Sunday, December 22, 2013

Monday, January 6-Charlie Rossiter is Waiting 4 the Bus + open mic

Kick off the new year in a poetically correct fashion
Meet me in the Rendevous Room at Jaks Tap for a super cool night of poetry
Sign up 7:30
Show time 8pm
Featured poet:Charlie Rossiter
Suggested theme "beginnings"

Great food
Awesome beer selection
Jaks Tap
901 W Jackson

The show is free
We do suggest donations to pay the featured performer

Friday, December 13, 2013

Red Rover Series / Experiment #70

Red Rover Series
{readings that play with reading}

Experiment #70:
Monster Light & Go

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13th
7pm / doors lock 7:30pm
*please note: event is Friday*

Featuring:
Stephanie Anderson
Julia Cohen
Sueyeun Juliette Lee

Soham Patel
and Regeneration X


at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave
suggested donation $4

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

STEPHANIE ANDERSON
is the author of In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments (Horse Less Press) and five chapbooks, including the forthcoming Sentence, Signal, Stain (Greying Ghost) and LIGHTBOX (The New Megaphone).  Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in 6x6, Coconut, Lana Turner, Not Enough Night, Typo, and elsewhere.  She lives in Chicago and edits the micropress Projective Industries, though next month she'll move to Tokyo for the foreseeable future.

JULIA COHEN is the author of two poetry books, Triggermoon Triggermoon from Black Lawrence Press, and most recently, Collateral Light, from Brooklyn Arts Press. A collection of nonfiction, I Was Not Born, releases this fall from Noemi Press. Her work appears in journals like jubilat, New American Writing, Banango Street, and DIAGRAM. She just moved to Chicago.

SUEYEUN JULIETTE LEE teaches creative writing and literature courses at Richard Stockton College, and language craft for the College of Art Media and Design at the University of the Arts.  She's also a 2013 Pew Fellow in the Arts.  Her third full-length collection, SOLAR MAXIMUM, is forthcoming from Futurepoem BooksIn 2006, she founded COROLLARY PRESS, a chapbook series dedicated to innovative multi-ethnic writing.  She reviews poetry for The Constant Critic and curates poetry for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s digital magazine, The Margins.
 


SOHAM PATEL's first chapbook, "and nevermind the storm," is now out from Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs.  Her recent work is up in The Volta and The Destroyer Magazine.  She has also recently received her first Pushcart nomination and her manuscripts, "Hello::Ghost" and "towards evening:" were both named finalist for the Omnidawn First/Second Book Contest and The Kundiman Poetry Prize.  She studies Creative Writing in the PhD Program at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee where she is a 2013-2014 Chancellor's Fellow.

REGENERATION X is a performance poetry collective with writing talent from Columbia College.  A brilliant and diverse group, the members come from different worlds to talk about the city.  They got it going on: Laura Arredondo, Robert Brown, Donnell McLachlan, Michaelangelo, William Montes, Vaughan Nelson-Lee, Alison O'Connor, and Dave Thompson.
 


Red Rover Series is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin. Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers. Founded in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin, the events have featured a plethora of renowned creative minds.

WOW WOW WOW
Red Rover Series
on facebook? why not?

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Monday, December 16-Meg Tuite & David Tomaloff are Waiting 4 the Bus

Come join us at Jaks Tap in the beautiful rendezvous room for a magnificent night of poetry and word things.
Sign up 7:30
Show time 8pm
Suggested theme "on a winter's night"

Jaks Tap
901 W Jackson blvd

Good food
Many varieties of beer

Suggested donation for the feature

Come early and grab dinner

It's an open mic

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Dec 7: Memoryhouse Chapbook Festival


Saturday, December 7th
7-9:30pm at the University of Chicago
Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th Street


Join Memoryhouse for its first-ever Chapbook Festival! FREE food, drinks, handmade chapbooks, and performances by some of Chicago's finest poets including Kenyatta Rogers, Eric Elshtain, Jennifer Karmin, and Stephanie Anderson. Our student performance ensemble will also be debuting new work! 

Facebook event page here.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Monday, December 2nd-Donna Vorrewyer is Waiting 4 the Bus+Open Mic

vorreyer is Waiting 4 the bus +

come out and join us at Jaks Tap (901 W Jackson) for a cool night of open mic poetry and then the even cooler feature... Donna Vorreyer
sign up at 7:30pm
showtime is from 8-10 pm

our suggested theme is...Houses and Windows

the show is free
suggested donation for the feature performer

the food is awesome and the beer is exceptional

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Nov 15: Amina Cain & Veronica Gonzalez

Weekly literary event roundup!

Chicago book launch:
Creature by Amina Cain
& The Sad Passions by Veronica Gonzalez

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15th, 7:30pm
at the
Logan Center for the Arts
915 E. 60th Street, Penthouse 901
 

free admission
 
Facebook event page here


 AMINA CAIN is the author of two collections of short stories: Creature (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2013) and I Go To Some Hollow (Les Figues Press, 2009). Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in BOMB, n+1, Denver Quarterly, The Encyclopedia Project, Two Serious Ladies, and other publications.

VERONICA GONZALEZ's short fiction has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. In 2006 she founded rockypoint press, a series of artist/writer collaborative prints, books, and films. In 2008 her first novel, twin time: or how death befell me, was awarded the Aztlan Literary Prize.

About Creature:

 
“To be among Amina Cain’s creatures is to stand in the presence of what is mysterious, expansive, and alive. Whether these distinctly female characters are falling in and out of uncanny intimacies, speaking from the hidden realms of the unconscious, seeking self-knowledge, or becoming visible in all their candor and strangeness, they move through a universe shaped by the gravitational pull of elusive yet resilient forces—the yin-dark energies of instinct and feeling that animate creative life. It’s here that the intuitive reach of fiction meets the reader’s own quest for understanding, through the subtle beauty of living the truth of one’s experiences in the most attentive and unadorned way possible.”
- Pamela Lu, author of Pamela: A Novel

"To answer these questions for you, let me describe where Creature rests in my body—deep within my thoracic spine, in the middle of my vertebrae alongside photo booth-sized images of unrequited knives. I am conscious of it as I watch my body read. Its language moves and settles. This process of watching—as opposed to thinking—may seem enigmatic. It is."
- Claire Donato, HTML Giant


 About The Sad Passions:

"In Veronica Gonzalez's truthtelling novel of four bright sisters growing up with a mentally ill mother, the lucid, elegant writing defies the very havoc it describes. Built of multiple voices, with curious, haunting photographs, The Sad Passions is immersive, harrowing, and wonderfully intelligent."
- Michelle Huneven, author of Blame

"For all of the effects of erasure and absence on The Sad Passions, the narration is incredibly present, crawling on the page in spidery, sprawling observations, setting up pools and lairs that lure a reader in."
- Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

John Goode is W4tB+Open Mic


Come on out and join us for a special night, our madness has taken us to the strange theme...3 prompts and a feature.
you can write all, some, or one put please participate wisely. (none is also a choice, but it is the boring one)
prompts:
1-The secret life of blue
2-the blessings and curses of butterflies
3-in the days of mist and whiskey
Feature:
John Goode
join us at Jaks Tap Restaurant Bar
901 W Jackson
7:30 sign up
8-10pm show time
free (we do request donations for the feature performer)

Monday, November 11, 2013


Nick Cave is Dead: The Kill Yr Idols One Year Anniversary Event
November 19th 8pm
Cole's Bar
2338 N Milwaukee ave

Kill Yr Idols Reading Series is celebrating 12 months of poetry, music, comedy, and conspiracy theories with performances from Kenyatta Rogers, Marvin Tate, Melody Kamali, Elizabeth S Tieri, Corrine Mina, Jesse Laier, Hel F Kiernan, Jessica Robinson, and Robert Katovich. House band for the reading is The Millers, followed with a full set by the Weird Bananas. Hosted by Nicholas Souder.

21+
Free
Around the corner from the California Blue Line Stop
http://killyridolsreadingseries.tumblr.com/

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Red Rover Series / Experiment #69

Red Rover Series
{readings that play with reading}
 
Experiment #69:
Ecstastic Lyre

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9th
7pm / doors lock 7:30pm

Featuring:
Deidre Huckabay
Virginia Konchan
Jenna Lyle
Caroline Picard
& long-distance collaborator Jill Magi
 
at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave
suggested donation $4
 
logistics --
near CTA Damen blue line
third floor walk up
not wheelchair accessible
Ecstatic Lyre evokes, through text, instrumentation, song, and performance the semiotics of noise versus music in post-industrialism from a gendered perspective: that of repetitive labor (typing pools, atheletic feats, cleaning), the habituations and constrictions of the somatic body and "voice" in fashion and self-representation in a late capitalist labor market, the domestic sphere, and within the relationships that produce and deform a cohesive narrative of self.
 
DEIDRE HUCKABAY is a flutist who performs, facilitates, and produces unlikely musical events in Chicago. A native Texan, she has performed in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and venues in France, Italy, Switzerland, and Mexico. Addicted to collaboration both onstage and off, Deidre currently performs and produces projects with a number of ensembles including contemporary chamber orchestras Alia Musica Pittsburgh and the Eastman BroadBand, award-winning woodwind quintet Arabesque Winds, and Chicago's first contemporary music tape label, Parlour Tapes+. By day, she writes grants for three high-performing Chicago performing arts companies: eighth blackbird, Lucky Plush, and Blair Thomas & Company.
 
VIRGINIA KONCHAN’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets, The Believer, The New Yorker, and The New Republic, her criticism in Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, Quarterly Conversation, Barzakh Magazine, and Boston Review, and her fiction in StoryQuarterly and Joyland, among other places. Co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary, Virginia is pursuing her PhD in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
 
JENNA LYLE is a composer, vocalist, and sound artist living in Chicago while pursuing a Doctorate of Music in Composition at Northwestern University. Her artistic concerns are rooted in the unification of physiciality with the creative process for the sake of immediacy, clarity of expression, and intimate exchange. Her background in musical theater and dance taught her the ecumenical and communicative value of perceived body energy in art. In her growth as a composer, she has learned that harnessing movement on a finer scale and channeling it toward the production of sound can yield depth of communication and an intense, contemplative experience of self.
 
JILL MAGI works in text, image, and textile and is the author of Threads, Torchwood, Cadastral Map, SLOT, and LABOR which is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in early 2014. Visual work has been exhibited at the Textile Arts Center Brooklyn, apexart, AC Institute, Columbia College’s Arcade 6 Gallery. She is at work on a text-image theory/curriculum to be published in 2014 by Moving Furniture Press/Rattapallax, and in fall of 2013 she joined the faculty at NYU in Abu Dhabi. You can visit her web-site at http://www.jillmagi.net/.
 
CAROLINE PICARD is the Founding Editor for the Green Lantern Press and Blog Czar to Bad at Sports. Recent work has been published or is forthcoming from Paper Monument, Rattapallax, MAKE Magazine and Diner Journal.

Red Rover Series is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin. Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers. Founded in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin, the over sixty events have featured a diversity of renowned creative minds.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Shanna Compton & Nick Twemlow Poetry Reading


Columbia College Chicago features Shanna Compton & Nick Twemlow as part of the Fall 2013 Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Department of Creative Writing. The event is free and open to the public. 

When: Wednesday, Novemeber 13, 5:30pm
Where: Stage Two, 618 S. Michigan Ave, Second Floor


NICK TWEMLOW's first book of poems, Palm Trees, won the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is a senior editor at The Iowa review and co-edits Canarium Books. He is also a filmmakers, and his short works have played Tribeca, SXSW, Slamdance, Athens, and many other film festivals. He is an assistant professor at Coe College.  

SHANNA COMPTON's books include Brink (2012), For Girls & Others (2007), Down Spooky (2005) and several chapbooks. A Book-length speculative poem called The Seam is forthcoming next year. Her poems and essays have been published by The Best American Poetry series, the Poetry Foundation website, Poetry DailyVerse Daily, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day feature, among others. 

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

TONIGHT! Oct. 29! Jen Jay Besemer reads from, signs and talks about TELEPHONE at City Lit Books!

Telephone
by Jen Besemer
Tuesday,
October 29th
6:30 PM
City Lit Books
2523 N. Kedzie Blvd.
www.citylitbooks.com
773-235-2523

Meet Chicago artist and author Jen Besemer to discuss Jen's new collection of poems!

The Book: "Telephone is the kind of poetry I'm most attracted to...Besemer knows how to set the conditions for the best kinds of discoveries about the world and language simultaneously, and she leaves room for you to make your own. You won't want to put this telephone down. You'll want to become the receiver."- Laura Goldstein
The Author: Jen Besemer is an artist and the author of four poetry chapbooks, most recently Object with Man's Face. Jen's work has appeared in ArtificeAufgabeBlazeVOX,Drunkenboat, e-ratioOtoliths, and Pank, and is anthologized inTroubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Jen teaches art and poetry workshops in and around Chicago. 

Friday, October 25, 2013

Buddha 309 is...Waiting 4 the Bus (guest host Charlie Newman)


When was the last time you saw Buddha 309 feature?
When was the last time you saw Buddha 309?
Have you met Buddha 309?
Who the Hell is Buddha 309?
come and find out
Nov. 4th at Jaks Tap Restaurant Bar901 W Jackson
sign up 7:30
showtime 8-10pm
suggested theme, Ego, Narcissism, self love, and whatever happened to Echo?
Special Guest Host-Charlie Newman
great food
40 beers on Tap
No Cover (donations requested for the feature)

Molly Malone's All Stars

W4tB presents in conjunction with Molly Malone's Reading Series and Open Mic the 3rd annual Molly Malone's all star reading. We have a super line up for you all this year
come on out to
Powell's Bookstore in University Village(1218 S Halsted St)
for this amazing show
Friday Nov 1
7-9 pm

Ralph Hamilton is editor of RHINO. He has an MFA in Poetry from Bennington. His poems have appeared in Court Green, CutBank, Blackbird, and other journals. His first book of poems, Subtle Knot, will be published in 2015. He serves on the board of the Ragdale Foundation and is the 2013 judge for Fifth Wednesday’s prize in poetry.

Steven Schroeder is a poet and visual artist who has spent many years moonlighting as a philosophy professor. His most recent collections are Turn and (with David Breeden) Raging for the Exit. More at stevenschroeder.org.

Kristin LaTour’s most recent chapbook is Agoraphobia, from Dancing Girl Press (2013), as well as two others: Blood and Town Limits. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Fifth Wednesday, Cider Press, After Hours, dirtcakes, , and The Adroit Journal. Recently she became a staff writer at Luna Luna Magazine, and had an essay published in TAB about writing and teaching. She teaches at Joliet Jr. College and lives in Aurora, IL with her writer husband, a lovebird, and two dogitos.

Albert DeGenova is the co-host of the Molly Malone's Reading Series and has published two full-length poetry collections and two poetry chapbooks. In 2000, he launched After Hours, a journal of Chicago writing and art; he continues as publisher and editor. He is a blues saxophonist and one-time contributing editor to Down Beat magazine. He received his MFA from Spalding University, Louisville.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Red Rover Series / Experiment #68


Red Rover Series
{readings that play with reading}
Experiment #68:
Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19th
7pm / doors lock 7:30pm

Featuring:
Oliver Bendorf
Ching-In Chen
Meg Day
TT Jax
Stacey Waite
& guest curated by Jen (Jay) Besemer

at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave
suggested donation $4

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

About the new anthology published by Nightboat Books:
The first of its kind, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Trace Peterson, gathers together a diverse range of 55 poets with varying aesthetics and backgrounds. In addition to generous samples of poetry by each trans writer, the book also includes “poetics statements”—reflections by each poet that provide context for their work covering a range of issues from identification and embodiment to language and activism.


OLIVER BENDORF's book, The Spectral Wilderness, was chosen by Mark Doty for the 2013 Wick Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Kent State University Press. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he recently earned his MFA and now teaches creativity, comics, and composition.
 
JEN JAY BESEMER is the author of several poetry books and chapbooks, including Telephone, Object with Man’s Face, Quiet Vertical Movements, Ten Word Problems,  and What Is Born. A new chapbook, Aster to Daylily, is forthcoming in 2014 from Damask Press. Jay’s recombinant poetry projects are also found in Monsters & Dust, Aufgabe, Drunken Boat, BlazeVOX, e-ratio, Sentence and other delicious publications. Jay also writes feature essays and reviews, and teaches art and poetry workshops in and beyond Chicago. To find out more, visit www.jenbesemer.com
 
CHING-IN CHEN is author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press) and co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press). They are a Kundiman, Lambda and Norman Mailer Poetry Fellow and a member of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation and Macondo writing communities. A community organizer, they have worked in the Asian American communities of San Francisco, Oakland, Riverside and Boston. In Milwaukee, they are cream city review's editor-in-chief.  See www.chinginchen.com.

MEG DAY, recently selected for Best New Poets of 2013, is a 2013 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and the author of When All You Have Is a Hammer (winner of the 2012 Gertrude Press Chapbook Contest) and We Can’t Read This (winner of the 2013 Gazing Grain Chapbook Contest). A 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award Winner, Meg has also received awards and fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Hedgebrook, Squaw Valley Writers, and the International Queer Arts Festival. Meg is currently a PhD fellow in Poetry & Disability Poetics at the University of Utah.
 
TT JAX is a parent, poet, mixed media artist, and writer living in the Pacific Northwest by way of 28 years in the Deep South.
 
STACEY WAITE is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln and has published four collections of poems: Choke (winner of the 2004 Frank O'Hara Prize), Love Poem to Androgyny, the lake has no saint (winner of the 2008 Snowbound Prize from Tupelo Press), and Butch Geography (also from Tupelo Press in 2013).  Waite is the co-host of Prairie Schooner's podcast "Air Schooner" and has individual poems appearing most recently in Bloom, The Indiana Review, and Heart Quarterly.  One of Waite's poems from Troubling the Line was selected by Denise Duhamel and David Lehman for Best American Poetry 2013.  

Red Rover Series is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin. Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers.  Founded  in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin, the over sixty events have  featured a diversity of renowned creative minds.


Sunday, October 13, 2013

Jennifer Dotson is Waiting 4 the Bus (with Open Mic)


Monday Oct. 21st
7:30 sign up
8-10pm showtime
jaks tap
901 w Jackson
Chicago IL

come on out for one of the most relaxed and fun open mics in the city. This being our "Close to Halloween" show it's time to beat the devil and follow our suggested theme "Scary Monsters and Super Creeps" All poems with monsters mayhem, blood loss, body parts, and body counts are acceptable.

Our feature for the evening is Poetry Pentathlon 2013 champion Jennifer Dotson there is sure to be a splendid time for one and all

Jaks tap has great food and a wide and varied beer selection, you should partake of the amenities while you listen to poetry.

No Cover (we do pass the hat for the feature performer

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Elizabeth’s Crazy Little Thing Featuring Chicago Calling


Wednesday, October 9 (10 p.m.)
Phyllis’ Musical Inn
1800 W. Division Ave.
Chicago, IL  60622
This Eighth Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival event includes these artistic collaborations --
  • Janina Ciezadlo (art criticism, Chicago) & Bambang Asrini Widjanarko (Jakarta Art Movement, Indonesia)
  • Mario Andrea Rigoni (poetry, Italy), Vittorio Carli (poetry, Chicago), & Dom Carli (translation, Chicago)
  • Bob Rashkow (poetry, Chicago) & Tony Renner (visual art, Chicago)
  • & other surprise guests
free & open to the public 

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Oct 6: Furniture Press Tour

Furniture Press Books is celebrating 10 years of innovative publishing 
with a 12 city American tour 

The Chicago readings will feature:
Martine Bellen
Magus Magnus
Joshua Ware
Iris Cushing
Alicia Puglionesi
Toby Altman

 
October 6th, 7pm
at Spudnik Press Cooperative Annex
1821 W. Hubbard, Suite 302
 
The mission of the tour is very simple: introduce a wider audience to the diversity of the press’ poetics while collaborating with local poets to create an ever-expanding community of emergent presses, curators and creative human beings. Because our writers are spread out all over the country, it is only fitting for us to bring our world to theirs.

For more information about Furniture Press Books visit their website: 

Monday, September 30, 2013

Kate Greenstreet and Richard Meier Reading


Columbia College Chicago is proud to present Richard Meier & Kate Greenstreet as part of the Fall 2013 Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Department of Creative Writing. The event is free and open to the public.

When: Wednesday, October 2, 5:30pm
Where: Ferguson Hall, 600 S. Michigan Ave, 101



KATE GREENSTREET is the author of Young Tambling (2013), The Last 4 Things (2009), and case sensitive (2006), all from Ahsahta Press. Her poetry can be found in Chicago Review, Boston Review, Colorado Review, and other journals. 



RICHARD MEIER is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent being In the Pure Block of the Whole Imaginary (Omnidawn, 2012). Previous books Terrain Vague and Shelley Gave Jane a Guitar were published by Verse Press and Waves Books, respectively. He is writer-in-residence at Carthage College and lives in Madison and Chicago.