and is also working on non-fiction pieces about her trip to the West Bank.

• Bruce Boone’s 1979 book of stories My Walk With Bob, regarded as a founding text of the (predominantly) San Francisco-based New Narrative writers (“a seminal and perfect work” -said Dennis Cooper), was recently brought back into print, by Ithuriel’s Spear. Painter Gred Chadwick, whose work graces this new edition's cover, writes: “My Walk With Bob is brief, edited down to a strong yet supple form, and carries its weight of thought with deep elegance.” Bruce Boone has also translated a number of works from French, including Georges Battaille’s Guilty and On Nietzsche, and with Robert Glück, cowrote LaFontaine.

Thursday FEBRUARY 28
DAVID MATLIN and JAMES SCULLY

4:30 pm @ the Poetry Center
HUM 512, SFSU, free

• David Matlin, novelist, poet, and essayist, is the author of the poetry and prose collections China Beach, Dressed in Protective Fashion, and Fontana’s Mirror. His first novel, How the Night is Divided, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. His latest book, Prisons: Inside the New America, from Vernooykil Creek to Abu Ghraib, has been acclaimed by Fanny Howe, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Ishmael Reed, who in his Foreword writes: “If he were addressing an enlightened population, this book would energize prison reform the way Ralph Nader went up against the automobile industry, and Jessica Mitford galvanized a national inquiry into the scams of the funeral business. It would rank with Upton Sinclair's exposé of the meat packing industry.” A native Californian, David Matlin lives and teaches in San Diego.

• James Scully for many years has worked to quietly radicalize American poetry, in theory and in practice, in how it is lived as well as in how it is written. His seminal book Line Break: Poetry as Social Practice (1988/new edition 2005), argues forcefully for artistic and cultural practices that actively oppose structures of power too often reinforced by intellectual activities. Besides his own books of poetry and essays, he has edited several anthologies, including Qechua Peoples Poetry, and during the 1980s edited Curbstone’s Art on the Line series. His Santiago Poems, 1975, following his experience in Chile immediately following the Pinochet coup d'état, was the first book published by Curbstone, and instrumental to the founding of that press. His latest book of poetry is Donatello’s Version.

Adrienne Rich, in her Foreword to Line Break, writes: "James Scully's essays, like his poems, refuse to soothe or simplify, to shortchange either poetry or the imperative for social revolution. They are continuously interesting because they take on poetry from so many angles, are written from a generous frame of reference and in a human voice."

"Scully's brilliance is mesmerizing, radicalizing, a power plant producing synapses in the 'mind politic' that may well allow Americans, finally, to write and discourse with our kind around the globe. If American poets have a role to play in preserving free speech in the 21st century, this book belongs in our every backpack." –Linda McCarriston

Professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, Scully now lives in San Francisco.

March

Saturday MARCH 1
in collaboration with Intersection for the Arts
and San Francisco State University

PRISON/CULTURE ART, IDEAS and DIALOGUE
featuring keynote speaker ANGELA DAVIS

12:00–6:00 pm @ Jack Adams Hall, Cesar Chavez Student Center, SFSU
Admission is free, but advance reservations are required
To RSVP or for details

• Prison/Culture is produced in collaboration with Intersection for the Arts’ Prison Project, a year-long series of events and programs exploring the California prison system, and in conjunction with the exhibition Criminal: Art and Criminal Justtice in America, on display at SFSU’s Fine Arts Gallery from Feb 16–March 15.

The symposium on Saturday, March 1 will feature panel discussions, workshops with some of the artists from “Criminal,” actors, musicians, literary artists, and prominent scholars and activists in criminal justice. Angela Y. Davis, internationally renowned scholar and activist, will deliver the keynote speech. Professor of history of consciousness and feminist studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, Ms. Davis’s recent work has focused on the social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of communities most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. Poet and novelist David Matlin, author of Prisons: Inside the New America, will be one of several other featured speakers and participants.

This day-long exchange of ideas will bring together artists, activists, students, and community members to examine the many ways in which art addresses and can influence social issues, in this case, the California Prison System. The symposium will feature panel discussions and workshops with dancers, musicians, visual artists, architects, theatre and literary artists

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Thursday MARCH 6
AND NOW WHAT
A reading of freedom by multi-generational spoken word poets & writers

4:30 pm @ the Poetry Center
HUM 512, SFSU, free

• And Now What comprises a coalition of local groups providing services for individuals, families, and communities working towards freedom from incarceration, and is a collaborative project of Xochitl Fierro/The R.O.A.D. (Realization of a Dream); Kenny Johnson/This Sacred Space; Margo Perin/Write & Rise; and Maurisha Williams/D.Y.M.E.S. Youth. Along with Xochitl Fierro, Kenny Johnson, Margo Perin, and Maurisha Williams, we’ll be hearing from Mark Hall (a.k.a. M-One), Michelle Williams, Randy Nichols, Billy Booker, David Ball, Roberto Perez, and 14-year old Michael Williams.

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Thursday MARCH 13
Two readings with poets
ELENI STECOPOULOS and ROBERT KOCIK

3:30 pm @ the Poetry Center
HUM 512, SFSU, free

7:30 pm @ the Unitarian Center
1187 Franklin (at Geary), $5

• Eleni Stecopoulos, author of Autoimmunity (Taxt, 2006), studied literature and Hellenic Studies at Princeton, creative writing at U. Virginia, poetics and anthropology at SUNY Buffalo. She is completing two projects: Idiopathic: Visceral Poetics and the Chronic Syndrome of the West (criticism/memoir) and Earth Also is a Private Language, a book-length poem about the island of Evvia (Euboea), its geothermal springs and ancient healing sanctuaries, and family stories from the island.

• Robert Kocik, poet, essayist, artist, design/builder, lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he directs the Bureau of Material Behaviors. He is currently developing a building based on “prosody” and poets’ imagined relevance to our society. With the choreographer Daria Fain, he has initiated the Prosodic Body—an aesthetics or artscience based on prosody as the bringing forth of everything. His publications include: Overcoming Fitness (Autonomedia, 2001), and Rhrurbarb (Field Books, 2007).

Photo: Robert Kocik (rt.) with Larry Eigner in his living-room on Magee St., Berkeley, circa 1990; by David Levi-Strauss.

Saturday MARCH 15
The New Asklepion Poetics and Healing
guest-curator Eleni Stecopoulos
featuring ERIC GREENLEAF and ROBERT KOCIK

2:00–6:00 pm @ the Unitarian Center
1187 Franklin (at Geary), $5-$10

• The New Asklepion. Under the holistic sign of the ancient healing sanctuary, we initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue among those who work at intersections of poetry, dream or altered consciousness, and healing. This afternoon-length program, guest-curated for the Poetry Center by poet and writer Eleni Stecopoulos, features writer-practitioners in presentation and public interviews.

• Eric Greenleaf, Balinese Healing of the Visible and Invisible Worlds, with original videos: 1) Ayurvedic Healing: The Interior Mantram as Medicine; 2) The Balian Ketakson: Healing in Trance in the Ancestors’ Voices; 3) Community Trance Rituals: Healing While Possessed by the Gods. A clinical psychologist and author of The Problem of Evil: Disturbance and its Resolution in Modern Psychotherapy, Eric Greenleaf directs The Milton H. Erickson Institute of the Bay Area. He does research on trance and healing in Bali, teaches internationally, and trains therapists and Feldenkrais Practitioners in hypnotic communication.

sangdedari

• Robert Kocik, Designing a Prosodic Building: The Missing Science of Health, Homelessness of Poetry, and Livelihood of Poets.“What, exactly, do words heal? Under what circumstances?" Poet, essayist, artist, design/builder, Robert Kocik lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he directs the Bureau of Material Behaviors. He is currently developing a building based on “prosody” and poets’ imagined relevance to our society. With the choreographer Daria Fain, he has initiated the Prosodic Body—an aesthetics or artscience based on prosody as the bringing forth of everything. His publications include: Overcoming Fitness (Autonomedia, 2001), and Rhrurbarb (Field Books, 2007).

Photo: Sang Hyang Dedari trance ritual, March 2001 in Bali, Tatian and Eric Greenleaf.

Tuesday MARCH 18
THE TIME WE KILLED
a film by Jennifer Reeves in collaboration with Lisa Jarnot

7:30 pm @ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street (at Third)
$10 general, $6 Cinematheque members, seniors, students with ID
for advance tickets call 415-987-ARTS

presented by San Francisco Cinematheque
in association with the Poetry Center

SF Cinematheque program note: We conclude our whirlwind Jennifer Reeves retrospective tonight with her 2004 feature, THE TIME WE KILLED. Shot in striking high-con black and white, THE TIME WE KILLED is an immersively captivating, free-associative tale of an agoraphobic writer fearfully trapped in her Brooklyn apartment on 9/11. A collaboration with poet Lisa Jarnot, who appears on screen in nearly every frame (and whose poetry is featured), the film is a claustrophobic exploration of contemporary subjectivity and the relationship between internal and external reality, "a cinematic fugue of lost lovers, found memories and televised invasions." THE TIME WE KILLED will be preceded by one of Reeves' earliest films, ELATIONS IN NEGATIVE.

San Francisco Cinematheque

April

• In honor of Oppen’s Centenary, the Salute to George Oppen on April 26 will be the Poetry Center’s sole public event during the month of April 2008.

Saturday APRIL 26
SALUTE to GEORGE OPPEN

2:00–4:00 pm @ the Koret Auditorium
San Francisco Main Public Library
100 Larkin St (Civic Center BART), free

Photo: George and Mary Oppen, Berkeley, December 1980; © Richard Friedman.

• George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) is regarded as one of the great American poets of his generation, with a singular poetic and political awareness manifest in extraordinary, durable works of poetry, a body of work that has exerted a powerful influence on subsequent writing. On the occasion of Oppen’s Centenary, the Poetry Center and the San Francisco Public Library co-present a Salute to George Oppen, featuring rare video footage and audio recordings, from the Poetry Center’s American Poetry Archives, of the poet reading his works (both the earliest known audio recording, February 19 1963, and the earliest known video recording, February 22 1973), along with remembrances and tributes by friends and fellow poets.

George Oppen’s capsule biography includes marriage (1927) to Mary Colby, his lifelong partner; early affiliation with the Objectivist group of poets (Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, Carl Rakosi, Lorine Niedecker, William Carlos Williams among them); the couple’s work as political activists throughout the Great Depression, when he began what became almost 25 years of poetic silence (1934–1958); service in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he was severely wounded in combat; seven years’ exile to Mexico during the McCarthy repressions; and a return to poetry in 1958, resulting in several remarkable books during the 1960s and ’70s. In 1966, the Oppens returned to San Francisco, where George had grown up. In 1969 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, for Of Being Numerous. Since Oppen’s death in 1984, his audience has increased, and publication of his works has continued, with volumes of Selected Letters, New Collected Poems, and most recent, George Oppen: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers (just out at the close 2007).

Cosponsored by San Francisco Public Library and Friends of the SF Public Library

May

Saturday MAY 3
PHILIP WHALEN’s Collected Poems
a celebration and tribute

2:00–4:00 pm @ the Koret Auditorium
San Francisco Main Public Library
100 Larkin St (at Civic Center BART), free

• Philip Whalen (October 20, 1923 – June 26, 2002) was one of the most creatively radical poets of the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and beyond. To celebrate The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen (Wesleyan University Press) join editor Michael Rothenberg, with Whalen’s poet friends Bill Berkson, Clark Coolidge, Diane di Prima, Norman Fischer, Dave Haselwood, Alastair Johnston, Joanne Kyger, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Leslie Scalapino, for an all-star tribute.

Photo: Philip Whalen doing calligraphy in his apartment, San Francisco, 1965; by Larry Keenan.

“This definitive volume reveals the pure ease of an ambling and mighty mind. Whalen is ever the erudite teacher, reminding one, above all, to ‘banish shoddy thinking’! This book should be the cornerstone of every poet’s library.” —Joanne Kyger

HOMAGE TO WBY

after you read all them books
all that history and philosophy and things
what do you know that you didn't know before?

Thin sheets of gold with bright enameling

23:xi:63

Co-sponsored by San Francisco Public Library and Friends of the SF Public Library

Monday MAY 5
live word & music performance
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA
with 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border:
Undocuments 1971–2007

12:00 noon @ the Poetry Center
HUM 512, SFSU, free

with live music by
Francis Wong tenor saxophone
Karl A. D. Evangelista guitar
Melody Takata taiko

• As Congress debates immigration legislation, and Americans (so we’re told) grow more polarized in their opinions, Juan Felipe Herrera provides a fresh perspective on this crucial human rights issue via his new collection of poetry, prose, and performance writings. Raised in the fields of California in a family of migrant workers, Herrera has blended art and activism for over 30 years as a pioneer of the Chicano spoken word movement. Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, he is prolific author of 23 books. This latest (187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971–2007, brand new from City Lights Books) is a powerful collection ranging over 35 years.

Photo: Juan Felipe Herrera, 1983, by Yolanda M. López.