Summer Institute of Social Justice and Applied Poetics featuring Patricia Smith at the Bowery Poetry Club

Please join us for an evening of poetry with Patricia Smith, 2008 National Book Award Finalist and champion slam poet, on Saturday, July, 8th 6-7:30 p.m., at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, (Between Houston and Bleecker). For more info please call 212-614-0505 or bowerypoetry.com.

The Summer Institute of Social Justice and Applied Poetics is a free seven week workshop for New York City teens. Contact Urban Word NYC for more information at info@urbanwordnyc.org.

Patricia Smith’s fifth book of poetry, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press) chronicles the human, physical and emotional toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina. Patricia is also the author of Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press), a National Poetry Series winner, and the Best Poetry Book of 2006 on About.com. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and other journals. Recognized as one of the world’s most formidable performers, Patricia has read her work at venues round the world. In the U.S., she’s performed at places such as Carnegie Hall and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and has previously shared the stage with noted writers such as Adrienne Rich, Allen Ginsberg, and “Lord of the Rings” star Viggo Morgensen. Patricia is a four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular Poetry Slam, the most successful competitor in slam history. She was featured in the nationally-released film “Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.”

The Summer Institute of Social Justice and Applied Poetics is designed for young leaders, activists, poets, writers, emcees and scholars to engage the intersection between art, academics and activism. Students will explore and assess ways that critical social dialogue, the poetry of resistance, and social activism can ignite and incite change in their communities. By examining social movements from the past, and uncovering the issues that directly affect our communities, students will develop theories, poems and responses that will affect social change for today. The Summer Institute is produced by Urban Word NYC and Bowery Arts and Science.

Call for submissions: collaborative cleave poems in the Cleave Matrix

We are looking for poets to collaborate and create cleave poems together online, for anyone to watch.

For many the thought goes against the grain – creating something that is not entirely their own.

There is a level of vulnerability also.

There is also the possibility of doing something new, catching the edge of a new wave.

There are other collaborative poetry projects such as likestarlings, mygorgeoussomwhere, poetrycollaborative.

For those willing to get involved please email cleavepoetry @ gmail dot com with Cleave Matrix in the email title line.

I will then pair you up with another poet.

The poems that pass muster will be published here in The Cleave.

Bowery Poetry Club Records Live!!!

Bowery Poetry Club Records Live!!!

Featuring: Gary Glazner, John Giorno, Tahani Salah, Marjorie Tesser, Kristin Prevallet, and Cynthia Kraman

On Sunday, May 24 Bowery Poetry Club Records will be recording a group of some of the most talented poets in New York as they perform at the Bowery Poetry Club. The show will be from 4-7pm, and will include readings by Gary Glazner, John Giorno, Tahani Salah, Marjorie Tesser, Kristin Prevallet, and Cynthia Kraman.

Gary Glazner produced the first National Poetry Slam in San Francisco. His poetry has appeared in anthologies, periodicals, on CD, radio, television, and underwater on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. His poems have been translated into Chinese, Moldavian, Nepali, and Vietnamese. Glazner is the Minister of Fun for Poetry Slam Incorporated. He is currently the managing director of the Bowery Poetry Club.

In 1968, John Giorno founded Giorno Poetry Systems in order to connect poetry to new audiences, using innovative technology. Some of the poets and artists who recorded or collaborated with Giorno Poetry Systems were William Burroughs, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. In 1982 he made the album Who Are You Staring At? with Glenn Branca^[1] and is prominently featured in Ron Mann’s 1982 film Poetry in Motion. In addition to his collaborations with William Burroughs, Giorno has produced a number of albums, tapes, videos and books. In 2007 he appeared in Nine Poems in Basilicata, a film directed by Antonello Faretta based on his poems and his performances.

Tahani Salah was a member of the 2007 Nuyorican National Slam Team, has worked with Urban World NYC for the last 8 years and is now the Youth Outreach Coordinator for Urban World NYC, and has performed across the world, including at the Apollo and on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. As a Palestinian-American Muslim woman, Tahani is committed to bringing light and solutions to problems faced by people from communities and experiences whose voices are silenced.

Marjorie Tesser is the editor of Bowery Books, an independent poetry press, as well as the publisher for the journal The Mom Egg. She has won the inaugural Firewheel Chapbook Award for her manuscript The Important Thing Is…, she produced Bowery Women: Shoot the Poem! Video-poetry Festival, and has been featured at the Howl Festival of East Village Art.

Kristin Prevallet is a poet, essayist, performer, and educator whose literary focus is to integrate political and personal consciousness into radical poetic forms. She has taught poetry and poetics, critical thinking and close reading at NYU, The New School, Bard College, and Naropa University. She is currently teaching in the Institute for Writing Studies at St. John’s University in Queens, NY. She has received a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in Poetry and a 2004 PEN translation fund award.

Cynthia Kraman’s new book of poetry is The Touch (Bowery Books 2009). Her previous collections are Taking on the Local Color (Wesleyan University Press 1977), Club 82 (1979) and The Mexican Murals (eg press, 1986). She formed the band Chinas Comidas with Rich Riggins in Seattle in the late seventies, and a CD of their live and studio recordings was released in 2006. She has a doctorate in medieval literature from the University of London, Queen Mary, and lives in New York City.

Bowery Poetry Club Records has already released two compilation albums comprised of some of the best poets and bands that perform at the Bowery Poetry Club. All of Bowery Poetry Club Records materials can be downloaded from i-Tunes. Be sure to check out www.bowerypoetryclubrecords.com for more information about Bowery Poetry Club Records, as well as the artists on the label.