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                    <span class="style10">L O C A L &nbsp;&nbsp;N E W S </span></span></span></span><span class="style10"><strong><br>
                      </strong><span class="style3"><span class="style14 style18">______________________</span></span><strong></strong></span></p>
                <p align="right" class="style8 style11 style10"><span class="style10">SUMMER</span> <span class="style10">2005 </span></p>
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          <p align="left" class="style6"><span class="style7"><span class="style15"><strong>Dallas, Texas, USA </strong></span></span> </p>
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          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Summer is the off season for most literary organizations in Dallas. The city's main venues, The Writers Garret and Arts &amp; Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art, suspend programming until the Fall, and series hosted at local universities��Southern Methodist University and Chris Murray's Poetry Heat at the University of Texas at Arlington��also break for the summer. Paperbacks Plus in Lakewood sponsors an ongoing Saturday night poetry open mic and The Art Bar at Club Clearview in Deep Ellum draws performance poets to its Friday night open slam. Stepping up to fill the void in literary programming this summer is WordSpace, sponsors of the annual <em>Texas Unbound* Literary Festival </em> which takes place this year from July 29-August 14. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Founded in 1994 by poet Robert Trammell, WordSpace has long been regarded as the redheaded stepchild of the Dallas lit scene. Under the direction of Trammell, WordSpace has introduced writers including Robert Creeley, Ed Sanders, Andrei Codrescu, and Clayton Eshleman to conservative Dallas audiences. In recent months, the organization has focused its efforts on promoting local and emerging talent, organizing programs which have featured some of the most talented college age writers from local universities. This year's <em>Texas Unbound </em> will continue to build on this theme of showcasing Texas writers, gathering together an ambitious and diverse roster of talent focusing on Texas literary history. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Programs already confirmed for this summer's festival include Karen X's Dharma Broads Theater Troupe (members of the Dharma Broads are poets <em>and </em> yoginis), UTD Professor Frederick Turner, Dallas Slam Poets, programs featuring area high school and college age students, a tribute to Pablo Neruda in conjunction with DWF International, a program which will honor <em>Southwest Review </em>, recipient of this year's Nora Magid Award from PEN America, and a performance by Dancing Tongue, an interdisciplinary ensemble which incorporates text, live music, movement, and improv into its sets. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">For up-to-date information on presenters and passes for the Festival, visit the WordSpace website at <a href="http://http://octopusmagazine.com/issue06/html/main.html" target="_parent">www.wordspacetexas.org</a>. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">*The name of the WordSpace festival is an irreverent but playful take on Arts &amp; Letters Live Texas Bound! series. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em>Shin Yu Pai </em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style7 style15">_______________________</p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em><br>
          </em><strong>Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA </strong></p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em><br>
          </em>Milwaukee is feeling a bit transitory lately. Many poets have come to visit this spring; a few more that live here are leaving this summer. But for a city in the middle of the country, with a population of around 600,000, there is almost always an impressive amount of poetic activity taking place around the city. Some attribute this to lakes effects off of Lake Michigan to the immediate east. Others give credit to the fish fry and the bratwurst. A few attribute Milwaukee 's aesthetic to its proximity to Chicago. However, those who are not so wrongheaded as to tie our objectivist-tinged neighbor city to the south with this objectivist-tinged city to the north�those with clear vision and amiable dispositions�recognize that what imbues Milwaukee with the ability to hold a community of poets together is the absolutely non-transitory center of Great Lakes poetic innovation that is Woodland Pattern Book Center. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Woodland Pattern's selection dwarfs anything in New York; St. Mark's bookstore with its nice browse-able selection has nothing on the behemoth shelves and collected rarities that line the walls inside this fortress of progressive poetry. Perhaps this accounts for the large number of poets from New York that have visited and given readings in the last few months. Between the beginning of March and middle of April, Anselm Berrigan, Brendan Lorber, and Anthony Hawley all read�each at a different venue. George Stanley also made his way from Canada by train to read at Woodland Pattern. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Lisa Samuels, author of <em>The Seven Voices </em>(O Books) and editor of an annotated edition of Laura Riding's <em>Anarchism is not Enough </em>(University of California Press) gave a reading at Woodland Pattern in support of her newest collection <em>Paradise for Everyone </em>(Shearsman Books) alongside Laura Mullen in May. Samuels teaches at the University of Wisconsin�Milwaukee. The reading took place during a poetic visitation of another sort: a showing of the Jonathan Williams's portrait photography of other poets. So, in addition to the audience seated in front of Samuels listening to her read poems that examine the ways in which our experience is shaped by language (or vice-versa), it appeared that South-Eastern Wisconsin's own Lorine Niedecker and British sensation Basil Bunting were watching from behind. The portraits of Louis Zukofsky and William Carlos Williams faced away, but it remains unclear if it they were mildly embarrassed to be seen next to Samuels reading a piece titled �Nun walking naked out of the ahead of time, and what she is thinking� or if they were guiltily looking away from Niedecker, who hung next to them. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Stacy Szymaszek, who is the current literary program manager at Woodland Pattern also released a book this summer called <em>Emptied of All Ships </em>(Litmus Press), but since the release reading was not in Milwaukee but rather in Chicago (and I was not there) I will not comment further upon it, other than to say that it is a very nice book made up of some of Stacy's previous nautical texts and everyone should get a copy. In August Szymaszek is leaving her post at Woodland Pattern to move to New York and become the new program coordinator at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church. Moving up from the aforementioned city to Milwaukee's immediate south, her replacement Chuck 
    

     Stebelton, author of <em>Circulation Flowers </em> (Tougher Disguises), will take over in mid-August. </p>
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            <p><em>Dustin Williamson <br>
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          <span class="style7 style15">_______________________</span>          </p>
          <p align="left">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15">Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Philadelphia and the world prepare for Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday.&nbsp; Next to Elvis it would be hard to find an American as loved.&nbsp; Imagine Franz Kafka reading, and rereading Franklin's autobiography (which he did do), and Kafka and Franklin&nbsp;become a portal--once again--for the endless imagination.&nbsp; Superimpose their faces together and the possible meditative projections might just be the sharp little tool you've been searching out. But as we approach Franklin's 300th birthday we must remember the man's insistence that we be vigilant to preserve our liberties.&nbsp; President Bush and his pack of thugs will be crowding around statues of Franklin no doubt for front page photographs, and it's THESE times when we must present ourselves at full volume.&nbsp; These very people who will take the opportunity to align themselves with Franklin are in fact misaligned. P.A.C.E. (Poet Activist Community Extension) is not only an acronym, it is also the Italian word for PEACE.&nbsp; The <a href="http://PhillySound.blogspot.com" target="_parent">PhillySound</a> poets have been taking poetry--literally--to the streets.&nbsp; It started last Xmas eve day with poets Frank Sherlock, Linh Dinh, Mytili Jagannathan and myself, CAConrad.&nbsp; We read in front of hamburger joints, banks, churches, handing out our poems on war, America, and on&nbsp;the margins of speech.&nbsp; Prepared for a battle, we weren't prepared for the joy and love our fellow human beings shared with us for what we were doing.&nbsp; Since then there have been readings by the Federal Building, at the president's 2nd false inauguration (in falsetto for a nod to the false).&nbsp; Let this happen in every city and town these P.A.C.E. readings, and contact the PhillySound to meet up with you and your fellow poets on a street corner some afternoon to read, and to get a sense of the possible joys waiting out there with people you had no idea really WANT to hear and read your poems. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em>CAConrad  </em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style15"><br>
            <span class="style7 style15">_______________________</span>          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15">Raleigh, North Carolina, USA </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><br>
          For once I had somewhere to be besides mowing the lawn and being lashed by yellow jackets for the first real time in my life. I was to play host to one night of Lost Weekend 2005 at Raleigh's LUMP Gallery, which would be a culmination of readings by Brent Van Daley and myself, loading the remaining chambers with Chapel Hill's, Paula de Luna, a flamenco dancer with immaculate shoulder blades and arriving at the brink of a thunderstorm was the vicious editing team of Greensboro's new literary rag, The Backwards City Review. Lump has so far been the most inspiring gallery in the city of Raleigh. I've never been disappointed to drink a 36 oz beer at the Mexican restaurant and kick rocks for two streets to witness the bizarre opening installed each month. So, an offer to organize a reading there seemed a fair acceptance. The last reading I had done my friend posed as an NPR reporter with a laminated badge he had made at Kinko's two hours before. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Though I feel my views aren't meant to be read, I could say with unadulterated conviction that being an active resident for two years I've had problems finding even a white-bread state university prowler or a barfly with a shattered complexion who was interested in the un-enrolled local literary canon. But the evening broke some suspicion. The clusters of chairs filled up with bodies when Paula broke into an aggressive dance that shut up even the drunk kid in the back and sent sharp echoes off the gallery walls. It was twenty minutes of sass and authenticity, which afterwards made me consider if I had developed a thing for feet. All the while sitting in the audience was someone whose work I had admired, the next reader, Brent Van Daley. Brent drove up from Athens, GA to read stories from existing issues of <em>The Minus Times</em>, a magazine published at grandfather speed by Hunter Kennedy, a literary hub for writers like Sam Lipsyte, David Berman and Jeff Johnson. It was his first reading, and he took it like a pro. He finished with a new story about being an extra on a movie set due to emerge in the next issue of <em>The Minus Times</em> that Drag City records will distribute in the upcoming October. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">I closed the evening, reading some new poems like �Slaughterhouse 5000� and �The Great Depression� that felt an accomplishment if for at least nothing else but the true focus of the article; the Arkansas manufactured Lecternette. I wanted to inform all of you on the wonderful machines available at the North Carolina surplus center. This is where I had found, after touching flat screen televisions from the drug seizure room, a portable lector stand with built in canvas covered speakers, retractable microphone and bulb-lit knob display that sounded like your voice was coming out of a warm stove. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">The car tires had that tearing sound after a rain. We headed to a diner and had various drinks, some appetizers. There is a construction sight across the street now. I saw it from the table and got that anticipation syndrome, the What-Could-It-Be's. You can't complain about the amount of musical acts in this city, or the college jurisdiction, or the bar gossip because it is all we have. So I think, my next reading will contain a smoke machine, a blind magician. Or the dueling pianos I heard about at a downtown mid-life crisis bar. Maybe the construction will bring another place you can raise hell, or if you are a pocket-checking quiet type like myself, at least watch people do it. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em>Eric Amling </em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style7 style15"><br>
          _______________________          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada </p>
          <p align="center" class="style7 style15">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"> Robin Blaser turned eighty! A small, invite-only crowd of nearly one hundred companions gathered to wish Blaser happy birthday. Guests travelled from as far away as Buffalo and San Francisco. The highlight of the evening was when coral group, Musica Intima, performed a poem of Blaser's set to music. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Jay Millar read three days in a row! Launching his new book, <em>False Maps for Other Creatures</em>, (the first new blewointment title since McCaffery's <em>Panopitcon</em>), at three venues�two of which I can verify as KSW and the UBC Robson Square Reading Series. Any Vancouverite who has ever asked�how often can a visiting Torontonian read?�received an answer: three. Ex-Torontonian, now Buffalo resident, Steve McCaffery, came in a close second, reading two nights in a row�both at KSW�one re-inaugurating the Vancouver chapter of Rob Mannery and Louis Cabri's lecture series �The Transparency Machine,� the other for an epic reading of Steve's new work. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">West Coast Poetry Festival, July 7th to July 10th. Highlights included Christian B&ouml;k's performance from new work, <em>The Cyborg Sonata</em>, Wayde Compton and Jason De Couto's performance at �This is Definitely Not Rap Music,� and the �Three Georges� event (George Bowering, George Stanley, and George Elliot Clarke). Folks from all over the country (Alexis O Hara, rob mclennan, Larrisa Lai), and many of Vancouver luminaries (Daphne Marlatt, bill bisset) read. The same weekend the Powell Street Festival kicked off this year with its �Spatial Poetics� fundraiser reading. Fred Wah performed a new text �Pop goes the Hood� along with visuals by filmmaker Henry Tsang, among others. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Earlier in the season we were swamped. Meredith Quartermain's launch of Vancouver Walking at Artspeak fondly comes to mind, as does a reading by Corey Frost (with Anne Stone and Wayde Compton) at The Helen Pitt Gallery. Lastly, in one hectic weekend the AWP, the Unassociated Writer's Conference, and Robert Duncan conference at KSW occurred. My personal favorite was the Unassociated Writer's Conference at the Western Front, wherein writers were encouraged to enjoy �the pleasures of unassociation.� All I need to say is: a bouncy castle, which projected a video feed on each side of the castle of simultaneous readings by various participants (Stacey Levine was a highlight); tables set up by Clear Cut Press, Greenboathouse Books, perro verlag, ugly duckling press&eacute;, and Futurepoem; there was also a bar that served toasties and champagne cocktails. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><em>Aaron Peck </em></p>
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          _______________________          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11"><br>
          Chapel Hill/Carrboro, North Carolina, USA</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">A lot of energy has been generated by former Carrboro Poet Laureate Patrick Herron's <a href="http://www.carrboropoetryfestival.org">Carrboro Poetry Festival</a>; this summer's festival, the second in hopefully a long line of festivals, was a great success: 39 poets reading over two days to an audience of hundreds. Highlights included Christian B&ouml;k's tremendous performance of Dada/OuLiPo inspired work, Chris Vitiello's brilliant oration, Todd Sandvik's superb reading of his carnal poems, terrific readings by Dale Smith, Hoa Nguyen, Mary Margaret Sloan, Joseph Donahue, Carl Martin, Heidi Lynn Staples, Rod Smith, Mel Nichols, Philip Nikolayev, Gabriel Gudding, Standard Schaefer, and Linh Dinh, among others. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Another central aspect of life here has been Ken Rumble's Desert City Reading Series, which pairs a prominent national poet with one of Carolina's own. The next season is upon us, and scheduled readers include John Taggart, Rosmarie Waldrop, Sarah Manguso, Ed Robeson, Brenda Coultas and Brent Cunningham. These Saturday night readings are a highlight of everyone's week around here; the readings are in a cozy little anarchist bookstore, and the after party is always at Todd and Laura Sandvik's Blue Door (their home has a bright blue door): another short reading, performance, play or film springs forth, along with the requisite dancing, partying and arm-wrestling. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">The next year is going to be an exciting one as Todd has succeeded Patrick as Carrboro Poet Laureate -- Patrick will still be organizing the Festival, but Todd has some great plans for the office. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">What else is new? Chris Vitiello just started up LuciTalks, a series of 20-30 minute talks followed by questions and discussion. We just had the first one last Sunday, where I whipped up a little talk on Ronald Johnson's <em>ARK</em>, focusing on the Olsonian aspects of RJ's masterwork. I think the next one will feature David Need giving a talk on Rilke. Also in the plans is a chapbook press headed up by Ken Rumble and Chris Vitiello, called Desert City Press; I believe some of the planned releases include a series of translations from the brilliant Julian Semilian, who lives just down the road in Winston-Salem.</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Also exciting has been the road trips the Lucifer Poetics Group has undertaken: the first a few months ago was to DC and Philly, and the most recent was even more ambitious: Baltimore, Philly, Brooklyn, Ithaca. Scanning the blogs will probably turn up some scandalous pictures from these above trips. Hopefully all this road-tripping will help bring about a kind of Underground Poetry Railway where ambitious and/or foolish souls can hop along the East Coast from Athens/Atlanta up to North Carolina, then up to DC/Baltimore, Philly, then New York/Boston. This weekend we're hosting a group reading of Buck Downs, Tom Orange, Cathy Eisenhower and Adam Good from the DC scene; rumor is the afterparty will include a live rap group, guns, skinny dipping, guerilla art and perhaps the cooking of the rest of Randall Williams' chickens. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Also keep an eye out for the next issue of <em>Talisman</em>, which will feature a 40 page spread of North Carolina poets edited by Joseph Donahue that includes poems by Carl Martin, Ken Rumble, Eden Osucha, Randall Williams, Tessa Joseph, Evie Shockley, Marcus Slease, Amy Carroll, Andrea Selch, Chris Vitiello, the famous puppet Lester, and myself. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Also, check out the latest issue of <em><a href="http://octopusmagazine.com/issue06/html/main.html" target="_parent">Octopus</a></em>, the young hot shots issue, which features lengthy selections from two of our own hotshots, Brian Howe and Randall Williams. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><em>Tony Tost</em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style15 style7"><span class="style15 style7">_______________________ </span></p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11"><br>
          Chicago, Illinois, USA </p>
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          Chicago is a town in the poetry sense where many new and up incoming poets are writing and working. The list is endless but names like John Tipton, William Allegrezza, Kerri Sonnenberg, Arielle Greenberg, Mark Tardi, Chuck Stebelton, Jesse Seldess, Skriankth Reddy, John Beer, Joe Craig, and Simone Muench and many others are working here and making the poetry scene interesting. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Reading Series: there are many of great interest within the area, the Danny's Reading Series at Danny's Bar in Chicago's Bucktown Neighborhood is curated by poets Joel Craig and John Beer. This series is very diverse and has had some of Chicago's and the US's most important poets read people like Peter Gizzi, and NPR's Ira Glass have read at this venue and it is the place to be on Wednesday nights. Another important series is the Discrete Series which is currently housed at the 3030 W Cortland Space but is in the process of moving. Discrete is a great series curated by Jesse Seldess and Kerri Sonnenberg, Seldess is leaving Chicago so now Sonnenberg has to carry the mantle forward. This series, the first Friday of each month at 9 AM is home to the best readings in the city. Poets who range from Elizabeth Robinson, Charles Bernstein, and local poets like yours truly, Mark Tardi, John Tipton and many others have read at this venue which has a loyal and large following. Another interesting series and perhaps the most prestigious is the Chicago Poetry Project at the Harold Washington Library curated by John Tipton. This series is on Saturday 12:00 noon or 1 pm and is a fine well reasoned series of poets of note. A new series that has just started is the Art Institute Series at Powells bookstore in Lincoln Park; this series is curated by students in the MFA program at the Art Institute and has the backing of Dan Beachy-Quick, a local poet and professor at the Art Institute. Another new series is the Red Rover series at the Spareroom Art Gallery which is developing into something interesting going forward. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">There are many, many other events going on here, in Milwaukee at Woodland Pattern Chicago poet Chuck Stebelton is now curating the reading series; which by the way is heald in America's best poetry bookstore. As of this writing the reading series at the University of Chicago, University of Illinois and the other universities and the Poetry Center of Chicago are not published but are always interesting and worth keeping an eye on. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Small Presses: in terms of small presses, Flood Editions, Chicago's best small press continues to publish innovative work and a new poetry press, Field Press of Chicago, has launched for 2005-06. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">Magazines: Chicago is home to many good poetry magazines not least if these is <em>Poetry</em>, which has no contact with Chicago; I won't write about it since they do not really interact with the Chicago poetry scene. But other magazines are doing a great job: <em>Chicago Review</em> is a great magazine published by the University of Chicago, <em>Near South</em> is published by Chicago poet Garin Cycholl, <em>ACM: Another Chicago Magazine</em> is edited by Simone Muench and is very good for more traditional mainstream poetry; in online journals: <em>Moria Poetry</em> published by William Allegrezza is doing very interesting work. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">For more detailed information on everything going on in Chicago please visit <a href="http://chicagopostmodernpoetry.com" target="_parent">Chicago Postmodern Poetry</a>, the website I curate, which has everything in great detail in our calendar section. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><em>Ray Bianchi</em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style7 style15"><br>
          _______________________          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Providence, Rhode Island, USA</p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><br>
          By way of introduction, Providence 's literary community began long ago, pre-Pilgrim, but more recently it began with H.P. Lovecraft in the early years of the 20th century. Critical mass didn't begin until the 1960's when Edwin Honig created Brown University 's Creative Writing Program. In the autumn of 2003 Robert Creeley arrived after serving as anchor for Buffalo's community. How fortunate we were, and are. Almost instantly Providence became electric. Michael Gizzi and Michael Magee, at the suggestion of Creeley, began a new reading series in Downcity Providence at Tazza Caff&eacute; (not to be confused with Philly's La Tazza). Starting in September Tazza holds one reading a month. The first will be Lisa Jarnot and Carl Martin (check <a href="http://www.tazzacaffe.com/">www.tazzacaffe.com </a> for date and any other changes) and on October 4 K. Silem Mohammad reads with Kent Johnson. The bill for November 1 is not yet nailed down, so stayed tuned. The reading series at Tazza is an addition to the reading series at Brown, which one finds details for at <a href="http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Literary_Arts/events.htm">www.brown.edu/Departments/Literary_Arts/events.htm </a>. The Rhode Island School of Design also runs a reading series with the help of Mairead Byrne who is on faculty there. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">In addition to three great reading series, Providence has many small presses. Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop's Burning Deck, which began as a magazine in the 1960's publishing the likes of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and Robert Duncan, is the lynchpin of the community. Over the years, as new members joined the community, Lost Roads Press (eds. Wright &amp; Gander), Paradigm Press (eds. by Gale Nelson &amp; Lori Baker), Combo Books &amp; Magazine (ed. by Michael Magee), Qua Books (eds. Michael Gizzi &amp; Craig Watson), Horseless Press and Review (ed. Jen Tynes), and Encyclopedia Project (eds. Kate Schatz, Tisa Bryant, &amp; Miranda F. Mellis) joined the ranks. Recently, Combo published <em>A Thousand Devils </em>by K. Silem Mohammad and <em>Also, With My Throat, I Shall Swallow Ten Thousand Swords: Araki Yasusada's Letter In English </em> is imminent. Qua Books most recent publications are Bill Berkson's <em>Sweet Singer of Modernism &amp; Other Writings 1985-2003 </em> and Merril Gilfillan's <em>Small Weather. </em> One place in Providence where one is guaranteed to find publications like the above is the John Hay Library at Brown, which holds the Harris Collection of American Poetry &amp; Plays in addition to other publications from the international scene. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">It was a particularly eventful summer for Providence . So far we have had the Magdalena Festival which was brought here by Vanessa Gilbert, an international performing arts festival held this year for the first time in the U.S. after its recent stint in Cuba . <em>Water(war)s, </em>by Jill Greenhalgh &amp; Mike Brookes of Wales with six local and international collaborators, and <em>Strange Paradises 2, </em>by Rosa Casado of Spain, were two of the most memorable and haunting performances of the festival. Also, Sound Session, an international music festival, and the Rhode Island International Film Festival sparked the community during the typically slow, humid months of summer. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><em>Stan Mir</em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style7 style15"><br>
          _______________________          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><span class="style11">Brooklyn, New York, USA</span><br>
          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">In the time it takes me to write these few paragraphs, poets will move into or away from Brooklyn , new presses will start, others will shut down, and a reading series will be born. The bodega on the corner will lock its gate, and children in the neighborhood will run through the open hydrant. The ninety-degree weather has been heating things up in this fair borough. Here are just a few things happening in Brooklyn: </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">This past July a new reading series set up shop at The Fall Caf&eacute; in Carroll Gardens . <em>Typo </em> editor and host of The Burning Chair reading series, Matt Henriksen started a Brooklyn New Poets series. Reading this fall will be Andrew Mister, Gabriella Torres, Anne Boyer, John Latta, Carla Conforto, Jeffrey Morgan, Andrea Baker, and Charles Valle. For full details, check out <a href="http://typomag.com/burningchair/" target="_parent">http://typomag.com/burningchair/</a>. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Tracey McTague hosts the Battle Hill Reading Series at Bar Below on the first Tuesday of the month. Only a year old, the series has generated a welcoming scene for the underrepresented experimental work of both new and more established poets. This season will kick off on October 4 th with a reading by Brandon Downing and Dustin Williamson. Information on this series can be found at <a href="http://lungfull.org/battlehill/index.html" target="_parent">http://lungfull.org/battlehill/index.html </a>. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Another series to watch out for is Hand-to-Mouth. Hand-to-Mouth was founded last January by Corrine Fitzpatrick and Steve Holtje. This year the series is heading in new directions as it splits from both its home at the Glass House Gallery in Williamsburg and from co-host Holtje. The series is also changing from once a month to once every six weeks, but will continue to focus on community, collaboration, and experimentation. For more info, e-mail corrine.fitzpatrick@gmail.com. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Also of note is Jim Behrle's seemingly irregular series at Book Court, (contact: jimbehrle@gmail.com); This is Not the New Minstrel Show, curated by Will Fabro and featuring upcoming queer �transgressive� writers under thirty at Galapagos every third Tuesday; and readings and other events at Free Bird books in Red Hook, (<a href="http://www.freebirdbooks.com/" target="_parent">http://www.freebirdbooks.com </a>). Rumor has it the bi-weekly Pete's Big Salmon series at Pete's Candy Store in Williamsburg will be shutting down. However, the Big Salmon may rise again as an on-line journal. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Brooklyn-based presses have been quite busy lately. Ugly Duckling Presse is releasing a wide variety of books. Just out as an over-sized chapbook is Bethany Wright's <em>Indeed, Insist</em>, and <em>The Further Adventures of My Nose </em> by John Surowiecki with watercolor illustrations by Terry Rentzepis in a palm-size handbound volume. Also just released are <em>Iterature</em>, Eugene Ostashevsky's long awaited first book of poems, and Julien Poirier's novel, <em>Living Go and Dream</em>, in the form of a newspaper. UDP is also releasing the 300+ page experimental novel, <em>Chinese Sun</em>, by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko; Aaron Kiely's first book of poems; a chapbook-collaboration between poets Sara Veglahn and Noah Eli Gordon; a book of poems by the late Romanian poet Mariana Marin; and Edwin Frank's <em>Stack</em>, in a letterpressed chapbook. To keep up with all of this and more, check out <a href="http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/">http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org </a>. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Brenda Ijima's Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs has just published two chapbooks, Peter Lamborn Wilson's <em>Cross-Dressing in the Anti-Rent War </em> and Jill Magi's <em>Cadastral Map</em>. Also coming soon will be a chapbook by Christina Strong, and, in collaboration with Boku Books, Jon Coletti's chapbook <em>Physical Kind</em>. For more information, e-mail <a href="mailto:yoyolabs@hotmail.com">yoyolabs@hotmail.com</a>. (By the way, Brenda has a new book coming out this fall� <em>Animate, Inanimate Aims </em> on Litmus Press.) </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Brooklyn 's own Soft Skull Press will release Brooklyn poet Jennifer Knox's book <em>A Gringo Like Me </em>this fall. Other poetry releases forthcoming from Soft Skull include CA Conrad's <em>Deviant Propulsion, Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man </em> by David Lehman and James Cummins, and Danielle Pafunda's <em>Pretty Young Thing </em>. Soft Skull editor Shanna Compton, (also with a book coming out this fall, <em>Down Spooky </em> on Winnow Press), has started a micro-press out of her apartment. Half Empty/Half Full has recently released four limited edition broadsides and a collaborative chapbook, <em>Percapella</em>, by Christopher Connelly and Daniel Nester. View the catalog at <a href="http://www.shannacompton.com/half-empty.html">http://www.shannacompton.com/half-empty.html </a>. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">If this isn't enough poetry for you, you can check out Poetic Brooklyn on <a href="http://brooklynheightsradio.com">brooklynheightsradio.com</a>, a community-based on-line radio station. Shows are produced and hosted by Susan Brennan of Radio Poetique, Ink. Since November 2003, Radio Poetique has conducted over 80 interviews with individual artists and recordings of live readings and poetry related events. Excerpts from shows can be heard on-line at PennSound: <a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Poetic-Brooklyn.html">http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Poetic-Brooklyn.html</a>. Also check out Radio Poetique at <a href="http://www.radiopoetique.org/index.htm">http://www.radiopoetique.org/index.htm </a>. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em>Gina Myers</em></p>
          <p align="center">_______________________ </p>
          <p align="left">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15">Western Massachusetts (Pioneer Valley area), USA </p>
          <p align="left">&nbsp; </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Any scene report for a poet invariably consists of a list as simple as coffee shop, post office, bookstore, library, living room, etc�although I'm sure it's much different if one lives in close proximity to either of the large poetry nexuses of the left or right coasts. Being anywhere in between, one tends to romanticize the imagined confluence of writers and all of the ancillary work that brings them together. What?! More than one reading on a single night! Alcohol and talk and endless bookstores! The literature's mythologizing of the erstwhile New York &amp; San Francisco poetry hotspots only adds to a younger poet's nostalgic yearning for a chance to drop a few poems in the <em>Open Space </em> submission basket at Gino &amp; Carlo's, or to have rubbed shoulders with the Abstract Expressionists at the Cedar Tavern. That was then, this is now� &amp; what's the point of a scene report but to in some way do the same aggrandizing for one's own particular compatriots, haunts and social habits. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">That said, here's both what I found exciting during my decade or so of living in the Pioneer Valley region of Western Massachusetts &amp; what's been going on up to my departure in August for a new scene in Denver, CO. Troubadour Books! Troubadour Books! Troubadour Books! This is an incredible used bookstore, which, if visited every week or so, is bound to turn up treasures. Several well known poets, who shall remain nameless, often unload gems from their libraries here. As long as a thick black remainder mark won't deter you, The Raven, another used bookstore, with locations in Amherst and Northampton, is the place to complete your New Directions and Dalkey Archive back catalogues. There are a few dusty used bookstores on Market Street in Northampton, which, if perused often enough may turn up a find or two. Among the several other used bookstores worth hitting occasionally: Valley Books in Amherst; Half Moon in Northampton; the store on Masonic Street in Northampton whose name escapes me; ditto the store around the corner from Mass MoCA in North Adams. As far as new books, Amherst Books has the best &amp; largest poetry selection, including lit magazines and unmarked remainders, although Broadside Books, my former employer, has the most efficient system for ordering books. A new hardcover copy of Fanny Howe's <em>Robeson Street </em> has been sitting on the shelf at Booklink for many years, but it's the only decent thing in there. For all the acumen of the political titles that Food For Thought Books stocks, their poetry selection could use a bit of a jolt. There are a few other stores around, but none that come immediately to mind as being of any value. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">As for libraries, Amherst College has the most extensive collection of work related to the New American Poetry &amp; all of its various tentacles into the contemporary. It's really the best One-Stop Avant-Garde Poetry Shop anywhere around town. Smith College library, along with the best air-conditioning, has the most comfortable places to sit &amp; read. They also house an interesting special collection, which includes things like Sylvia Plath's annotated copies of Virginia Woolf's books. The library at UMass is an eyesore best to ignore. Among the local system, the Forbes in Northampton and the Jones in Amherst are both worth a visit. The Emily Dickson Homestead is, well, okay too. But best to save for visiting relatives. Her gravesite, in the center of Amherst, reads �Called Back�, if I'm remembering correctly. I refuse to mention anything local having to do with Robert Frost. Amherst College does enough of that already. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">There are several reading series around town, most of which are, in some way or another, leashed to one of the five local universities. UMass, my alma mater, runs one called the Visiting Writers Series, which, if one stays in town long enough, is bound to offer repeat performances from Charles Simic, Russell Edson, Charles Wright, John Ashbery, and Tomaz Salamun. Smith College has a tendency to bring readers who'll elicit the contemplative sigh, gasp or �hmmm� at the close of their poems. Amherst College is cloak &amp; dagger about their reading series, as one will most likely hear about readings the day after they've taken place. Amherst Books is the most community oriented in their openness to housing numerous and diverse readings. Recently, a group of folks in the MFA program at UMass have brought poets like Rod Smith, Rob Fitterman and Ted Greenwald, and Peter Gizzi was responsible for setting up readings for Andrew Joron, Aaron Kunin &amp; Ben Lerner. Additionally, Amherst Books hosts a reading series for current students in the MFA program called Live Lit. The Jones library is home to the Jubilat/Jones series, which offers interesting pairs of the same poets one might find within the pages of Jubilat. The Jubilat website now features recordings of these readings for easy download. It's my understanding that the Forbes library has a reading series, yet featuring nothing compelling enough to have made me attend. A long drive will get you out to Geoffrey Young's gallery, where, during the summer, there are often amazing readings, but, regretfully, I'd only ever made it to one of them. Also worth the hour drive is the series at Wesleyan University, which has, since Elizabeth Willis began teaching there, improved tremendously�the highlight for me being Kamau Brathwaite's compelling two-hour tour de force of a retrospective reading/talk. Boston is about an hour &amp; a half away, but seems full of tumbleweeds now that Jim Behrle's gone to NYC. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">As for the publishing end of things: <em>Jubilat </em>has an office in the English Department at UMass; check out the journal <em>One Less</em> out of Florence; Small Beer Press is located in Northampton; and Verse Press/Wave Books has an office in Florence. Needless to say, the area is also home to several worthless publishers, a load of that revenue-generating-hobbyist-writing-retreat activity, and the asinine pox on the face of poetry that is the winningwriters website. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">It's always the camaraderie of fellow poets that makes a scene &amp; the Pioneer Valley has got a plethora of engaged &amp; active folks. I miss Western Mass already! So far, the most promising place I've found in Denver is Book Buffs. I picked up a copy of Larry Eigner's <em>Air the Trees </em> there the other day�&amp; they've still got another one if you hurry! </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">More from a mile high soon� </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><em>Noah Eli Gordon</em></p>
          <p>_______________________</p>
          <p>&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Athens, Georgia, USA</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Athens has long had cultic standing as an alternative music hotspot, but only recently has it been in the limelight for its poetry. The poetry scene here is hyper-dynamic, with scads of performances, publishing ventures, and of course, the requisite workshops and scribblalia. PhD students in UGA's Creative Writing Program are at the crux of this tumult, collectively curating VOX, a monthly reading series that pairs one of our own � the charming Sabrina Mark (<em>The Babies</em>, Saturnalia Press) or the redoubtable Kirsten Kaschock (<em>Unfathoms</em>, Slope Editions), for example � with a visiting poet. The venue is Flicker, our local black box cabaret/curio cabinet, decked out in decrepit New Orleans-style chandeliers and a dazzling array of owl statuary. Add to this Jed Rasula's incessant stream of visiting poets � Alice Notley, Lyn Hejinian, Lisa Jarnot, and Jerome Rothenberg, to name only a few � and it gets to be a heady mix. There are also fantastic locally-spawned projects, such as Tara Rebele's performance texts (<em>I'm Not Jenny</em>, Slope Editions) or Ben Koolik's E.L.I. (Electro-Linguistic Imaginator), a robot that moves through the streets speaking randomly generated poetry in exchange for new vocabulary words. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">In terms of publishing, Athens is the home of Johannes G&ouml;ransson, who with his wife Joyelle McSweeney, are launching their new poetry imprint, Action Books, this Fall. They'll be publishing Arielle Greenberg's second book and Johannes's translations of the raucously morbid Swedish poet, Aase Berg, as well as my own book. Danielle Pafunda (<em>Pretty Young Thing</em>, Soft Skull), one half of <em>La Petite Zine </em>'s editing duo, is also here, as is <em>The Georgia Review</em>, spearheaded by Terry Hummer. UGA Press publishes scores of younger poets in their acclaimed Contemporary Poetry Series edited by Bin Ramke. Up until a few months ago, <em>Verse </em> magazine was also here under the sign of Brian Henry, who's recently departed. Brian built up a stellar undergraduate program and brought a steady stream of cronies to town - Ethan Paquin, Josh Beckman, Matt Rohrer, Matthew Zapruder et al. He also convened a biannual <em>Verse </em> festival, which brought to town such notables as James Tate, Dara Weir, and Timothy Donnelly. Other recent departures include Heidi Staples (<em>Guess Can Gallop</em>, New Issues Press), Laura Solomon (<em>Bivouac</em>, Slope Editions), the fabulous Claudia Rankine, and Coleman Barks, who still haunts the local tiki lounge. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">In short, we keep outrageously busy here in Athens. And in our spare time, we take trapeze classes at the local trapeze studio, romp at the slaughterhouse-turned-transgender-disco, visit Orange Twin, and speculate on how best to explode the house of poetry. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">P.S. A little advertisement: UGA is starting an MFA program next Fall, so those who like their academia tinged with a heavy dose of Southern gothic, please apply! </p>
          <p align="left"><span class="style15 style7"><em>Lara Glenum</em></span></p>
          <p align="center"><br>
          _______________________          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Asheville, North Carolina, USA</p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"> Poetry news might be scanned under "Spoken Word" in the local free weekly, Mountain Express, but is she discouraged? It isn't real. That's what she gets when she wants something with substance. Speak to a stranger, someone unknown who fools for words. Stranger reports on the state of her funny community. Poetry news from Asheville* carries an asterisk. At her own risk she presumes poets as those who need weaning. Give him a fig and find him a poem. He isn't an expert. Some people make poems in this town and then they become experts. There are here in Asheville* any number of experts. Seven plus experts equal to the task of making another seven plus poems get together and gloat. They know everything to do with the speed between two subsequent words, something thus found in a footnote and thanks to an interviewed stranger. Please answer the questions to the best of her ability who has all seven plus sweaters. That's why it's stupid. How well, for instance, does she stick to the script and when to begin? And then there's a bad movie about us!  </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em>Stephen Kirbach </em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style15 style7"><br>
          _______________________          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Bay Area, California, USA </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Mid-August finds the bay area enjoying a cool, foggy moment, sort of an inverse backdraft soon to be filled (we hope) with temperatures in the 70's and 80's during our typically hottest months of the year: September and October. Similarly, poetry world bay area is enjoying its last few moments of summer break before the opening of at least five institutional (or non-institutional, but synched up with the school year) reading series. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Don't let me confuse you: we've been busy this summer. Laynie Browne started the new Sunday afternoon Evelyn Avenue Reading Series in Albany. Readers included Laura Moriarty, Aaron Kunin, Jill Stengel, Rusty Morrison, Aaron Shurin and formerly �our own' Elizabeth Robinson, whose long-running summer house reading series in Berkeley is no more since she and family moved to Colorado. We miss Elizabeth, but we're happy for the good people of Boulder. Another state lucky to have benefited from a recent bay area transplant is Texas�David Hadbawnik arrived in Austin only a few weeks ago, his departure signaling the end of yet another well loved series of house readings. I'll miss smoking on his cold, windy roof in groups of three and four, enjoying the particular view of the ocean it availed, which at night was pretty much an expanse of unreadable navy blue topped by a bank of clouds. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Fortunately, Melissa Benham and Chana Morgenstern continue to hold it down with Artifact, a new-ish series packing the house at their second location on Folsom Street in San Francisco. On the especially rowdy and crowded night I attended, we were spilling out onto the back stairs in hopes of hearing Micah Ballard, Patrick James Dunagan and Cedar Sigo. If you're going to be in town check their website because this one runs all year: <a href="http://www.artifactseries.blogspot.com/%20" target="_parent">http://www.artifactseries.blogspot.com/ </a></p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">I guess rowdiness is the word for summer break and boy oh boy did it find its full expression at the New Brutalism Drunken Sheep Cabaret. A tradition begun last year, the mid-July riot of music and skits seems more and more perfectly timed. This year's debauch coincided with a visit from Peter Gizzi, (in town to work with Kevin Killian on the volume of Spicer's complete poetry they're co-editing), the tail end of Aaron Kunin's bay area visit, and one of Jen Scappetone's very last nights in the east bay before her move to Connecticut. Brent Cunningham played the charmingly twisted pastor, aka M.C., although he wasn't the only one wearing a white suit. I got a great picture of Brandon Brown's jaw dropping during the burlesque dance number choreographed by Dana Teen Lomax and Apryl Renee. Yours truly participated in the group project �I Pity the Fool (Who'd Undertake Such a Project)� a sort mock-confessional-altar call of �bad' writing projects. (�Baaa�baaa�I was a baaa-ad writer��) Geoff Dyer's band Sweet William closed out the night but management was hard pressed to shoo us down the long alley at 21 Grand's new location, ideally suited to hanging out far past any event's scheduled end. I wound up with a very cheerful crowd eating chicken and waffles at the Merritt Diner afterwards. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">New Brutalism, that term fallen mostly into disuse except, in passing, on Ron Silliman's blog as a point of mystified contention, settles even further into the dust of 2003 as the reading series that bears its name ends next week with one last installment, featuring Stephen Vincent and Beverly Dahlen. But watch for a reincarnation in September, at the same location but with a new name and rumored to include film and video along with the poetry. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Since this report seems to be all about who moved where and are they going to host a reading at their house? I'll tell the joke that's true, how Taylor Brady recently moved back to San Francisco from Oakland (well, Piedmont) at exactly the same time Chris Stroffolino moved back to Oakland from San Francisco. So now you can run into Chris if you're walking around the lake. And to answer the second question, Taylor <em>has </em> hosted several readings at his new place this summer. In other moves, Alli Warren is officially living in San Francisco full time and we couldn't have waited a minute longer for her to arrive, although now I'm worried I won't see Carra Stratton as often since those two used to drive up from Santa Cruz together all the time. And while we miss Kasey Mohammad A LOT, <em>a lot a lot</em>, he's driven down from Ashland at least twice and is, in fact, going to be in town this very Thursdsay night for the Shampoo 5th Anniversary celebration, at a gallery downtown I've never been to or even heard of before, someplace only Del Ray Cross could swoop up for what's sure to be a fabulous event. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">And those are some of the things I love most about the bay area, we really are doing it ourselves, because it's unbelievably expensive to live here but at least there's <em>room</em>, and sometimes a backyard too, and then great people are always moving here or visiting. For instance, I'll close by saying that Douglas Rothschild read last night from the doorstep of Juliana Spahr, Bill Luoma and Charles Weigl's house on the Mills Campus, and while it was kind of grey and cold by the end so we went inside to finish up the tomatoes because it's tomato season, Douglas has the voice to carry off an outdoor reading, and the poems to keep us rapt, sitting under the trees in the dirt and flagstones surrounded by mint plants and ivy with our hands around our knees. Plus I walked away with the new <em>Mirage #4/Period(ical) </em> #121, put in my hands by Kevin Killian, I don't know if you can get a copy out there wherever you are but it's a really good one, with cover art by Amy Rathbone, Garrett Caples' poem �Dub Song of Prufrock Shakur�, his interview with the late Philip Lamantia and these amazing �Ripcord' poems from now it's officially so, �our own' Alli Warren. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"> P.S. A late correction: the Evelyn Avenue Reading Series this summer was actually the project of Laynie Browne *and* Susanne Dyckman. (Look for this series to continue, hopefully, next summer. Readings are hosted at Susanne's house in Albany.) </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><em>Stephanie Young  </em></p>
          <p>_______________________ </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Austin, Texas, USA </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">The Austin area has a couple of graduate creative writing programs through which young poets are siphoned and then expelled. I can tell you a little about the people who make this an interesting place to stay. Hoa Nguyen and Dale Smith run <em>Skanky Possum</em> Press and Magazine. Their reading series takes place at an independent used-book shop called 12th Street Books. Recent readers have included Stefan Hyner and Jim Koller. They also brought down the Arlington-based poet Chris Murray who has since been a frequent visitor and an insightful voice in our conversations. Nguyen also runs a workshop out of her home that has sustained and bettered the work of many interesting locals. Poet and translator Susan Briante curates a reading series called <em>0 to 60 </em> that features first or second book poets and fiction writers. Using funds from the UT Austin, this series has brought in folks like Renee Gladman, Joshua Clover, and Matthea Harvey for public readings and talks about how they lied, cheated, stole, or worked in order to pay the bills and keep writing until they got teaching gigs or whatever it is they now do. Working in concert with this series is Unibrow, a collective of writers and designers Susan Briante Erin Mayes, and Vince Lozano who create beautiful, graphically innovative broadsides. Scott Pierce runs effing press and only recently folded <em>effing magazine</em>. Pierce concentrates on publishing beautiful chapbooks of great stuff. He'll be doing Tom Clark's new collection soon. Just today I finished reading through the last batch of poems for <em>Borderlands #25</em>. <em>Borderlands</em> is a print journal that's been carried through the last ten years or so by rotating editorial teams. This issue marks the end of my two issue co-editing tenure. My partners were Phil Pardi and Vive Griffith. We're all excited for the arrival of David Hadbawnik, a recent transplant from San Francisco who has brought with him Habenicht Press. Add to these Corrine Lee's Winnow Press and you get a sense of the publishing momentum building in the area. Now entering its fifth year, the Round Top Poetry Festival has brought in folks like Nicky Flynn and Adam Zagagewski. We're hoping to bring in Harryette Mullen and others this spring. It's also worth noting that Austin is home to senior poets Christopher Middleton, recently featured in the <em>Chicago Review</em> and David Wevill, neither of whom can be found drinking and smoking with us. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><em>Farid Matuk </em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style15 style7">_______________________ </p>
          <p align="center" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Washington DC, USA </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"> in some order of importance: </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">tom orange and I ate some fricking amazing southern indian food in langley, md after being profoundly disturbed by <em>Mysterious Skin</em>. then we talked to cathy eisenhower about writing some parodies of Gregg Araki movies, as long as they involve sharks. cathy eisenhower is a big fan of sharks. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">speaking of sharks, dc is sad that mark wallace is going to be a lot closer to sharks, since he is moving to san marcos, CA to teach at cal state san marcos. you know what rhymes with marcos? sharkos. we hope that mark doesn't get eaten by sharks, human or otherwise. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">kaplan harris doesn't have any sharks, but he does have cats, and also a cool blog: <a href="http://croissantfactory.blogspot.com/" target="_parent">http://croissantfactory.blogspot.com/ </a>. he also still has the flower pot i brought my rice salad in at his last potluck, when susan schultz read. that rice salad was awesome. speaking of reading (don't you love these transition sentences?), there have been several great readings in baltimore recently, strengthening the baltimore-dc connection and just being all around awesome. michael ball gets people to read at red emma's, an anarcho-something-something bookstore/coffeeshop that has one big fan. the group reading of zukofsky's 80 Flowers was great, as was the Lucipo reading. the happy hour at Brewer's Art around the corner has beer, which we enjoy. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">we also enjoy the new baltimore label Narrowhouse Records release<em> Fear the Sky</em> by dc-er Rod Smith. the release party featured rod saying lots of stuff about bottoms. heather fuller and mel nichols also read. i like those people. justin sirois of narrowhouse (and of other things) threw an after-party at his pad. hijinks ensued. (does after-party have a hyphen?) </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">rod let me borrow the FLCL dvd's for my trip to the beach. FLCL is the best thing culture has produced or will ever produce. the beach has sand, lots of it. but no robots. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><a href="http://www.dcpoetry.com" target="_parent">www.dcpoetry.com</a> is getting a face lift, courtesy of ryan walker, tom orange, mel nichols, rod smith, and yours truly. look for new content (including audio) soon. <a href="http://www.yourblackeye.org" target="_parent">www.yourblackeye.org</a> continues to publish new dc poetry as well as new non-dc poetry. heather fuller saw it and said, "good god...." i won't tell you what she said after that. in september the reading series start back up. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">here's what we know: in your ear, sunday, sept, 18th - beth jaselow, mike kelleher, tom mandel. ruthless grip, saturday sept. 10th - reading for "the tiny" magazine, readers TBA check out <a href="http://www.dcpoetry.com" target="_parent">dcpoetry.com</a> for updates. sign up for e-mails. etc. just what is fooly cooly (FLCL) anyway? </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><em>Adam Good</em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style15 style7">_______________________ </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Portland, Oregon, USA</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">There's been a variety of poetic and semipoetic happenings in the Portland area this year.&nbsp; </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Spare Room (<a href="http://www.flim.com/spareroom" target="_parent">www.flim.com/spareroom </a> ), a group of people (myself included) who organize readings and other events that focus on what, for lack of a better term, we call experimental poetry.&nbsp; Spare Room started the year with a marathon reading party of Bernadette Mayer's&nbsp;<em>Midwinter Day</em>. We also held two living room readings this year, where poets of various aesthetic persuasions assembled to drink vodka and read. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Our monthly reading series hosted a variety of out-of-town writers, including Christian Bok, Sarah Mangold, Jonathan Skinner, Charles Alexander, Eric Baus, Mark Salerno, Kerri Sonnenberg and Drew Kunz. Local readers included Tom Fisher, Ashley Edwards and&nbsp;Spare Room members Joseph Bradshaw and Lindsay Hill. Non-Spare Room readings included a May book party for Phil Jenks' <em>My First Painting Will Be �The Accuser�</em>, which also featured the off-to-Iowa Nico Alvarado-Greenwood. Another new reading series, Loggernaut ( <a href="http://www.loggernaut.org/" target="_parent">http://www.loggernaut.org </a>) brings writers together to read work around specific topics. Alicia Cohen read as part of a trio of writers exploring cruelty, and Loggernaut's website features an interview with Alice Notley. <br>
            <br>
          In March, Matvei Yankelevitch of Ugly Duckling Presse gave a presentation at Reed on the Russian Absurdist poets Daniil Kharms and Aleksander Vvedensky of OBERIU. Norma Cole also appeared at Reed, but no one but students knew about it. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">The Portland journals <em>Spectaculum </em>(edited by Endi Hartigan) and <em>FO A RM </em>(edited by Portland residents Matt Marble and Joseph Bradshaw, and emigrants Bethany Wright and Seth Nehil) have featured a number of local and national writers, including Portlander David Abel. Amanda Deutch edited the lovely <em>Salt: A Collection of Poetry on the Oregon Coast</em>, which included work from 32 poets including Leonard Schwartz, Zhang Eg, David Abel, and myself. Chris Piuma revived the hilarious webzine FLIM (<a href="http://www.flim.com/" target="_parent">www.flim.com </a>) as a daily in 2005. In July Kaia Sand and Jules Boykoff relocated from the Washington DC area and brought their interesting zine and chapbook press The Tangent Press (<a href="http://www.thetangentpress.org/" target="_parent">http://www.thetangentpress.org/ </a>) &nbsp; Spare Room has readings scheduled through the fall, and we hope to have a Jackson McLow memorial marathon reading/event sometime soon. &nbsp; </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><br>
            <em>Maryrose Larkin</em> (Maryrose_at_gmail.com) </p>
          <p align="center" class="style15 style7">_______________________ </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><br>
            <span class="style11">Ithaca, New York, USA </span></p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">For much of the summer, Ithaca has been gripped by a heat wave matched by uncharacteristic dryness. Lawns turn brown, trees wilt, the creeks are low, the waterfalls trickle. That mostly characterizes the literary scene here too during the summer, with so much of the town's creative energy tied to the rhythms of the two major schools, Cornell and Ithaca College. But this week humidity has returned along with a chance of rain. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">SOON Productions, the reading series run by myself, Aaron Tieger, Karen L. Anderson, and Theo Hummer, was on hiatus in July, but we returned on Saturday August 20th with two local poets, Katherine Lucas Anderson and Fred Muratori. Katherine hasn't given a reading since college, but she managed to be both authoritative and charming at the podium, showing an especial talent for responding to artwork and art-process in her poetry. She has published work in <em>Poetry</em>, <em>Salmagundi</em>, <em>Seneca Review</em>, and other journals; she works at Family &amp; Children's Services here in Ithaca. Fred Muratori's work has an appealing dry, wry sensibility; I like his series of prose poems that incorporate film noir into commentary on loneliness and the American scene. Fred is a poet and critic whose poems and reviews have appeared in <em>New American Writing</em>, <em>Talisman</em>, <em>Denver Quarterly</em>, <em>Boston Review</em>, and other journals; he is also the author two collections, <em>The Possible </em> and <em>Despite Repeated Warnings</em>. In September we are delighted to be welcoming Mr. Million Poems himself, Jordan Davis, and his Million Poems Show, with special guest Ange Mlinko whose newest book <em>Starred Wire </em> has just been published to rapturous acclaim on Coffee House Press. You can keep up with SOON at our website, <a href="http://soonproductions.org/" target="_parent">http://soonproductions.org </a>. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Aaron Tieger not only produces beautiful broadsides for each of our readers every month, but he's also the editor and publisher of <em>CARVE</em>, a terrific �little� magazine that manages to give each of its poets a lot of room to breathe in every issue. I'm a big fan of the format and of Aaron's taste in writers, which ranges from old masters to fresh talent to the rediscoveries of poets that ought to be better known in this country, like the English poet Richard Caddel. <em>CARVE </em> No. 6 has just been published and features work by Emma Barnes, Clark Coolidge, Yuri Hospodar, Mark Lamoureux, Dorothea Lasky, and Bill Marsh. You can order the issue, and get a peek at the spooky cover art by Wendy Hyman, at <a href="http://carvepoems.org/wordpress/index.php" target="_parent">http://carvepoems.org/wordpress/index.php </a>. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">Now it's time for our correspondent to head on down to that Back to School sale at Race Office Supply on the Ithaca Commons. There's nothing like an excuse for buying some really good pens. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><br>
            <em>Joshua Corey</em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style15 style7"><br>
          _______________________          </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Orono, Maine, USA </p>
          <p align="left">&nbsp; </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">All quiet except for Steve Evans' brilliant New Writing Series at the University of Maine. After each Thursday performance by poets brought in from �away� (that's vernacular for anywhere other than Maine), interesting graduate students with excellent home haircuts clamor to dine with the contemporary avant-garde. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">�It's a good place to get work done,� the graduate coordinator of the poetics program told me when I phoned last April to find out what one might do here other than write. �It's a good place to get work done� is a nice way to say that you stay inside and wear legwarmers nearly year-round. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">The girls of Maine are at home reading Mina Loy and learning how to make hats from lampshades. The boys are probably head-banging or reading Foucault. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em><br>
          Monica Fauble </em></p>
          <p align="center" class="style15 style7">_______________________ </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">&nbsp;</p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style11">Buffalo, New York, USA </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7"><br>
            <br>
          It's been a long, hot summer here in Buffalo (in fact, the hottest on record in decades!), a nice and much needed break from a long-ish, cold-ish winter (though not <em>nearly </em> as bad as our reputation would suggest!). And with the sun came the final push through our current �transitional period� in the Poetics Program. When Creeley and Bernstein left in 2003, there was something of a lull (at least <em>publicly </em>) in �outward� activity while we busied ourselves finding a suitable replacement. Last year, we welcomed Steve McCaffery and Karen Mac Cormack from Toronto to join Myung Mi Kim, Dennis Tedlock, and Susan Howe as core Poetics Program faculty members, and since, we've been in the midst of another flurry of activity. This September, the Program will receive visits from James Logenbach, Elizabeth Willis, Michael Palmer, Rob Halpern, and Michael Davidson. Craig Dworkin will visit in November, as will Yedda Morrison, Sarah Anne Cox, and Elizabeth Treadwell. Just Buffalo Literary Center, an important local resource co-sponsoring Davidson's visit (a three day �scholar-in-residence� stint, featuring a number of intensive seminars), will bring out John Ashbery in October. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">In addition to these very exciting reading series, Christina Milletti has been curating an interesting fiction series at Hallwalls (a local art space founded by Cindy Sherman) called �Exhibit X,� and Ethan Paquin (of Slope Editions) has been curating his own series at Medaille College. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">In other news, lots of small press activity in town. Sasha Steensen's first volume, <em>A Magic Book </em>, was released by Fence at the end of last year. Mike Kelleher's first book, <em>To Be Sung </em>, was recently published by BlazeVox (locally manned by Geoffrey Gatza), as was Jonathan Skinner's <em>Political Cactus Poems </em> on Jane Sprague's Palm Press. A new Kiosk Magazine (edited by Kyle Schlesinger, Sasha Steensen, and Gordon Hadfield) just saw the light of day (including a supplementary audio compact disc featuring a reading by Creeley), as did Sarah Campbell's beautiful new magazine P-Queue. My chapbook press, Atticus/Finch, just released two new books: <em>Mantle</em>, a collaborative work by Thom Donovan and Kyle Schlesinger, and <em>I Heart My Zeppelin </em> by Gregg Biglieri. I'll be printing Lisa Jarnot's translation of the <em>Iliad </em> (Book XXII) in the Fall, and a chapbook by Myung Mi Kim in the Spring. Kyle Schlesinger's Cuneiform Press just finished a new chapbook by Johanna Drucker, <em>From Now</em>, and promises to release Gil Ott's <em>Amputated Toe </em> this Fall. Speaking of Schlesinger, his collaborative book (with Caroline Koebel) about German stencil graffiti will be released by Chax in the near future. </p>
          <p align="left" class="style15 style7">AND, if that weren't enough, Sarah Campbell is hosting a fantastic poetry radio program on the local NPR station on Sunday mornings. If local poet Douglas Manson continues his radio program <em>Inks Audible</em>, we'll be one of the only mid-sized cities to have <em>two </em> poetry radio programs! </p>
          <p align="left" class="style7 style15"><em>Michael Cross           </em></p>
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