AWP 2019 Offsite Readings

Participating in these 3 offsite readings at the 2019 AWP Conference:
#comesee 

New Orleans Poetry Festival 2017

last weekend i had the distinct pleasure of attending the second annual new orleans poetry festival. being a louisiana writer, publishing colleague, and friend of the organizers, megan burns and bill lavender, i had attended and loved the first one as well. clearly i'm biased--even more so because of the setting--so i'll just get into some of the inspiring experiences i had over the weekend.

the poets with bands concert is always a blast, and i got to watch brett evan's band the skin verbs (finally!) and kelcy mae both kill it, before going out to grab oysters and beers with my new friend and talented denver poet teow lim goh, who was introduced to me online by a mutual friend and former lsu colleague.

friday am started with "o galactic black wild,"a memorial panel for new orleans painter and poet daniel reinhold and unlikely books editor and poet, michelle greenblatt. i was not familiar with daniel's body of work but i admired hearing his story of recovery, his sensitive and funny (not an easy feat to pull off; for instance, one poem dealt with getting a heart transplant with a piñata) poems read by his friends and family, and the anecdotes of him kicking around the city with everette maddox. the second half of the panel was a tribute to michelle greenblatt from her friend and clockwise cat publisher, alison ross, and her unlikely books friends and family. alison, jonathan penton and roz spencer read from her collections ashes and seeds and her new posthumous book, brain : storm.  christopher shipman read some poems inspired by michelle's voice and emails while helping us edit _a ship on the line. i commemorated michelle by reading a eulogy i wrote for her and an excerpt from my introduction to another posthumous publication, a book of ghazals she wrote in collaboration with sheila murphy.

the sacred grove reading series hosted one of the best readings of the festival--what a climax for their final reading before a "permanent hiatus!" every reader was stellar, and it was the most lively and diverse reading i attended. jenn marie nunes 4-person collaborative translation reading of the same poem's correlating lines through multiple drafts of revision really evidenced her claim to make the translation process more transparent, and it certainly modeled a more performative way to convey translation. tim jones-yelvington bec[a]me on [our] face with a wonderful poem and performance about being the supermodel of poetry, lauren hunter (freshly published with my friendys, birds, llc.) made me question all our human achievements, kwoya fagin maples read seat-writhing and haunting poems about the experimental slave subjects in alabama, and rushelle frazier closed with one of the most honest and endearing love poems that i won't soon forget.  

later my former teacher, laura mullen introduced me to lisa samuels, a very kind poet living in new zealand doing cool things with sound, and laura very generously gifted me lisa's newest book, symphony for human transport . lisa delivered a sonic reading complete with an echo device that i wish i talked more to her about.  chuck perkins sang and bellowed poems that owned the audience, having no need for a mic, and another former teacher, rodger kamenetz inspired us all with heartfelt poems and alligator atheist allegories.

the next day, i showed up late (surprise, surprise)--missing rodger's dream workshop i had intended to write a great poem in; then i skipped the lunch read in favor of hanging out with zander at the open mic stage--his volunteer duty was hosting for several hours. bill informed me we missed a grand dada reading (martin mattos and luis bravo), which i regret a little, but we had a blast goofing around, drinking beer, reading our most unpolished poetry, and delving into our own dada mobile google performances. afterwards i caught the trembling pillow press read and got to hear an exciting preview of lsu peer, kristen sander's cuntry (read by jenn), which included a poem that starts with garth brooks in a ball gag (what could be better?) as well as longer reads from lisa donovan's new work, red of split water, and lauren ireland, who absolutely relieved my ears from all the intentionally bad poetry i'd been reading at the open mic with her amazing moon poem. next i got to hear my new friend teow read from her stellar and informative work, islanders, which gives voices to the detained chinese women and immigrants the us detained at angel island before the second world war.

late from dinner break, i only saw rodrigo toscano at the evening read, but did he ever steal the moment with his inspiring and hilarious performance that weaved millennial voices, politics, bar napkin scribbles, and sound poetry. i captured an excerpt from his last poem for you (see below).

finally, the bookfair, like at awp, is always one of my favorite places to hang, network, and shitshoot with like creative minds, not to mention stock up on some loot of the lute too (see pic below). paul cunningham gave me some great tips on cool translations presses. i had a great conversation with ralph adamo at xavier review, not to mention getting him to autograph my copy of ever (lavender ink). i also finally got my copy of nancy's no lit anthology, and i had a big fun chatting it up and getting to know the gigantic sequins and big lucks books crew. then the call girls (bill and shippy's punk band) rocked the house, and the poets danced. the occasion also served as a reunion with many gulf coast writer friends. safe to say, see you next year nola poetry fest!

voices from the bayou river

Featuring a student motivated anthology titled “Voices from the Bayou” has been produced and edited by Professor Clarence Nero and published through the Baton Rouge Community College Foundation for the purpose of allowing students a voice regarding their views relating to the shootings and historic flood in Baton Rouge over the past year. 

Proceeds from the publication will benefit English Department students and faculty: https://voicesfromthebayou.com/

Contributor readers from the publication: Delisa, Janee, Zachary, Latoya, Payge, and Johnathan

River also featuring:

BENJAMIN ALESHIRE is an artist based in New Orleans, LA. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Iowa Review, Barrow Street, and many others. He makes his living as a poet for hire in the French Quarter, writing poems for strangers on a manual typewriter. Ben also runs a small publishing cooperative called Honeybee Press, which uses letterpress printing, hand papermaking, and traditional bookbinding. He was awarded a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council, as well as the Chighizola Poetry Prize from the University of New Orleans. Ben serves as assistant poetry editor for the Green Mountains Review. In 2016 he was a finalist for the Iowa Review Award in Poetry, and attended the Breadloaf Writers Conference on scholarship. Look for a new edition of his artist-book, Currency, in 2017.

MACY STOGNER will be graduating in the fall with a Bachelor's degree in English Creative Writing from LSU. She plans to create her own zine soon to publish local artists that she has met and collaborated with in Baton Rouge and surrounding areas. Macy hates bios, but sees this as a good opportunity to plug her need for contributors. Ask her about it after the reading!

feb river + krieger book release (2.22)

please join us for a feb. river celebrating the voices and poetry of:

toiryan milligan
vanessa saunders
& dylan krieger's book release for "Giving Godhead" (Delete Press)

Toiryan Milligan is a spoken word artist born and raised in Baton Rouge Louisiana. He was a member of the 2016 National Poetry Slam Team for Baton Rouge Louisiana. Toiryan started his writing journey in high school in 2011 when he made The Baton Rouge National Team to compete in Brave New Voices, a national poetry slam competition with the top poets in the country. Toiryan is continuing to grow and learn new ways to captivate an audience. He hopes to keep growing and learning on his path to becoming one of the best to grace a stage.

Dylan Krieger is a pile of false eyelashes growing algae in south Louisiana. She lives in a little cottage with a catfish and her demons and sunlights as a trade mag editor. She earned her BA in English and philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2012 and her MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University in 2015. Her first book, Giving Godhead (Delete Press, 2017), challenges the boundary between the sacred and the obscene by conflating biblical archetypes of holy acquiescence with sexually deviant forms of submission. Find more of her work at www.dylankrieger.com.

Vanessa Sauders enjoys green tea, Paul Celan, and long walks on the beach.

br human rights river

2016 was a brutal and capricious year for Baton Rouge and the United States. The change of presidential power markedly threatens democracy and human rights. Major cities around the country are organizing solidarity readings like The International Day of Poetry Benefit for Immigrants and Human Rights and Writers Resist. As human rights advocates and literary artists that share a home, we want to produce an original, Baton Rouge version of rebellion-through-art-and-community event, and we wish to invite interested artists in the community to join us in celebrating the diversity of our talented community of culture producers. We invite you to join us for an amazing, art-filled, and positive evening.

Readers include Chuy Avila, Toi the Poetic Beauty, Shannon Groll, Chelsea Murry, John Warner Smith, Phillip Spotswood, Robert Alan Wendeborn.

With musical performances from Quiana Lynell and Peggy Trenta.

Visual art and video intermission with Baton Rouge artist and creator of the Alton Sterling mural, Jo Hines.

awp offsite

Unlikely Books (New Orleans, LA) and Červená Barva Press (Somerville, MA) join forces with River Writers (Baton Rouge, LA), Delete Press (Fort Collins, CO) and TENDE RLOIN (Columbus, OH) to present a fun, relaxed evening of poetry and translation. Translators Marc Vincenz and Katherine Young will read, as will poets Kenyatta JP Garcia, Annie Pluto, Joani Reese, Michael Ruby, and Bill Yarrow.

After that, Vincent Cellucci will introduce the Krewe of No Other Reading, a decompression reading of verse and friendship, featuring a sub-krewe of Chatham alums and Dylan Krieger’s book release for Giving Godhead (Delete Press). Readers include: Ben Aleshire, Mel Coyle, Zachery Elbourne, Elizabeth Gross, Brittney Hailer, Jessica Kinnison, Gloria Mindock, Jenn Marie Nunes, Jonathan Penton, Brad Richard, Will Rivera, Sarah Shotland, Christine Stroud, and Chris Tonelli.

Riversgiving (11.10.16) - Nov. River Writers

River celebrating Randolph Thomas' recent two contest-winning book publications and the literary stylings of Jessica Rogers and Dylan Krieger.

Dylan Krieger is a pile of false eyelashes growing algae in south Louisiana. She lives in a little cottage with a catfish and her demons and sunlights as a trade mag editor. Her first book, Giving Godhead, is forthcoming in 2017 from Delete Press. Her other poetry projects include a collaborative satire of big-budget action movies, a collage of automatic captions from alien abduction documentaries, and (mostly recently) an irreverent reimagining of philosophical thought experiments.

After recently graduating from LSU in Creative writing, Jessica decided she would just do whats sensible and for unemployment. She then tried to get a job at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, because they have an excellent corporate structure and they... *they* give *you* the tools to be your own boss. After a month of wearing pantsuits and learning what the word 'compact' means, she now knows the value of a hard-earned dollar and if you've fallen from drinking too much tequila, Enterprise will most definitely not pick you up. You can find her short fiction piece "One, two, three" in Delta Journal 58 and other stories on her blog jessicaashleighr.wordpress.com
 
Randolph Thomas is the author of two prize-winning books: Dispensations, a short story collection and winner of the 2014 Many Voices Project Award from New Rivers Press, won a Bronze Medal in the national short fiction category of the Independent Publishing Awards (IPPY), and was named a finalist for Forward Reviews' INDIEFAB Book of the Year. The Deepest Rooms, a collection of poetry and winner of the Gerald Cable Award, was published by Silverfish Review Press in 2015. He teaches at LSU.

brickyard riverback book release (10.20.16)

riverback in a brand new location, the brickyard south (171 south blvd.)
celebrating new reading manager, taylor gorman and the prose stylings of mary b. sellers
as well as unlikely book's kingpin, jonathan penton's book release of standards of sadiddy 

Taylor Gorman's work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Cutbank, Passages North, and The New Orleans Review. He received his MFA from Wichita State University and currently lives in Baton Rouge, LA.

Mary B. Sellers is pursuing her MFA in fiction at Louisiana State University. Originally from Jackson, MS, she now lives in Baton Rouge with her dog, Daisy Buchanan. She tries to teach freshmen English Composition, but most of the time feels like a failed, stand-up comedian. She's also the social media and blog editor over at New Delta Review. Important activities include: drinking wine and eating tacos on a regular basis. She has pieces published or forthcoming in Permafrost (Pushcart nomination, '15), Maudlin House, Queen Mob's Teahouse, and Literary Orphans. She wants to be a mermaid when she grows up​.

In 1998, Jonathan Penton founded UnlikelyStories.org. Since then, he has lent editorial and management assistance to a number of literary and artistic ventures, such as MadHat, Inc. and Big Bridge. He has organized literary performances, and performed himself, in places like Arkansas, California, Chihuahua, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Washington, state and DC. His poetry books are Last Chap (Vergin’ Press, 2004), Blood and Salsa and Painting Rust (Unlikely Books, 2006), Prosthetic Gods (New Sins Press/Winged City Chapbooks, 2008), and Standards of Sadiddy (Lit Fest Press, 2016).

Elevator Projects & River Writers Resurgence Read (10.1.16)

Facebook event

Between shootings and floods, it's been a hellish summer in BR. The literary arts scene of the city remains persistent if not thriving, and we want to support two vital voices of our community: Donney and Leslie D. Rose. 

Elevator Projects literary programing combines with River Writers to offer a reading in support of Baton Rouge's only Donney Rose's upcoming trip to the 2016 Individual World Poetry Slam. He will be joined by his amazingly talented wife Leslie. Hosted by WHYR 96.9 FM, this reading will go down in their record shop at their Main St. location in the heart of Mid City. Come out and support Donney representing BR on the national stage as well as your own community radio! Come hear what's right about BR.  

Donney will have his hot-off-the-press chapbook "New Definitions" ($10) for sale and there will be vinyl to flip through and purchase for all you music lovers.

Tonight #ArtistsforAlton

Friends,

Please see the below information about a very important event that my friend Donney is helping coordinate tomorrow. It is taking place at the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge. As we are attempting to return to some normalcy in the wake of the flood, I urge you all to remember that a large portion of our community are still dealing with the effects of Alton Sterling being slain by Baton Rouge law enforcement who have not to date been held accountable for their actions. This event is on behalf of the children he left behind. Please share this info with your network.

On Tuesday, July 5th the children of Alton Sterling lost their father by way of a world-publicized state sanctioned murder. Alton Sterling, known to residents of the Fairfields community as the CD Man, was out selling CDs to provide for his family. He is no longer here to be able to do so, therefore it is up to his community to truly be a village for the children he left behind.

To that end, the #Artists4Alton show is the first in a series of initiatives geared toward helping take care of the Sterling children. This event has been approved by Alton's primary guardian, his aunt Ms. Veda. ALL PROCEEDS from this event will be put into a Liberty Banks savings account per the request of his aunt.

This show consists of an all-star line up of some of the city's most celebrated artists in the genre of spoken word poetry, hip hop and inspirational music. Featuring the talents of

XERO SKIDMORE
MARCEL P. BLACK
TANESHA CRAIG
DONNEY ROSE
DEANDRE HILL
KALESHA BROWN
TOIRYAN MILLIGAN
LUKE ST. JOHN
+ A special presentation by National Lawyers Guild Treasurer, ADA GOODLY and LSU Law Professor CHRIS TYSON

HOSTED BY TONY KING IS FUNNY

$10 COVER.

new venue new poets same river (11.3.15)

After a little rest and the search for a new home, River Writers teams up with Elevator Projects to offer poetry readings in a beautiful art space downtown--(Facebook event page)

Six Unlikely authors from south Louisiana are joining with Larissa Shmailo of New York City, Wendy Taylor Carlisle of Eureka Springs, AR, and Michael Harold of Shreveport, LA for a three-event series of literature and sound decisions in the week leading up to Grand Coteau, LA's Festival of Words! In Baton Rouge, come hear from:

Xander Bilyk
Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Michael Harold
Alexandra Johnson
Dylan Krieger
and Larissa Shmailo - Poetry and Prose

Unlikely Saints is conduced with the support of Unlikely Books, Lyrically Inclined, and The Festival of Words Cultural Arts Collective. 

See you in the River!

Also, see the New Orleans event and our Lafayette event!

2 exceptional readings this week

river proudly promotes two exceptional reads occurring this week:

1) collaborative poetry duos tomorrow 4.19 @ the baton rouge gallery's sundays @ 4 (pm) series (fb event)

up from New Orleans, Chris and co-auther Brett Evans read from T. Rex Parade, a book about the tit'Rex mardi gras art parade ( Lavender Ink / Diálogos, 2015) 

and Christopher Shipman and Cellucci, his other co-author, will read Battleship verse from _A Ship on the Line (Unlikely Books, 2014)

2)  river writers in collaboration with ALSCW, LSU Comp. Lit & MFA Program present a reading by Noah Warren, Santiago Vizcaíno, and translator Alexis Levitin. see flier below for details and full bios below:

Alexis Levitin, SUNY Distinguished Professor, has translated over thirty books of Portuguese poetry and prose into English. His works include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm (short prose) and Eugénio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words (poetry), both published by New Directions. His most recent book is Salgado Maranhão’s Blood of the Sun (Milkweed Editions). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, the Witter Bynner Foundation, the Gulbenkian Foundation, and Columbia University’s Translation Center, which awarded him the Fernando Pessoa Prize. As a translator, he has benefitted from residencies at the Banff International Translation Centre in Canada, the European Translators Collegium in Germany, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center at Bellagio, Italy. He has given readings and lectures on translation at well over one hundred colleges and universities in the USA, as well as institutions in Brazil, Portugal, Ecuador, the Czech Republic and France.     

Santiago Vizcaíno has a degree in Communications and Literature from the Catholic Pontifical University of Ecuador. He has worked as an editor at the newspaper Hoy, at Superbrands Ecuador, and at the Office of Publications in Ecuador’s Benjamín Carrión Casa de la Cultura. At present, he is the editor of the magazine Nuestro Patrimonio, published by the Ministry for the Coordination of the Patrimony, and of various other publications, including those of the Organization of Historical Centers of Latin American and the Caribbean. His work has appeared in several magazines, including Letras del Ecuador, Rocinante, Retrovisor and Casa de las Américas. His first book of poetry, Destruction in the Afternoon, won the Premio Proyectos Literarios Nacionales award from the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture in 2008. His second book, In the Twilight, won second prize in the Pichincha Poetry Prize competition in 2010. His work has appeared in Bitter Oleander, Chattahoochee Review, Connotation Press, Dirty Goat, Eleven/Eleven, eXchanges, Ezra, Lake Effect, Moon City Review, Osiris, Per Contra, Rowboat, Saranac Review, and Words Without Borders. The translations of all forty poems that comprise the text of Destruction in the Afternoon have been published in literary magazines in the United States. He was awarded a one-year fellowship to Malaga, Spain, in 2011. 

Noah Warren was born in Nova Scotia in 1989 and grew up in New England. He received his BA from Yale, which awarded him the valuable Fredrick M. Clapp Fellowship for 2011-12 on the strength of his poetry. After a stint teaching English at Phillips Academy Andover he moved to New Orleans in 2013. His first book, The Destroyer in the Glass, was chosen by Carl Phillips for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 2015, and will be published by Yale University Press in April 2016. He is the recent recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and will begin his tenure at Stanford in the fall. His poems appear in Poetry, The Southern Review, AGNI, Yale Review, and The Missouri Review, among other journals. 

 

new review

new review of recent book, A Ship on the Line, in The Pedestal Magazine, the lit mag where I published my first poem. thanks to Cindy Sostchen-Hochman for following us to the "river’s aphotic zone."

deltamouth_this week

deltamouth is one of my fav festivals in la
singing free literary rhythm & blues

i'm introducing brock guthrie this evening.
#comesee. 
  
fb events and details:

thursday_KICKOFF
friday_QUEER NIGHT
& sat_performance finale


thurs readers:
  

BROOKE CHAMPAGNE, a descendant of P. G. T. Beauregard, was born and raised in New Orleans. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Louisiana State University. Her poems and essays have appeared in Louisiana Literature, Burnside Review, Housefire, DIG, Prick of the Spindle, and most recently, in the anthology Tuscaloosa Writes This. She lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama with her husband, the poet Brock Guthrie, and their creative dogs King and Nola.

BROCK GUTHRIE is the author of Contemplative Man, published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2014. He grew up in Athens, Ohio, and got his B.A. and MA in English from Ohio University and his MFA in poetry from Louisiana State University. His poems have appeared inCimarron Review, Iron Horse, Los Angeles Review, New Ohio Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He teaches writing and literature at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

ANGUS WOODWARD is a Louisiana writer of prose whose comic novel, Americanisation: Lessons in American Culture and Language, was published by Livingston Press in 2011. Oxford American hailed Americanisation as “a hilariously crafted postmodern novel wedged into the template of a social-studies textbook for immigrants.” His follow-up to Americanisation is Oily, a comical, unconventional novel about the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

BERND SAUERMANN graduated from McNeese State University with an MA in English and an MFA in Poetry. He currently teaches composition, literature, creative writing, and film in the Division of Fine Arts and Humanities at Hopkinsville Community College in Kentucky. Sauermann was also the poetry editor at Whole Beast Rag. He’s had poems, stories and photographs published in McSweeney’s, Southern Indiana Review, New Orleans Review, Nimrod, Poet Lore, The Kansas Quarterly Review of Literature, and many other publications. He has a chapbook entitled Diesel Generator out from Horse Less Press (2013), and his first full-length collection, Seven Notes of a Dead Man’s Song, was recently released by MadHat Press.

EARL LOVELACE (born July 13, 1935, Toco, Trinidad) is a West Indian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright celebrated for his descriptive, dramatic fiction about West Indian culture. Using Trinidadian speech patterns and standard English, he probes the paradoxes often inherent in social change as well as the clash between rural and urban cultures. His novels include While Gods Are Falling (1965), The Schoolmaster (1968), The Dragon Can’t Dance (1979), The Wine of Astonishment (1982), and Salt (1996). Lovelace also published the short-story collection A Brief Conversion and Other Stories (1988), as well as the plays The New Hardware Store and My Name Is Village, both collected in Jestina’s Calypso & Other Plays (1984).

fri:

MEL COYLE is from Chicago and other places where the corn grows. Currently, she lives in New Orleans where she co-edits TENDE RLOIN, an online poetry gallery and hosts ColdCuts, the reading series. You can find some of her work online.

JENN MARIE NUNES is the author of five chapbooks, including HYMN: An Ovulution, a collaboration with poet Mel Coyle, forthcoming from Bloof Books. She lives in New Orleans where she co-edits TENDE RLOIN, an online gallery for poetry, and performs as [Bi]Nary with the New Orleans Poetry Brothel. Her first full-length collection, selected by Dawn Lundy Martin as the winner of the Queer Voices Award, is forthcoming from Switchback Books.

MEGAN VOLPERT is the author of five books on communication and popular culture, most notably about Andy Warhol and most currently, Only Ride (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014) is a nominee for Georgia Author of the Year. She has been teaching high school English in Atlanta for the better part of a decade and recently served as her school's Teacher of the Year. Volpert edited the American Library Association-honored and Lambda finalist anthology This assignment is so gay: LGBTIQ Poets on the Art of Teaching. She got her MFA at LSU. Predictably, www.meganvolpert.com is her website.

BRAD RICHARD is the author of three books of poems and two chapbooks, including Motion Studies (The Word Works, 2011), Curtain Optional (Press Street, 2011), and Butcher’s Sugar (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). His poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, Literary Imagination, Mississippi Review, New Orleans Review, Okey-Panky, Passages North, Plume, Witness, and Xavier Review, among other journals. He directs the creative writing program at Lusher Charter School in New Orleans, and keeps very busy with endeavors for young writers and LGBT writers in the New Orleans region.

sat: 

MAURICE RUFFIN is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of New Orleans. He has recently won two short story awards: the 2014 Iowa Review fiction award (for “The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You”) and the 2014 Short Fiction Contest at So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art! (for “The Anchor Song”). His novel-in-progress, All of the Lights, won the gold medal for that category in the 2014 William Faulkner-William Wisdom writing competition, and an excerpt will appear in an upcoming issue of Callaloo. His writing has also appeared in The Knicknackery, Writing Tomorrow, Redivider Journal, 94 Creations, The Apalachee Review, Regarding Arts & Letters, and the University of New Orleans’s Ellipsis.

MONA LISA SALOY is an author, folklorist, educator, and scholar. An award-winning author of contemporary Creole culture in poems about Black New Orleans before and after Katrina, Saloy documents sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games to discuss the importance of play. Her first book of poems, Red Beans & Ricely Yours, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award and tied for a third. Her new book, Second Line Home, is a refreshing collection of poems that captures the day-to-day New Orleans speech, contemplates family dynamics, and celebrates New Orleans—all in a way everyday people can enjoy.

CORINA COPP is a writer and theater artist based in New York. She is the author of the chapbooks ALL STOCK MUST GO (Shit Valley Verlag, Cambridge, UK), Miracle Mare (Trafficker Press), and Pro Magenta/Be Met (Ugly Duckling Presse), among others. Recent work can be found in Cabinet, BOMB, Boston Review, Corrected Slogans: Reading and Writing Conceptualism (Triple Canopy), SFMOMA’s Open Space, and elsewhere. She is developing a three-part play entitled The Whole Tragedy of the Inability to Love, inspired by the successive forms of the work of Marguerite Duras. She is a curator at the Segue Foundation and a 2014 NYFA Fellow in Poetry. Her first book, The Green Ray, is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse this spring.

DESIREE DALLAGIACOMO is a student at the University of New Orleans where she studies creative writing and women & gender. In October of 2014, She ranked 3rd at the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, the recipient of UNO’s Ryan Chigazola Poetry Scholarship, and, as a member of Slam New Orleans, ranked 3rd in the nation at the 2014 National Poetry Slam. She is a teaching artist for Forward Arts, The Recovery School District, and The Centre for the Arts. Her work has been featured on EverydayFeminism.com, The Huffington Post, Upworthy.com, in Tulane University’s production of The Vagina Monologues, the New Orleans Fringe Festival, Tandem Review, and Words Dance Literary Magazine. For more of her work, you can check out poemsbydes.tumblr.com

BUDDY WAKEFIELD is a three-time world champion spoken word artist featured on the BBC, ABC Radio National, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, NPR, and most recently signed to Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. In 2004 he won the Individual World Poetry Slam Finals and then successfully defended that title at the International Poetry Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands against the national champions of seven European countries. In 2005 he won the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship again and has gone on to share the stage with nearly every notable performance poet in the world. Born in Shreveport, LA, mostly raised in Baytown, TX, and now claiming Seattle, WA as home, Buddy is an author at Write Bloody Publishing, a queer activist, and an original Board of Directors member with Youth Speaks Seattle. Wakefield, who is not concerned with what poetry is or is not, delivers raw, rounded, disarming performances of humor and heart.



  

t(w)o river: feb3

feb3 @ 8pm
international poet marc vincenz returns
and two exciting first rivers from
ull professor, rhonda r. berkely, and br's own anna wilson--

Rhonda R. Berkeley is a dream-poet, whose work explores unconscious processes and motivations, through a multiplicity of associations. Dr. Berkeley's academic focus on psychoanalytic theory and poetics informs her work. She teaches English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Berkeley's poetry has been published in various media, including journals like Ekleksographia, Knock 27, Rue de Fleures, and Moondance; a collaborative chapbook, Other Sticky Valentines; and a film, Acadie. Her poem, fire and water, received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Berkeley's chapbook, Ragbag,  was published by Nous-zot Press in 2011. Berkeley is also a semi-professional photographer.

Marc Vincenz has published eight collections of poetry; his latest are This Wasted Land and its Chymical Illuminations (Lavender Ink) and Becoming the Sound of Bees. forthcoming with Ampersand Books.  He has been published extensively in many journals and anthologies, including: The Manhattan Review, Washington Square Review, Plume, Guernica, The Bitter Oleander, St. Petersburg Review, Fourteen Hills, Exquisite Corpse, Spillway and The Canary. He is the translator of numerous German-language poets, including the Herman Hesse Prize winner, Klaus Merz.  His own work has been translated into German, Russian, Romanian, French and Chinese. He is Coeditor of Fulcrum and Executive Editor of MadHat Press and lives in Cambridge, MA. 

Anna Wilson relocated from the Third Coast to the Gulf Coast to undertake an M.F.A. at Louisiana State University, where she also teaches writing and makes "textually active" visual art, from small books and videos to large installations featuring handmade paper. Anna's poetry, reviews, and interviews have been featured and are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Meatpaper, The Volta Blog, New Delta Review, and other places.

krewe de vieux eve nola reading

krewe de vieux eve 
nola reading 
facebook event

new year / new river

can't not pop up for the new year!!
2015 new rivers from:
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Xui Avila was born in Mexico and raised in Houston, Texas where he earned his B.A. in English from UH-D. In Houston, he worked for several outreach programs including Writers in the Schools, Voices Breaking Boundaries, and Talento Bilingue de Houston.  He was accepted into LSU’s Creative Writing Program in 2010 and earned his MFA in the Spring of 2013.  Much of his poetry consists of complicating and compounding the human anatomy, the desert terrain, with religious rite and iconography.  He is currently piecing together a chapbook version of his larger work des-milagros. 

Claire Dixon was born in England and grew up in Canada, an experience that tempered her general moodiness with excessive politeness and also gave her minor nerve damage in the form of three lightly frostbitten toes. When it's cold, her toes feel like they are floating loose in her socks like Lincoln logs. She has an MFA from LSU and recently won first place for poetry in the Words and Music/Faulkner Wisdom Writing Competition. She has embraced the cliche of being a writer with a library science degree and works in records management. In her spare time, she can be found overinstagramming trees, food and her two year old daughter.

Charles Garrett, has published no books; has no published collections for you to buy or pretend to care about. He has no stake in making you like him or his words, but you will undoubtedly love his voice. He does not do radio, nor does he sing. He loves cooking for his son, and learning the extremes of his own tolerance. He is not a "teaching artist" nor a professional one, but will gladly talk and share with anyone, willing to listen. He doesn't remember the names of most individuals he meets, so repeat your name to him if you care to be remembered. He believes poetry is in the way we bleed, not how much we do so. His poetry is meant to be read at the most inopportune times: in churches, gynecologist waiting rooms, unemployment lines, welfare lines, admissions and financial aid offices, as well as funerals. He knows that you will most likely remain lost after reading/hearing his work. This is by design. He is not here to walk the path for you, merely to light your way, as he tries to find his. Hold your glasses firmly and know that you are in the best place for poetry.

Muriel Leung is a multimedia poet and former teaching artist from Queens, NY. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Coconut, Ghost Proposal, TENDE RLOIN, Nepantla, Bone Bouquet, and others. She is a recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and is a regular contributor to The Blood-Jet Writing Hour poetry podcast. Currently, she is a MFA candidate in poetry at Louisiana State University where she also serves as the Assistant Editor of New Delta Review.