Poetry Channel #52
11/28/98
IN THIS EPISODE: Albuquerque Poetry Festival, Jello Biafra, SF Book Fair, Jim Carroll, Michelle Tea, Crispin Glover, Jim Goad, FringeCore, Slam the Movie, Outside Looking In, War on Drugs, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Taos Poetry Circus.Hey folks,
Welcome to the Poetry Channel & Information Network. Need a disclaimer? Okay, here it is: Don’t read this. The following are extremely biased personal opinions about the state of spoken word, contemporary poetry and the small press world. If you want a cheerleader, watch pro football. If you want a publicist, call William Morris.
So. . . what’s new with you?
The 1999 Albuquerque Poetry Festival starts on Mardi Gras, February 16, with a Poets Procession and ends the following Sunday, February 21 with a regular smorgasbord of events.
The program includes daily open mics, three-day workshops in local high schools, a small press book fair, a teen slam and a Superslam and various showcases featuring local and national poets. Joe Ray Sandoval and I are coordinating the ABQ-Santa Fe corridor during the week. He’s looking forward to seeing his D.C. poetry compadre Jeff McDaniel plus Edwin Torres, Sister Spit, Jon Longhi, Bucky Sinister, Daphne Gottlieb, Greg Zura, Matthew John Conley, Paula Friedrich, Phil West and all the wonderful folks who are coming to town, more details to follow.
I heard Jeff featured at the Paradise Lounge here in San Francisco with Jon Longhi. Both of them have books out on Manic D Press: Jeff’s beautiful and troubling collection of poetry, The Forgiveness Parade, and Jon Longhi’s Flashbacks and Premonitions, a very funny, very real collection of short stories.
Jon Longhi read at Slim’s last week with Jello Biafra, Don Bajema and Ellyn Maybe. He had the punk rock kids in their DK t-shirts rolling in the aisles. Don presented powerful personal work, a narrative with actual home movies to deliver the one-two punch. Ellyn Maybe charmed them all, and Jello. . . well, Jello was Jello. “Don’t mention Dead Kennedys in the intro,” he tells me. “They’re trying to sue me. And don’t mention punk. It’s been co-opted.”
Jello Biafra is notorious for going extensively long in his diatribes -- even he acknowledges it. Tarin Towers said she could have made actual jello in the same time Jello took for his set. And she’s right! But you know, I really like the guy. Complainer-pranksters are necessary. I learn something important every time I hear him. (He was really after Frankenfood, beef loaded with antibodies that we eat, in turn building resistance to antibodies. It’s the same stuff that got Oprah sued by Texas cattle ranchers.) He has a new spoken word CD called If Evolution was Outlawed, Only Outlaws Would Evolve, out on AK Press.
The reading was a benefit for the SF Book Council, which sponsors the SF Book Fair. My boss was in the hospital with a staph infection, so we picked up the book fair ball and ran with it. The, ahem, council placed the Last Gasp booth out in the loading docks with the romance writers and antiquarian booksellers.
I heard Random House bought the meaty chunk of booths in the center of the concourse where Last Gasp usually takes its position. Don’t think our retailers and publisher pals didn’t notice. (This is the same weekend that word spread like wildfire that Barnes and Noble purchased Ingram Book Distributors. Double fucking yikes!) I thought there was room for everyone in Book World, but if that’s the way the big boys want to play, I’m ready for action. I know what side my bread isn’t buttered.
But all-in-all the book fair was a fun fest: I met Florence Henderson in the ladies room. Some guy bummed a cigarette from Patti Smith and didn’t recognize her. I had a chance to visit with Margery Snyder, her squeeze Whitman McGowan, and our pals Bob Holman, Regie Cabico, Justin Chin, Bucky Sinister and Horehound Stillpoint over dinner at the Rite Spot. Manic D Press shared a booth with modern primitives photographer Charles Gatewood and Re/VSearch publisher V. Vale. The lead singer from one of my fave 80s bands -- Deborah I. of Romeo Void -- stopped by the Last Gasp booth and oh! she does spoken word! We exchanged numbers and Tom Ivelli invited her to feature at the Tip Top.
(Jen Joseph gave a rare reading at the Tip Top last week. She’s a wonderful writer but nobody knows that because she’s Miss Manic D Press/Poetry Above Paradise to everyone. She was also on C-Span’s BookTV just last week.)
I ate grubs with cartoonist Keith Knight (K Chronicles, Dances with Sheep) at the book fair. Ten Speed Press was promoting their new series of books, Creepy Crawly Cuisine, Man Eating Bugs and Eat-A-Bug Cookbook. I offered some to SanJo poet David Huang, who inadvertedly knocked them out of my hand and we had to pick up dozens of barbeque-flavored grubs out of the carpet in the back of the spoken word room. Oy! I think it’s the future food, it was probably the ancient food, I just have to develop a taste for it. (I wouldn’t call grubs delicious, but they do resemble Cheetos.)
Jim Carroll read this week at the Great American Music Hall. I like his work; he’s always interesting and has that Basketball Diaries Mr. Cool cult of personality thing going. His new book of poetry is called Void of Course, published by Penguin. The first piece is the book is called “Eight Fragments for Kurt Cobain,” and he held the audience rapt when he read it, rock star to rock star. JC must have been comfortable -- he read a lot of work he said he had never read before, pattered with the audience in an endearing, slightly self-effacing way. Beth Lisick opened the show. She was wonderful, super high polish, ready for the Big Time. But then, we’ve been saying that for a while. The Examiner raved about her in the next day’s review; there’s no doubt a line of lucrative offers knocking at our monkey girl’s door about now.
The Great American Music hall is one of my favorite rooms in the City. David West told me it used to be a bordello. It’s next door to the Mitchell Brothers porn palace, the O’Farrell Theater. One of my co-workers at Last Gasp had her bachelorette party there. She paid beautiful naked girls to color in Devil Babe’s Big Book of Fun (by SF artist Isabel Samaras) while guys in suits watched crowded at the railings. One girl said, this is too fun, keep the money.
Michelle Tea’s new book finally landed from Semiotext(E). The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America is the name of the book, and it’s a hoot. Michelle’s a great storyteller, one of the best. Eileen Myles and the entire Sister Spit ensem showed up to the party, including Harriet Dodge, Tara Jepsen and Marci Blackman. Marci Blackman has her novel, Po Man's Child, coming out next spring through Manic D Press. She’s going to go on national book tour, and Publisher’s Group West has already put it on their “A List.” She also edited Beyond Definition, an anthology of queer writing from the Bay Area.
That same evening we saw Wammo at Café du Nord with the Asylum Street Spankers. He was just in Europe, doing a spoken word tour with Bob Holman, Beau Sia, Mike Ladd and Maggie Estep. He said everyone was really friendly, that Maggie wasn’t a primadonna or anything. I said, that’s nice. The Spankers are so close to the Big Time, if they spat they’d probably hit a Grammy.
More tour notes: Crispin Hellion Glover is showing his new film (which should be ready in January) in indie arthouses across the country. He also has a slide show and three books to tout: Oak-Mot, Rat Catching and What It Is & How It Is Done. All very funny, extremely twisted, beautifully bound and way way out there. No, I hardly understand them. Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey introduced us at the ComiCon.
Adam is featured in a new book that just came out from D.A.P. called The End is Near: Visions of Apocalypse, Millennium and Utopia. Also included are the Dalai Lama, Howard Finster and Roger Manley. It’s a gorgeous book, full color throughout, very visual. It even includes the entire Book of Revelations by John the Divine.
Jim Goad, publisher of Answer Me, will be the subject of an upcoming article in Spin Magazine. He’s serving time in jail while waiting for his assault and kidnapping trial in January. The bail was too high, so he’s stuck there. Apparently the prosecution is planning on holding up a copy of Jim’s zine (Answer Me #4, which is the infamous over-the-top rape issue that I haven’t read yet) as evidence against him. I think the ACLU is being pulled into it. I’m planning on attending the trial, schedule permitting. Jim Goad also wrote The Redneck Manifesto, which is published by Simon & Schuster.
Shane Bugbee, publisher of Mike Hunt Publications, is planning on reprinting Answer Me #4 right before the trial. No doubt sales will be high. He’s also publishes the Florida artist Mike Diana (whom Dade County officials went after on obscenity charges), and he’s planning a cookbook by Dorothea Puente, the little old lady from Sacramento who killed her tenants for their social security checks. Apparently, he says, she’s a very good cook.
I saw an article in the Brit mag Fringecore about the National Poetry Slam in Austin. Bob Holman wrote it. Thanks Bob, for being the only person to mention in the media aftermath who the organizers were. And where are they now? Michener fellow Phil West is working on his play, nightclub owner Mike Henry is producing Ernie Cline’s movie, Sonya Feher is teaching high school and yours truly, well, I’m keeping busy. In other words, back to normal.
Fringecore is edited by Jack Sargeant, publisher of Creation Press. He has two new books out: Suture, a cutting-edge arts journal with a Trevor Brown cover, and Eros in Hell: Sex, Blood & Madness in Japanese Cinema. Oh, and he also just came out with Renegade Sisters: Girl Gangs on Film. I love his books; my fave is Meat is Murder: An Illustrated Guide to Cannibal Culture.
I finally saw Slam the Movie. I tell you, I was relieved it had nothing to do with the poetry slam. It reminded me to mention a new book, Outside Looking In: How to Keep from Going Crazy When Someone You Love Goes to Jail. It’s by Toni Weymouth, a Fresno writer and one of the “Moms From Hell” prisoner advocates and support group. Toni says that people tend to convict the family members when their children are convicted of heinous crimes. For example Jeff Dahmer’s mother was asked to leave her church group in Fresno after the murders in Milwaukee were discovered. That’s compassion for you.
And there’s tens of thousands more people serving time in jail in this so-called Drug War, mostly poor and disenfranchised, much like the character Saul Williams played in Slam the Movie. New and bigger prisons are the number one capital outlay of many state legislatures. Some states are privatizing their prison systems; it’s becoming a business; the more prisoners the more money in the budget. Who likes giving up their budget? It’s a rotten circle. The War on Drugs takes the most prisoners.
Oh, another book I want to mention is Shattered Lives, a photo book about the people caught up in the War on Drugs. It really personifies the folks getting sent into the prison system, those caught up in this anti-drug hysteria. Money talks in the judicial system; doesn’t anyone remember lessons learned by O.J. Simpson? In a very weird sidenote, Johnnie Cochran’s brother was recently found shot to death on a Los Angeles sidewalk. The police have no suspects.
A reader writes in:
“A big hello from Ledbury Poetry Festival based in the market town of Ledbury in rural Herefordshire. Britain’s foremost poetry festival is gearing up for 1999 after a sucessful 1998 festival featuring Adrian Mitchell, Germaine Greer, Roger McGough and John Hegley amongst others. The festival runs from July 1-11, 1999, email at lpoetry@aol.com for more details.Thanks for the post, LH. I want to go! It’ll give me a chance to catch up with Genevieve Van Cleve.Lawrence Hurley,
Ledbury Poetry Festival”
Sherman Alexie will defend his title as World Heavyweight Poetry Champion against. . . Wanda Coleman! This bout at the long-running Taos Poetry Circus is sure to make your head spin; those two l-o-o-ove the stage. It happens in June, so you still have some time to reserve ringside seats. I heard Jim Nave has transplanted to Taos, where he started a regular poetry slam. Taos will be one of many new cities making it to Chicago for the Poetry Slam Nationals in 1999 including San Juan, P.R., Milpitas, California and Houston, Texas. The poetry bout was also born in Chicago, predating the slam by a few years. Isn’t Chicago the place where Theater Sports began as well? Umm, I need to think about this some more. There must be a common thread running through it all. The water? The public school system? The Daley Dynasty? The theater scene? The Bulls?
U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is reading at the Huntington Library in Pasadena on December 9 at 7:30 p.m. He’s reading from his translation of Dante’s Inferno. If you go, you’ll be able to submit poems to his Favorite Poem Project, a video/audio archive.
Sic Magazine Vice & Verse needs a distributor in San Francisco. They left two boxes of Sic with me, which is highly annoying since I don’t have a car. But I love the editors Rafael Alvarado and S.A. Griffin. Rafael and Dafid crashed on my couch recently. They were in town for interviews with Shannon Wheeler and Robert Anton Wilson. Contact them through sagriffin@mindspring.com.
That’s it for me. Thanks for the patience. If someone forwarded this newsletter & you'd like to subscribe, or if you're ready to call it quits, go to our subscription page & click subscribe or unsubscribe. If you want to write me personally, please do so at sofasurf@usa.net. I appreciate letters, but I don’t usually get a chance to respond promptly. I’ll be better about keeping in touch. Many kisses and thank yous to Stephen Spyrit, Ritah Parrish, Kevin Sampsell, Noel Franklin, Bob Redmond, Marty Kruse, Ruben Nisenfeld, Alison Durrazi, Gabrielle Boulaine, Paula Friedrich for a wonderful Northwest tour. I love you guys. And thanks to David Walker, Arthur Tulee and Richard Marshall. It was a pleasure sharing the stage with you.
xox Juliette Torrez
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