New York poet Tonya Foster, whose chapbook "Bibliography" Creature Press boasts as one of its inaugural trio of publications, will be reading in Bryant Park this coming Tuesday, August 31st, as part of an event remembering Hurricane Katrina, which hit 5 years ago. As she hails from New Orleans, Foster has an acute connection to the catastrophe and its ongoing aftermath.
Last-minute notification, but please come by if you're available. It should be an amazing reading, and it doesn't even cost a thin dime. Here are the particulars:
Aug. 31:
Katrina Project Presents Poetry
7:00pm – 8:30pm | Bryant Park Reading Room
FREE
Nicole Cooley
Tonya Foster
Yusef Komunyakaa
Rain Venue(s):
*The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen
20 West 44th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenues)
Tonya Foster's Creature Press chapbook, from which she may read on Tuesday, charts an effort to recover a state where "speech is possible" in the wake of what seems like unspeakable devastation. Foster does this by "taking in her mother / landscape," elaborating a dense abecedarian catalogue of names, things, and phrasings that saturate her experience of that landscape. Read straight through, the book reveals itself as a dizzying litany of the sacred and the mundane, the plain and the obscure, the patently personal and the implicitly political. Its charged act of confrontation---running through alternately poignant, hilarious, and outraged tonal registers---is perfectly channeled by the a priori lexical structure and the small, discrete pages of the book. Come on out to hear Tonya read and to support the Katrina Project.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
News Flash: Paolo Javier, Poet Laureate of Queens!
Even though I'm quite late posting this, I still consider it flashing news. One of Creature Press's very own, author of the BOX chapbook "The Feeling is Actual," has recently received a thrilling commendation and charge. Below is an excerpt from the press release, and check out a link to another article underneath that. Congratulations, 'QPLO'! We know you'll rock this new mantle with verve and swagger and magnanimity.
.....................
A “ONCE-GLOBAL NOMAD” WHO FINDS “THE WORLD IN QUEENS,”
PAOLO JAVIER IS NAMED BOROUGH’S FIFTH POET LAUREATE
FLUSHING, N.Y., June 18, 2010 ― Describing himself as “a once-global nomad” who made Queens his permanent home because he has “no trouble finding the world in it,” Paolo S. Javier has been named the fifth Poet Laureate of Queens. His three-year appointment, following a search launched in March, was announced yesterday at Borough Hall by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and Queens College President James Muyskens.
Queens’ newest poet laureate is an award-winning author of two poetry collections and four chapbooks (short books of poetry), as well as a playwright, film director, college professor, editor, and publisher. A native of the Philippines who has traveled widely and lived in Asia, the Middle East, and North America, Javier moved to Katonah, NY, in 1986, and has been a resident of Sunnyside, Queens, for over a decade.
“I am delighted to approve my panel of judges’ recommendation of Paolo Javier as the next Poet Laureate of Queens,” said Marshall. “Mr. Javier is an up-and-coming poet as well as a filmmaker who has a clearly articulated vision of how to promote a love of poetry among our diverse youth through multimedia programming. We are very excited to collaborate with him over the next three years.”
“Paolo Javier is truly a 21st century poet who is recreating poetry as a dynamic literary art form that draws from theater, new media, sound art, and international cinema,” said Muyskens. “His unique, multidisciplinary approach will surely engage our diverse communities.”
Javier is the author of the forthcoming The Feeling Is Actual (Creature Press) and Megton Gasgan Krakoom (Cy Gist Press), as well as LMFAO (OMG Press), Goldfish Kisses (Sona Books), 60 lv bo(e)mbs (O Books), and the time at the end of this writing (Ahadada Books), which received a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award in 2005.
http://www.leaderobserver.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Paolo+Javier+is+Queens-+poet-+and+he+knows+it%20&id=8014541&instance=home_news_right
.....................
A “ONCE-GLOBAL NOMAD” WHO FINDS “THE WORLD IN QUEENS,”
PAOLO JAVIER IS NAMED BOROUGH’S FIFTH POET LAUREATE
FLUSHING, N.Y., June 18, 2010 ― Describing himself as “a once-global nomad” who made Queens his permanent home because he has “no trouble finding the world in it,” Paolo S. Javier has been named the fifth Poet Laureate of Queens. His three-year appointment, following a search launched in March, was announced yesterday at Borough Hall by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and Queens College President James Muyskens.
Queens’ newest poet laureate is an award-winning author of two poetry collections and four chapbooks (short books of poetry), as well as a playwright, film director, college professor, editor, and publisher. A native of the Philippines who has traveled widely and lived in Asia, the Middle East, and North America, Javier moved to Katonah, NY, in 1986, and has been a resident of Sunnyside, Queens, for over a decade.
“I am delighted to approve my panel of judges’ recommendation of Paolo Javier as the next Poet Laureate of Queens,” said Marshall. “Mr. Javier is an up-and-coming poet as well as a filmmaker who has a clearly articulated vision of how to promote a love of poetry among our diverse youth through multimedia programming. We are very excited to collaborate with him over the next three years.”
“Paolo Javier is truly a 21st century poet who is recreating poetry as a dynamic literary art form that draws from theater, new media, sound art, and international cinema,” said Muyskens. “His unique, multidisciplinary approach will surely engage our diverse communities.”
Javier is the author of the forthcoming The Feeling Is Actual (Creature Press) and Megton Gasgan Krakoom (Cy Gist Press), as well as LMFAO (OMG Press), Goldfish Kisses (Sona Books), 60 lv bo(e)mbs (O Books), and the time at the end of this writing (Ahadada Books), which received a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award in 2005.
http://www.leaderobserver.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Paolo+Javier+is+Queens-+poet-+and+he+knows+it%20&id=8014541&instance=home_news_right
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