Month: September 2015

Posted on

Poetry Reading: Small Animal Project this Friday October 2 in Cambridge, MA

Stephanie Ford, Kevin McLellan, Annie Won

Small Animal Project invites you to its first fall reading, featuring Stephanie Ford, Kevin McLellan, and Annie Won.

Outpost 186
186 1/2 Hampshire Street
Cambridge, MA
Friday, October 2
8:00 pm (doors open at 7:45)

About the readers 

STEPHANIE FORD is the author of All Pilgrim, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2015. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Tin House, Harvard Review, Gulf Coast, and many other journals. Originally from Boulder, Colorado, she now lives in Los Angeles.

KEVIN MCLELLAN is the author of Tributary (Barrow Street) and the chapbook Round Trip (Seven Kitchens), a collaborative series of poems with numerous women poets. The chapbook Shoes on a Wire (Split Oak Press) and the book arts project [box] (Small Po[r]rtions) are both forthcoming. THRUSH Poetry Journal and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts nominated his writing for the Pushcart Prize. Kevin has taught poetry workshops at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and at the University of Rhode Island.

ANNIE WON is a poet, yoga teacher, and medicinal chemist. She is a Kundiman Fellow and a Juniper Writing Institute scholarship recipient. Her chapbook with Brenda Iijima,Once Upon a Building Block, was recently published with Horse Less Press (2014) and individual chapbook, so i can sleep, is forthcoming from Nous-Zot Press (2015). Her work has appeared in or is soon to appear in the following venues: New Delta Review, Entropy, Delirious Hem, TheThePoetry, TENDE RLION, Similar:Peaks::, and others. Her critical reviews can be seen at American Microreviews and Interviews.

Directions

Outpost 186 is located on Hampshire Street, between Prospect & Amory streets. There’s metered parking on both Hampshire & Cambridge streets, as well as permit parking on the side streets nearby.

The closest T stop is Central Square on the red line. Exit station & walk up Prospect 0.5 miles to Hampshire Street (intersection with 7-Eleven & Hess). Take a left onto Hampshire. Take first left onto path just behind 7-Eleven & walk to the brown shingled house behind another (bigger) brown shingled house.

The 83 and 91 buses run from Central Square & stop at the intersection of Prospect & Hampshire.

The 69 bus runs between Lechmere & Harvard Square, with a stop at the intersection of Cambridge & Hampshire, just in front of 1369 coffee shop.

Contact/Other

Jessica Bozek at smallanimalproject@gmail.com
See also http://smallanimalproject.tumblr.com/readings

——————————–

Editor’s Note: This notice is re-posted from the Small Animal Project email newsletter. To subscribe, email Jessica Bozek at smallanimalproject@gmail.com.

Posted on

“Grief Ambition Knot of Self” Published in the Fall 2015 Issue of Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing

My poem “Grief Ambition Knot of Self” appears in the Fall 2015 issue of Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing. Many thanks to Jacinta White for her work on The Word Project and Snapdragon.

grief, ambition, knot of self that won’t untangle, fear of my own
banked fires, caught between frost and sunshine, caught between

Read the entire poem here

Posted on

Boston Area Poetry Readings for September and October 2015

Poetry and all that jazz

Poetry readings lie thick as apples on the ground this time of year. Be sure to check out some mainstays of the Boston poetry scene: Tom Daley, Jill McDonough, and Doug Holder to name a few. Commemorate 9-11 with the BASH reading series put on by Black Ocean Press, one of the hippest scenes in town. Or catch Daniel Bouchard — the  gentleman who sends out these listings via email — at Harvard just before Halloween.

If you’re in the mind to write some poetry of your own, consider attending my poetry workshop which runs every other Thursday this September and October. We’ll hit the open mic at the Chapter and Verse reading series in October, so come along if you’d like someone to cheer you on.

Thursday, September 10, 6 pm
“Performing Democracy: Private Citizens on the Public Stage”
Poet Edward Hirsch leads a discussion including playwright Rebekah Maggor, director and translator Bryan Doerries, and BC Law Professor Frank J. Garcia (presenting the work of James Boyd White), on theater’s vital role in enacting the questions and values that nourish and sustain democracy.
Clough Center Series on the Arts and the Culture of Democracy
Boston College
Devlin 101
Chestnut Hill, MA
Free

Continue reading “Boston Area Poetry Readings for September and October 2015”

Posted on

Interview with Carolina de Robertis, author of The Gods of Tango

In her new book The Gods of Tango, bestselling author Carolina de Robertis weaves together a story addressing the issues of race, class, immigration, and sexuality as beautifully as the tango weaves together the music of Argentina’s many immigrant communities. In language musical and brutal by turns, de Robertis tells the story of Leda, a young Italian immigrant who passes as a man in order to pursue her dream of becoming a tango musician. Along the way, we learn the back stories of many other characters and the obstacles they overcome — or fail to overcome — as their lives intersect with Leda’s. de Robertis took some time out of her busy schedule to talk with me about her work.

Image of a woman with long hair and red lipstick wearing a red sleeveless shirt.
Carolina de Robertis, author of The Gods of Tango

What inspired you to write this book and what sort of research did you need to do to write it?

I began with the seed of my own great-grandmother’s immigration experience, from Italy to Argentina. I quickly saw, however, that from that seed I wanted to grow a much larger story, not only about the great migration of that time to South America, but also about the rich cultural history of the tango’s origins, and about female transgression into an underworld of men.

I did a huge amount of research. I scoured libraries and bookstores, read piles of books in English, Spanish and Italian (badly), walked the streets of Buenos Aires and Montevideo and Naples and my ancestral village in Italy, took tango dance lessons and violin lessons, and consulted with all sorts of experts, from musicologists and musicians to friends on the transgender spectrum. Continue reading “Interview with Carolina de Robertis, author of The Gods of Tango”