W4tB presents Open Mic at the Bus Stop:

7:30pm - 10:00pm
Cafe Ballou
939 N Western Ave.

W4tB Open Mic Night
Featuring: John Goode

Stuck inside a mobile with the Memphis blues again: Bob Dylan Lyric Night

03/05/11 Lake Villa Janet Kuypers poetry/video/music feature @ 6 PM

Friday, March 5th 2011 (03/05/11) Swing State Lake Villa, IL, 6 PM Janet Kuypers “Visual Nonsense” feature Janet Kuypers opens at 6 PM with the Visual Nonsense performance art evening’s first feature at Swing State ($6 cover to enter Swing State’s hookah lounge; 19041 W. Grand Ave, Lake Villa, IL - find directions and a map on line at madtownlounge). Kuypers is reading her classic longer pieces of poetry, while video of her drawing on a marker board will be projected on a large screen, all while huge video projections accompany her television-projected readings. Pre-recorded music from The DMJ Art Connection (Nashville TN), the Bastard Trio (Madison WI), the Penthouss Playboys (Chicago, from “Chaotic Radio” show #73), the Joanne Pow!ers Trio (Madison WI), the HA!man of South Africa, and guitar sampling from John Yotko (Illinois) will be playing during her readings as well. You can always get info about this show on line at http://scars.tv/av/20110305/letting-it-all-out.htm, but check out Janet Kuypers at this last Visual Nonsense event at Swing State March 5th at 6 PM in Lake Villa!

March 4-6: The Dust of Suns

The Chicago Poetry Project presents
a staged reading of the play

The Dust of Suns
by Raymond Roussel
Trans. Harry Mathews

March 4-6th
Fri & Sat 8pm; Sun 3pm
All performances are FREE!

at The Charnel House
3421 W. Fullerton Street
773.871.9046

This script-in-hand performance of Raymond Roussel’s play, directed by John Beer, with design by Caroline Picard, features an array of Chicago writers and artists.

Performers include: James Tadd Alcox, Joshua Corey, Joel Craig, Monica Fambrough, Sara Gothard, Judith Goldman, Samantha Irby, Lisa Janssen, Jennifer Karmin, Jamie Kazay, John Keene, Jacob Knabb, Francesco Levato, Brian Nemtusak, Travis Nichols, Jacob Saenz, Larry Sawyer, Suzanne Scanlon, Jennifer Steele and Nicole Wilson.

French poet, novelist and playwright Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) faced almost universal incomprehension and derision during his lifetime, for works that neglected traditional character and plot development in favor of the construction of elaborate descriptions and anecdotes based on hidden wordplay. While the premieres of his self-financed plays caused near-riots, admirers included Surrealists Andre Breton and Robert Desnos, who called The Dust of Suns (1926) “another incursion into the unknown which you alone are exploring.” Roussel never enjoyed the posthumous fame of his hero Jules Verne, but he has exercised a powerful fascination upon later writers and artists including the French Oulipo group, Marcel Duchamp, John Ashbery, Michel Foucault, and Michael Palmer. New editions of his novels and poetry are forthcoming this year from Princeton and Dalkey Archive.

Like much of Roussel’s writing, The Dust of Suns has a colonial setting. Against the backdrop of fin-de-siecle French Guiana, a convoluted treasure hunt unfolds. Along the way, Roussel fully indulges his penchant for bizarre invention and juxtaposition. The Frenchman Blache seeks his uncle’s inheritance: a cache of gems whose location lies at the end of a chain of clues that includes a sonnet engraved on a skull and the recollections of an albino shepherdess. Meanwhile, his daughter Solange is in love with Jacques—but all Jacques knows of his parentage is a mysterious tattoo on his shoulder...

Tuesday Funk

When March rolls in, can spring be far behind? Well ... in Chicago? Yes, yes, it can. So what can you do but march on down to Hopleaf and join Tuesday Funk in our continuing resolution to defy winter with great readers and great beers?

The February blizzard did its best to shut us down but failed, and this time around in our proud, unbroken literary tradition we'll be bringing you rabble-rousing readings from Joe Weintraub, Keith Ecker, Maggie Kast, Steven H Silver and Jenny Seay, not to mention our patented Poem By Bill. Oh, and the beer, the beer—80 varieties of it.

Tuesday Funk convenes Tuesday, March 1, 2011, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago. Arrive early, stake out a table in the upper room, and grab a beer from John at the cash-only bar. We start seating at 7:00 pm and no earlier. Admission is always free, but you must be 21 or older. And come early or stay afterward for some great Belgian-style food downstairs.

Jericho Brown @ Roosevelt University

Roosevelt Reading Series
When: Tue., March 1, 5 p.m.
Roosevelt University, Gage Gallery
Loop 18 S. Michigan Ave.


Jericho Brown, a former speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans, has been a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, the Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland. His first book of poetry, PLEASE (New Issues), won the 2009 American Book Award.

German Poet Nora Gomringer at the Goethe-Institut Chicago

"Von Gryphius bis Gomringer - LyrikMix mit Tricks"
Slam Poetry and Perfomance
Monday, February 28, 2011 at 6:00 p.m.
Goethe-Institut Chicago, 150 North Michigan Ave, Suite 200, Chicago, IL 60601


German lyricism at its most experimental and conservative is just part of German lyric poet and performance reader Nora Gomringer’s bag of tricks, which gets people talking about a linguistic treasure-trove of texts. Her presentation and performance draw on passages from Gryphius, Goethe, Schiller, and Heine, as well as Sachs, Brecht, Schwitters, Kästner, Rilke, Lasker-Schüler, and Meerbaum-Eisinger, while including Jandl, Eugen Gomringer, and the writings of Nora Gomringer herself, which are full of allusion, humor, and folly. Gomringer’s selection of writings proves that lyricism belongs to speech and that being serious can also be a lot of fun. With a few props here and there she conjures entire scenes among chair, table, voice, and audience.

A warm soft loud quiet evening of poetry in German, with objects, instruments, and other sundries (most commonly Chinese “peri-fairies”).

This event is free and open to the public.

Please RSVP with Lisa Lux at
1-312-263-0472
lux@chicago.goethe.org

Feb 25: Drupe Fruits in Milwaukee

Drupe Fruits Reading
Friday, February 25th
8:00-11:30pm

at the Laundry Chute
728 E. Locust Street
Milwaukee, WI

Such monsters of modern rock as:
MC Hyland
Jennifer Karmin
Jeremy Behreandt
Sarah Fox

We will also be celebrating
"In What Sequence Will My Parts Exit"
by Cynthia Spencer

Drupe Fruits issue #2 features:
Harold Abramowitz, Jeremy Behreandt, Erin M. Bertram, Stacy Blint, Jamison Crabtree, Kevin Dunham, Amira Hanafi, MC Hyland, Jennifer Karmin, Susan Kirby-Smith, Dolly Lemke, Jonathan Lohr, JS Makkos, Jenn Marie Nunes, Daniela Olszewska, Edwin R. Perry, Meg Prichard, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, and Joseph Young

Plumberries is a mobile press invested in the tangible.

Plumberries Press is committed to the tactile, but has acquiesced to posting things online (hence this page). When not caught up in working ourselves into the oracle and upping our traffic, we work on limited runs of journals and chapbooks with an emphasis on quality ingredients and unique production aesthetics. We are mostly interested in shorter, strange writings, and we read all year.