Chicago Durutti Skool

CHICAGO DURUTTI SKOOL 2011
May 1st, 5th & 6th

The Durutti Skool & Red Rover Series
would like to invite you to take part in a series of events
concerning poetry, social existence, Marxism and Anarchism

Our main concern is to join in the greater conversation occurring around the country at other Durutti Skools this year about poetry itself as a catalyst for social change. The idea for the skools began last summer when a group of poets met in Berkeley, California as part of the 95 Cent Skool. All participants were invited to form their own skools in order to continue the conversation and encourage poets to connect more strongly with their communities and ideas about writing, community, and change.

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SUNDAY, MAY 1st
Poetry for Labor:
A May Day reading & celebration
Guest curated by John Keene
9am-12pm @ the Haymarket Square

POETRY FOR LABOR is a free, public, participatory reading to celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the Haymarket Square Affair in 1886, one of the signal events in US and global labor history, and the struggles of workers in the US and worldwide. All participants are welcome. Bring your own poem or poems, poems or prose by writers you love, short autobiographical pieces, or any text that brings to life, in celebration, in reflection, in commemoration, work and those who do it. Come out and read, recite and perform your poems!

JOHN KEENE teaches at Northwestern University and is fully or partly responsible for two books, and many drawings and translations, more of which are on their way.

LOCATION:
the Haymarket Martyrs’ Statue, Haymarket Square
approximately 165 N. Desplaines Street
half a block north of the intersection with W. Randolph Street
CTA Green or Pink Lines to the Clinton-Green Station

ALSO RECOMMENDED FOR MAY DAY:
April 30th @ 2pm Haymarket Re-enactment
May 1st @ 1pm Haymarket Martyrs' Ceremony
http://www.illinoislaborhistory.org

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THURSDAY, MAY 5th
Chicago Durutti Skool: Workshop
with the Next Objectivists
7-9pm @ Mess Hall

THE NEXT OBJECTIVISTS is a free, open-to-the-public poetry workshop dedicated to the study & reproduction of the outsidereal. We take this term from the "Black Mountain" poet Edward Dorn & our name from the second generation modernist poets associated with The Objectivist Press. Although writers associated with the Objectivists and Black Mountain "schools" (Bunting, Creeley, H.D., Niedecker, Pound, Reznikoff, Williams, Zukofsky to name only those we've already studied) are prominent stars in our constellation, our objective is not to reproduce any particular style, mode or tradition, but instead to draw on many different ways of doing and making in order to isolate those practices of writing & publishing & above all those poetic effects which lead us out of the neoliberal present & the future it imagines.

The Next Objectivists Poetry Workshop was founded in January 2009. Members make the curriculum as we go along. Our meetings are potlucks and beginners are always welcome. We read, discuss & write poetry together. As time allows we publish our findings through our website: http://nextobjectivists.blogspot.com

LOCATION:
Mess Hall, 6932 North Glenwood Avenue
CTA Red Line to the Morse Station
http://www.messhall.org

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FRIDAY, MAY 6th
Chicago Durutti Skool: Readings & Discussions
with Frank Rogaczewski & Michelle Taransky
7-9pm @ Outer Space Studio

What is the role of poetry and the poet in addressing and engaging social awareness?

FRANK ROGACZEWSKI holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago and teaches in the MFA Program at Roosevelt University in Chciago. He lives in Berwyn with his wife Beverly Stewart. "Fate of Humanity" was released by American Letters and Commentary in Fall 2009. Poet Mark Nowak describes the book well: "Straight from the near west suburbs of Sandburgland, Frank Rogaczewski explodes the less than brave new world we’ve unfortunately arrived at. The Fate of Humanity in Verse sears through the vast gaps of capitalism and pop culture in multi-page paragraphs of pure invention. It is quite simply, to borrow two of Rogaczewski’s titles, an “Arse Poetica” for “The Day They Outsourced America.”

MICHELLE TARANSKY is the author of "Barn Burned, Then" (Omnidawn 2009). She lives in Philadelphia, works at Kelly Writers House, as Reviews Editor for Jacket2, and teaches at University of Pennsylvania and Temple University.

LOCATION:
Outer Space Studio, 1474 N. Milwaukee Avenue
third floor walk up, not wheelchair accessible
CTA Blue Line to Damen Station

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DURUTTI SKOOL on Facebook, National Events
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=155285014499575

RED ROVER SERIES
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/redroverseries
redroverseries@yahoogroups.com

04.26 the Cafe poetry open mic & feature

April 26, 8:30PM

The Cafe open mic
5115 N. Lincoln Ave.
$2 & 2 drink minimum (any drink, even bottled water or soda)
plus donation for the feature

The Cafe (5115 N. Lincoln Ave.) hosts a weekly poetry/performance art open mic (hosted by Janet Kuypers). April 26th has Martin Altman as a feature, following an open mic.

For info about the open mic and the 2011 schedule (or getting the chance to sign up for your OWN feature, or even to check out the menu for the great food at the Cafe, because we have a collection of books to choose from for anyone who orders food at the Cafe during the poetry evening), you can always check out http://www.chaoticarts.org/thecafe/ for weekly podcasts, feature videos or future schedules.

06.21 the Cafe poetry open mic & feature

June 21, 8:30PM

The Cafe open mic
5115 N. Lincoln Ave.
$2 & 2 drink minimum (any drink, even bottled water or soda)
plus donation for the feature

The Cafe (5115 N. Lincoln Ave.) hosts a weekly poetry/performance art open mic (hosted by Janet Kuypers). June 21st has Jessica Helen Lopez, Zachary Kluckman and Katrina Guarascio as a group feature, following an open mic.

For info about the open mic and the 2011 schedule (or getting the chance to sign up for your OWN feature, or even to check out the menu for the great food at the Cafe, because we have a collection of books to choose from for anyone who orders food at the Cafe during the poetry evening), you can always check out http://www.chaoticarts.org/thecafe/ for weekly podcasts, feature videos or future schedules.

April 29: The Dollhouse Reading Series

The Dollhouse Reading Series presents

Jennifer Karmin

Stephen Danos

Steve Roggenbuck

FRIDAY, APRIL 29th

Doors 8pm / Reading 9pm

1850 W. Belle Plaine Ave, #3

Curated by Dolly Lemke

Bring 2-3 books to swap!

JENNIFER KARMIN's text-sound epic, Aaaaaaaaaaalice, was published by Flim Forum Press in 2010. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. A proud member of the Dusie Kollektiv, she is the author of the Dusie chapbook Evacuated: Disembodying Katrina. Walking Poem, a collaborative street project, is featured online at How2. In Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools (http://aaaaaaaaaaalice.blogspot.com).

STEPHEN DANOS is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry at Columbia College Chicago, where he is the recipient of a Follett Fellowship and the Eileen Lannan Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lo-Ball, Bateau, Juked, Columbia Poetry Review, Phantom Limb, OVS Magazine, and LEVELER.

STEVE ROGGENBUCK. i am 23 years old, and i live in chicago. i grew up in rural michigan and played in a death metal band in high school. i am a vegan and a buddhist. i make jpegs, videos, and text poems, all available free online, self-published into the public domain. i have a book of found poems set in helvetica called DOWNLOAD HELVETICA FOR FREE. COM, i also have a short chapbook called i am like october when i am dead (2010). i run the tumblelog INTERNET POETRY and help with a justin bieber fan twitter. this is my main site (http://www.steveroggenbuck.com/), where i post a mix of creative content and my ideas about poetry and the internet (archive).

THE POETRY PENTATHLON:Friday, September 2nd 7:30-10PM

Friday, September 2nd
7:30-10PM
St. Paul's Cultural Center
2215 W NORTH AVE
THE POETRY PENTATHLON IS A LIVE PERFORMANCE EVENT IN CHICAGO. CONTESTANTS MUST COMPETE IN ALL FIVE EVENTS AND WILL BE JUDGED ON BOTH WRITING ABILITY AND PERFORMANCE STYLE.
ALL CONTESTANTS SHOULD HAVE FORM SUBMITTED NO LATER THAN JULY 15TH.
CANCELLATION OF APPEARANCE MUST BE SUBMITTED VIA E-MAIL NO LATER THAN AUGUST 1ST.
THE PENTATHLON IS A JUDGED READING. CONTESTANTS WILL BE AWARDED POINTS ON BOTH THEIR
WRITING ABILITY AND THEIR PERFORMANCE STYLE.
WARNING: THE ONLY PRIZES AWARDED FOR THE EVENING ARE PRIDE AND BRAGGING RIGHTS, ANY TROPHIES
ARE GRAVY AND SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS SUCH
PLEASE FILL OUT THE FORM ON THE HOMEPAGE AT http://www.waiting4thebus.com/
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS CAN BE SENT TO WAITING4BUS@GMAIL.COM

EVENTS
1.Poetry Prompt (prompt not given until night of the event, poem is written during the
course of the evening)
2.a rant
3. A Sestina
4. a Zombie Poem
5. performing a work of a famous dead poet (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

submit to us

Exact Change Only is now accepting submissions for its Sumer issue. Submit between 1 – 5 poems at a time. We will read all styles and themes of poetry, as long as it is honest, quality material. Prefers poetry 50 lines or shorter.

We only accept submissions over e-mail. Poems should be attached as Word documents, with the poet’s name along with the names and number of poems attached. Include both e-mail and mail addresses.

Exact Change only acquires first rights. We accept only original work. simultaneous submissions are okay, just inform us of other publications. Poets may submit a maximum of 5 poems per issue. We tend to comment on rejected work. All contributing poets receive a copy of the journal.
All Submissions for the Summer Issue must be submitted by May 15th

All submissions for the Winter Issue must be sent by October 31st.

Send submissions to exactchangepress@gmail.com

April 15-17: To Art & Profit festival

TO ART & PROFIT:
Creative Labor, Collective Action & Conscientious Capitalism

Interdisciplinary performance series
arts-focused dialogues & street spectacles

Curated by Links Hall Artistic Associates
Abra Johnson & Meida McNeal
http://toartandprofit.wordpress.com

APRIL 15-17
Quit Bullshittin': Recognizing Division
& Building Solidarity in the Arts

Collaborating Artists:
In The Spirit, Siete Lunas Nuevas, Avery R. Young,
Boogie McClarin, Nikki Patin, Crystle Dino,
Nicole Noland & Fathom DJ

PERFORMANCES
8pm Friday & Saturday
at Links Hall, 3435 N.Sheffield
http://linkshall.org

COMMUNITY SPECTACLE & DISCUSSION
4pm Community Spectacle
5:30pm Panel Discussion
at the Maekeen Room
2147 S. Lumber Street, Suite 405
River Front Lofts, Pilsen

UPCOMING MAY 20-22
Come As You Are: Re-Imagining Art with a Conscience

Collaborating Artists:
Silvita Diaz Brown, Nicole Garneau & Lani Montreal;
Nicole LeGette; The Ladies Ring Shout,
Ayako Kato & David Boykin

W4tB presents Open Mic at the Bus Stop:

7:30pm - 10:00pm

Cafe Ballou

939 N Western Ave.

W4tB Open Mic Night

Cafe Ballou

939 N Western

7:30-10pm

Featuring: Elizabeth Harper

Evan Lavender Smith & Kiki Petrosino @ Columbia College

Spring 2011 PO ET RY Reading Series
Sponsored by the Department of English Columbia College Chicago

Kiki Petrosino & Evan Lavender-Smith
Stage Two 618 S. Michigan, Second Floor Wednesday, April 13, 5:30p.m.


KIKI PETROSINO is the author of Fort Red Border (Sarabande, 2009). She was born in Baltimore and received her BA from the University of Virginia. She spent two years in Switzerland teaching English and Italian at a private school, after which she earned graduate degrees from both the University of Chicago and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her awards include a post-graduate writing fellowship from the University of Iowa and two staff scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She currently teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Louisville.

EVAN LAVENDER-SMITH is the author of Avatar (2011) and From Old Notebooks (2010). Stephen Burt has called From Old Notebooks "an anti-masterpiece of an anti-novel." Charles Altieri said the book represents “conceptual art that is thoroughly literary." Lavender-Smith is the editor of Noemi Press, the prose and drama editor of Puerto del Sol and a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University. He lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico with his wife and children. This event is free and open to the public.

April 15 & 16: Roy Fisher Symposium

Friday, April 15 @ 7pm
Readings by August Kleinzahler, Maureen McLane, & Tom Pickard
at The (New) Corpse Space
1511 N. Milwaukee Ave

Saturday, April 16 @ 1:30pm
Roy Fisher Symposium - Talks & a Film
at Morningstar
22 W. Washington, 7th Floor

Chicago Poetry Project is pleased to announce a short symposium on the work of British poet Roy Fisher. The event will feature short talks by August Kleinzahler, Maureen McLane, and Tom Pickard and will include a screening of Pickard's film about Fisher, "Birmingham Is What I Think With." The Friday evening prior to the symposium, the presenters will give a group reading of their own and Fisher's poetry.

Born in 1930, Roy Fisher is a British poet of remarkable range. Stripped of ornament, skeptical in temperament, his poems find music in sharp angles, hesitations, and silences. They often move through post-industrial landscapes of Birmingham and the English Midlands, registering crepuscular half-tones, "the dog odour / of water," and "malted-milk brickwork." Beyond such literal subjects, Fisher captures the intermingling of fancy and perception, the play of light and shadow in the mind itself. As August Kleinzahler has suggested, "The eye darts about in Fisher's poetry. It abhors the object at rest, framing of any kind. It's like a camera, jerking and swiveling on an unstable tripod. Early and late, the poetry is about the eye in motion. The shifts may be subtle or vertiginously abrupt. It's best not to get too comfortable as you progress through a poem because you're not going to be where you think you are for long." His restless and exploratory poetry has long been admired in the United Kingdom, and by a select few readers in the United States. His Selected Poems, edited by Kleinzahler and designed to introduce his work to an American audience, has just been published by Flood Editions.

The symposium is free and open to the public but *REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED FOR THIS EVENT*. Simply send an e-mail to john.tipton64@gmail.com with your first and last name so we can put you on the access list, and bring photo ID to the event. This is a building security requirement.

August Kleinzahler was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1949, and raised in Fort Lee, New Jersey. For six years, he commuted everyday, from New Jersey to New York, to attend the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. After high school, he attended the University of Wisconsin as an East Asian Studies major. He dropped out of Wisconsin, and finished his studies at the University of Victoria in British Columbia where he majored in English and studied with Basil Bunting, whom he considered a great hero. Kleinzahler is the author of ten books of poetry, including: The Strange Hours Travelers Keep (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), winner of the International Griffin Poetry Prize; Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club : Poems: 1975-1990 (2000); Green Sees Things in Waves (1999); and Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow (1995). He is also the author of one prose book, the meditative memoir Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004). His honors include a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lila Acheson-Reader’s Digest Award for Poetry, an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and the post of poet laureate in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Maureen N. McLane was educated at Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Chicago, from which she received her PhD in 1997. She is the author of Balladeering, Minstrelsy, and the Making of British Romantic Poetry (Cambridge UP, 2008) and Romanticism and the Human Sciences (CUP, 2000, 2006). She also co-edited The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry (2008). Her research and teaching focus on British literature and culture, 1750-30, and more broadly on the intersection of poetry, "literature," and modernity: special areas of interest include romanticism, modernism, balladry (British and American), mediality, 20th- and 21st-century poetries in English, the human sciences, historiography, and the case of Scotland. A poet and critic, she is the author of Same Life: poems (FSG, 2008) and World Enough: poems (FSG, forthcoming June 2010). A contributing editor at Boston Review, her articles on poetry, fiction, teaching, and sexuality have appeared widely, in (e.g.) The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Boston Review, The Washington Post, American Poet, and on the Poetry Foundation website. In 2003 she won the National Book Critics Circle's Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing; she served on the Board of Directors of the NBCC, 2007-2010. Before coming to NYU, she taught at Harvard, the University of Chicago, MIT, and the East Harlem Poetry Project. She thinks print is not dead, nor poetry, nor the human--though regarding what the latter two might be, she remains agnostic.

Tom Pickard’s first book of poems, High on The Walls, was published in 1968 by Fulcrum Press and his latest, Ballad of Jamie Allan, by Flood Editions in 2008. It was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle awards. In 1970 City Lights published Guttersnipe and in 2011 Pressed Wafer published More Pricks Than Prizes, both part memoirs. He also documented northern working-class culture/history in books, on radio and in TV documentaries. He has worked with musicians, including John Harle for whom her wrote the libretto, Ballad of Jamie Allan, and more recently the words for Harle’s City Solstice—a piece for saxophone and the Kings College Cambridge Choir. Currently collaborating with the singer songwriter, Ben Murray, on his interpretation of Ballad of Jamie Allan with song, field recordings, and poems from the book. Pickard has been banned from the North Sea, the Newcastle Festival, and HM Prisons, amongst other places. He now lives in the North Pennine Hills near the Border with Scotland and makes recordings of winds on Fiends Fell while walking and watching cloud shadows on distant hills.

Chicago Poetry Project
http://chicagopoetryproject.wordpress.com

Dirty South Dance Party & Reading

Artifice Magazine and Beauty Bar present
the inaugural Dirty South Dance Party
with beats provided by Lindsay "DJ Sensible Shoes" Hunter
and free pizza provided by Beauty Bar

Wednesday, April 13th
7-10pm

at Beauty Bar
1444 W. Chicago Avenue

7pm - Come get your dance on
8:30pm - Readings
9pm - Dance on, and on, and on

$5 donation at the door, proceeds benefit Artifice Magazine

April 10: In Memory of Kathryn Hixson

NO JOKE:
Readings in Memory of Kathryn Hixson

SUNDAY, APRIL 10
1–4pm

Readers will include:
Lauren Carter
Michael Fleming
REH Gordon
Joe Grimm
Jennifer Karmin
Michael Milano
Marissa Perel

at LVL3
1542 N. Milwaukee Ave. 3rd fl
near the CTA Damen blue line
http://lvl3gallery.com

This reading is in in conjunction with the exhibition No Joke, dedicated to Kathryn Hixson who passed away in the Fall of 2010. Participants will read from Kathryn's writing and their creative responses to her work.

Kathryn Hixson was one of the most distinguished art critics in Chicago, an amazing teacher, advisor and good friend. She was finishing a PhD dissertation at the University of Texas Austin on the role of humor in the work of Bruce Nauman and Richard Prince.

In the spirit of her spontaneity, criticality and wise-ass attitude, recent M.F.A graduates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago pay tribute to Kathryn and her influence on the latest generation of emerging artists. No Joke features new work by: Andy Cahill, Alan & Michael Fleming, Yasi Ghanbari, Danny Greene, Joe Grimm, Marissa Perel, Aaron David Ross, and Michael Vallera. The show runs from April 2 – April 30, 2011.

Closing Reception
Saturday, April 30
5–8pm

LVL3 is an exhibition space directed by Vincent Uribe. It is dedicated in supporting collaborative work and group shows to foster connections between emerging and established artists.

Revolving Door Series

Join us Wednesday, 27 April 

for Poetry Outside the Lines!

This month's features:

Sunny Byers is Irish. Oldest. Lover of Chicago. Hoofer. She says what shouldn't be said and not always done in the right way. She's not afraid to make an ass of ... anything. Her work has been published.

Jacob Saenz is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago where he served as an editor for the Columbia Poetry Review. His work has appeared in Inkstains, Buffalo Carp, Paramanu Pentaquark and Poetry. He has been nominated for an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. He works at a library.

Where: South Halsted Gallery (1825 S. Halsted)

When: Open mic @ 7PM, Features @ 7:30PM

April 8: A Tribute to Akilah Oliver

A Tribute to Akilah Oliver

FRIDAY, APRIL 8th
8-10pm

A Toast in Your House:
a memorial reading to celebrate
the life & work of Akilah Oliver

Featuring:
Adrienne Dodt
Krista Franklin
Jenny Henry
Jennifer Karmin + dancer J’Sun Howard
John Keene
Kevin Kilroy
Marie Larson
Todd McCarty
Marissa Perel

Hosted by Rebecca George
& Luis Humberto Valadez

at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave

logistics --
near CTA Damen blue line
third floor walk up
not wheelchair accessible

$4 suggested donation
All funds will be donated to assist the Oliver family with the costs
associated with Akliah’s departure and to keep her work alive!

Co-presented by the Midwest Naropa Writers & Red Rover Series
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/redroverseries

AKILAH OLIVER was a poet, a dedicated teacher, and an inspiration to the lives she touched. Her books include An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet (Farfalla, McMillan & Parrish, 2004), The Putterer’s Notebook (Belladonna, 2006), a(A)ugust (Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), and A Toast In The House of Friends (Coffee House, 2009). She taught poetry in New York at The New School, Pratt Institute and The Poetry Project. She also taught at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, http://www.akilaholiver.com.

We will remember her warmly, in a house of friends, with our words.