3/30 Blast Furnace Radio zine launch @ Glitter Box + Krewe de Louisiane & friends @ The Big Legrowlski

2PM SATURDAY, in Portland for #awp2019, b/c you live there, or otherwise? Well then,

Lavender Ink (New Orleans) and the River Writers Reading Series (Baton Rouge, LA) bring you masters of poetry and prose from Louisiana, Dixie, and beyond! We’ll bring you a diverse set of literary styles from a varied group of authors. Come hear some literature, drink an afternoon beer, and have some fun!

OUR FINAL LINEUP IS:
Jonathan Penton
Maurice Ruffin
Teow Lim Goh
Jenn Marie Nunes
Mel Coyle
Christopher Romaguera
Laura Mattingly
Vincent Cellucci
Moira Crone
Rodger Kamenetz
Shira Dentz
Elizabeth Gross
Andrea Jurjević
Devon Balwit

MC’d by Vincent A. Cellucci and Jonathan Penton!

7PM back at the good old Glitter Box in Pittsburgh,

You are invited to the concert/zine release bash for author/activist Vincent Eirene’s “The Future Writings of Blast Furnace Radio”. Culled from recent interviews and dialogue, the booklet continues the story of protest/social activism from Vincent’s earlier book The Day the Empire Fell, which will also be available in its 2nd edition. In partnership with Another True Story Publishing, there will be albums by the band A.T.S, and art zines by Evan Knauer. Event starts at 7pm with author Vincent Eirene book signing all night. Drinks and light food provided. Music by The Knauer Brothers 7:30-9, Melissa Chrissy +Ed Trio 9-9:30, Alexei Plotnicov 9:30-10, A.T.S 10-11. Admission to Glitter Box is free, books and albums moderately priced.

3/19 Moira Crone, Rodger Kamenetz, & Ariel Resnikoff @ Wolfman Books

7PM TUESDAY

Two New Orleans based writers–poet and dreamworker Rodger Kamenetz and fiction writer Moira Crone–join forces with East Bay native and recent returnee Ariel Resnikoff for a speculative set of their latest work. All three of them habitually push hard on boundaries, whether it’s the divide between conscious and subconscious life or the linguistic borders dividing cultures.

Rodger and Moira both taught writing at LSU in Baton Rouge for many years. Ariel is finishing up a PhD at Penn, where he has been very active as a teacher and a multilingual editor and translator.

Author of seven works of fiction, Moira Crone has won distinction for her short stories, novels, and her speculative fiction. In 2009 she received the Robert Penn Warren Award from the Southern Fellowship of Writers for the body of her work. Her 2014 novel THE ICE GARDEN, a coming of age tale set in the 1960’s South, won the Independent Booksellers Regional Gold Medal and was hailed by author Lee Smith, as “a heart-stopper.”   Her 2012 dystopian THE NOT YET, set in a drowned Louisiana in 2121, was one of seven finalists for the international Philip K. Dick Award, for sci-fi paperback of the year. She has received fellowships from the NEH, the NEA, Bunting Institute at Harvard-Radcliffe, and other institutions. Her works have been selected for the prize anthology New Stories from the South: The Year’s Bestfive times, have appeared in two dozen anthologies, and in such magazines as The New Yorker, Mademoiselle, TriQuarterly, Oxford American, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Image. She lives in New Orleans.

Poet, author, essayist, biographer, religious thinker and dreamwork practitioner, Rodger Kamenetz is probably best known for his breakthrough account of Jewish-Buddhist dialogue, The Jew in the Lotus. A serious student of dreams since 1999, his The History of Last Night’s Dream was featured on Oprah Winfrey’s Soul Series. His poems have appeared in hundreds of periodicals and 25 anthologies. His previous books of poetry include The Missing Jew, Stuck, The Lowercase Jew, and To Die Next To You. YONDER is his seventh collection. Kamenetz lives in New Orleans where he practices Natural Dreamwork. Visit him at kamenetz.com or  thenaturaldream.com

Ariel Resnikoff  is a poet, translator, editor & teacher. His most recent works include Ten-Four: Poems, Translations, Variations (Operating System 2015), with Jerome Rothenberg, & Between Shades (Materialist Press 2014). With Stephen Ross, he is at work on the first critical bilingual edition of Mikhl Likht’s modernist Yiddish long poem, Processions; and with Lilach Lachman and Gabriel Levin, he is translating the collected writings of the translingual-Hebrew poet, Avot Yeshurun. Ariel is a contributing editor of Global Modernists on Modernism (Bloomsbury, forthcoming ‘19), an anthology of multilingual modernist source texts, as well as a commissioning editor at Jacket2. His writing has been translated into French & Spanish and is forthcoming in German in a special issue of Schreibheft.

7/3-5 Getting It… Together feat. Rodger Kamenetz @ West Chester University

THIS WEEKEND…

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.

…

 

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.

11/2 Rodger Kamenetz @ Louisiana Book Festival

TODAY at the Louisiana Book Festival,  State Capitol, Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

2 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.
Senate Committee Room E
Presentation
To Die Next to You
Author Rodger Kamenetz will read poems and perform songs from To Die Next To You with musical partner Anna Byars.

Book Signing
3 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.

 

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.

10/16 Rodger Kamenetz @ Cafe Istanbul

TONIGHT at 7:30, Rodger Kamenetz & three other poets will perform at Cafe Istanbul as part of Don Paul‘s Poetry Ball 6. If you’re in New Orleans & want to hear some poetry (&/or spit some at the open mic), hit this up!

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,