April is National Poetry Month-here's a $#!%-load of events

Friday

Apr 3

7:30 p.m.

St. Paul’s Cultural Center

2215 W North Avenue

2-1/2 blocks west of the Damen stop on the CTA blue line

street parking available

Jennifer Karmin

Larry Sawyer

Elizabeth Harper

Daniel Godston

perform their poetry during The First Friday Poetry Series curated by Dan Godston!

beer, wine, soft drinks available @ cool-low prices

free admission, donation requested

Jennifer Karmin's text-sound epic, Aaaaaaaaaaalice, will be published by Flim Forum Press in 2009. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented nationally at festivals, artist-run spaces, and on city streets. Karmin teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Public Schools. Recent poems are published in Cannot Exist, MoonLit, Otoliths, Come Together: Imagine Peace (Bottom Dog Press) and Not A Muse (Haven Books).

Larry Sawyer curates the HYPERLINK "http://www.myopicbookstore.com/mynews/" Myopic Books reading series in Wicker Park, Chicago. Chapbooks include Poems for Peace (Structum Press), A Chaise Lounge in Hell (aboveground press), Tyrannosaurus Ant (mother's milk press), which was recently included in the Yale Collection of American Literature, and Disharmonium (Silver Wonder Press). His blog is HYPERLINK "http://larrysawyer.blogspot.com/" Me tronome. His work was also recently included in The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (anthology, Cracked Slab Books, 2007) and A Writers’ Congress: Chicago Poets on Barack Obama’s Inauguration (anthology, DePaul Humanities Center Press, 2009). Larry also edits HYPERLINK "http://www.milkmag.org" www.milkmag.org (since 1998). His poetry and literary reviews have appeared in publications including the Chicago Tribune, Babel Fruit, Vanitas, Jacket, MiPoesias, The Prague Literary Review, Coconut, 88, Hunger, Skanky Possum, Exquisite Corpse, Court Green, the Miami Sun Post, Ygdrasil, Shampoo, Van Gogh's Ear, and elsewhere.

Daniel Godston teaches and lives in Chicago. His writings have appeared in Chase Park, After Hours, Versal, Drunken Boat, 580 Split, Kyoto Journal, Eratica, The Smoking Poet, Horse Less Review, and other print publications and online journals. He also composes and performs music, and he works with the Borderbend Arts Collective to organize the annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival.

Elizabeth Harper lives in Chicago and has been reading her poems in bars (and coffeehouses and rock clubs and art galleries and churches and other places of direpute) for several years. She is a member of PolyRhythmic: A Chicago Arts Collective, which hosts a late-nite open mic night on Tuesdays. She participated in the Chicago Calling Arts Festival in 2006, 2007, and 2008. In April 2008, she participated in Poetry Bomb by reading poetry at the top of her lungs in front of Chicago's Water Tower and probably will again this year. Her two books of poetry are Love Songs from Psychopaths and Fairy Tales Gone Awry.

The First Friday Poetry Series is a Poetry Green Zone.

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Call for Proposals: Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2010

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness invites poets, writers, activists, and all concerned citizens to Washington, DC, March 10-13, 2010 for four days of poetry, community building, and creative transformation as our country continues to grapple with two wars, a crippling economic crisis, and other social and environmental ills.

The festival will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism -- opportunities to imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change.

We invite you to send proposals for panel discussions, group readings, roundtable discussions, workshops, and small-scale performances on a range of topics at the intersection of poetry and social change. Possibilities are endless. Challenge us.

The deadline is May 30, 2009.

Details and guidelines are online at: www.splitthisrock.org/documents/2010_panel_proposals.doc

Discussion and community building are at the heart of Split This Rock. We value diversity, creativity, and new ideas. Check out last year's schedule for inspiration: www.splitthisrock.org/schedule.html.

Please join us!

Help Split This Rock Spread the Word

Forward this email, post it on your blog, send a message to all your Facebook friends. We are a grassroots movement and need your help to reach a wide variety of poets and poetry lovers. Thanks!

WHY SPLIT THIS ROCK?

Split This Rock calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of activist poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation and witness from our home in the nation's capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.

Our next festival will be March 10-13, 2010 stay tuned here for festival details.....

Split This Rock Needs Your Support!

Support Split This Rock, the national network of activist poets. Donations are tax-deductible through our fiscal sponsor, the Institute for Policy Studies.

Click here to donate. Or send a check payable to "IPS/Split This Rock" to: Split This Rock, c/o Institute for Policy Studies, 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036. Many thanks!

Contact info@splitthisrock.org for more details or to become a sponsor.

Split This Rock Poetry Festival

www.SplitThisRock.org

202-787-5210

info@splitthisrock.org

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Dear poets and poetry people,

To celebrate National Poetry Month, Caffeine Theatre is pleased to

offer you and a guest free tickets to our production of TALLGRASS

GOTHIC on Saturday April 4 at 4pm.

TALLGRASS GOTHIC, by Melanie Marnich, is a modern riff on the Jacobean

verse classic THE CHANGELING by Middleton and Rowley. Both plays are

running in rotating repertory through April 12 at the West Stage of

the Raven Theatre Complex, 6157 N Clark at Granville.

To reserve your free tickets for yourself and a guest, simply email

rsvp@caffeinetheatre.com or call 312-409-4778. We hope to see you at

the theatre!

For more details, schedule, and a preview video trailer, visit

caffeinetheatre.com.

TimeOut Chicago says:

“****…Marnich’s jaggedly poetic, intensely tonal take makes for a

deeply creepy variation on Middleton and Rowley’s text, and Shook’s

imaginative staging plays up Tallgrass Gothic’s haunting qualities."

“Why hasn't someone thought to do this sooner? Author Melanie Marnich

made no secret of her rural-noir shocker being anything but an updated

revision of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's 17th-century

spine-chiller, The Changeling (not to be confused with the recent

movie of the same title). So what could be more logical than for a

single company to stage them together in repertory?” –Mary Shen

Barnidge, Windy City Times

Happy Poetry Month!

Jen Shook

Artistic Director

Caffeine Theatre

caffeinetheatre.com

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Saturday

Apr 4

10 AM - 4 PM

Chicago Cultural Center

Creative Chicago Expo

Admission Free

100+ Vendors

20+ Workshops

40+ Consultants

for Dance • Fashion • Film •

Literary • Music • Theater • Visual Art

Plan to attend Chicago's unique annual gathering of resources, spaces, services and expertise specifically for people in the arts. The Creative Chicago Expo brings the best of Chicago's cultural community together under one roof for one day.

Consult-a-thon

Sign up for one-on-one consulting with experts on business and career strategies. Get 20 minutes of intensive consulting for only $10. Consultathon is by appointment only, space is limited. Topics will cover organizational development and business issues for non-profit organizations, career coaching and discipline-specific advice for your career in fashion, music, visual art, dance, public art, theater, and more.

Workshops

Over 20 Workshops will be presented throughout the day, from Cultivating Individual Donors to Art Festival Applications, to Forming a Non-Profit and Finding Live/Work Space.

Vendors

Over 100 local and national services for every art discipline -- for individuals, art non-profits and small arts businesses. See the complete list here. Many are providing fabulous door prizes, which will be awarded throughout the day.

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Sunday

Apr 5

8:00-9:00 pm

88.7 Fm WLUW & Streaming Live on www.wluw.or

Guests: Jenene Ravesloot & Hugh Schwartzberg

Two poets who are hardly defined or limited by their poetry.

Jenene is an artist and producer of poetry/jazz CDs.

Hugh is a lawyer and a documentarian of Chicago poetry events.

And, yes, they are both terrific poets!

Guest host: Charlie Newman

www.wordslingers.org

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Sunday

Apr 5

7:00 pm

Myopic Books, Chicago

1564 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Chicago, IL 60622

(773) 862-4882

Oni Buchanan & Donna Stonecipher

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Monday

Apr 6

7:30 PM

Jak’s Tap

901 W. Jackson

Feature - Jaqueline Wolk

LYRIC NIGHT/DRUG-ANTI-DRUG SONGS

In celebration of this marriage of music and words, Waiting 4 the Bus presents music lyric night. April 6th at Jaks Tap, we give you The Needle and The Damage Done. Songs about Drugs. Taking Drugs, Bein’ on Drugs, and Kicking the Habit.

Just add some song lyrics to your regular set and then you’re all set. Anything from early psychedelic pop to Trip Hop, and you’re ready to go.

W4tB is a poetry green zone

We do pass the hat for suggested donations

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Tuesday

Apr 7

8:00-10:00

The Cafe

5115 N. Lincoln

Feature - Bruce Matteson

Great poetry, great drinks, great googlie-mooglie!

Open mike & feature every Tuesday...8:00-10:00

$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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Thursday

Apr 9

1:00-2:00 p.m.

Film Row Cinema, Columbia College Chicago

1104 S. Wabash Ave., 8th Floor, Chicago, IL 60605

ROBERT POLITO’s most recent books are the poetry collection Hollywood & God and The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (forthcoming August 2009). His other books include Doubles, A Reader’s Guide to James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover, and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, which received the National Book Critics Circle award in biography. He is the founder and Director of the New School Graduate Writing Program, and is completing a new book, Detours: Seven Noir Lives.

DAVID TRINIDAD’s most recent book, The Late Show, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2007. With Jeffery Conway and Lynn Crosbie, he co-wrote Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse (Turtle Point, 2003), a mock-epic based on the 1950 film All About Eve. His other books include Answer Song (High Risk Books, 1994), Hand Over Heart: Poems 1981-1988 (Amethyst Press, 1991), Pavane (Sherwood Press, 1981), and Plasticville (Turtle Point, 2000), a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets. With Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton, he edited Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (Soft Skull Press, 2007). Trinidad teaches poetry at Columbia College Chicago, where he co-edits the journal Court Green.

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Friday

Apr 17

8:00pm - 10:00pm

The Horseshoe

4115 N. Lincoln Avenue

7732481366

Inspired by round-robin nights held regularly in Nashville, Los Angeles and New York, Chicago-based singer-songwriter Larry O. Dean started Folk You! in December 2001. Weary of standard acoustic showcases, Dean wanted something more intimate and at the same time, more varied.

Held the third Friday of every month, Folk You! presents a quartet of performers taking the stage simultaneously with naught but their guitars and songs. Interaction is encouraged but there is no script; performers may play and let the songs speak for themselves, or talk about how they came to write them. Backing is also provided on occasion by violist, Derek Walvoord.

Who performs at Folk You! ? Larry hosts and plays, joined by three others. The one throughline is the night must comprise songs that can be played nakedly and stand up alone. Obviously performers well-versed in folk-type solo acoustic situations are welcome, but Dean also encourages songwriters who tend to front electric combos to step out from their role as one of the band and let the songs be heard as they were written.

This month: TONY MEMMEL, TODD MURRAY & KORY QUINN

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Friday

Apr 17

6:00 PM

FLATFILEgalleries

217 North Carpenter L12

Free & open to the public.

UniVerse of Poetry

www.universeofpoetry.org

&

Whole Foods Market

invite you to celebrate the

The Marriage of Poetry

featuring readings by

Danielle Chapman & Dan-Beachy Quick

Live performances by

Pont des Arts Ensemble

featuring Richard Fammerée, Carrie Ingrisano, Meg Lauterbach, Victor Sanders, Meg Thomas, Rachel Jamsion Webster & Jeanette Aylward

&

The Jim Barbick Trio . . .

A Mother's Day/Father's Day poetry tribute featuring:

Dina Elenbogen

Richard Fammerée

Maureen Flannery

Mary Hawley

Larry Janowski

Lauren Levato

Onam Liduba

Toni Asante Lightfoot,

Charlie Newman

Elise Paschen

Mike Puican

Parneshia Jones

Stella Vinitchi Radulescu

Judith Valente

Rachel Jamison Webster

& Winners from Louder than a Bomb

Showing in the FLATFILE CINEMA

(Gallery East):

The screening of "War Rug," a poem film by Francesco Levato.

Continual play of the visceral photographs of Susan Aurinko.

The screening of "A Message From the East."

An organic wine & cheese reception compliments of

Whole Foods Market

&

a Mothers/Fathers Day Market featuring

Fresh Jewelry Company

&

green genes

organic + recycled + re-purposed

The Marriage of Poetry will be recorded live by

Chicago Public Radio/Chicago Amplified

UniVerse of Poetry [www.universeofpoetry.org] is an online archive, interactive forum, and celebration of international poetry encouraging

universal dialogue, compassion and peace. UniVerse honors courageous, celebrated poets from every nation of the world, regardless of territory,

also including oral traditionalists, poets writing in endangered languages

and poets collaborating with music and film. "One Poem: The Next Generation"

will soon introduce international young people's poetry.

UniVerse of Poetry initiates a new opportunity for international poets--many of whom are refugees--to be heard, read and studied. These poets often transcend hardship, isolation, and exile to write the enduring human story. Curricula are being developed to enable schools and universities worldwide to utilize UniVerse as a free resource.

UniVerse of Poetry is dedicated to freedom of expression for everyone everywhere

and the eternal dialogue of wisdom and prophetic sanity renewed daily by poets internationally.

All donations benefit UniVerse of Free Expression.

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Friday - Sunday

April 17-26

7:00 PM - Fri/Sat

8:00 PM - Sunday

Links Hall

3435 N Sheffield

Cupola Bobber sails into Links Hall April 17-26 with World Premiere Way Out West, The Sea Whispered Me.

Links Hall is pleased to present the World Premiere of Cupola Bobber’s Way Out West, The Sea

Whispered Me, co-commissioned by

Links Hall and PS122 (NYC) in partnership with the National Performance Network. Way Out West, The Sea Whispered Me runs Friday through Sunday for two weeks April 17–26, 2009. Performances are Friday and Saturday nights at 8pm and Sunday nights at 7pm. Tickets are $15 general admission or $10 for students, seniors and groups of 10 or more. For group sales and more information call 773.281.0824, and to purchase tickets online through Brown Paper Tickets visit www.linkshall.org.

“Cupola Bobber can lay claim to a special talent for alternative performance making of disarmingly odd, cosmic charm.” - The Times of London

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Sunday

Apr 19

3:30 pm

Wherever You Are!

The Poetry Bomb!

What that means is people from all walks of life are invited to participate in or simply enjoy either poetry shows, or random acts of poetry.

Curious: Check out www. myspace. com/thepoetrybomb for more information on show locations.

Want to help out: If you like to read poetry (whether you write it or not), or like to organize shows or advertizing, please contact The Bomb Squad at poetrybomb@gmail.com.

Also, if you run a reading or are a regular at one, we'll be happy to advertise your show in our advertisement. Just let us know.

I hope to see you at a show, or on a street corner in April!

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Sunday

Apr 19

7:00 pm

Myopic Books, Chicago

1564 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Chicago, IL 60622

(773) 862-4882

Karen Leona Anderson & William Allegrezza

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SUNDAY

APR 19TH

2:00 PM - 4:30 PM (Reception & reading)

at the home of Ralph Hamilton:

630 Clinton Place (ONE BLOCK WEST OF THE EVANSTON ARTS CENTER)

Evanston, IL 60201

Phone: 847-492-1106

A SPECIAL INVITATION TO OUR FRIENDS

TO A READING & PARTY

CELEBRATING THE RELEASE OF RHINO 2009

FEATURING poets from RHINO 2009:

Vincent Francone

Greg Grummer

Tim Hunt

Ron Offen

Stella Radulescu

Susan Slaviero

Past contributors to Rhino are welcome to read a poem at the open mike following the featured readers.

BRING FRIENDS & FAMILY TO & HEAR OUR MIGHTY ANIMAL --

THE (NOT SO LITTLE) MAGAZINE WITH THE BIG HORN!

with a completely new look for 09!

EAT, DRINK & BE POETRY.

RHINO 2009 & other delicious publications - will be available for purchase & perusal.

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Monday

Apr 20

8:00 PM

Red Line Tap
7006 N. Glenwood
The Injured Parties once again plays IPO Chicago!
Also performing:
Nick Bognar
Crash Street Kids
First In Space
Incredible Shrinking Boy
The Smiling Eyes
The Auramatics
http://www. heartlandcafe. com

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Sunday

Apr 26

7:00 pm

Myopic Books, Chicago

1564 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Chicago, IL 60622

(773) 862-4882

Arpine Grenier & Guest

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