Monday, October 19, 2009

Bookslut Reading Series

Tuesday October 20th
Hopleaf Bar, 5148 N. Clark
7:30 Pm


Mary Caponegro
Matthew Gavin Frank
Stephanie Kuehnert




Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of “Barolo” (forthcoming from The University of Nebraska Press), a food memoir based on his illegal work in the Italian wine industry. His poetry manuscript, “Sagittarius Agitprop” is available from Black Lawrence Press. He is also the author of the chapbooks “Four Hours to Mpumalanga” (Pudding House Publications), a poetry sequence about his initial visit to his wife’s homeland in rural South Africa, and “Aardvark” (West Town Press), a poetry sequence that strangely engages the alphabet.




Mary Caponegro is author of The Star Café, Five Doubts, and The Complexities of Intimacy, Mary Caponegro lives in the Hudson Valley where she is the Richard B. Fisher Family Professor of Writing and Literature at Bard College.








Stephanie Kuehnert is the author of the young adult novels I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE (2008) and BALLADS OF SUBURBIA (2009) published by MTV Books.

Rock the Independent Vote!



Rock the Independent Vote!
Music, Poetry, Candidates, & more!
Saturday, October 24th
8pm-12am
Weed's Tavern
1555 N Dayton St

Old Town/River North, Chicago
312-943-7815
El: Red to North/Clybourn

CPL Workshops for Young Writers


Kevin Coval Teen Poetry Writing Workshop

Date: Thursday, October 29th
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Location:
Harold Washington Library Center
YOUmedia
400 S. State Street
60605
Program: CityVerse

About this event:

A short, entertaining performance of poems followed by an hour-long workshop [of writing exercises] intended to give writers confidence to tell their own stories and add to or begin their own portfolios.

Selected readings will include the topics of hip-hop, love and urban living, love of Chicago, coming of age and Jewish identity.






Teen Urban Haiku and Renga Poetry Workshop with Regina Harris Baiocchi

Date: Tue. November 10, 2009
Time: 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Location:
Whitney M. Young, Jr.
7901 S. King Drive
60619

Program: CityVerse

About this event:
Regina Harris Baiocchi will lead a poetry workshop that includes writing urban haiku and renga. Participants are invited to read one poem up to two minutes long during the open microphone. Teens ages 13 and up are welcome to participate!

Phone: 312-747-0039

Registration:
Registration is preferred but not required. Please call or stop by if you would like to reserve a spot!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Chicago Humanities Festival



Michael Salinger: Well-Defined, An Irreverent Poke at Vocabulary Definitions


Sun, Nov. 8 2:00 - 3:00 PMAdmission: Adults: $5.00, Educators & Students: FREE
Where: Francis W Parker School, 2233 N Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60614

Michael Salinger delivers his playful poems and also will discuss his work on stage and in the classroom as a literary advocate and poetry champion.

Michael Salinger is a poet, fiction writer, and performer. His work has appeared in dozens of literary journals published across the US and Canada and he is the author of Stingray and Well Defined - Vocabulary in Rhyme, among others. An eight-time captain and coach of the Cleveland Slam team that represented the city at the National Poetry Slam competition, he is also the founder and director of the Nova Lizard project, and chief facilitator of the teen writing and performance program at Cleveland's Playhouse Square Foundation

After writing poetry for more than twenty years, Michael Salinger had an epiphany. A veteran of the National Poetry Slam competition, he recognized the correlation between the rich rhythms of the English language and the complexities of its vocabulary. He has since created an innovative teaching method, incorporating rhyming and vocal performance, that helps youth understand and remember such challenging vocabulary words as “credulous” and “instigate.” Playful poems and Salinger’s animated delivery make this program family-friendly. Salinger will also discuss his work on stage and in the classroom as a literary advocate and poetry champion.


***


Kay Ryan and Billy Collins: Poets in Conversation



Sun, Nov. 15 6:00 - 7:30 PM
Admission: Adults: $10.00, Educators & Students: FREE
Where: Northwestern University School of Law, Thorne Auditorium, 375 East Chicago Street, Chicago, IL 60611

Note: Tickets to this event are SOLD OUT.

California-based Kay Ryan is in the midst of her second yearlong term as US Poet Laureate; New Yorker Billy Collins served a pair of terms earlier this decade. Both are wry and sly, wise and capacious, and deservedly beloved. The prospect of the two of them onstage together, trading insights and verse, fills us with delighted anticipation. Collins, winner of the 2005 Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry, is the author of the anthologies Picnic, Lightning, Sailing Alone Around the Room, and Ballistics, among others. Ryan won the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her books include Say Uncle and The Niagara River.


***

The Chicago Humanities Festival's mission is to create opportunities for people of all ages to support, enjoy and explore the humanities. We fulfill this mission through our annual festivals, the fall Chicago Humanities Festival and the spring Stages, Sights & Sounds, and by presenting programs throughout the year that encourage the study and enjoyment of the humanities.

For a complete schedule of events, visit here.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Light Quarterly


Thursday November 5th
6pm at The Oak Park Arms,
408 S. Oak Park Ave.
in Oak Park. (708) 366-0544,

www.lightquarterly.com.

Light Quarterly presents a reading of light verse: humorous poems by X. J. Kennedy, Tom Disch, John Updike, Gail White and more, read by the staff of Light Quarterly. (We are the only print magazine that regulary publishes light verse).

Rhino Workshop w/ Tony Trigillio


October 25th
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

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.

Leader: Tony Trigillio

Tony Trigilio is the author of the poetry collection, The Lama's English Lessons (Three Candles Press, 2006); the chapbooks, With the Memory, Which is Enormous (Main Street Rag Press, 2009) and Make a Joke and I Will Sigh and You Will Laugh and I Will Cry (e-chap, Scantily Clad Press, 2008); and two books of criticism, Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007) and Strange Prophecies Anew (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000). With Tim Prchal, he co-edited Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870-1930 (Rutgers University Press, 2008). He teaches at Columbia College Chicago, where he also co-edits the poetry journal Court Green.

Tony’s topic: Documentary Poetics
Bring 15 or more copies (no longer than two pages) of work you want critiqued.
*$5 donation appreciated
This project has been partially supported by a grant from Poets & Writers.
For more info: RHINOPOETRY.ORG

Documentary Poetics: Mark Nowak



Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 6:30pm
TH!NKART Gallery: 1530 N. Paulina, Suite F, Chicago IL

Mark Nowak reads from his recent book, Coal Mountain Elementary. Introduction by Ray Bianchi. A reception at the gallery will follow the reading.

A singular, genre-defying treatise from one of America's most innovative political poets, Coal Mountain Elementary remixes verbatim testimony from the surviving Sago, West Virginia miners and rescue teams, the American Coal Foundation's curriculum for schoolchildren, and newspaper accounts of mining disasters in China with photographs of Chinese miners taken by renowned photojournalist Ian Teh.

"Coal Mountain Elementary is an imaginative and shocking reminder of what it means, in the most human and poignant terms, to be a miner, whether in this country or in China, or for that matter anywhere in the industrial world. It is also a tribute to miners and working people everywhere. It manages, in photos and in words, to portray an entire culture. And it is a stunning educational tool." - Howard Zinn

"Mark Nowak's vital poetry cleaves to the hard surfaces of working lives. There is an epic quality to the voices that cannot be dismissed by corporations or the state. Coal Mountain Elementary will move readers to indignation and action." - Aihwa Ong poet and labor activist heralded by Adrienne Rich for "regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature," Mark Nowak regularly leads transnational poetry workshops between American and international trade unions. He is the author of Revenants and Shut Up Shut Down, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and finalist for the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin Award. A native of Buffalo, New York, he is now the Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College in Maryland.

Visit the author's web site at http://coalmountain.wordpress.com