Tag Archive for 'poetry'

Kristy Bowen reads from Major Characters in Minor Films 4/3

Published on March 6, 2015 0 Comments
Apr ’15
3
7:00 pm

MCMFCover
“Get ready: Kristy Bowen’s major characters in minor films casts our favorite muse du jour in a ‘white-hot, white dress.’ Through poems that are lyrical, irreverent, and a little bit naughty, we discover the swanky, labyrinthine interior of her straight-to-DVD universe: remember, she tells us in ‘movie of the week,’ ‘Everybody loves a victim, especially the blonde, pretty kind.’ Through scathing missives to James Franco and sensual harangues directed at the moon, our wine-stained diva tempts us through vivacious non sequiturs to the ‘poem within a movie within a girl-shaped world’ in all of us.” -Sara Henning, author of A Sweeter Water

“I want to be best friends with the ‘I’ of this book. She’s hilarious. She’s heartbreaking. She’s more than a little bit dangerous. Whether she’s writing about crying on the bus or hiding a knife under the sink, she deals out her words like a card shark—fast, sure, sly. What’s not to love about such a deft performance of wit, skill, and heart?” -Sara Biggs Chaney, author of Ann Coulter’s Letter to the Young Poets

“In Kristy Bowen’s major characters in minor films, language moves like a camera, cutting from image to image, leaving impressions that form intriguing fragmented narratives of love, intrigue, mystery and damage. Populated with both the familiar and the strange, with rabbits and birds as well as whiskey and fire, the journey through the scenes these poems create is a wild and rich ride.” -Donna Vorreyer, author of A House of Many Windows

A writer and visual artist, Kristy Bowen is the author of several book, chapbook, and zine projects including the shared properties of water and stars (Noctary Press, 2013) and girl show (Black Lawrence Press, 2014).  Her work has appeared most recently in Birdfeast, Diode, and Eratio.  She  lives in Chicago, where she runs dancing girl press & studio. For  more  info:  kristybowen.net

Click here to see Facebook invite for this event.

Fri, April 3rd, 7pm, Free Event

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Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz Reads From Everything is Everything

Published on January 30, 2010 0 Comments
Mar ’10
1
7:00 pm
Everything Is Everything

Everything Is Everything

In a recent interior with lit blog Orange Alert, poet Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz describes her latest book, Everything is Everything, as “an odd, tender, spastic, claustrophobic and bizarre-fact-riddled book that is trying to appreciate the journey instead of obsessing about the destination.” But she was also sure to add that “the book also contains a bizarre amount of poems about giraffes who have been trained to rape humans. But only because they really existed, and not because I’m a crazy sadist.”

“Sometimes you plod through the day, bumping into people, tripping over your own feet. But then there are those remarkable days when you move through the world as stealthily as ninja. The latter is how the poems move in this book. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz spits in her hands, grabs the sledgehammer, swings it hard, and rings that bell in poem after poem after poem. Everything is Everything is a winning collection chock full of swift, honest, smart, funny, and even tender poems that go up to 11.” – Jennifer Knox, author of Drunk by Noon

Everything is Everything is Aptowicz’s first poetry collection to be published after her acclaimed non-fiction book, Words In Your Face: Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam (Soft Skull Press, 2008). Cristin will be joined by several poets from the local Chicago Poetry Slam community, as well as her partner – poet and former surly Quimbys employee – Shappy Seasholtz, who will read from his most recent chapbook, This is All I Can Offer You.

For more info: http://www.aptowicz.com

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teddy merino reads *the city the earth the heart a happening*

Published on August 7, 2009 1 Comment
Sep ’09
5
7:00 pm

teddy marino (yes, all lowercase, he tells us) got his start as a poet while studying History at UW, Madison, and working at a daycare. He wrote about politics, the apocalypse, and sex. After graduating, he lived a year in Puebla, Mexico, where he taught English, volunteered for a labor rights organization, and lived in a Franciscan orphanage.

In August of 2007 he moved to his native city of four generations. He found an Americorps job, working at an elementary school on the border of Garfield and Humboldt Park. He continues to work there as a teaching assistant and bicycle program manager. He writes about his (and the schools) neighborhood, about the city, people, and children.

His first book, *the city the earth the heart a happening* is mostly about Chicago, with a little bit of Puebla, a couple poems from the East Coast, and a handful of love poems.  And this is what he tells us about it:

“I want to celebrate before suffering the interminable winters of publishing companies whose bodily gases smell too much like roses for me. Broiler Plate: Italian sausage, Polish sausage, matzah balls, beef tacos, fried plantain, collared greens, and a barbecue seitan sandwich.  Broiler Plate: Looking for cultural nourishment of an unsung Chicago poet? Welcome to the party.”

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