MUSELETTER #47

9/4/2000

Labor Day in the US, the day working folk set their labors aside for a last summer barbecue. Welcome to September, everybody!

This Museletter brings two special announcements & columns from two of our correspondents:

• Kim Holzer Leeds is back with the About Poetry Chat -- this Wednesday, 9/6.
• Our site is becoming About Poetry: Contemporary, paired with the brand-new About Poetry: Classic site.
• Ian Ferrier, just returned from a poetry performance excursion to Norway, has news from Scandinavia and Canada.
• Marj Hahne reports all the poetic doings in that nexus of Northeast poetry, Philadelphia.

Margy Snyder & Bob Holman
Poetry Guides

POETRY IS EVERYWHERE AT ABOUT

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Now there are two poetry sites at About:

• The brand-new Poetry: Classic site, focused on the poetries of the past & directed to students & teachers of classic poetry. Browse around the resources Guide Linda Grimes has gathered already & we're sure you'll find many reasons to join us in welcoming her site to About Arts & Lit.
  
  
• Our site, to be renamed Poetry: Contemporary (but note, our url has not changed), focused on contemporary poetry & directed to practicing poets & contemporary poetry readers/listeners.

EUROPE/MONTREAL/CANADA

Volapuk
This report comes mostly from Oslo, Norway, where I have spent the last ten days performing at an amazing event called Volapuk. This cultural and literary festival invites writers and musicians from Scandinavia and the rest of the world to get together and present their work during a five-night party that includes films, theatre, music, poetry, stories, drama and photography.

The major force behind all this is Hans Broch Nielsen, who has squatted in the abandoned estate that houses the festival for over ten years now. During that time, he and the other resident artists have transformed the property from a dilapidated wreck to a thriving cultural center, all of this while resisting the developer who owns the land, and was planning to tear it all down.

Each year the artists have responded by making the site a little more indispensable to the cultural life of the country, an effort that is both exhausting and exhilarating. The fight is now in the hands of the Oslo city government, where an effort to expropriate the estate and endow it as an ongoing cultural center is finally gaining momentum in the city government assembly.

With the tide turning, this event drew both the national television and radio networks, on hand to interview the organizers and artists, as well as most of the national newspapers. In this most literate of countries, an anoymous donor has also offered millions to the festival if they can secure the land upon which they have built it.

The five days, from August 23rd to August 27th, brought together some amazing work. One highlight for me was a reading by Asli Erdogan, a Turkish writer and journalist deeply committed to the plight of dissenting writers in Turkey. The Turks still have a lot to learn about tolerating free speech, and for now they learn it from Asli and others who brave threats on their life to highlight the plight of writers and artists imprisoned for dissenting from the current regime. For Erdogan this has meant listening to an anonymous caller who clicks a gun into her telephone each night.

Erdogan has not lost her sense of humour though, and her work was tough and lively, including a wonderful description of a late night party with “all the corners dark enough to get laid in.”Other high points were a Norwegian swing band that does Frank Sinatra tunes, and an Egyptian belly dancer who can move muscles I didn't know existed in the human body. On hand also were two Swedish writers, my fellow Canadian, the novelist Ray Smith, and from Ireland Mr. Mike McCormack, whose recent collection of stories, Getting it in the Head, is making its own waves.

My shows in the country started at Smuget, a night club in the centre of the city that has hosted acts like Prince, Sting and Mick Jagger among others. Monday is the night when all the musicians in Oslo are invited to come for free soup and music, and sometimes literature, and this was the night I went onstage. It turns out that when musicians get together most of them don't want to listen to more music. They'd rather have a few beers and cruise their way into a nice new relationship, thanks, and with the men and women of this country being so blonde and so beautiful, who can blame them?

Volapuk, on the other hand, was one of the best audiences for literature I've ever encountered. I did three shows there, and the second of the three will remain a highlight of my career. So thanks to Oslo, Norway, and as the jet lag starts to seep out of my bones, on to Montreal and Canada. . . .

HOWL, An Art & Revolution Festival
This month Montreal will host HOWL -- An Art & Revolution Festival -- from the 19th to the 22nd of September. The 20th will feature the Montreal release of a new poetry CD entitled Unheard Of, as well as a guest performance from Fortner Anderson and music by Annabelle Chvostek. A number of the poets on the CD will be on hand for the event, including Jennifer Paterson, Vince Tinguely, Victoria Stanton, and CD producer Nathaniel Moore. Iz Cox and literature performer extraordinaire Catherine Kidd can be heard at Café Chaos on the 21st , and on the 22nd I'll be doing a set at l'X, along with a fabulous band called Noma.

This Just In
This just in from Julie Crysler in Toronto:

This Magazine's annual literary issue hits newsstands in mid-September and features the winners of their annual poetry and fiction contest “The Great Canadian Literary Hunt” (plus a special feature, “Nationalism & Its Discontents,” and much more).

If you're in the Toronto area on September 28, come out to This Magazine's annual Literary Party! They'll be having readings by winners of this year's “Great Canadian Literary Hunt” at 8:30 pm, followed by music, drinks and literary antics at Cobalt (426 College Street). See their Web site for more details, or call them at 416.979.9429. This Magazine has been one of Canada's leading voices for critical, intelligent writing about culture, politics and the arts, winning the 1998 Alternative Press Award for Best Cultural Coverage, and placing as a finalist in the 1999 Award, for Best Political and Social Issues Coverage. It provides analysis and commentary from a dissenting perspective, along with in-depth arts coverage and a commitment to Canada's writers and poets.

Canzine 2000
Also in Toronto on Sunday October 1st will be Canzine 2000, Canada's Largest Zine Fair and Festival of Alternative Culture. The event -- which showcases alt and underground lit as well as over 150 underground periodicals on display from across Canada -- takes place on from 1 pm - 8 pm at The Big Bop (651 Queen Street, corner of Queen and Bathurst). Free admission! All Welcome! To find out more about Canzine, contact zines@brokenpencil.com, or visit Broken Pencil.

Planète Rebelle Literary Cabaret
Finally for this issue, Planète rebelle will be hosting its annual literary cabaret in Montreal at le Lion d'Or on the 3rd of October. The event will feature performances by top names in the French literary culture here, and is a spoken word highlight. For more info you can log onto www.planeterebelle.qc.ca.

Take care till next time, when I'll hopefully have more info on Vancouver's 2nd annual Videopoem Festival. From Oslo, Norway / Montreal, Canada. . . .

--Ian Ferrier

PHILADELPHIA/SOUTH JERSEY/DELAWARE

Eloping with The Muse, Honeymooning with Myself
Three days before I left for the 23rd Annual International Women’s Writing Guild’s Summer Conference, I wrote “A Perfect Couple” in response to a man who had told me unequivocally that he was married to the Muse, that he liked sleeping alone, and that he had no problem finding women to satisfy his sexual needs. The poem reveals my mixed envy and resentment toward men and our culture, for that biological and social luxury men have that permits them to declare a lifelong commitment to the Muse: “I envy you / Men, I envy / Your swagger, your walk / Down the aisle of your / Self.” I didn’t know I would soon betray my own words. I didn’t know that a week with 600 women giving me permission to honor my creative impulse above all else, would turn me into a confirmed playgirl of poetry. Supreme Dame to Her Art, Hannelore Hahn birthed The International Women’s Writing Guild at founding member Vicki Heland’s kitchen table on October 26, 1976. When the baby learned to speak, it declared, “I am a network for the personal and professional empowerment of women through writing.” “Because the Guild is process,” Hahn says, “the Guild is chrysalis. Furthermore, it engenders this state of becoming in others, who eventually turn into butterflies.” And the annual “Remember the Magic” Conference, which always begins on the second weekend in August at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, is one very special, safe place where “women birth and rebirth each other in a supportive and mindful circle,” where we enter in “silent partnership with the spiritual, with the sacred. And without doctrine. Just awareness of a dimension which deepens and ennobles the work.” Workshops in juggling, yoga, money, voice training, doll- and puppet-making, Native American myths; sessions on self-publishing, finding an agent, writing comedy or romance or monologues, writing for advocacy or children or TV and film -- all this in seven days plus evening open readings, critique opportunities, and a marketplace to sell your literary wares. Oh, and lifelong friendships with dynamic women who return to Skidmore year after glorious year. Ladies, listen to this po-spinster when she speaks: marry the Muse, join the Guild for only $35/year, and maintain a lifeline to other women writers through their bimonthly newsletters and regional events. Contact The International Women’s Writing Guild at P.O. Box 810, Gracie Station, New York, NY 10028, 212.737.7536, email iwwg@iwwg.com, Web site www.iwwg.com.

More Ketan Ben Caesar Sightings
Ketan Ben Caesar’s “unconventional pre-convention reading” on Thursday, July 20, at the Philadelphia Ethical Society on Rittenhouse Square, may have been his final performance of its kind -- not because the Republicans offered him a gig as a speechwriter, but because he wishes to explore multimedia ways of presenting his work. Caesar drew a crowd large enough to be seated in the Ethical Society’s main room and talented enough to pack the open mic reading that follows all programs sponsored by Poets and Prophets, 610.328.POET (who also present readings at the Borders locations in Center City and Springfield, PA).

For now, Ketan Ben Caesar can still be found moderating the irregularly scheduled open mic poetry reading at the Northeast Regional Library, Cottman Avenue and Oakland Street (near Bustleton Avenue), Philadelphia, PA, 215.685.0501. I attended the July 19 reading and found it quite supportive of new voices. I also heard some very talented folks whom I have not seen at other local poetry events. Call the library for upcoming dates.

Love, Sex, and Transgression, Oh My!, at the Asian Arts Initiative
The Asian Arts Initiative, 1315 Cherry Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA, 215.557.0455, closed the third year of its third-Fridays RAP series on July 21 with writers Jeff Loo, Mytili Jagannathan and Quinn Eli presenting a provocative and playful program entitled “Love, Sex, and Transgression.” To further the Initiative’s belief in the arts as a powerful force for challenging misperceptions and catalyzing social action, the RAP series presents film and performance meant to inspire dialogue about race and gender issues. Poets Loo and Jagannathan and Philadelphia Weekly writer Eli teamed up to address cinematic representations of people of color and their relationships. Loo showed a clip from The Lover and read his ironic narratives, most notably a string of poems about a former white girlfriend’s family who could not accept his Asian ethnicity. Jagannathan showed a clip from Deepa Mehta’s Fire, about the sexual relationship that develops between two Indian women, and then read her poems, one accompanied by another female reader in a beautiful poetic duet. Regular readers of the Philadelphia Weekly already know about Eli’s obsession with Pam Grier, so I wasn’t surprised when he screened a clip from a Pam Grier film from the Blaxploitation era, in addition to one from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Eli then read his humorous autobiographical essay, which originally appeared in the Weekly, about 70s-era white female television stars -- a la Charlie’s Angels -- who infiltrated his teenage imagination despite himself, and his undying loyalty to Pam Grier and self-reproach for abandoning her back then. The spontaneous commentary among Loo, Jagannathan and Eli was so engaging, I only wish that audience members could have participated in the discussion. But unfortunately the usual follow-up Q&A had to be forfeited because this particular presentation lasted longer than expected. The RAP Series will resume in September.

NOTcoffeeHouse Serving Verse on First Sundays
The NOT coffeeHouse’s first-Sunday-of-the-month Poetry and Performance Series returns from its summer hiatus with Jeff Loo, Thaddeus Rutkowski, and Alfred Vitale reading from their new works on Sunday, September 10, at 1:00 pm (this month’s first Sunday falls on Labor Day weekend), at the First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215.563.3980. Admission is still only $1, and includes a musical performance and an open mic reading.

Jeff Loo will read from Strangers in a Homeland, his forthcoming chapbook from Ashland Press (2001), as well as some other pieces. He has published in American Poetry Review, RANT, Barrow Street, Green Mountain Review, Many Mountains Moving, and CrossConnect. He has performed at the Painted Bride Art Center, the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center, New York Stories (in the East Village), and NEMLA (Baltimore), and on WXPN’s “Live from Kelly Writer’s House” radio show. Loo teaches creative writing at Community College of Philadelphia, and volunteers for the Asian Arts Initiative of Philadelphia, where he recently participated in their RAP Series program entitled “Love, Sex, and Transgression” (see above headline for details).

Thaddeus Rutkowski grew up in central Pennsylvania and now lives in New York City, where he works as a newspaper copy editor. He is the author of Journey to the Center of My Id, and his work has been published in numerous publications including Mudfish, Global City Review, and the New York Times. He has been a resident writer at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Ragdale Foundation, and a Poetry Slam winner at the Nuyorican Poets Café. In his new novel Roughhouse, Rutkowski “brings a poet’s sensibilities to a funny, perversely erotic and compelling story of an American family,” says Shay Youngblood. And according to Hal Sirowitz (author of Mother Said, but who apparently has his own opinions!), “What is most startling about Roughhouse is that it seems too realistic to be a novel, and yet too unsettling to be completely factual. He’s like our modern-day Marquis de Sade… who mixes reality and fantasy so intricately that he becomes our guide….” Lead us, Thaddeus.

Alfred Vitale is the former editor of RANT, a member of the Unbearables, and co-editor of the upcoming anthology Help Yourself!, a satirical deconstruction of self-help movements being published by Autonomedia Press. Vitale’s work has appeared in Chick for a Day & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, and numerous journals and magazines. He currently lives in Philadelphia with his wife Betty and their daughter Sofi.

Poets and performers may submit works for posting on NOTcoffeeHouse’s Web site via email to webmaster@notcoffeehouse.org or to Richard Frey at richardfrey@dca.net, or sent USPS or hand-delivered through the mail slot at 500 S. 25th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19146. For more information about NOTcoffeeHouse, you may also contact founders/hosts Jeff Loo at 215.546.6381 or Richard Frey at 215.735.7156.

Afaa Michael Weaver: Po-Oracle Speaks Truths at Robin’s Bookstore
Afaa Michael Weaver wants us to know that “Afaa” means “oracle” or “one who gives clarity to the present,” and that giving clarity to the present is not the same as telling the future. On Tuesday, July 25, at Robin’s Bookstore, 108 S. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA. 215.735.9600, Weaver did just that with his soulful, self-disclosing poems from Multitudes: Poems Selected & New (Sarabande Books, 2000). Dedicating his reading to the deceased poet Roger Allen Jones, who had read with Weaver years ago on Philadelphia’s Spruce Street, Weaver put together this retrospective collection when he learned he had a heart condition. Turning 49 this year, the end of the Buddhist wisdom cycle, Weaver owes his restored health to tai chi, a discipline he values for its relationship to poetry and song. “Time has a gift that is not time,” he says in “Friendship, 1994,” gifts we receive when hearing Weaver, with the grace of a holy man, tell horrifying stories and read poems about his fifteen years in his native Baltimore as a blue-collar factory worker in a “place of emotional, spiritual, and physical violence.” To his dangerously racist co-workers in “Enemies,” he says, “In the warehouse’s shallow echo, you hate me. / My smile is a knife. I cut you in your dreams.” As Sonia Sanchez says, “He speaks to us in tongues that are ‘cultured’ by timbre and prayer, black and white galaxies.” Weaver read poems about his childhood, his parents, his own children, my favorite being “Abiku,” about his indebted gratitude to the timeless gift, in birth and death, of his namesake Michael S. Weaver, Jr. (1971-1972): “Count my gifts to you -- ten months of life, / my name engraved in bronze in the earth.” Although Weaver did not take his ancestral Nigerian name of “Afaa” until a few years ago, even as a child in “Radio Days,” he “was supposed to make the future / a safe place.” Weaver’s gentle authenticity, absence of pretense, and conscious examination of his many lives make him immediately trustworthy -- make the present in his presence a very safe place, and the future, a hopeful one.

Po-Puppet Love at the Hands of Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
“My love for you is close to grief. My heart’s been stolen by a thief,” mourns the poor common Majnun for the wealthy precious Layla, in the Persian version of an Arabic legend set to puppet-stage by local poet Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore. The Floating Lotus Magic Puppet Theater is Moore’s return to the stage without the hitches he experienced while producing theater years ago at Berkeley: “Puppets don’t get pregnant or fall in love and run off.” Moore was celebrating his 60th birthday on Thursday, August 3, the day of his one-man show at Main Line Art Center, Old Buck Road and Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, PA, 610.525.0272. The spry sexagenarian narrated “The Mystical Romance of Layla and Majnun” in poetic verse, switching between his live voice and a recording of his voice, the latter of which I, at least, was not aware until Moore intentionally popped his head above the stage to show that his lips weren’t moving. Also deliberately comical were some of Moore’s word choices to maintain the rhyme scheme. Magnun, a farmer name for “measure,” and Layla, meaning “night” or “wine,” were childhood friends whose lifelong love brought shame to Layla’s family name. They recited poetry to each other until Majnun, heartbroken by Layla’s arranged engagement to a man her father deemed worthy of her, fled to the woods to live wild among the animals. “He who searches for the beloved in his life is not afraid of the world.” I won’t reveal the rest of the story, except to say that the two lovers find peace knowing that “God’s eye that sees all is our wedlock.” Moore was delightful: he sang, played harmonica, changed all the beautiful backdrops, and at times emerged from behind the stage, donning mask and garb as the love-mad Majnun. Like the townspeople witnessing the mystical romance of Layla and Majnun, we in the audience could not deny that “the power of poetry is great.” Scroll down for information below about Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore’s “Millennial Prognostications and Other Manifestations” during the upcoming Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Rap is Poetry! Writing Workshop for Youth
This summer, the Poetry for the People Collective teamed up with the Logan Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, 1333 Wagner Avenue, to present Rap is Poetry!, a writing workshop for kids ages 6 and up. On three consecutive Friday afternoons, July 28, August 4, and August 11, participants read and listened to works by selected hip-hop artists, and wrote and performed their own rap lyrics. They engaged in stimulating discussions and a variety of interactive, audio-visual, and youth-led activities concerning the relationship of hip hop and poetry to their personal experiences. You may contact Poetry for the People at poetry4peeps@hotmail.com if you wish to learn more about their community outreach programs.

Wacky About Words? Check Out the Mad Poets Society
Since its inception in 1987, the Mad Poets Society has grown from a handful of poets at Media (PA) Borough Hall to over 100 members in six states. In the words of founder/director Eileen M. D’Angelo, “It is an organization of poets and writers who have joined together for camaraderie and critique with heart, to promote poetry and the literary arts, to bring poetry and the appreciation of the spoken word to surrounding communities, and to foster a supportive, nurturing atmosphere to promote individual growth.” Mad Poets are teachers, bricklayers, lawyers, secretaries, accountants. Mad Poets are students, parents, senior citizens, published and unpublished. In addition to presenting events at schools, libraries, art centers, nursing homes, and festivals, the Mad Poets Society runs five poetry series in the Delaware Valley, which include one or two featured readers followed by an open mic reading, and offer excellent opportunities for new poets to express themselves in an encouraging atmosphere. The Mad Poets Society also publishes an annual literary journal, Mad Poets Review, which is listed in Poet’s Market. You need not be a member of the Mad Poets Society to submit work, but the $20 annual membership entitles you to affiliate memberships in both the Pennsylvania Poetry Society and the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Members will receive those two organizations’ newsletters plus the Mad Poets Society’s own quarterly newsletter, an impressively comprehensive listing of area poetry events. Check out their Web site for reading series schedules and a membership application.

Emiliano Martin and Bill Holmes Set Words to Flight at the Hunt Club Mansion
On Wednesday, August 23, as part of the Mad Poets Society’s series (4th Wednesdays) at the Hunt Club Mansion at Rose Tree Park (1521 N. Providence Road - Rt. 252, Media, PA), Emiliano Martin and Bill Holmes read their poetry, followed by an open mic reading.

Founder of the Philadelphia Poetry Forum and former director of the Latin American Guild for the Arts, Martin is the author of several books of poetry including Legacy of the Poet, Sparkles of Eternity, and his most recent book, Moody Muse, from Mad Poets Press. He has performed for the Philadelphia school system, and recently presented with Peter Krok, Poetry Director of the Manayunk Art Center, a dramatic play on the life and poetry of Federico García Lorca at the Philadelphia Ethical Society. Widely published and converted to songs in Spain, Martin’s poesías are laced with the accent and charm of his native Madrid. Whether reading a serious or humorous poem, Martin speaks with authority, perhaps a carryover from his days as a corporal under Franco’s rule. “Poetry: a weapon loaded with future… perhaps,” he pretends to equivocate. “I am a poet of ambition without fear,” he declares in “Who Am I?” But mostly Martin exposes his soft side. The narrator of “Ode to a Firefighter” feels helpless as he watches a firefighter holding a child: “From a distance there was nothing I could do but cry.” And in “I Like People,” the narrator “can’t help liking people who bring out the best of people in this world.” Perhaps the most crowd-pleasing poem was “Kinds of Poets,” a litany listing today’s po-types “far more complicated than classics, classics, classics.” Martin identifies scholar poets, blue-collar poets, resident poets, and poets looking for a residence. He names weekend poets, frustrated poets, forgotten poets, and the truly unnoticed. “But as long as they are honest, I love them all,” he assures us.

Bill Holmes’ work has appeared on radio and in newspapers and anthologies. The Mad Poets Society first discovered him when he competed in last year’s Multi-State Poetry Slam at the New Market Cabaret in Philadelphia. Holmes performed emotionally vulnerable and spiritual pieces about “illumination, rejuvenation, salvation” from his chapbook Illuminations, his spoken word recording Asphyxiation, and his forthcoming book (Spring 2001) entitled Straight from the Heart. In his closing poem, he spoke the words he’d like engraved on his tombstone, asking us to “remember me as a cup of tea when you’re feeling blue.”

Upcoming Poetry Events Presented by the Mad Poets Society:
See the Mad Poets Society Web site for schedules of their five reading series.

• Sunday, October 1, 12:00 - 5:00 pm
  14th Annual Mad Poets Festival, Media Borough Hall (3rd and Jackson Streets, Media, PA) in the Parlor, featuring up to 40 locally and nationally known poets reading on a first-come, first-served basis, with scheduling preferences given to new members
• Saturdays, September 16 and October 21, at dusk (6:30 pm)
  Mad Poets Bonfires, Camp Sunshine (Glen Mills Road, Thornton, PA), an outdoor open forum for poets, songwriters, and musicians of all ages, hosted by Richard Bank. Bring musical instruments, a flashlight, a lidded coffee mug/cup, munchies, a lawn chair or blanket, your poetry, your friends! For directions to Camp Sunshine, contact Eileen D’Angelo at 610.586.9318 or madpoets@voicenet.com.
• Thursday, November 9, 7:30 pm
  Mad Poets Ray Greenblatt, Camilia Nocella, and Marj Hahne (me!), as part of the Thursday Evening Lecture Series at the Main Line Art Center, Old Buck Road and Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, PA, 610.525.0272.

Mix Po-Potions with Edwin Torres in His Word Laboratory at WWCAC
Kicking off the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center’s new biannual Creative Writing Workshop series will be Edwin Torres, a wildly original and talented poet and performer, claimed by the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Poetry Project, and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E schools. Torres has been called nomadic, traveling among these fractions of avant-garde poetics and having toured England, Germany, Amsterdam, and Australia, conducting writing workshops in venues that range from schools and prisons to farms, festivals, and beaches across the USA. In a review of his marvelous Fractured Humorous, Brenda Coultas writes that “[t]here is a reason why Torres is claimed by all poetic camps, and that is because he is an extraordinary poet.” He has also taught poetry/performance workshops and curated a reading series at NYC’s Poetry Project, where he is a board member. Torres’ other publications include Sandhommenomadno, Lung Poetry, and I Hear Things People Haven’t Really Said, in addition to work that has appeared in numerous anthologies.

Torres has entitled his workshop “BRAINLINGO: Writing the Voice of the Body.” As artists we create our own communication. How we listen “affects” how we speak, how we see our language “affects” how our voice is heard. Where the senses meet each other is where poetry can begin. This workshop will be an active creative laboratory that will explore how we communicate by exercising the languages inside us. Exercises will be balanced by critiques. It will be an active writing workshop for poets, performers, and anyone with an open mind.

Registration deadline is September 5th! Workshop registration is open, on a first-come, first-served basis. Class size will be limited to 15 participants.

Class dates: Saturdays, September 16, 23, October 7, 14, 21, 28, from 12:00 - 2:00 pm
Fee: $100/$80 members
Guidelines: Send five pages of writing; a cover sheet with name, address, email address and/or phone # for notification; and an SASE if you would like your work returned, to: Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center, Writing Workshop, 2nd and Cooper Streets, Camden, NJ 08102.

There will also be a Spring 2001 Writing Workshop, its instructor and dates to be announced. For more information about the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center, you may view their Web site or call 856.964.8300.

The Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center also invites us to attend an evening of poetry in the gardens of Smithville Mansion in Eastampton, NJ, on Friday, September 15, at 7:00 pm. Laura Boss is the featured poet. There will be tables with information regarding poetry groups in the South Jersey/Philadelphia region, plus editors from such literary journals as Painted Bride Quarterly, Lips, Paterson Literary Review, 6ix, and The Literary Review. Smithville Mansion is located on Smithville Road off Route 38 East in Eastampton. Please RSVP by calling the Camden County Cultural & Heritage Commission at 856.858.0040, and they can also give more specific directions to the Mansion.

Poetry with an Edge at the Fringe Festival
The 2000 Philadelphia Fringe Festival runs September 1-16 with more than 500 performances, several of which incorporate the spoken word. Complete schedules detailing performances, venues, and ticket information were inserted in the August 24 issue of the City Paper, and program updates can be found at www.pafringe.com. Their box office is located at the National Showroom, 113-131 N. 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215.413.1318. Single Festival tickets are $10 unless otherwise noted, and discount coupon packets can be purchased at the Fringe Box Office or by phone.

Fringe events featuring the spoken word:

• Sekou Sundiata at the Labor Day Block Party, Arch Street between 2nd and 4th Streets, Monday Sep 4, 5:00 pm, free! New York-based spoken-word master Sekou Sundiata returns to the Fringe with his six-piece band to perform the powerful, message-laden work from his latest CD longstoryshort, a stirring mix of poetry and music that combines the rich sounds of blues with funk, jazz, and African and Afro-Caribbean percussion.
  
  Other Block Party events begin at 6:00 pm with a parade of Fringe artists starting and ending at the National Showroom, 113-131 No. 2nd Street.
  
  
• Day of the Poet: Word Wide First Friday’s Fifth Anniversary Bash, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine Street, 215.925.9914, Friday Sep 1 at 8:00 pm, $12. (Fringe coupons not valid for this show -- tickets must be purchased at the Painted Bride.) Kicking off the Fringe Fest and the Bride’s 31st season, Day of the Poet celebrates its 5th year as the city’s vanguard festival of the spoken word with an all-star lineup of poets from the last five years: Ursula Rucker, the Twin Poets, Rich Medina, and host Kevin O’Neill. Special guests include Keith Roach and others from NYC’s Nuyorican Poets Café, readers from The Young Philly Poets Collective, and video poets from O’Neill’s Inmate Poetry Project. Sign up early for the special Open Mic Lotto.
  
  
• Don Riggs Reads Poems, Old First Reform Church, 153 N. 4th Street, Wednesday Sep 6 at 9:30 pm, Thursday Sep 7 at 7:00 pm (1 hr 30 min), $10 (double bill with Shawn Walker, who explores meditative and ecstatic spaces through poetry and sounds, weaving words and music). With influences ranging from Dylan Thomas to John Cage, Drexel prof Don Riggs blasts his poetry not just through his voice but through his whole body, hitting listeners from their ears to their intellects. In his own mystical words, his poems are “scattered scraps of image leavings gleaned from glitterings of sunrevealed leftovers of late night mindwander epic diatribe fragments gleaned from hangover apartment exploration.” Riggs always makes good on his conviction that poetry readings are meant to be fun as well as mental firmament.
  
  
• Nathalie Anderson’s Crawlers, Old First Reform Church, 153 N. 4th Street, Saturday Sep 9, 4:30 pm, Saturday Sep 16 at 4:30 pm (1 hr), $10. A toddler grabs at a glistening spider; centipedes trawl the bathtub; roaches skitter across the kitchen floor. Swarthmore prof Nathalie Anderson’s poems jitter, shimmy, swing, and shimmer with verbal intensity.
  
  
• Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore’s Millennial Prognostications and Other Manifestations, Old First Reform Church, 153 N. 4th Street, Sunday Sep 10 at 3:00 pm, Monday Sep 11 at 7:00 pm (1 hr), $5. Playing mystic-tuned zither, African marimbas, Moroccan djuga, Nigerian bamboo kalimba, and sweet Hohner harmonica, Moore’s image-packed wordbursts are surreal flights and illuminated Rumi-esque contemplations of the here and now. Coleman Barks says, “He’s like an old wisdom tradition come up off the streets.” Ron Silliman concurs, “Daniel Moore was a legend among poets and the hip cognoscenti of California in the 1960s, so it’s a great pleasure to see just how brightly this flame still burns.”
  
  
• Chris McCreary’s bitter suite symphony, Old First Reform Church, 153 N. 4th Street, Sunday Sep 3 at 8:00 pm, Friday Sep 8 at 10:00 pm (1hr 20 min), $5 (double bill with Crux Grammata’s bold musical combination of rock, free improvisation, and modern composition). Constructed from bits of advertising scripts, song lyrics, white-collar jargon, and oblique biographies cut and pasted together, bitter suite symphony is a humorous long poem created from a collage of narratives, resulting in a fractured yet unified urban hymn for the post-op, postal, postmodern age.
  
  
• Daisy Fried’s Stories of the Great Ballets & Jim Quinn’s Dirty Words, Ugly Problems: A Comedy, Old First Reform Church, 153 N. 4th Street, Saturday Sep 9 at 9:30 pm, Saturday Sep 16 at 2:00 pm (1 hr 30 min), $5. Married to each other, these two poets illuminate the problems of relationships, mostly sexual, always unsolvable, usually funny -- especially when tragic. Drawing influences from ballet and music, and using dramatic lighting and several readers (Melissa Backes, Rich Kaufmann, Amy Smith, and others), Fried and Quinn present their own distinct approaches to the battle.
  
  
• Una Pong’s Dissolve, Cabaret Theatre, 211 Race Street (rear entrance), Saturday Sep 9 at 7:00 pm, Sunday Sep 10 at 8:00 pm (1 hr 35 min), $10 (double bill with singer/songwriter Cynthia G. Mason). Una Pong masterfully blends improvised sound sculpture, spoken-word pieces, and more traditional musical works with visual and theatrical elements to explore the conflict between the need for intimacy and the desire for independence.
  
  
• Sandy Crimmins’ Secret Lives, Cabaret Theatre, 211 Race Street (rear entrance) Tuesday Sep 12 at 9:00 pm (1 hr 20 min), $10 (double bill with Michael “the WID” Baldwin’s one-man show). Sandy Crimmins presents her searing poetry in performance, backed by the finger-picking guitar music of David Falcone and by Thom Dura, a master fire-eater and flame artist. Boring into that place where we begin to act on our passions, Crimmins and company tread lustily among our obsessions and compulsions.
  
  
• Sandy Crimmins’ Tough Little Girl, Cabaret Theatre, 211 Race Street (rear entrance), Sunday Sep 10 at 5:30 pm, Saturday Sep 16 at 9:30 pm (50 min), $10. Poet Sandy Crimmins, guitarist Richard Dreuding, and drummer Stephe Ferraro create a world of aural cinemas where both narrative and music speak in the voices of women on the edge.
  
  
• Paz Tanjuaquio’s Strange Fruit and Other Secrets, Christ Church, 20 N. American Street, Wednesday Sep 13 at 7:00 pm, Thursday Sep 14 at 9:30 pm, Friday Sep 15 at 9:30 pm, Saturday Sep 16 at 7:00 pm (1 hr), $10 (double bill with dancer Rob Petres). Inspired by a trip to the Philippines, New York-based choreographer Paz Tanjuaquio combines her unique style of dance and silky movement that is at once sensual and martial with spoken word, music, and video in this fruit-as-metaphor exploration of cultural identity.
  
  
• truedruid.org’s Afrodisiac: Lyrical Fornication, Silk City, 5th and Spring Garden Streets, Saturday Sep 2 at 1:30 pm, Monday Sep 4 at 1:30 pm, Wednesday Sep 6 at 6:45 pm, Friday Sep 8 at 7:30 pm, Thursday Sep 14 at 7:00 pm (2 hr 30 min), $10. Exposing their hearts beneath their skin, a gathering of female performance poets use theatrical spoken word to convey their personal journeys through life.
  
  
• A Drug Called Horse Productions’ Abort/Retry/Fail?, 3rd and Filbert Streets, in the Alley, Wednesday Sep 13 at 8:30 pm, Thursday Sep 14 at 8:30 pm, Friday Sep 15 at 8:30 pm, Saturday Sep 16 at 9:30 pm (45 min), $10. As a definition of rage, the concept of anger is harnessed and processed through movement, thought, and spoken word, and then converted into a substance suitable for breathing. The performance comprises three passionate and persuasive installments: Passive, Atrophy, and Denial.
  
  
• Propaganda’s Crossways, Cornucopia (soul vegetarian cuisine), 4950 Parkside Avenue, Tuesday Sep 12 at 8:00 pm, Thursday Sep 14 at 8:00 pm (1 hr), $5. Blending poetry with percussion and song, Rachel Robbins and Sai Oye combine expressions of different realities as they examine, rail against, and celebrate the ways we experience race, gender, familial relationships, education, religion, and more.
  
  
• Philadelphia Committee for Independent Culture’s Performance Café, Cyberground, 15 N. 2nd Street, Sunday Sep 10 at 5:00 pm (2 hr), $10. An eclectic sampler of theater, poetry, and music, the Performance Café offers up new ways of seeing social issues and contemporary life, and breaks down the barriers between performers and audience.
  
  
• Spoke ‘n’ Wheel’s Path/Way/Home, Muse Gallery, 60 N. 2nd Street, Satirday Sep 9 at 3:30 pm, Sunday Sep 10 at 3:30 pm (1 hr), $10. Four poets weave poetry, storytelling, drumming, and movement into a visual time capsule. What happens when an African-American man tells the story of a Malaysian immigrant? What becomes unearthed when the hidden is revealed?
  
  
• Sandra Staley Young and Bernard Collins’s Thorns of the Rose, Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Avenue, Sunday Sep 10 at 8:00 pm (1hr 30 min), $15. Combining modern dance, poetry, writing, acting, and music, this collaborative work deals with the realities of a battered spouse and her partner, and how violence is sometimes passed down through the family.
  
  
• Diana Barnhart’s To Her Divine Majority: Women Poets Set to Song, St. George’s Methodist Church, 235 N. 4th Street, Friday Sep 15 at 7:30 pm (1 hr 15 min), $10. Soprano Diana Barnhart, accompanied by Elise Auerbach, bursts out of classical mode to sing the poetry of such luminaries as Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Dorothy Parker, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
  
  
• Pandora’s Laptop’s 3 Poets Unleash Love, Snyderman Gallery, 303 Cherry Street, Friday Sep 15 at 7:30 pm (1 hr), $10. A new troupe of poets read their accessible, personal, tender, powerful, and often funny works on love in all its varieties.
  
  
• Chris Vecchio’s Every Day I Think of You, telephone outside of Nexxus, 137 N. 2nd Street. Walk past the telephone in this visual installation, and it rings. Answer it! A voice begins to read one of three love poems beginning with “Every day I think of you,” and what was private becomes public. The technology simultaneously facilitates communication and anonymity.
  
  
• Susan Smolish’s Word Play in Old City, St. George’s Park, New Street between 2nd & 3rd Streets. Do go gentle into this good forest of words, and meander through the memories, images, and poetics that each of us carries inside. Although the environment is public, this installation piece encourages the free association of intimate thoughts and feelings and the creation of poetry.

A Must for Poets: Poetry Must Shine (P.M.S) at The Point
Kim DeAngelo’s open mic reading series at The Point, 880 W. Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA, 610.517.0988, continues to be one of the best attended, most energizing venues on the local poetry scene. Still occurring monthly, P.M.S. or Poetry Must Shine attracts a lot of top-notch poets, mostly from Delaware County and the Main Line, although more Philadelphians have been showing up, thanks to the R5 Septa train which deposits us only a couple blocks from The Point, and the last train of the night, the 11:24, which takes us back home. Musical accompaniment is available if local musicians show up. The next few readings are scheduled for Mondays, September 18, October 30, and November 27, from 8:00 - 10:30 pm, but call The Point to confirm the October and November dates. Kim can be contacted at possessedpoet@aol.com for what she calls Poetic Mind Sharing!

Manayunk Art Center’s 2000-2001 Poetry Programs
The Sunday poetry series at the Manayunk Art Center, 419 Green Lane (rear), Philadelphia, PA, 215.482.3363, launches its twelfth year on September 17, from 2:00 - 4:00 pm, with a trio of upstate New York poets: Harry Humes, Patricia Goodrich, and Paul Martin. A $4 donation is requested, and refreshments will be served. Poetry Director Peter Krok likes to organize the readings around particular themes, the 2000-2001 schedule of which follows:

• October 8, 10th Anniversary of the Schuylkill Valley Journal, MAC’s literary journal edited by Jim Marinell, with a Diner Photo Exhibit by Barbara Battista
• October 29, An Afternoon with Edgar Allan Poe: a perfect pre-Halloween talk by Katherine Ashe and other musings about the luckless writer
• November 12, Washington Prize & Word Works: Washington, DC poets Karren Alenier, Hilary Tham, Miles Moore, Nathalie Anderson, Patricia Garfinkel, and Peter Blair; Word Works is a nonprofit literary organization founded in 1974, and information about their programs and other DC literary events can be found at their Web site.
• December 3, Storytellers and Poets: Connie Bretz, Tina Devine, and Ruth Scult
• January 14, 2001, Meridian Poets: 10th anniversary volume featuring poets who appeared at the Sedgwick Cultural Center in Philadelphia’s Mt. Airy section
• February 11, 2001, Poets and a Rilke Connection: Lisa Sewell, Bernhardt Blumenthal, and others to be named later
• March 18, 2001, Poetry and Healing: Elinor Grace Mattern, David Mook, Kelley White, and others
• April 22, 2001, A Trio of Poets: Emily Grosholz, Lynn Levin, and Charlie Mosler
• May 20, 2001, Zen, The East, and the Muse: poets to be named later

A Reason to Like Mondays: The Monday Poets at the Central Library
At the Free Library of Philadelphia’s main branch, 1901 Vine Street, 215.686.5322 General / 5402 Literature, the Literature Department’s Monday Poets are offering, for the fifth year, a free poetry workshop appropriate for beginners as well as others looking for feedback and criticism of ongoing work. Meeting every fourth Monday of the month, from 6:30 - 8:30 pm, in the Skyline Room, participants will critique each other’s poems, learn about oral presentation styles, and be introduced to the Library’s information sources helpful for poetry writing and publishing. Because the workshop builds on the previous month’s discussion, ongoing participation is encouraged, and for scheduled critiquing sessions, participants should bring 25 copies of their poems. Fall 2000/Spring 2001 dates are October 23, November 27, December 18 (note this is the 3rd Monday due to Christmas holiday), January 22, February 26, March 26, and April 23. For additional information, call Michele Gendron or Michele Belluomini at 215.686.5402. I attended a couple of workshop sessions last year, and both Micheles are gentle presenters and knowledgeable poets committed to sharing their love of the craft.

The Monday Poets also present an Open Reading Series in the Central Library’s East Corridor, on alternating second Mondays, from 6:30 - 8:30 pm, the schedule of which follows:

• September 11: Alexandra Grilikhes, series moderator, is a nationally known poet and the editor/publisher of American Writing: A Magazine. She is the author of nine small-press collections of poetry and a novel, Yin Fire (Spring 2001). Her essays, poems and stories have been widely published, and she was a 1999 Pushcart Prize nominee in fiction. Grilikhes has taught at the University of the Arts for over two decades.
• November 13: CAConrad and Sandra Evans Falconer
• January 8, 2001: Shulamith Wechter Caine and Kenneth Pobo
• March 12, 2001: Lamont Dixon aka Napalm and Janet Mason

Information about poetry happenings at all Free Library branches can be found at their Web site.

Painted Bride Quarterly Hits the Cyber-Newsstand
The current issue (#63) of Painted Bride Quarterly, the almost-30-year-old Philly-based literary magazine, is now available online at webdelsol. This issue includes new work from Philip Levine, Ruth Stone, Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton, Nick Flynn, Douglas Goetsch, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Richard Tayson, as well as reviews and articles. Co-editor Daniel Nester contributed a section culled from the New York reading series he curated, and there is a feature article on the 30th anniversary of the Painted Bride Art Center that includes interviews with former Bride poetry curators Major Jackson and Gil Ott.

Upcoming poetry events at the Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215.925-9914:

• Friday, October 6, 10:20 pm, Day of the Poet
  Word Wide First Friday, $7 cover. Hosted by Kevin O’Neill, this monthly First Friday event delivers a featured spoken word artist followed by an open mic reading, which gets a heavy turnout so sign up early.
• Sunday, October 15, 3:00 pm, Liam Rector and Charlie O’Hay
  $8 / $4 members. From barrooms to bedrooms, Rector and O'Hay explore the betrayed promises of America, often using comedy to pacify the loss but sometimes laying it bare on the page. Director of the Graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College, Rector is the author of two books of poetry, American Prodigal and The Sorrow of Architecture, and edited The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall. A fixture in the local poetry scene, O'Hay has been published in American Writing, APR: The Philly Edition, and New York Quarterly, among others.

Wall-to-Wall Word Fun at Giovanni’s Room
Giovanni’s Room, “The World’s Biggest, Best & Most Beautiful Gay, Lesbian & Feminist Bookstore,” 345 S. 12th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 215.923.2960, giophilp@netax.com, is hosting two not-to-be-missed poetry readings this fall:

• Friday, October 6, 7:00 pm, CAConrad and Maralyn Lois Polak
  CAConrad calls Philadelphia “the city where he learned to love the world,” and owes his education in poetry, or “life in the kaleidoscope,” to “many poets along the way, dead or alive.” He is the author of Frank (Insight to Riot Press), Complete Frank (The Jargon Society), evaporate again (Mooncalf Press), and advancedELVIScourse (Buck Downs Books).
  
  Maralyn Lois Polak is quirky like her poetry. She is the author of Bologna Sandwich and Other Poems of Love and Writer as Celebrity: Intimate Interviews, conversations from her years as a writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her experimental, interactive cyber-novel The Man in Her Mind: Further Adventures of Boris and Natasha recently made its online debut as a weekly serial on the political-literary Web magazine Femme Soul. Polak writes a weekly commentary column called Left-Handed for WorldNetDaily, one of the most widely read Internet news sites.
  
  
• Saturday, November 11, 7:00 pm, David Trinidad and Jim Cory
  “[T]here is an unwavering light in all of Trinidad’s work that turns individual words into objects, new facts,” says Alice Notley about David Trinidad. The New York School poet will read from Plasticville (Turtle Point Press, 2000), and if we’re lucky, from his previous book, now out of print, entitled Answer Song (High Risk Books, 1994), a collection of poems deconstructing Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls and Sharon Tate’s murder at the hands of Charles Manson. Giovanni’s Room was able to find copies of this book, and both collections will be available for sale. Trinidad also appears in the brand-new anthology entitled Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry, edited by Timothy Liu (Talisman House Books, 2000).
  
  Local favorite Jim Cory is a magazine writer, founding editor of Insight to Riot Press, and author of two collections of poetry, The Redheads and Wife. He is currently editing the experimental poet Jonathan Williams’ collected poems, and he edited the late James Broughton’s collected poems entitled Packing Up for Paradise (Black Sparrow Press, 1999).

A Packed Weekend of Poetry at the Dodge Poetry Festival
The Eighth Biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival runs September 21 -24 in the Village of Waterloo, NJ. The largest poetry festival in North America delivers four full days of poetry readings, discussions, and workshops. The 2000 Festival lineup features Chinua Achebe, Coleman Barks, Toni Blackman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Diana Di Prima, Mark Doty, Edward Hirsch, Marie Howe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Stanley Kunitz, Rika Lesser, Thomas Lux, Heather McHugh, Pat Mora, Alicia Ostriker, Göran Sonneri, Gerald Stern, Sekou Sundiata, Anne Waldman, C.K. Williams, and Nellie Wong. For more information, email festival@grdodge.org or visit the festival Web site. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster by phone at 201.507.8900 or 201.307.7171, or online at www.ticketmaster.com.

--Marj Hahne

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