PhillySound: new poetry

SATURDAY JULY 1ST --> LET'S GO!

7:30 pm Poetry reading before the film featuring hassen, CAConrad, Charles Moxley, Jim Trainer. The poets will read a few poems of Bukowski's as well as their own work.

7:30 pm, July 1st
at the Old CINEMA
on Walnut, between 39th & 40th

Reading followed by the film "Charles Bukowski, Born Into This" directed by John Dullaghan. Runtime: 130 min.

TD

Hey hassen, thanks for posting that dream from the past. 2002 was the date of the "Green City Strategy" link, which sounds about right, meaning four years ago was before this feeding frenzy of real estate AND BIG BUCKS changing so many minds about green of money, green of cabbage.

Nicole McEwan told me that one community garden group in West Philadelphia saw what was going on in the way of developers snatching the land where gardens are, and they bought their land collectively, with some sort of statement in the sales agreement that the land cannot be developed for a hundred years.

And that's of course GREAT NEWS for that garden. Many others in the past few years (but especially RIGHT NOW) don't have that protection, and are going down. It's no joke about the bulldozers coming into the community garden of Carpenter and Grays Ferry, in fact they might be tearing things up at this very moment.

There is a rescue team trying to salvage the plants and trees at that garden. And when these people write about saving this garden's plants, they remark about what it was like saving others last summer. This is a very serious situation that has people who have enjoyed creating green space now creating salvage teams.

That documentary is great by the way, I've seen it. And it shows pretty regularly on PBS. Just hope it doesn't turn out to be a document to show the grandkids in years to come, "See, look at how people USED to create space together in the city." For some of the gardens already earmarked for the dozers, it's become a countdown at ground zero.

Every single time I'm watering and weeding in the plot I share with Cathleen Miller there are construction workers right across the street building yet another condominium, and it makes me sad to know that the cement trucks will be filling in that very spot I'm kneeling on by this time next year, making roots and leaves feel delicate in my hands like I've never felt such delicate, and threatened, life.

CAConrad

conrad & anyone else interested, just a quick btw/fyi link to PHS' Philly Green for info on what's going on with regard to greening the city. be sure to check out the Green City Strategy.

hassen

Having a garden plot at the South & Broad community garden with poet Cathleen Miller is such a fantastic dream. For years I've been on lists for stupid lotteries to get into plots. NOW that I finally have one, it's the final year for it, as it's going to be a condominium by this time next year.

And I've JUST this morning received YET ANOTHER e-mail from South & Broad gardeners about YET ANOTHER community garden being taken over by developers who have broken promises and have court orders to start work early. At Carpenter & Grays Ferry the community garden is about to be bulldozed. There's a rather dramatic call to arms to help save the beautiful Bradford Pear Trees and the Rose of Sharon in the garden.

There is absolutely no way I can hide my disgust, my HATRED for this carnage! The vicious feeding frenzy of the real estate world on all levels of real estate right now sickens and saddens me. It's exactly what's going on in a very different way in the rural Pennsylvania I escaped from half my life ago. Trees, wheat and corn fields, everything chopped and pushed aside for Wal-Marts and housing and who the FUCK are these people anyway?

Someone said to me (who the FUCK was that!?) recently that I "just don't like change." Actually that is not true. Not true for a second. Change can be great, but WHAT KIND of change is the thing, I mean there's many opportunities to have change, many ways to have change. Destroying communities and neighborhoods is NOT a good one. And YES, THAT KIND OF CHANGE is something I "just don't like," you bet!

Dismissive statements like "you just don't like change" are built to not have to listen, because if you listen, you might agree, and then your whole ridiculous idea of "progress" might be challenged. Change can be beautiful, can nourish everyone around, can build and sustain a caring environment. Which is what the community gardens were about in the first place.

Someone who has a beautiful, healthy sense of change is Carol Mirakove. After my reading with Jen Benka and Shanna Compton in New York recently we were all hanging out, talking about such change. Carol had not long ago attended a protest which was more like a barbecue, and she was explaining how this FESTIVAL set a mood for everyone to really understand how we truly are all in this together. This festival inspired her, and was inspiring us as she told the story.

As a result of that conversation, Jen Benka sent Carol a Wikipedia link to the word CARNIVALESQUE. It was exactly what I needed to read this morning after the e-mail about yet another decade old community garden being DESTROYED in the name of "progress."

If destroying green space is progress then FUCK progress! The bulldozers come long before they're supposed to and it's so you can't do a thing about it. Wicked days this summer!

CAConrad

SAVE THE DATE: wed july 19th (7 PM)

Philadelphia Freedom: Stories, Slides, and Serenades at the Institute of Contemporary Art

"Philadelphia Freedom" celebrates summer with an outdoor evening on the terrace of art, stories, slides and serenades.

Frank Sherlock's poem from the Poetry, Politics, Proximity: Third Annual Kerry Sherin Wright Prize event at Kelly Writers House on April 27 is now available in chapbook form.

You can get a copy of Spring Diet of Flowers at Night at Robin's Bookstore- 108 S. 13th Street, Philly.

For ordering inquiries, contact Mooncalf Press at CAConrad13@aol.com

Cover art by Jonathan Allen.

Hassen, CAConrad, Charles Moxley, Jim Trainer @ the BUKOWSKI Festival

"I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression. My oath of office is to protect and defend America’s laws and its people. By refusing unlawful orders for an illegal war, I fulfill that oath today." --U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada

On Thursday June 22, First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer of the US Army to publicly refuse to go to Iraq and to campaign for an end to this war, was confined to his base and put under a complete gag order without being charged. We urge you to support his principled and courageous stand, to demand that he be freed to move and to communicate with his family and supporters and the public, and that he not face any further punishment for his actions.

"Normally, those in the military have allowed others to speak for them and act on their behalf. That time has come to an end… I hope that my example shows other soldiers that they too have the power to choose right over wrong and that freedom is something that can never be taken away". --U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada

The Day of Action has been called by the US group Courage to Resist and actions have been planned across the US. The Watada family is pleased and excited that Payday will internationalize the support by calling for groups and individuals in other countries to take action with them.

International Day of Action
Tuesday June 27, at the
National Constitution Visitor Center,
Noon – 1pm
Market St. between 5th & 6th St.,
Philadelphia

Protest in Philadelphia called by Payday with Global Women's Strike (GWS) & Women of Color in the GWS and endorsed by AFSC Youth & Militarism Program, Brandywine Peace Community, Survivors Taking Action Against Abuse by Military Personnel (STAAAMP), Veterans for Peace (VFP), Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), with involvement by Michael Berg, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Phila Grandmothers for Peace, Phila Regional Anti-War Network (PRAWN) (for info or to endorse, call 215-848-1120

FREE showing of AWARD WINNING Documentary
SIR! NO SIR!
Monday, June 26 @ 7 p.m.
1501 Cherry St, Philadelphia

AFSC & PRAWN invite ALL activists to attend a FREE showing of the Award winning documentary, Sir, No Sir!
A panel, after the 90 minute movie, includes VietNam Vets who participated in the ground breaking Winter Soldier Investigation, the 1971 documentary that exposed VietNam war crimes and atrocities.
Dr Jon Bjornson-VietNam '64-'65
Bill Perry-VietNam '67-'68
These panelists, and the movie, will be available for YOUR groups' film showings, throughout July.
A female Iraq war Veteran, and IVAW organizer, M.P. Kelly Dougherty will draw comparisons based on her Iraq experiences, v. the suppressed history of the G.I. movement, ONLY on Monday evening, June 26.
FOR MORE INFO:
AFSC contact: Janine Schwab 215-241-7165
PRAWN contact: Rich Gardner 215-443-9213

posted by CAConrad,
hoping for TEN THOUSAND BY THE FOUTH OF JULY

I thought I was happy and said to my friend

It's because we are together

The blushing hills were rusty
its nerves as icy as his sleeves

Doll's hair, snow like artificial
Elimination of detail, a day to be grateful

He had broken parole

With speed-thinning strides
a horse passed by without a saddle

-------

Overwhelmed by reading Carol Mirakove's new book MEDIATED, I did what I often do with such books: turn to another book, sometimes any book of poetry. It's a good thing to do, I find, to then return with a fresh palate. The book I turned to was a chapbook by Fanny Howe titled The Long Wrong. Edited by PhillySound's own Alicia Askenase four years ago as part of the "Whitman Notables" series for the Walt Whitman Center.

Don't mistake my idea of switching books to find one less passionate, it's got nothing to do with such lessening, it's got to do with switching, period, in an attempt to get clarity. But The Long Wrong needles its way into your reading like a daydream that hunts you down. Is there a recording of Howe reading this? You too would hope so, reading it....

-------

A body never forgets
The lens is turned on its own tremendum

Only blocks away--tubes, needles, straps
at the physician's prison

No sign of reflection, just blood and bone
trying to incorporate meds into atoms

When the body escapes without identification
this is its identification:

Chunks of moonstone smoothing a curb
Honey night snow in the city

-------

WOW! What a book! Only 16 pages, and it could go on for a thousand more! And by page 300 I'm sure I would want to switch back to Carol's book for some space from the hunt! Will come back soon with more on Mirakove's MEDIATED, just wanted to share a couple pages from Fanny Howe's chapbook.

CAConrad

For NYC folks, I'll be reading this Saturday w/ Dustin Williamson. We're participating in an event curated by Ben of So L'il and CockNow! magazine. My new mini-chap entitled Spring Diet of Flowers at Night (Mooncalf Press) will be available at the reading. Hope to see you there!

- Frank Sherlock
__________________________________________________________________

The Post-Pacino Spectacular
8pm @ Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

from the organizers:

The Post Pacino Spectacular is a festival that will take place on Saturday, June 24th. The Spectacular is a circus of sorts based around diversity and fostering communication between different communities, including musicians and bands of multiple genres, painters, poets, theater, dancers, and mostly mad fun, the first Post-Pacino Spectacular will include: Reflectiostack, So L'il,I Feel Tractor, Ifwhen, Seaman & Queerfunkel, Sleeping Kings of Iona & Katherine Betty Jones will be displaying her paintings. Poets Dustin Williamson and Frank Sherlock will be reading. Additionally, limited edition Goodbye Better compilations and zines will be released in accordance with each performance. Pete’s Candy Store is located at
709 Lorimer St.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

For more info on them please visit: http://www.harvestsum.com/skoi/ Gratzi mucho.

Love, Goodbye Better

Check out the Summer Reading series at the awesome Chapter House.
Also--The Stylus has new sound from emerging poets l o a d e d !

http://the-stylus.blogspot.com/

Hello from Seattle!

-Div

If you're in town this Saturday, I'm reading with Mecca Sullivan and Ryan Eckes at a new Summer Series, which you can find out details on by clicking HERE

CAConrad
p.s. I'm reading Carol Mirakove's fantastic new book MEDIATED. More later, and hope others will also be wanting to share their thoughts and feelings on this great new book.

This is such an important petition to sign!

A good friend just sent me this information. THIS WEEK, possibly Monday (TOMORROW!) the senate will vote to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour.

It's been STUCK (AMAZINGLY!) at $5.15 an hour for ten years! TEN YEARS!? And of course every single senator gives themselves a nice fat raise every single year!

Click HERE to sign the petition.

CAConrad

Several PhillySound readers wrote asking similar questions about the Bernadette Mayer post (see 6/9/06), asking for the most part what was an example of a form that I had been used to that differed from the "Counterhatch" example.

I'm on the third reading of this READER, and with this round am reading each piece over and over and Loving how things fall apart from what was originally understood, felt, seen, heard. The book is addictive in that way, that concentration at how and where and WHEN every line has its say. The kind of addiction I always hope for in a book of poetry.

But to answer the question about what has been more familiar for me with Mayer, which differs from the "Counterhatch" example. The following poem "First turn to me...." Lee Ann Brown showed me for the first time a few years ago. "First turn to me...." was written in the 90s, three decades AFTER the time of the "Counterhatch" writing. There's a deft use of alliteration (as a kick-start) with this more narrative voice which is intimate in a way that sex in poems doesn't always accomplish. Not exploitive, and beautiful as any tremulous and honest human animal motion when uninhibited and not uninhibited in the act of overcoming being inhibited, but just natural, an unconscious natural. And maybe it's just me, but I'm never brought to this feeling of voyeurism, it's like having tea while Bernadette and some guy cum against the pressures of the percolator, the thrusts as much the conversation as any other part of the conversation. You'll have to let me know how it is for you. Hehe, how was the sex of the poem for you? Was it good? Of course it was, it's a brilliant placement of everything.

-------------


First turn to me . . . .
by Bernadette Mayer

First turn to me after a shower,
you come inside me sideways as always

in the morning you ask me to be on top of you,
then we take a nap, we're late for school

you arrive at night inspired and drunk,
there is no reason for our clothes

we take a bath and lie down facing each other,
then later we turn over, finally you come

we face each other and talk about childhood
as soon as I touch your penis I wind up coming

you stop by in the morning to say hello
we sit on the bed indian fashion not touching

in the middle of the night you come home
from a nightclub, we don't get past the bureau

next day it's the table, and after that the chair
because I want so much to sit you down & suck your cock

you ask me to hold your wrists, but then when I
touch your neck with both my hands you come

it's early morning and you decide to very quietly
come on my knee because of the children

you've been away at school for centuries, your girlfriend
has left you, you come four times before morning

you tell me you masturbated in the hotel before you came by
I don't believe it, I serve the lentil soup naked

I massage your feet to seduce you, you are reluctant,
my feet wind up at your neck and ankles

you try not to come too quickly
also, you don't want to have a baby

I stand up from the bath, you say turn around
and kiss the backs of my legs and my ass

you suck my cunt for a thousand years, you are weary
at last I remember my father's anger and I come

you have no patience and come right away
I get revenge and won't let you sleep all night

we make out for so long we can't remember how
we wound up hitting our heads against the wall

I lie on my stomach, you put one hand under me
and one hand over me and that way can love me

you appear without notice and with flowers
I fall for it and we become missionaries

you say you can only fuck me up the ass when you are drunk
so we try it sober in a room at the farm

we lie together one night, exhausted couplets
and don't make love. does this mean we've had enough?

watching t.v. we wonder if each other wants to
interrupt the plot; later I beg you to read to me

like the Chinese we count 81 thrusts
then 9 more out loud till we both come

I come three times before you do
and then it seems you're mad and never will

it's only fair for a woman to come more
think of all the times they didn't care


-------------

The following sonnet I want to share, it's one of my favorite sonnets by her. The anger of the world view is one I feel in my own life, and this poem really gets me! I LOVE it! (This poem is also from the 90s)

-------------


Sonnet
by Bernadette Mayer

You jerk you didn't call me up
I haven't seen you in so long
You probably have a fucking tan
& besides that instead of making love tonight
You're drinking your parents to the airport
I'm through with you bourgeois boys
All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts
Only money can get--even Catullus was rich but

Nowadays you guys settle for a couch
By a soporific color cable t.v. set
Instead of any arc of love, no wonder
The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time

Wake up! It's the middle of the night
You can either make love or die at the hands of
                               the Cobra Commander
---
to make love, turn to page 121.
To die, turn to page 172.


-------------

Let me share an extraordinary poem she wrote in the 60s, around the "Counterhatch" writing. "It Moves Across" is a mystery that GETS YOU, holds you to the rails as we speed along! Mmmm! You'll see!

-------------


It Moves Across
by Bernadette Mayer

It moves across and over
across the ground
it moves across over the ground
under (by the bridge) the moss
over the moss
across the grass the
grass moves across crossing the
blades of grass into
larger fields
of grass crossing over the
mounds and hills of
nothing but grass on top of
roots of grass
it moves across slowly
slowly into
another field or further
through the forest still
moving by
and by emerging from
the forest small enough
moving
the same rate
under the bridge next to the
trees next through the
trees missing them moving
around them still
crossing like the trees
the trees over
like blades of grass the
grass over as a bridge goes over
bridges
bridges over the trees
it moves across the hills
like a field over the fields
like field on field
of a hill of a hill
as if the forest
into its forest
on the ground like the ground over
it
stopping over
near a patch of grass.


-------------

For EPC link: MAYER

For many other links: MAYER

(posted by CAConrad)

Selma James –
International coordinator of the Global Women's Strike from London England who wrote the Introduction to Creating a Caring Economy: Nora Castañeda and the Women's Development Bank of Venezuela

- will speak about the book, women
and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela at
Robin’s Bookstore
108 S. 13th Street, Phila
7pm Tuesday June 13

This is a one-night Philadelphia event!!

Selma James – activist, author, strategist and critical thinker – has been to Venezuela four times and was an International Observer on behalf of the National Electoral Council in the 2004 national referendum, which resulted in a landslide victory for President Hugo Chávez. She was a main organizer of the highly successful 2004 US speaking tour of Nora Castañeda, President of Venezuela’s Women’s Development Bank.

Selma James’s many publications include the 1972 feminist classic The Power of Women and Subversion of the Community, translated into Italian, French, Japanese and Spanish, and credited with launching the international domestic labor debate on the economic value of housework. Widow of CLR James (The Black Jacobins, etc.), she is founder in 1972 of the International Wages for Housework Campaign.

For more information please contact the Crossroads Women’s Center 215-848-1120 or Robin’s Bookstore 215-735-9600 http://www.robinsbookstore.com/

(posted by CAConrad)

Budweiser is the official beer at World Cup stadiums; it's not going over well with the locals.

For more details read the article in today Philly Inquirer: "In the land of Oktoberfest, World Cup fans are hopping mad."

Here are a few haiku-like poems I've just written using some language from the article:

In the boisterous beer hall,
the patrons cry:
Spuelwasser! (Dishwater!)

*

"Pouring rights" $40 mill,
12 World Cup stadiums;
anti-Bud sites flourish

*

Local pilsners VS. Bud draft:
German soccer fans swell--
BUDWEISER!

*

Behind only the Czechs,
Germans love their beer.

*

Global media sports
marketing VEEP says:
"We're proud of Budweiser,
what it's about" CHOICES!

*

At Munich: Germany pitted
against Costa Rica; silence
in the Hofbrauhau House.

*

In historic Bavarian beer halls,
new beer-drinking songs:
Tastes Great! Less Filling!

*

At concession stands
one concession: a bit
for Bit Beer!

*

A matter of taste.
A toast, the local
Weissbier is no more!


--TOM DEVANEY

Frank, thanks for the plug man! Hehehe! That picture makes me smile because that was such a great party! And peonies are all the reason needed to smile, ants and all!

I've been rereading Bernadette Mayer. Correction! I've been READING her as well! Picked up a copy of A BERNADETTE MAYER READER in a 2nd hand shop a couple days ago. Like an idiot for all these years I stuck with such a limited slice of what she has to offer. Like MIDWINTER DAY and bits and pieces. This book makes me want to read IT ALL!

What a range of forms and, and, the tastes get in you as different as the range of forms. Hard to decide WHAT poem to share here. So let me choose one I like very much which is not at all like any of the forms I've been used to by her before finding this READER. Yeah, everyone, if you don't Love this one I'll be surprised! And then I'll have to Love it enough for us! Which I will do, no problem!--CAConrad
-------------

Counterhatch
by Bernadette Mayer

     In all part in point in singing part in mountains,
part in point
     the store the ancient the old always have intermissions,
part of this is too bold, but owning a part of the old
may turn into science, part to the bold, that's the ending.
     in quiet parts of the old (now after always a light),
we silence, not ours but the enemy's toward an efficiency
wanting an end.
the end. We make ouselves richer, we start what's untold.
     in papers, turned in words not marks, that's red.
     which is racial (absorbed), where are elements--
man--to raise, he's happy
     nothing in detroit that fantasy excludes
     why not (plumber a mass a nude) & so on
to alternates & averages, averages tombs, two spaces told spaces,
deny it again, sold.
     question in pleat, the unanimous fold now in rites
then in bells, execute
     ignore the story build a cemetery
     an abstraction, the end, the owl, where in point,
language of country, exhort
     so to end the expelling of exploit the untelling of
dams putting in these reminders of death. that's purple.
     toward denying to continue to the end, here by
continuing the of . . .
     done we expel them for social, the kind of space of
the actual, space of breath & with it the space for the
space of the rest
     as a joke for retelling canot persist in unpeeling
all the world's explorations, we rise to get up at the stroke of . . .
found what was lost in the heat of . . . white battle & waves &
found in rough the gut of it, having in melting how. . . .
     the rest in awe, still how in awe, flower
          in laugh in flower in waves. . . .
& singing & entering & awe again & this time it's awe of the reverse
that's green
     of returning to scream without thinking, the end
in thinner, of thick, & simplers of trees in parrot to lisp
"sea anemone," closed
     apology in rest: research isn't festive, looking for
names, burning down piers & papers & scoring the time I'm
translated to shore on the back of a porpoise
     & to see like a mirror turned on the port
     so for saying injection as far as it goes in the
arm (truth) of (black symbols)
     will adopt parents that cannot grow (anthem emblem
knife), a knife for the course that ends like this not like that,
& they'll all come to orbit, arbit, in the courts by force
we'll make the exchange        & to count, continue, to embrace
     forgetting parts important to "in concurrence" that's grey.
           we'll fissure the end & cleave in parting by
statements by surgery by force
     cerebral from parent, dim from latin--everything's in half
we do it by force, by the time . . . this is the final please let me
   ending in dive in ring proposing in answer the positions for
           silence growing minerals closed sky another &
how to prepare . . . rhyme to give phial in waves blank to prompt
     in ending amend that's brown.

Then read Kate Greenstreet's interview with CAConrad about the release of Deviant Propulsion- your strawberry ice cream for today.

- Frank Sherlock

For years I've been saying to myself that I should learn Spanish.

It's been so easy not to learn it. It's easy being lazy when you already speak and write the language of the ruling class and race.

And where I come from no one learns Spanish, or even considers it. Only one member of my extended family has ever graduated from college (and it's not me).

The recent hostile arguments from our esteemed Washington leadership for making English the official language, meaning a requirement for the privilege of citizenship, has me as angry as I am embarrassed.

Angry because the racism and classism handed down from the pearly top. Embarrassed because I do not know Spanish, but want to better support those who LIVE in the language.

So I've decided to be as vocal as I can be about learning Spanish this year. Mainly because I want to say as often as I can, "I am NOT learning a foreign language, but another American language!" Because this IS TRUE!

Learning Spanish and being confrontational about NEEDING to learn it has never seemed more important. Solidarity with the Latino community in their (our) present and future crises needs to be met at the very least with making an effort to communicate. That and knowing more about a culture and a community than what and how to order off the menu.

Also, this crisis of language in Washington might just be the very thing needed to make more Americans aware of Chavez and the amazing revolution in Venezuela. Such awareness can only make Americans angry about what we LACK!

May the backfiring begin, and soon!

It will also be good to read poetry in Spanish, to finally see if I agree with all those translators, CAConrad

The amazing Andrea Lawlor just sent around a link to the PHILADELPHIANS AGAINST SANTORUM website, check it out! --CAConrad

According to Bill Frist on yesterday's Fox News Sunday, flag burning and gay marriage are urgent priorities. He plans to introduce bills in the Senate to prevent both this summer, to be known as the "burn fags not flags" amendment. So it’s obvious that this is a pathetic ploy to rally the conservative base unhappy with an administration that cannot prosecute an effective war, spies on Americans, takes money from first responders in NYC and leaves an American city to fend for itself in swamp ruin. But flag burning? Come on. When is the last time you saw a flag burning? I don’t even think they do that in West Philly anymore. Can Karl Rove orchestrate a flag burning at a gay wedding so the Senate can come to our rescue?

- Frank Sherlock

First, thanks Tom for that generous review!

Second, I've been getting plenty of hate mail from the Gay Right, as this post just appeared on GAY PATRIOT about my views on gays in the military.

What a fricken joy conservative queers are!
CAConrad

CAConrad’s book Deviant Propulsion published by Soft Skull this spring is an unapologetic, curative, black magic book.

Deviance for CAConrad is survival; deviance is an act of faith: a religion against religions; it’s a private, vulnerable deviance distinct from the grand malevolent brand. There is something loving and lonely about Conrad’s deviance. His poems propel deviancy--his deviancy--into the poetry. In a country that wrongly casts poets and poetry itself as deviant Conrad's poems here are unflinching. That is, the poems are not about deviancy, each in its own artful way, is an act of deviancy itself.

Here are some lines from Conrad's powerful poem “Exit as Real Journey to All Friends,” (I am quoting mid-poem here):

we are
dirt
don’t
worry turn us
inside out

lemon slice
too small to remember
the tree

growls
from mirror
resemble
mother

open the
sleep they
mail us

pleased and
open

poem
lowering
from
air where
air gives

“we
must be
up inside
the cyclone”
so says Dorothy
engine’s
large ingestion
of birds

compass not
working in
outer space
where
endless
mazes home are
some stories

And the poem end:

you are
the first
i’d call if
poetry didn’t
exist

battering
walls of
flesh the
heart

--Tom Devaney

CELEBRATORY BOOK RELEASE of GRIT and tender membrane

Samantha Barrow's very first book, published by Plan B Press

Sunday, June 4th

6:00 Wine, cheese & music by Fan of Friends
6:45 Book reading and signing

Robin's Bookstore
108 South 13th Street
Philadelphia
215.735.9600

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sam and her plans:

"Samantha Barrow will always stand out as one of the gutsiest and most
provocative performers I've seen." Jersey Beat Magazine

"Sam Barrow is smart and sassy, empowering and brave. You can feel
soul oozing out of each word." – Katz, Athens Boys Choir

This summer, Sam will tour the U.S. on her motor bike to celebrate the Grit and tender membrane, the full-length manuscript of poetry and tales from her first tour, published by Plan B Press. Sam was awarded a Leeway grant to fund this tour and to facilitate erotic poetry workshops with survivors of sexual abuse along the way. Those sessions will result in a chapbook of poems by survivors that will then be used by grass roots anti- violence and survivor support services for fundraising and
educational purposes.

FROM SAM:

About the workshops:

My workshops use poetry to explore the ways we can shed some of the shame that blocks our potential for joy. We celebrate the erotic in all its complexities and individuals are welcome to speak directly about painful experiences and/or revel in writing about pleasure. All of our lives are affected by the sexual violence of the media, as well as by issues of gendered dominance that pervade interpersonal and
professional relationships. In my workshops, the definition of "survivor" is expanded to encompass that broad range of second hand abuse for participants who would like to counteract its influence.

If you know of a fabulous organization, venue or contact who may be interested in hosting a workshop or performance anywhere in this country, let me know. I'll be traveling all over and there can never be too many shows. Contact Samantha Barrow at: samantha.barrow@gmail.com

Posted by TD