Oxford Alum and HBO Def Poet Taylor Mali Releases New Book

Please join us for the book release party of Taylor Mali’s “The Last Time as We Are” on Wednesday, September 9th 8-9:30 p.m. at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, (Between Houston and Bleecker). Admission of $8 includes a discount on your purchase of the book. Special guests & rare appearances. For more info please call 212-614-0505 or bowerypoetry.com.

Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement. After studying drama at Oxford with members of The Royal Shakespeare Company, Mali was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Russel Simmons Presents Def Poetry and was the “Armani-clad villain” of Paul Devlin’s 1997 documentary film SlamNation. He is a vocal advocate of teachers and the nobility of teaching, having himself spent nine years as a teacher. His New Teacher Project has a goal of creating 1,000 new teachers through “poetry, persuasion, and perseverance”. He is the author of two books of poetry, “The Last Time As We Are” (2009) and “What Learning Leaves” (2002), as well as four CDs of spoken word. He received a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2001 to develop Teacher! Teacher! a one-man show about poetry, teaching, and math which won the jury prize for best solo performance at the 2001 Comedy Arts Festival. Formerly president of Poetry Slam, Inc., the non-profit organization that oversees all poetry slams in North America, Taylor Mali makes his living entirely as a spoken-word and voiceover artist these days, traveling around the country performing and teaching workshops as well as doing occasional commercial voiceover work. He has narrated several books on tape, including The Great Fire (for which he won the Golden Earphones Award for children’s narration).

Horace said the “task of the poet is to instruct or entertain,” and it would be difficult to find a poet who more fully embodies this vision than Taylor Mali. In this latest collection, Mali’s work buzzes, hums, snaps and zaps, the tour-de-force of Mali on stage having been properly captured and catalogued on the page. You don’t need a classroom to be a teacher, and you don’t need to be a teacher to help someone learn a lesson. Taylor Mali’s poetry explores this truth in entertaining and plainspoken ways, giving readers “what they need before they knew they needed it” (“Miracle Workers”). The poems contained in “The Last Time As We Are” prove that “He who seeks to teach must never cease to learn.”

Billy Collins, United States Poet Laureate, says, “Not since Taylor Mali, has there been a poet of the likes of Taylor Mali, which is to say he is a man of unique properties. He is tagged as a performance poet, but his performances, rather than being frontal assaults, are leavened by charm and wit and could survive happily on the page.”

Bowery Poetry Club

Bowery Poetry Club Live Performance

Collaborations
Spoken Word and Music
Janet Hamill and Bryan Hamill, music, performing together from “Body Of Water”

Join them and their special guests,
Diana Manister with music by Steve Cialino

and Larissa Shmailo with music by Brant Lyon
Saturday, July 25, 4 p.m.
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, NYC
212-614-0505
$5

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.

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.

New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon and RACKETT at the Bowery Poetry Club

Please join us for an evening of poetry and rock and roll with Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize winning poetry editor of the New Yorker, and the Princeton-based band RACKETT on Saturday, March 21 8-9:30 p.m., at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (Between Houston and Bleecker). For more info please call 212-614-0505 or bowerypoetry.com. $15

Along with Muldoon, RACKETT features: Stephen Allen (keyboards), Bobby Lewis (drums), Lee Matthew (lead guitar, vocals), Paul Muldoon (guitar, lyrics), and Nigel Smith (bass).

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Paul Muldoon was given an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature for 1996. Other recent awards are the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2005 Aspen Prize for Poetry, and the 2006 European Prize for Poetry. He has been described by The Times Literary Supplement as “the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War.”

Paul Muldoon’s main collections of poetry are New Weather (1973), Mules (1977), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting The British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), Poems 1968-1998 (2001) and Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), for which he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. His tenth collection, Horse Latitudes, appeared in the fall of 2006.

Hosting between 20 and 30 shows a week the Bowery Poetry Club (BPC) is proud of our place in the lineage of populist art: the Yiddish theater, burlesque, vaudeville, beat poetry, jazz, and punk that gave the Bowery its name.

Shab-e she’r returns for Persian New Year with open mic and poetry.

Join us for Norooz 2009, the Persian New Year celebration, at the Bowery Poetry Club on Wednesday, March 18^th from 6:00 – 9:00 pm at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, (Between Houston and Bleecker). For more info please call 212-614-0505 or bowerypoetry.com. $10

The celebratory evening will feature two incredible acts that bring the works of ancient poets including Rumi and Hafez to life through music. Opening the evening will be Rana Farhan, who is best known for setting classical Farsi (Persian) poetry to contemporary jazz and blues music that will surely captivate any audience. The second act will feature Iraj Anvar – singer, author and expert translator of Rumi. Performing in Persian song, Anvar will recite his renditions of Rumi ghazals and will be accompanied by Anne Twitty, who will translate the Persian performance into English.

Persian Arts Festival, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to showcasing the magnificence and diversity of Persian art and culture through its voices, artists and visionaries. PAF provides a truly unique opportunity for local and global communities to gather and explore one of the world’s most ancient and rich civilizations. Persian Arts Festival is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

Hosting between 20 and 30 shows a week the Bowery Poetry Club (BPC) is proud of our place in the lineage of populist art: the Yiddish theater, burlesque, vaudeville, beat poetry, jazz, and punk that gave the Bowery its name.

Alice James Books at the Bowery Poetry Club

Alice James Books invites you for a reading and book give-away extravaganza on Thursday, February 5th at 6pm at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, (Between Houston and Bleecker). For more info please call 212-614-0505 or bowerypoetry.com.

The press will be celebrating its latest collections by Idra Novey and Carey Salerno and giving away free books and Poetry Bailout pins. Come by and pick up a book, hear some poems, and help celebrate 35 years of poetry publishing with Alice James Books!!!

Idra Novey is the author of The Next Country. Novey’s chapbook of poems was selected by Carolyn Forche for a 2005 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poems have also appeared in Slate, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Agni. She received a PEN Translation Fund Award for her translation of The Clean Shirt of It, by Brazilian poet Paulo Henriques Britto (BOA Editions, 2007, Lannan Translation Series). She currently teaches at Columbia University and in the Bard College Prison Initiative.

Carey Salerno is the Acting Director of Alice James Books and author of Shelter. Salerno has an MFA from New England College. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Rattle and Natural Bridge. She lives with her husband and dog in Farmington, Maine.

Hosting between 20 and 30 shows a week the Bowery Poetry Club (BPC) is proud of our place in the lineage of populist art: the Yiddish theater, burlesque, vaudeville, beat poetry, jazz, and punk that gave the Bowery its name.

Derrick Brown at the Bowery Poetry Club

Derrick Brown celebrates his new book “Scandalabra”.

Please join us for an evening of poetry, spoken word, music, and magic featuring Derrick C. Brown. This event is free and will take place Tuesday, January 13th, from 6:00-7:00pm at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, (between Houston and Bleecker). For more information please call 212-614-0505 or visit bowerypoetry.com.

A book party for “Scandalabra” will be held at 6pm, followed by WordShop, during which Brown will give tips on touring and how to write great poetry. The Urbana Poetry Slam will follow at 7pm, featuring Brown.

Former paratrooper Derrick Brown takes his poetry around the world, as to date he has performed at over 1100 venues and universities, including La Sorbonne in Paris. In 1998 he placed second in the National Poetry Slam individual championship, and in 2004 he won the California Independent Book Critics’ Award for his written work. He has consistently been the opening act for Indie rock act, Cold War Kids and has been booked with The White Stripes and performed with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. In response to his latest collection “Scandalabra”, Nylon Magazine proclaims “Derrick has blown honesty and humor into the darkness and has somehow made poetry cool again.”

In 2004, Brown started Write Bloody Publishing. Write Bloody has published many authors and artists, including the works of Amber Tamblyn, Buddy Wakefield, and Roger Bonair-Agard. Brown’s own publications include “Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife” (Write Bloody Publishing, 2006), “I Love You is Back” (Write Bloody Publishing, 2006), and “The Last American Valentine” (Write Bloody Publishing, 2008).

Hosting between 20 and 30 shows a week the Bowery Poetry Club (BPC) is proud of our place in the lineage of populist art: the Yiddish theater, burlesque, vaudeville, beat poetry, jazz, and punk that gave the Bowery its name.

New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon and RACKETT at the Bowery Poetry Club

We would like to draw your attention to a very
special event. Please join us for an evening of poetry and rock and
roll with Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize winning poetry editor of
the New Yorker, and the Princeton-based band Rackett, on Saturday,
December 20th, 8-9:30 p.m., at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery,
(Between Houston and Bleecker), New York. Ticket cost is $15.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Paul
Muldoon was given an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in
literature for 1996. Other recent awards are the 1994 T. S. Eliot
Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Griffin
International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, the 2004 American
Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2005
Aspen Prize for Poetry, and the 2006 European Prize for Poetry. He has
been described by The Times Literary Supplement as “the most
significant English-language poet born since the second World War.”

Along with Muldoon, RACKETT features: Stephen Allen (keyboards), Bobby
Lewis (drums), Lee Matthew (lead guitar, vocals), Paul Muldoon
(guitar, lyrics), and Nigel Smith (bass).

Please feel free to contact us for more details.

Katelyn Maloney
Media Director
Bowery Poetry Club

Bowery Poetry Club presents a night of poetry with Bill Berkson and Tony Towle

We would like to draw your attention to a very special event.

Bowery Poetry Club presents a night of poetry on Thursday, December 4 at 8 PM at 308 Bowery, (Between Houston and Bleeker) New York.

Bill Berkson and Tony Towle, notables of the second-generation New York School, will read from 50 years of their poetry. Berkson’s recent books include OUR FRIENDS WILL PASS AMONG YOU SILENTLY; a major book of poems that will appear from Coffee House next year. Towle’s most recent book is WINTER JOURNEY. For more info please call 212-614-0505 or visit bowerypoetry.com.

Katelyn Maloney
Media Director
Bowery Poetry Club