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Saturday, September 26, 2015

Speech Is Not Free! 60th Anniversary of Howl, poetry workshops, and more . . .

Speech is Not Free! 60th Anniversary Celebration of Howl, Ping-Pong Free Press Extravaganza!

Featuring Anne Waldman and Ambrose Bye in performance
anneandallen
pc: Jaroslav Kratochvil
Group Reading of Howl, screening of the Telling Pictures film, Howl.
Poetry Reading of The Revolution Will Have its Sky, Maria Garcia Teutsch
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Mike Scutari 667-2764

Speech is Not Free
Howl 60th Anniversary, choral reading and Film; music by Anne Waldman and Ambrose Bye; a benefit for Ping-Pong Free Press/release party for the 2015 journal.
On Friday October 16 the Henry Miller Memorial Library will present their second annual Speech is Not Free Event with apoetry reading from the Library’s literary journal Ping-Pong; a group reading of Howl; a performance featuring Anne Waldman and Ambrose Bye followed by a showing of the Telling Pictures film, Howl.
On Saturday the Library will host performance and poetry workshops: 10-11:45, Riot Writing: poems to start a revolution generative workshop with Ping-Pong EIC, Maria Garcia Teutsch; 12-12:30 brown bag lunch. 12:30-2:30-Performance and Poetry workshop with Anne Waldman and Ambrose Bye; 2:30-4: Free Speech Presentation and exhibit: informal chat with library executive director Magnus Torén.
On Saturday Evening there will be performances by Grammy award winning artist Ian Brennan, and Bob Forrest of Thelonius Monster.
ginsbergtypinghowl
Allen Ginsberg typing Howl
Saturday 10/17/15 Workshops:
10:00-11:45 am: Riot Writing—Poems to start a Revolution: Poetry of Protest is Poetry of Witness generative workshop with Maria Garcia Teutsch
Poetry is written for any number of reasons, most often having to do with witnessing: the poet sees something so beautiful they want share it with the world, or perhaps the poet sees an injustice they want to give voice to—poetry of social consciousness. Working primarily with poetry of the latter ilk, we will examine Chicano/a poetry, Feminist poetry, Palestinian Poetry, Jewish poetry, Russian poetry, Syrian poetry etc… and then generate and share our own poems of protest.
12:30-2:30:The Poem-in-Performance: A Workshop with Anne Waldman & Ambrose Bye
Working with our melopoeia, — the innate music of our writing — we will let our poetry guide us into various performance strategies and modes of composition. We will be working with our voice, our timing, possible instrumentation, collaboration and the like. We will consider methods of sprechstimme (speak-singing), monologue, vocal duets, curses, spells, lullabies, blues, poem-as-libretto, and also consider how to shape the work on the page with its orality in mind. We will begin with some “experiments of attention” and work toward individual pieces we will then record on a CD. Participants may also bring a piece of their choice to class to work on, as well as instruments they can play. Musicianship is welcome! Discussion will include some performance theory.

7:00PM–Saturday evening performances by Grammy Award winning artist Ian Brennan and Bob Forrest (Thelonius Monster).

About the artists:
Anne Waldman The author of more than 40 collections of poetry and poetics, Anne Waldman is an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry movement, and has been connected to the Beat movement and the second generation of the New York School. Her publications include Fast Speaking Woman (1975), Marriage: A Sentence (2000), and the multi-volume Iovis project (1992, 1993, 1997).
Her work as a cultural activist and her practice of Tibetan Buddhism are deeply connected to her poetry. Waldman is, in her words, “drawn to the magical efficacies of language as a political act.” Her commitment to poetry extends beyond her own work to her support of alternative poetry communities. Waldman has collaborated extensively with visual artists, musicians, and dancers, and she regularly performs internationally. Her performance of her work is engaging and physical, often including chant or song, and has been widely recorded on film and video. www.annewaldman.org

Ambrose Bye, musician/producer grew up in the environment of The Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University, graduated from The University of California, Santa Cruz and was trained as an audio engineer at the music/production program at Pyramind in San Francisco. Working primarily with poets, he has produced four albums with Anne Waldman, “In the Room of Never Grieve”, “The Eye of the Falcon”, “Matching Half”, and “The Milk of Universal Kindness”. He also produced “Comes Through in the Call Hold” featuring Waldman, Thurston Moore, and Clark Coolidge. Recently he produced, “Harry’s House” a compilation from recordings done at Naropa University and is working on Volume Two. www.fastspeakingmusic.bandcamp.com

Maria Garcia Teutsch is an award-winning poet, editor and educator. Her most recent collection, The Revolution Will Have its Sky, received the Minerva Rising Chapbook award, Judge: Heather McHugh. She serves as editor-in-chief of The Homestead Review, Ping-Pong Magazine and Ping-Pong Free Press. She has been teaching poetry and creative writing classes at Hartnell College for the past 16 years where she received the Gleason Award for teaching excellence. Ilya Kaminsky says of Maria’s poetics: “The voices in her poems are direct and yet there is a certain mystery to this directness, this clarity of address. Clarity, the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish taught us, is the first mystery. She understands this too. Her poems can be devotional, or political or sexy, but there is always this sense of direct address, of clarity that isn’t all that simple, that contains a kind of tenderness, a kind of playfulness that is clear and mysterious at the same time.” www.marialoveswords.com

Thursday, September 3, 2015

The Revolution Will Have its Sky, Now Available!



Judge's Citation, Heather McHugh

The Revolution Will Have Its Sky
by Maria Garcia Teutsch
*
The revolution will have its sky—where else might its banner wave, aloft,
esteemed--and still be widely legible? In order for us to discern what otherwise the
sight alone can’t catch, impulses appropriate letters, airs take shape, the wind turns
signs to tatters, tatters to signs. The author of these poems keeps an eye not on a
single great celestial value, but on the human disposition to scrips, emblems, notes,
names, lists: The scores we keep.

The tricks that contribute to this work's verbal motif are many, but not superficial.
Brothel trick, funeral trick, mirror trick, catafalque trick: they arise as the recourse
of an active alertness, in the face of masks, to the presence of representations.
In heraldry, an engraver's trick enlists letters or numbers (written or carved) to
represent colors (under whose airier sways may armies march). But this poet's
alerted attention is to another sort of detachment.

The senses of the word “trick” flicker between means and meaning, exploit and
exploiter, ruse and wit; between adroitness and waylaying; between wile and skill,
where working skeptics must be wary even of awareness: "Mirrors in tatters
become a veil." And where exactly are those "Stripes in gold fringes"? In words? In
garbs? The grand banners and regal ribbons of a Reine Soleil ? (Or the sun’s own
sine qua non , taken, in a coup d’oeil , for a single eyeblink?) Even love hurts; and
looking (or seeming) is its chief instrument.

This poetry isn't out to convert, but to advert. It doesn't pledge allegiance or invest
in transcendent causes, but rather observes some kinds of signs – signs of war, wars
of sex, hexes of communication It won't hallow a transparency; it won’t turn away
from an execution.

In the skeptic's etymology, to look and to reflect are kin. I watch, says the skeptic.
And the watch pulled from the Madame/ Queen’s breast “[s]teals a whirl of second
hands.” The ticker—with its little diamond—keeps count of time’s bit-bedevilled
billionfold: more and more representations of the claim to be one. Emblems of
Monarch, Freemason and Pope alike inscribe a dialectic: two arms serving the same
brain. (Hence the insignias of their respective realms: the unicorn's complement of
lion; the double-headed eagle; two keys crossed.)

The heart of the matter, the matter with consciousness, is the momentary: the
ticker cannot construct enough momentousness out of the countlessness or bits of
particulars. "…The eternal song/can prolong the funeral trick/ but for a moment…”
Whether in love or in politics, a con is attended by its pro.

This work's occasions are implicated in its materials: with trompes l'oeil , jacks and
johns, sleights of hand, this poetry registers some serious claims and obligations:
"After he sells her to the rebels/for 100 women…/…she becomes…/An anti-image
singing/to an image in a field of blue." (An engraver's trick is an anti-image too.)
Constitutions are (constitutively) vulnerable to prostitutions, restitutions,
destitutions.

In a final draft, the colors may come down to a blast of taps: "If you fasten a
collection/of decorations to a uniform/you can give last orders/ to last men." In
black and white, Old Glory has been tagged. Seeing illusions attached to
engagements, uses to ubiquities, profanities to idealism, privates to a general, The
Revolution Will Have Its Sky reminds us enlistees (whether in grays or blues,
whether in wishes or words, whether in war or love) how down-and-dirty signing
up can be.

Heather McHugh
February 14, 2015
Seattle WA

To purchase a copy of this collection please go here: Minerva Rising