PRESS MOI RELEASE

Another interruption from my thoughts on judging poetry -- these two press releases just came out, which is to say,

YOU ARE INVITED TO:

FEBRUARY = FLAMENCO
PAWA Arkipelago Literary Series
Sunday, February 21, 2010
2:00 PM
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission Street, San Francisco
A free event.

Duende Within: Flamenco Inspired Poetry

Featuring

Sandy Mcintosh is the managing editor of the New York City poetry press, Marsh Hawk Press. His poetry collections include the just-released ERNESTA, IN THE STYLE OF THE FLAMENCO.

Eileen Tabios' publications includes 18 poetry collections, including a flamenco-poetry collection in NOTA BENE EISWEIN. She just released THE THORN ROSARY: SELECTED PROSE POEMS 1998-2010, with essays by scholars Thomas Fink and Joi Barrios. She once took a flamenco class in New York City, and failed it with much enthusiasm.

Edwin Agustín Lozada is the author of Sueños anónimos/Anonymous Dreams and Bosquejos/Sketches. He produced Field of Mirrors, PAWA’s 2008 anthology. He was a member of Rosa Montoya Bailes Flamencos from 1998-2003.

With special guest performers
Roberto Campos: flamenco guitar

Alicia: flamenco dance

Michelle Bautista is a poet and kali martial artist. She has released a poetry collection entitled KALI'S BLADE (Meritage Press).

*****

MARCH = POET-EDITORS!

Boog City presents

d.a. levy lives:
celebrating editors from
Northern California renegade presses

Wed. March 17, 7:30 p.m. sharp, free

Books and Bookshelves
99 Sanchez St.
San Francisco

featuring readings from

Albert Flynn DeSilver
editor The Owl Press (Woodacre, Calif.)

Travis Ortiz
co-editor Atelos Publishing Project (Berkeley, Calif.)

Jill Stengel
editor a+bend press (Davis, Calif.)

Eileen R. Tabios
editor Meritage Press (San Francisco/St. Helena, Calif.)

and from New York City

David Kirschenbaum
editor, Boog City

and music from
The Chris Stroffolino Pop Snob Sideshow

Curated and with an introduction by Boog City editor David Kirschenbaum

For more info call Books and Bookshelves at 415-621-3761 or Boog City at 212-842-BOOG (2664)

BIOS:

**Boog City
http://welcometoboogcity.com/
Boog City is a New York City-based small press now in its 19th year and East Village community newspaper of the same name. It has also published 35 volumes of poetry and various magazines, featuring work by Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti among others, and theme issues on baseball, women's writing, and Louisville, Ky. It hosts and curates two regular performance series--d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press, where each month a non-NYC small press and its writers and a musical act of their choosing is hosted at Chelsea's ACA Galleries; and Classic Albums Live, where 5-13 local musical acts perform a classic album live at venues including The Bowery Poetry Club, CBGB's, and The Knitting Factory. Past albums have included Elvis Costello, My Aim is True; Nirvana, Nevermind; and Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville.

**Albert Flynn DeSilver
http://www.theowlpress.com/
Albert Flynn DeSilver is a poet, teacher, visual artist, and publisher living in Woodacre, Calif. He is the editor and publisher of The Owl Press, which publishes innovative poetry and poetic collaboration. He received a B.F.A. in photography from the University of Colorado, and an M.F.A. in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. He is the author, most recently, of Letters to Early Street, (La Alameda/University of New Mexico Press), and Walking Tooth & Cloud (French Connection Press, Paris). He has published more than a hundred poems in literary journals worldwide including Zyzzyva, New American Writing, Jacket (Australia), Poetry Kanto (Japan), Van Gogh’s Ear (France), Hanging Loose, and Exquisite Corpse, among others. The most recent Owl Press title is Bill Berkson’s Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently.

**David Kirschenbaum
http://www.boogcity.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/gilmoreboysmusic
David Kirschenbaum’s work has appeared in The Brooklyn Review Online, can we have our ball back, Chain, Pavement Saw, and unpleasant event schedule, among others. He is the lyricist for the band Gilmore Boys, and the editor and publisher of Boog City, a New York City-based small press now in its 19th year and East Village community newspaper.

**Travis Ortiz
http://www.atelos.org/travis/
Travis Ortiz is a writer, publisher, dj, and designer living in San Francisco. Ortiz has work in various publications including Bay Poetics and Poetics Journal, and has written two books, Geography of Parts (Melodeon) and Variously, not Then (forthcoming, Tuumba). He is the co-director (with Lyn Hejinian) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets. Atelos was nominated as one of the best independent literary presses by the Firecracker Awards in 2001.

**Jill Stengel
http://www.dusie.org/Langiappe_Stengel.pdf
Jill Stengel is a poet, publisher of a+bend press, and parent of three young children. Formerly of San Francisco and Los Angeles, she now resides with her family in Davis, Calif. Several of her serial poems have appeared in chapbook form—cartography (WOOD); History, Possibilities (a+bend press); ladies with babies (Boog Literature); lagniappe (Nous-Zot Press, Dusie Kollektiv); late may (Dusie); may(be) (Dusie); and the forthcoming and I would open (Ypolita) and wreath (Texfiles). Some of these chapbooks, and individual poems, can be viewed online as well as in print, and she has new work in the forthcoming anthology Kindergarde. Her first full-length collection is forthcoming this year from Black Radish Books.

Begun in San Francisco in 1999, a+bend press published 40 chapbooks in its first 20 months of existence. Stengel produced the chapbooks in conjunction with her reading series, Second Sundays at BlueBar, held in the poetically historic North Beach district of San Francisco. The press took a chapbook-publishing hiatus for nine years, during which time she produced three children and five issues of the journal mem, focusing on writing by women mothering young children, and page mothers. Now the hiatus is on hiatus: a new a+bend press chapbook was released at the end of last year.

**Eileen R. Tabios
http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm
Eileen R. Tabios has released 18 print, four electronic, and 1 CD poetry collections, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, a short story book, and two novels. She has also exhibited visual art and visual poetry in the United States and Asia. Recipient of the Philippines’ National Book Award for Poetry, she’s just come out with The Thorn Rosary: Selected Prose Poems 1998-2010, edited with an introduction by poet-critic-painter-scholar Thomas Fink and with an afterword by poet-scholar Joi Barrios. In poetry, Tabios has crafted a body of work that is unique for melding ekphrasis with transcolonialism. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, computer-generated hybrid languages, paintings, video, drawings, visual poetry, mixed media collages, Kali martial arts, music, modern dance, and sculpture. She’s the publisher of Meritage Press (St. Helena & San Francisco).

**The Chris Stroffolino Pop Snob Sideshow
http://www.myspace.com/chrisstroffolino
Chris Stroffolino writes: "I dedicate this bio note to the late Vic Chesnutt, who died on boxing days eve 2009, as a direct result of American health insurance business. A quadriplegic since 1983, Chesnutt's 'pre-existing condition' prevented him from receiving adequate treatment. He could have received SSI Disability because of his condition, but his accident also awakened his songwriting ability, and he heroically battled his condition for 25 years--releasing many albums (the most recent one produced by Jonathan Richman)--and, though he never made enough money to pay for the exorbitant costs of his health treatement, he made TOO MUCH to be eligible for Social Security disability support. It's a sad cruelty of America that had he had not tried to make something of himself after his accident, and achieved success as a songwriter (at his best, he reminds me of what I love about Townes Van Zandt), he would have received more economic support for his 'health issues.'

"Of course, the basic obituaries will just say, 'he died of an overdose of pain killers,' but read his statements about his health care, and you tell me if this beautiful heroic survivor's death was 'suicide.' I am absolutely sure that Vic would not mind being used as a rallying cry in his death. He's so much more--but another reason to step up the fight for Single Payer."

Oh, as for Chris Stroffolino--he likes to think you can trust him, and says you might even like his new solo album, available at the above url.