FURTHER LANDSCAPES, a reading and community discussion

Taking the image of the “urban wasteland” or “third landscape” as a broad conceptual platform, this event will include readings and interactive audience discussion with poets & interdisciplinary writers/artists around the question: What does it mean to be currently engaged in writing around/about ecology while living in an urban/industrialized area?

Featuring: CAConrad, Tina Darragh, Marcella Durand, Brenda Iijima, Patrick Lucy, Hoa Nguyen & Jonathan Skinner

Saturday, 13 November 2010 [400pm to 700pm) @ Fergie’s Pub

For more information contact J Townsend at greybridge@gmail.com

CACONRAD is the author of The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010/Chax Press, 2009).  He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006) and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined (Factory School, 2010).  The son of white trash asphyxiation, his childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift.

TINA DARRAGH‘s recent books include Deep eco pré, a collaboration with Marcella Durand freely available from Little Red Leaves, and The Elders Series #8 with Jane Sprague and Diane Ward (belladonna, 2009).  “No Rights Observed” – an opposable dumbs project report – will soon be available from Palm Press.

MARCELLA DURAND‘s recent books include Deep eco pré, a collaboration with Tina Darragh (Little Red Leaves, 2009), AREA (belladonna, 2008), and Traffic & Weather, a site-specific book-length poem written during a residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in downtown Manhattan (Futurepoem Books, 2008).  She is the 2010-2011 Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice for the Center for for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania where she will be teaching a course in ecology and poetry.

BRENDA IIJIMA is the author of Around Sea (O Books, 2003), Animate, Inanimate Aims (Litmus Press, 2007), revv. you’ll-ution (Displaced Press, 2009) and If Not Metamorphic (Ahsahta Press, 2010) as well as numerous chapbooks and artist’s books.  She is also the editor of the eco language reader (Nightboat Books & Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2010)  Currently she is working on a body of work titled, Some Simple Things Said by and about Humans – a chronicle of how humans have used animals as surrogates.  She is also choreographing ecstatic creaturely movements and gestures.  She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs.

PATRICK LUCY lives and writes in Philadelphia, where he is a member of the New Philadelphia Poets.  Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, The Corduroy Mtn, Elimae, Elective Affinities and more.  He is the author of two chapbooks, LIVE FIELD: GROWTHS 1-5 (_Catch/Confetti press, 2009) and WILLIAM (con/crescent press, forthcoming).

HOA NGUYEN was born in the Mekong Delta, grew up in the DC area and studied poetics in San Francisco.  She is the author of 8 books and chapbooks, most recently Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey, 2009), Kiss a Bomb Tattoo (Effing Press, 2009) and Chinaberry (Fact-Simile, 2010).  Based in Austin, Hoa curates a reading series and leads a creative writing workshop.

JONATHAN SKINNER‘s poetry collections include With Naked Foot (Little Scratch Pad Press, 2009) and Political Cactus Poems (Palm Press, 2005).  He founded and edits the journal ecopoetics, which features features creative-critical intersections between writing and ecology.  Skinner also writes ecocriticism on contemporary poetry and poetics, his essay “Thoughts on Things: Poetics of the Third Landscape” appeared recently in the eco language reader (ed. Brenda Iijima).  Skinner teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at Bates College, in Central Maine, where he makes his home.