the chicago poetry calendar

THE NEWS

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Friday
Feb 20
Open mic/feature - 7:00-9:00
The Mercury Café
1505 W. Chicago Av
Vito, as usual, has 3 (COUNT 'EM...#!) fab features:
Kristin La Tour
Tara Keogh
Jenene Ravesloot

No cover charge

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Friday
Feb 20
9:30 pm
Viaduct Theater
3111 N. Western Avenue

The Partly Dave Show: Please Mister Postman
part of the Rhinoceros Theater Festival 2009
Dan Godston
Scott Hermes
Wells-next-the-Sea

Hosted by Dave Awl,
with co-hosts Christopher Piatt and Diana Slickman

The theme for this edition is "Please Mister Postman": an evening of pieces about letters, mail, and the post office! I'll (Diana Slickman) be co-hosting along with the titular Dave Awl and Christopher Piatt and our super-special guests include Scott Hermes (of the Neo-Futurists and the legendary Cardiff Giant) and Dan

Godston (poet, trumpeter, and curator of the Chicago Calling Arts Festival).

And we have the privilege of presenting the debut of a hot new band as our musical guests! For those of you who remember Analog Radio from the "Way of the Worrier" edition back in 2004 -- well, Dann Morr from Analog Radio is in a brand-new outfit called Wells-next-the-Sea, featuring (I'm told) boys, girls, flutes, fiddles, and I don't know what all kind of mayhem. Should be good!

Tickets: $12 or "pay what you can"

All reservations are handled through the Viaduct Theatre box office at (773) 296-6024.

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Friday,
Feb 20
6 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Howard Brown Health Center
4025 N. Sheridan Rd., Chicago

Launch Party for Condom Sense: A Real Life Education

Please join us for the official launch of our new multi-disciplinary sex-ed program created by and for youth infected and affected by HIV.

Community partners Howard Brown, Beyondmedia Education, and About Face Youth Theatre are proud to launch Condom Sense: A Real Life Education, a multi-disciplinary sex education program created in collaboration with Chicago-area youth.

The launch begins at Howard Brown with a gathering to showcase the pieces that make up Condom Sense, including Fast Forward, a play by About Face Youth Theatre that tackles the sex education crisis in America, HIV: Hey, It's Viral!, a groundbreaking sex-positive 20-minute video from Beyondmedia Education addressing HIV/AIDS prevention and activism from youth perspectives, and an LGBTQ-inclusive, medically-accurate prevention curriculum developed by Howard Brown's Broadway Youth Center.

A panel discussion will follow the presentation. Refreshments will be served.

Howard Brown Health Center is one of the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) healthcare organizations. Through a wide array of health, wellness, social service and research programs, Howard Brown cares for more than 28,000 adult and youth clients annually. Among its many programs is the Broadway Youth Center (BYC), which focuses on the needs of LGBTQ youth ages 24 years and under. In the safe and affirming environment of the BYC, youth socialize with their peers and gain access to comprehensive services, including housing or job placement assistance, free HIV and STD testing and medial care and counseling. For more information about Howard Brown or the BYC, please visit www.howardbrown.org

About Face Theatre creates exceptional, innovative, and adventurous plays to advance the national dialogue on gender and sexual identity, and to challenge and entertain audiences in Chicago, across the country, and around the world. About Face has three programming arms: our award-winning Mainstage Season, our innovative New Works Program, and our nationally recognized Education Programs, including the celebrated About Face Youth Theatre and Educational Outreach Tour that collectively reaches approximately 5,000 students and teachers each year. About Face is one of Chicago's most respected theatres, and is a national force in the development of new work about gender and sexual identity. For more information about About Face Theatre please visit www.aboutfacetheatre.com.

Beyondmedia Education collaborates with under-served and under-represented women, youth and communities to tell their stories, connect their stories to the world around us, and organize for social justice through the creation and distribution of media arts. Beyondmedia has partnered with more than 100 community organizations and schools to produce award-winning documentary films, multimedia installations, websites, spoken word performances, and photography exhibits. Beyondmedia specializes in media literacy and production workshops that equip marginalized communities to use these powerful tools to explore their lives, develop their voices, and educate the public to their stories. The work is screened across the U.S. and internationally in film festivals and cultural centers, schools and universities, on television, and via the Internet. For more information about Beyondmedia Education please visit www.beyondmedia.org. Questions?

Contact Jenny Mack, Director of Special Events, at 773.388.8992 or

jennym@howardbrown.org.

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Saturday
Feb. 21
7:30 sign up
8 pm Open Mic
9 pm featured performer
3rd Saturday Coffeehouse:

The Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
875 Lake Street, in Downtown Oak Park
THIS MONTH'S FEATURES:
Al DeGenova
Jared Smith
An Open Mic for Poets, Musicians, Storytellers & Other Performers at Unity Temple in Oak Park!

Albert DeGenova's most recent collection of poetry is The Blueing Hours (Virtual Artists Collective, 2008). In 2000, he launched the literary/arts journal After Hours, for which he continues as publisher and editor. He is a blues saxophonist and one-time contributing editor to Down Beat magazine. Al and Charlie Rossiter co-authored the book Back Beat (Fractal Edge Press, 2006) a collection of poetry with memoir of which Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote, "Back Beat beats everything for being beater than the Beats."

Jared Smith's poems have been published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in this country and abroad over the last 35 years. He is the author of 7 volumes of original poetry. He has served on the editorial board of leading poetry magazines such as New York Quarterly and Home Planet News. A past resident of Illinois, Jared will be coming to us all the way from his new home in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. A rare opportunity to hear a voice that was long a mainstay of the Chicago poetry scene, a voice that participated in Readings for Peace at Unity Temple.

Join us at Unity Temple, 875 Lake Street (at Kenilworth), Oak Park. 7:30 sign up, 8 pm Open Mic, 9 pm featured performer. Open Mic is limited to 5 minutes. (Sign up early—open mic time is limited.) Charlie Rossiter host. We are acoustic--no equipment provided. $3-$5 donation. Wheelchair accessible. Info at 708-660-9376.

UPCOMING FEATURES:

Mar. 21 - singer/songwriter Carol Williams

April 18 – Milwaukee poet laureate Susan Firer

May 16 – the folk-rock of Just Another Bird

DIRECTIONS:

From Chicago take the I-290 exit at Austin, go north to Lake and west to
Kenilworth

From the West take the I-290 exit at Harlem Ave, go north to Lake and east
to Kenilworth

With the el, exit the Green Line at Oak Park Ave, go north to Lake St;
west to Kenilworth

Parking--there's lots of street parking.

Also a village lot at Oak Park & North Blvd., and another at Lake Street & Forest.

Need more info: 708-660-9376.

We hope you can join us, and please forward this note to interested others.

If you would like to be taken off of our monthly email list, please hit reply and let me know.

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Saturday
Feb 21
9pm
Heartland Cafe
7000 N. Glenwood

The Art Against War shows continue. we have the stage at the Heartland Cafe starting at 9p but have moved the shows to Saturdays....our programs give artists and writers from around the area the opportunity to speak out against the wars and present a vision of peace.

The February show is cosponsored by and for the benefit of the AFSC's youth program and Peace Recruiters - CCOMY (Chicago Coalition Opposed to the Militarization of Youth).

Poetry from KING KEITH

PEACE FASHION SHOW (THIS IS NOT TO BE MISSED!)

Music by DONNIE BIGGINS

Our next show will be March 21st - cosponsored by and for the benefit of the

IRAQ VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR.

hope to see you there

$5

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Saturday
Feb 21 & 28
7:00 pm
Viaduct Theatre
3111 N. Western Ave
There are two performances left of The Art of Unbearable Sensations.

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Sunday
Feb. 22
1:30-4:30
Evanston Public Library -- Room 108
Church & Orrington
FOURTH SUNDAYS
RHINO POETRY WORKSHOPS and peer exchange

sponsored by RHINO/the Poetry Forum

Leader: Jared Smith

A former Chicagoland resident, Jared Smith is the author of seven critically acclaimed volumes of poetry along with two CDs. His Selected Longer Poems: 1983-2008 is forthcoming from Tamarack Editions. He has served on the editorial boards of The New York Quarterly, Home Planet News, and The Pedestal. Jared is former president of Poets & Patrons, a member of Illinois State Poetry Society and of the Academy of American Poets, as well as a past judge of the Jo-Anne Hirshfield Prize. He currently lives in Colorado.

Jared's topic: The Narrative in Contemporary Poetry: Pulling Dignity From Hard Times. Narrative poetry in contemporary times is much different than what we think of as traditional narrative. It's more immediately tied to the senses, and it's more nonlinear to capture the modern temperament. But it reaches into the soul of the people and it pulls them in like nothing else. The question is: how to do it.

Bring 15 or more copies (no longer than two pages) of work you want critiqued.

*$5 donation appreciated

COME AND TRY OUT YOUR NEW WORK ON US!

Past leaders and readers and all poets welcome. Drop in, have poems critiqued, and participate in an ongoing discussion of poetry and poetics. Sessions are free* and no registration is required.

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

This project has been partially supported by grants the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

For more info: RHINOPOETRY.ORG

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Tuesday
Feb 24
8:00 PM
The Cafe
5115 N. Lincoln

Jared Smith features!

Great poetry, great drinks, great googlie-mooglie!

$2 Admission

And we do pass the Crown Royal bag for voluntary feature financial enhancement.

The Café is a Poetry Green Zone.

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Wednesday
Feb 25
5:30 p.m.
Columbia College Chicago's Hokin Auditorium

623 S. Wabash Ave., Room 109

BRANDI HOMAN is the author of Hard Reds from Shearsman Books and the chapbook Two Kinds of Arson from dancing girl press. She received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and her MA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. The recipient of a Ragdale Foundation residency, Brandi is Editor-in-Chief of Switchback Books, a feminist press specializing in poetry by women. She writes professionally in advertising and is originally from Marshalltown, Iowa.

JAMES SHEA is the author of Star in the Eye, selected by Nick Flynn as the winner of the 2008 Fence Modern Poets Series. His poems have appeared in various journals, including American Letters and Commentary, Boston Review, Mrs. Maybe, and Verse. He currently teaches at Columbia College Chicago and DePaul University.

Sponsored by the Columbia College Chicago English Department, Creative Writing--Poetry Program http://www.colum.edu/academics/english_department

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Friday
Feb 27
7 – 9 pm

Molly Malone's
7652 Madison
Forest Park
After Hours Contributors Open Mic

The new issue is here! And we're celebrating with a contributors' open mic. Come hungry and thirsty AND bring friends.

Contributors will receive their copy of the new magazine and the open mic will begin at 7:30. The open mic is limited to contributors to After Hours reading 3-5 minutes of their work. We will begin the reading with contributors to the new issue.

Molly Malone's is easy to get to by car and there is plenty of parking. Located just west of DesPlaines Ave on Madison Street. Take the Eisenhower I-290 to Harlem Ave and go north to Madison, then go west about 1/2 mile to Molly's.

By public transportation, take the Blue Line to DesPlaines Ave and then walk about 4 blocks north to Madison, then one more block west to Molly's.

We hope to see you all there.