Total Lunar Eclipse - December 21, 2010

Gaze in Best of 2010 list at No Tell Motel

Gaze (Black Radish Books) appears on David Wolach's "Best Poetry Books of 2010" at No Tell Motel: http://notellpoetry.blogspot.com/2010/12/best-poetry-books-of-2010-david-wolach.html -- along with Eleni Stecopolous' Armies of Compassion, Brenda Iijima's revv.you'll--ution, Mark Lamoureaux's Spectre, Rachel Zolf's Neighbor Procedure, and six others.

Copies of Gaze are available from SPD: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780982573105/gaze.aspx

Kathrin's Schaeppi's new collection

Kathrin Schaeppi's new poetry collection from Black Radish Books is now available: Sonja Sekula, Grace in a Cow's Eye: A Memoir. Check it out!

Dusie in Poets & Writers

The Dusie Kolletiv is featured in the December Poets & Writers's special section on "Indie Innovators": how cool is that?! Also featured are Ugly Duckling Presse, Siglio, Dzanc, Foursquare, Plastique, and Granta, along with 10 others, and DIY instructions for making your own pocket-size book.

Black Radish Blog

Heather Momyer dons Hecate's mask for All Haints Eve and responds to Mark Lamoureux's Spectre. Check it out at Black Radish Books' blog here.

Marthe Reed at Series A and Red Rover

Traveling to Chicago this week for two readings -- if you live or will be in Chicago, come see me!

Wednesday Nov 3 at Series A -- The Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue -- reading with Lina ramona Vitkauskas and Joseph Wood.

Friday Nov 5 at Red Rover -- Outer Space Studio1474 N. Milwaukee Ave., suggested donation $4 -- reading with Joel Lewis and Adrian Moens.http://chicagopoetrycalendar.blogspot.com/2010/10/red-rover-series-experiment-41.html

Reading at Red Rover in Chicago

Red Rover Series
{readings that play with reading}

Experiment #41:
Approaches to What?

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5th
7pm / doors lock 7:30

Featuring:
Joel Lewis
Adrian Moens
Marthe Reed

at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave
suggested donation $4

logistics --
near CTA Damen blue line
third floor walk up
not wheelchair accessible

JOEL LEWIS' most recent book is "Learning From New Jersey". He edited the selected talks of Ted Berrigan, the selected poems of lefty poet/anthologist Walter Lowenfels and an anthology of contemporary NJ poets. In addition to hundreds of reviews, essays and polemics, he dreamed up the now abolished NJ Poet Laureate position that was such a headache for Amiri Baraka. He is at work on a memoir about being a child of a Holocaust Survivor. He lives in Hoboken with his wife, film theorist Sandy Flitterman-Lewis.

ADRIAN MOENS is a multi-media artist and writer currently living in Chicago. Adrian has exhibited and performed work in the United States, most recently for the Electronic Literature Organization Conference at Brown University. The primary focus in much of his work is the extraction and transmutation of language from various linguistic
and non linguistic sources.

MARTHE REED has published two books, Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink) and Gaze (Black Radish Books), as well as two chapbooks, (em)bodied bliss and zaum alliterations, both part of the Dusie Kollektiv Series. Her poetry has appeared in New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, New Orleans Review, HOW2, MiPoesias, and Exquisite Corpse, among others, and is forthcoming from Ekleksographia and Fairy Tale Review. Her manuscript, an earth of sweetness dances in the vein, was a finalist in Ahsahta Press’ 2006 Sawtooth Poetry Contest. She edits Nous-zot Press, http://nous-zot.blogspot.com and directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

RED ROVER SERIES is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin. Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers. The series was founded in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin.

UPCOMING:
December 4 - Vanessa Place

Email ideas for reading experiments
to us at redroverseries@yahoogroups.com

The schedule for events is listed at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/redroverseries

Kate Bernheimer on PBS' "Weekend Edition"

Kate Bernheimer, Writer-in-Residence at UL Lafayette, will be interviewed along with playwright, film director, and fiction writer Neil LaBute on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, November 7. They will discuss fairy tales and short stories and Kate’s new anthology with Penguin, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales.

Reading: Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Abraham Smith, and Solan Jenson

Poets Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Abraham Smith with banjoist Solan Jenson stopped in Lafayette last night to read and perform at The Blue Moon Saloon, as part of the 2010-11 Deep South Reading Series at UL Lafayette. Smith read, rhythmically, intensely, powerfully--steeped in the pathos of Hank Williams' life, channeling the songwriter's fever/furor. His new collection Hank is published by Action Books. Next Joshua Marie Wilkerson stepped up, accompanied by the strange, sweet lyricism of Solan Jenson's banjo improvisations, performing haunting renditions from Wilkinson's new Selenography. A gorgeous, poignant experience -- well worth catching if you can. You can find a list of all the stops on his reading tour here.

Review of Mark Lamoureux's Spectre

"Jenny Haniver / Jenny Hanniver: After Mark Lamoureaux's Spectre" -- Rhonda dean Robison has written a fun and fabulous review of Mark Lamoureux's Spectre -- now up at Black Radish Blog: http://blackradishblog.blogspot.com/

Check it out!

News and updates

New work up in William Allegrezza's Moria -- five poems from my manuscript Nights Reading, a collection with its genesis in The Thousand and One Nights: the tales, dynamics of power and resistance within them, and the alternatives to power those narratives articulate.

Black Radish Blog has a new post up -- forthcoming titles. Next up a series of responses to their most recent title, Spectre by Mark Lamoureux. As Elaine Equi writes, this collection evokes "disturbing and often distinctly American landscapes explore the interface between fantasy and fatalism, magic and machine. In the tradition of Duncan and Spicer, he is a metaphysical poet for our times, when even 'the cheerleader's dreams are sinister' and 'what was once all Wagner is now/ all Duran Duran.'" Available from SPD.

Black Radish Blog

Black Radish Books has a new blog -- announcements, new books, news, and reviews: check it out and become a follower!

Dusie Kollektiv 4, the upcycled collective

The newest incarnation of Dusie Kollektiv is now live. Dusie Kollektiv 4 features work requiring the use of re/upcycled materials in the production of its chaps -- paper, texts, even money! Edited by Susana Gardner with assistance from Paul Klinger and Marthe Reed. Webpages by Marthe Reed, Dusie Teaparty by Zeke KalishReed.

The poets featured are Samar Abulhassan, Cara Benson, Elizabeth Bryant, Mackensie Carignan, meredith Clark, Shanna Compton, Juliet Cook, Sarah Anne Cox, Michelle Detorie, Finegan Ferreboeuf, Susana Gardner, Jesse Glass Michalle Gould, Arielle Guy, j/j hastain, jared hayes, Jen Hofer, Carrie Hunter, Paul Klinger, Mark Lamoureux, Dana Teen Lomax, Nicole Mauro, Marci Nelligan, Anna Moschakovis, Francis Raven, Marthe Reed, Kaia Sand, Kathrin Schaeppi, Elizabeth Treadwell, Catherine Wagner, Rachel Warriner, and Vincent Zompa.

Leslie Scalapino Tribute, Day 4 of 4

Leslie Scalapino Tribute: Day 4 of 4
-----------------------

Eileen Myles

"from a conversation with Stacy Szymaszek"

Judith Roitman

"No Self"

Brenda Iijima

"Leslie's books are survival pods"

Rodrigo Toscano

"Simultaneous Multi-Local Mass-Body Rhythm in way"

Dana Teen Lomax

"'the difficulty' (the necessity)"

Leslie Scalapino

"Eco-Logic in Writing"

* * * * * *

A TRIBUTE TO LESLIE SCALAPINO 1944–2010 DAY FOUR OF FOUR


Julian T. Brolaski | Laura Elrick | E. Tracy Grinnell

Brenda Iijima | Elizabeth James | Dana Teen Lomax | Eileen Myles

Frances Presley | Stephen Ratcliffe | Judith Roitman | Sarah Rosenthal

Leslie Scalapino | Adam Strauss | Rodrigo Toscano

+ more...

* * * * * *

edited by Cara Benson + Elizabeth Bryant + Catherine Wagner

Delirious Hem
http://delirioushem.blogspot.com

Tribute to Leslie Scalapino, Day 3 0f 4

Leslie Scalapino Tribute: Day 3 of 4

-----------------

Notes on keeping company with Leslie's life and writing:
Martha Ronk + Linda Russo
+ Elizabeth Treadwell + Marthe Reed + Pierre Joris

Elizabeth Bryant in conversation with Leslie Scalapino (with poems by Scalapino)

"Leslie Loved Invasion of the Body Snatchers": Laura Hinton

Joyelle McSweeney on Dahlia's Iris

* * * * * *

A TRIBUTE TO LESLIE SCALAPINO 1944–2010 DAY THREE OF FOUR


Laura Hinton | Linda Russo | Pierre Joris |

Marthe Reed | Celia Bland | Richard Price | Elizabeth Bryant

Joyelle McSweeney | Elizabeth Treadwell | Heidi Lynn Staples

+ more...

* * * * * *

edited by Cara Benson + Elizabeth Bryant + Catherine Wagner

Delirious Hem
http://delirioushem.blogspot.com

Leslie Scalapino Tribute

Leslie Scalapino Tribute: Day 2 of 4
-----------------

Jena Osman

on her correspondence with Leslie Scalapino

Ruth Lepson

edits: Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino in collaboration and conversation

Michael Rerick

essays "Delay Series" (from way)

Jodi Chilson:
"And skimming over ZITHER and Autobiography again, now, I discover"

* * * * * *

A TRIBUTE TO LESLIE SCALAPINO 1944–2010 DAY TWO OF FOUR

Lynn Behrendt | Jodi Chilson | K. Lorraine Graham | Megan Kaminski

Ruth Lepson | Jena Osman | Deborah Poe | Michael Rerick

Jennifer Styperk | Rachel Zucker

+ more...

* * * * * *

edited by Cara Benson + Elizabeth Bryant + Catherine Wagner

Delirious Hem
http://delirioushem.blogspot.com

Fairy Tale Review e-books

Kate Bernheimer's Fairy Tale Review titles are now available on Weightless Books as e-books. Weightless is run by Gavin Grant, editor of the fabulous Small Beer Press (which is also run by author Kelly Link). You can buy all back issues of FTR for just $9.99! That's less than ten cents a tale.

Spread the fairy-tale news!

http://weightlessbooks.com/updates/welcoming-the-fairy-tale-review/

http://weightlessbooks.com/category/publisher/fairy-tale-review/

http://weightlessbooks.com/genre/fiction/fairy-tale-review-special/

Mark Lamoureux's Spectre

Mark Lamoureux's new book Spectre is out from Black Radish Books. You can catch a glimpse of it at on "SPD Recommends" or buy a copy here.

A marriage of the fantastic to the absurd--the monstrous and the transcendent, the ridiculous and the delightful, the ordinary and the other-worldly: Lamoureux pursues a deliciously strange seam of Nazis, superheroes, aliens, mythologies, monstrous fungi, altered consciousness, magic, and spirits, a carnival-esque world scored by a voice alternately sardonic, wistful, and ironic. A potent and beguiling collection.

If you would like to review Spectre, contact Black Radish Books for a free copy at blackradishbooks at gmail dot com

David Wolach on Philly Sound

PhillySound has a nice interview with David Wolach on his new book, Occultations from Black Radish Books: the book's genesis, the concerns with body, the body politic, the nature (and loss) of our connections to one another. http://phillysound.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

Kate Bernheimer's Horse, Fower, Bird

Kate Bernheimer, Writer-in Residence at UL Lafayette, has a new story collection Horse, Flower, Bird (Coffee House Press) and an anthology, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (Penguin). Horse, Flower, Bird has been getting fabulous reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, as well as among some high profile book blogs such as Wordmunch: http://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/there-is-no-disputing-these-are-adult-tales-horse-flower-bird-by-kate-bernheimer/.

Booklist writes:

In eight hauntingly poetic fairy tales, Bernheimer roots deep into the hyperimagination and fears of lonely girls and the estranged women they become. When a little girl’s pet parakeet dies, she runs away from home and later becomes an exotic dancer who builds her own cage. Two sisters perform imaginary scenarios from Star Wars in which love never triumphs. A girl abandons her sister’s friendship for that of a doll, and later for an imaginary friend whose disappearance leaves her psychotic. A young Jewish girl suffers from guilt and a fear of incineration after her friends and family fail to comprehend her intense desire for atonement. And in the collection’s most heartrending story, a woman hides a petting zoo in her basement, convinced that her secret is preserving her overworked husband’s stability. By turns lovely and tragic, Bernheimer’s spare but captivating fables of femininity resonate like a string of sad but all-too-real and meaningful dreams. This is a collection readers won’t soon forget, one that redefines the fairy tale into something wholly original.

And Library Journal:

Bernheimer, Kate. Horse, Flower, Bird. Coffee House, dist. by Consortium. Sept. 2010. c.208p. illus. ISBN 978-1-56689-247-6. pap. $14.95.

This is a collection of eight imaginative if not downright unusual tales that will delight readers but also evoke sadness and loneliness. Bernheimer’s lean and lyrical writing conceals forceful and spirited stories that will definitely prove disturbing, as in the collection’s last, dreamlike tale, “Whitework.” Other stories, like the penultimate “A Star Wars Tale,” will bring back strong memories of childhood as they communicate an innocent understanding of the world that is simultaneously beautiful and perhaps brutal. Bernheimer’s passion for fairy tales is evident in every story she spins, which should come as no surprise—she is founder and editor of Fairy Tale Review, and her previous works (e.g., The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold) draw heavily on classic fairy tales from many countries to create wonderfully original ones. VERDICT Bernheimer’s work provides a refreshing contrast to most available fiction. It is no stretch to compare her to Aimee Bender or Kelly Link, and fans ought to be on the lookout for My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, a forthcoming collection that she edited featuring those two authors.—Faye A. Chadwell, Oregon State Univ. Libs., Corvallis

Another re-inter-view: David Wolach and Emily Carr

David Wolach, whose new Black Radish Books collection Occultations is just out, reviews Emily Carr''s Directions for Flying, while Emily turns her attention to David's Occultations: check it out at Dialogue's End.

David Wolach's Occulations

Also out from Black Radish Books, David Wolach's Occulations. Mark Wallace published a mini-review of Occultations here: http://wallacethinksagain.blogspot.com/2010/08/brief-reviews.html

And CA Conrad has published part of a feature (to be added: poet commentary by Rob Halpern, Rachel Levitsky, others) that will end up as completed on PhilllySound. For now, it is at his web journal.
Interview plus poetry, etc. http://tenbyfour.blogspot.com/

afteriwas dead: origin / a dress

afteriwas dead: origin / a dress

An deeply interesting, engaged meditation/exploration. Check it out -- from Laura Mullen's blog.

Gaze in Allegrezza's Daily Glance

Gaze appears in William Allegrezza's p-ramblings "Daily Glance": a nice shout out.

Elif Shafak

A fascinating talk about writing, difference, and discovery. http://www.ted.com/talks/elif_shafak_the_politics_of_fiction.html

Dialogue's End

Christophe Cassamina of Dialogue's End invited Chris McCreay and I to review one another's new books and to interview one another -- read it here.

From Amy King --

Take up Amy's challenge women who write!

http://amyking.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/your-own-revolution-poetry-publishing-the-internet/

Reading from Gaze in Grand Coteau

Reading from Gaze at Casa Azul in Grand Coteau last month.

Black Radish and David Wolach

David Wolach's new book Occultations from Black Radish Books (http://www.blackradishbooks.org/) gets an excellent introduction and review here:

http://bigother.com/2010/07/07/new-from-black-radish-books/

Check it out!

Reading in Santa Cruz

Jill Stengel and I will be reading in Santa Cruz, June 19th (Saturday) at A New Cadence Poetry Series:

Saturday

A New Cadence in June --- Stengel and Reed

A New Cadence Poetry Series

Presents

Marthe Reed
&
Jill Stengel

reading from their works

Saturday,
June 19th
@ 7:30
Felix Kulpa Gallery
107 Elm Street, Santa Cruz, CA
Free

Jill Stengel is a poet, publisher of a+bend press, and parent of three young children. Formerly of San Francisco and Los Angeles, she now resides with her family in Davis, CA. Several of her serial poems have appeared in chapbook form: cartography (1999, WOOD); History, Possibilities : (1999, a+bend press); ladies with babies (2003, Boog); lagniappe (2008, Nous-Zot Press, Dusie Kollektiv); late may (2007, Dusie); may(be) (2006, Dusie); and the forthcoming and I would open (Ypolita) and wreath (Texfiles). Some of these chapbooks, and individual poems, can be viewed online as well as in print, and she has new work in the forthcoming anthology Kindergarde. Her first full-length collection is forthcoming from Black Radish Books in 2010.

Marthe Reed is an Assistant Professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the Director of Creative Writing. She has two collections of poetry, Gaze, published by Black Radish Books, and Tender Box, A Wunderkammer, published by Lavender Ink, as well as two chapbooks, zaum alliterations and (em)bodied bliss, both part of the Dusie Kollektiv series. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, New Orleans Review, and Sulfur, as well as e'zines such as HOW2, MiPoesias, Exquisite Corpse, Aught, eratio, Word For/Word, and Moria. Her manuscript, an earth of sweetness dances in the vein, was a finalist in Ahsahta Press' 2006 Sawtooth Poetry Contest. Marthe Reed edits the chapbook press Nous-zot Press. Her training includes an A.M. in Creative Writing. from Brown University, an M.A. in English and American Literature from U.C. San Diego, and a PhD in the poetics of place from the University of Western Australia.

For more information contact jamaughn@cabrillo.edu

http://anewcadence.blogspot.com/

Louisiana's marshlands before and after BP

Reading in New Orleans

Thursday, May 20th, I will be reading from Gaze at The Gold Mine Saloon's 17 Poet's Series, 701 Dauphine St., corner of Dauphine and St. in New Orleans.

June 19th, reading in Santa Cruz at A New Cadence Poetry Series: 7:30 PM at the Felix Kulpa Gallery, 107 Elm Street, Santa Cruz 95060 (behind Streetlight Records).

Gaze is one its way to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (April 24-25) with SPD, from whom it is now available: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780982573105/gaze.aspx.

AWP 2010

Just back from AWP 2010 -- three days at the book table for Dusie and FABULOUS reading with Dusiers, Pussipo, and the Stonecoast MFA program, organized by Mackenzie Carignan. Such a treat to hang out with so many fabulous women writers and to hear such amazing work.

Much praise for the beauty of the Dusie chaps and excitement about the project. Annie Finch stopped in to sign hers, while Jenn Karmin helped me woman-the table, and Cara Benson and Mackenzie Carignan were inveterate companions.

Gaze is coming April 2010

From Black Radish Books: Gaze.

If you would like a review copy, email me at: marthereed at gmail dot com

Full review of Hume's Shot on New Pages

Check out my review of Christine Hume's Shot in last month's New Pages:

http://newpages.com/bookreviews/2010_02/february2010_book_reviews.htm

Poet Pirate Netbot

Navigating/reading/writing the information web:

http://vispo.com/guests/kedrick/poetpiratebot/

Late winter reading

A scatter-shot of glimpses:

jared hayes' new Dusie chap, Act Two of the Gertrude Spicer Story, oulipioan transformations presented as triptychs, a flip book of side-by-side iterations/interruptions of Stein and Spicer, a meditation/meander on the poetic process.

Stephen Vincent's tree haptics in the new Ekleksographia, photos of tree 'signs' or 'writing', the trace of growth, injury, decay. Vincent has arranged these in a vertical scroll so that one's eye follows them down--down into another realm/world/being: the slow time of growth. Lovely work.

Hearing Cathy Wagner read: holding a taut filament between sung and spoken, between the lyric and the gap-filled stutter, her unflinching attention to the body and its passages into and against other bodies, through the quotidian matrix. Her fabulous sense of humor!

j/j hastain's sweetstrange nerve yen to yew tree, so much attention to the shift or the gap, attending to what waits there, reading the body through the text, through the cultural-mythic text.

Chrstine Hume's Shot

Christine Hume's new book Shot, from Counterpoint Press, is a Baedeker of night, mapping a haunting landscape with a language she makes strange to fit the dreamscape in which the poems unfold. Dream wording a dream world.

Striking the hour in rounds

A freak disease tears across the vista

You’ve been told this is the year of medicine

Lunar halo must bother you tonight with some life

War shine and flare lit in the lips

...

Sugar awake in the animal disaster

Vaccinations break and they bother you

The situation of its waves

Puts catheters in blather-mouths

Time for you to ride

Hume writes us into a realm where “stars are swinging doors that miracle the shift,” her night made ours: “this night your existence depends upon the doubt of single pair of eyes stoning you from a low bridge.” And like the dark, Hume chastens us: “Pound at your own belief until its empty of you.” She draws the reader down into a language wedding illusion and certainty, ambiguity the quicksand under our feet. Get this book!

Out the door!

The envelopes are addressed and stamped: zaum alliterations is going out by mail today, Dusie 4! Keep your eyes peeled for a white 5X9 envelop.

Bread And Jam For Frances: Highlights of 2009: Friends Having Babies (and me knitting sweaters for those babies)

Bread And Jam For Frances: Highlights of 2009: Friends Having Babies (and me knitting sweaters for those babies)