Bloomsday Anniversary

It’s Bloomsday again, which means this blog has existed for one year! 98 posts (not including 4 I deleted) & counting – a busy year indeed for Six Gallery scribblers.

Hard Times Blues by Elwin Cotman

To Die Next to You by Rodger Kamenetz & Michael Hafftka

Sea of Dust by Kevin Finn

The Librarian by John Grochalski

&

The Lower Forty-Eight by Jason Baldinger

all came out during that time. Here are some quick updates regarding forthcoming books:

Yield to the Willow, the second collection by haiku master Don Wentworth, will have a soft release in July, so it’ll be available at Pittsburgh book stores & on Scamazon, if supporting corporate oppression is your bag. For Real release in the fall sometime.

We Are The… by “Sneaky” Mike Lubbert will be out in time for the 3rd anniversary of Occupy. Good Christ, that’s September 17th.

Imagination Motel, a collection of poetry by legendary novelist & edumacator Chuck Kinder, will exist & have some kind of legendary release party October 8.

Light on Yoga & Psychedelics by yoga master & psychonaut Alan Lowenschuss will manifest also this year, ASAP, as will

Hungry by Daniel Parme,

Gloom Hearts & Opioids by John Thomas Menesini

&

a currently untitled collection by local poet Stephanie Brea.

…

 

5/10 Feeding Goats @ Moscow 57

TONIGHT…

The experimental, electro-acoustic microtonal improvised music group “Feeding Goats” brings its avant-garde sounds to Moscow 57, the new Russian Central Asian restaurant on Delancey Street on New York’s Lower East Side on Saturday, May 10th. The performance will start approximately 10:00pm. Other artists scheduled to appear include Jordan Pettay, Laura Foulke, and Ellen Kaye hosting and performing with the M57 Band.

“Feeding Goats” features artist-musician Michael Hafftka on guitar, synthesizers and other instruments, Yonat Hafftka on theremin, garrahand, steel pans and harmonium; Richard Carr on violin and computer and Allen Bernard Branch playing marimba and percussions.

Tikkun reviews To Die Next to You

Emily Warn says some nice things about the Kamenetz-Hafftka collab To Die Next To You in the latest Tikkun.

Kamenetz and Hafftka’s collaboration feels markedly different to me than other poetry-visual art projects, perhaps, in part, because Hafftka’s work is a direct response to Kamenetz’s poems, a way of working that is anathema to many poets and painters who team up but only want their art to relate obliquely. Kamenetz’s poems and Hafftka’s drawings, on the other hand, play off one another, not as sequential, competing riffs in jazz do, but as cello chords, reverberating and diminishing into settled or unsettling silence.

Read the whole thing here.

10/24 To Die Next to You in NYC & SWOM#6 @ Biddle’s Escape

TONIGHT at 8PM at Columbia University 501 Schermerhorn,

Join Rodger Kamenetz and Michael Hafftka to celebrate the publication of To Die Next To You, a book of poems and drawings from Six Gallery Press. Readings, music, slides and a dialogue between poet and artist are all part of the mix.

Here are some nice things Liel Leibovitz said about the book in Tablet Magazine.

ALSO TONIGHT at 7PM at Biddle’s Escape in Pittsburgh:

10/23 Rodger Kamenetz & Anna Byars @ BJ’s in the Bywater

TONIGHT this is happening:

Join us at BJs Wednesday, Oct 23 for a celebration of Rodger Kamenetz’s new book To Die Next to You. He’ll be performing with Anna Byars as part of their performance duo Married Woman. Open mic follows the performance, 8PM. Rodger Kamenetz is the author of five previous books of poetry and has been on the New Orleans scene since 1995. He founded the MFA program in creative writing at LSU where he taught 28 years. His prose books include the international best-seller The Jew in the Lotus and The History of Last Night’s Dream which was featured on Oprah’s Soul Series. His newest book , To Die Next To You, is poetry coming out of his work with dreams, illustrated by master painter Michael Hafftka. David Shapiro hailed Kamenetz as “one of the secret best poets in America” and found in his work “the fire in the heart of the great transcendental romantics.”

Anna Byars, a Baton Rouge native, is the guitar player and co-songwriter for Married Woman and performs with a handful of other bands, including Polly Pry. Byars credits her rigorous classical music education with her ability to jump genres as projects demand. She also offers private instruction in classical guitar, bass and drums.

Married Woman is Rodger Kamenetz & Anna Byars performing songs based on poems from To Die Next To You, from Garcia Lorca and from their own fleshy hearts.

10/14 Henry Shuckman & Rodger Kamenetz @ Collected Works Bookstore

TODAY at 6PM at Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe , Henry Shukman & Rodger Kamenetz will demolish & inspire you. Sometimes even simultaneously,