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I've been awful about updating this news page and a lot has happened this past fall, including several Accidental Player events, a reading for Prolit Magazine in Philly, and a few podcast appearances. So here's a round up:
Accidental Player now has its own website which has the schedule for the Winter/Spring season now up, and it includes an archive of past events. Additionally, Accidental Player is now publishing chapbooks! The first title, Planchette by Sean Collins, will be released at an event in Philly on Thursday, January 17th. Late this summer, I talked to Mike Ingram for his new podcast called Day Jobs. It's focus is on art, money and what artists do to support themselves if they aren't able to do so through their art. I talk about the range of jobs I've had (factory worker! bar tender! web content writer!) as well as the ability (or inability) to do residencies and the cost of poetry book prizes. The episode came out in December, and the most recent episode, featuring Bud Smith, just dropped this week. Check out Day Jobs. I also spoke to Jeff Alessandrelli and Sunny Bleckinger for their new podcast The Steer, which features writers talking about music and musicians talking about writers. It was a lot of fun to drop by the KBOO studio when I was in Portland and talk to Sunny and Jeff, and I love that they assembled a playlist to close out the episode. Other episodes feature Justin Phillip Reed, Eileen Myles, Jonathan Lethem, and Laura Gibson. Check out The Steer. I also have two new poems in the January/February issue of American Poetry Review. They included one of them, "Emma," online. Read "Emma" at American Poetry Review. (They seem to have pulled a photo of me that's about ten years old!) Since I was pretty much only happy with two poems I wrote this past year, it was nice to have them picked up by a journal I've long admired! Onward into 2019! Accidental Player is excited to host Jeff Alessandrelli, Warren C. Longmire, Jeff T. Johnson, Christy Davids, and Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela on Thursday, July 12 upstairs at Tattooed Mom (530 South Street, Philadelphia, PA). Reading starts at 8pm.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of the poetry collections THIS LAST TIME WILL BE THE FIRST (2014) and Fur Not Light (2019), both from Burnside Review Press. Just published in the US and UK in March by the UK press Eyewear, Jeff's also the author of the essay collection The Man on High: Essays on Skateboarding, Hip-Hop, Poetry and The Notorious B.I.G. Recent work by him appears in The American Poetry Review, Pleiades and Please Kill Me, among other outlets. Additionally, Jeff runs and directs the vinyl-record only poetry press Fonograf Editions; recent albums have been released by Alice Notley, Harmony Holiday and Rae Armantrout. Warren C. Longmire is a Philly native, expert level whistler, pushcart nominee, and former poetry editor at Apiary Magazine. He's been published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Eleven Eleven and has two chapbooks: Ripped Winters and Do.Until.True. He currently splits his time between web programming, midi drumming, and writing tumblr poems about the limit of 1/x. You can find his writings, essays, videos, and sounds at dountiltrue.tumblr.com and soundcloud.com/wclongmire. Jeff T. Johnson is the author of Trouble Songs: A Musicological Poetics (punctum books, 2018). His writing has appeared in Gramma, PEN America, Jacket2, Encyclopedia Vol. 3, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere. A chapbook, trunc & frag, is at Our Teeth. He lives in West Philadelphia. Christy Davids is a poet and teacher. She is an assistant editor at The Conversant, collects recordings at poetry//SOUNDS, and co-curates the Philadelphia-based reading series Charmed Instruments. Some of her work can be found in VOLT, Open House, Bedfellows, Jacket2, and the Poetry Foundation's Harriet among others. Her chapbook "on heat" was selected by the editors in BOAAT Press' 2016 chapbook competition and was published in May 2017. Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela is a writer, editor, community college professor and sometimes DJ. Her poetry and prose have been supported by many rad people and projects including: VONA, Lambda Literary, The Leeway Foundation, Hedgebrook, American Poetry Review, The Baffler, Make/shift, As Us Journal, The Rust Belt Rising, APIARY, Aster(ix), Solstice, The Acentos Review, Mad House, HOLD, boneless, skinless, Bedfellows, and Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements (Soberscove 2016).  I'm looking forward to reading at this event celebrating the release of Erin Dorney's new book from Mason Jar Press: I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems After Shia LaBeouf. Come join me, Erin, and Jim Warner for a night of readings and 50 cent pierogies. Hosted by Jaime Fountaine.
I am really excited to be joining Barrelhouse's upcoming Conversations & Connections conference in Arlington, VA on Saturday, May 12. I'll be appearing on a panel with Dan Brady and Celeste Doaks titled "To Make the World in Words: Writing Poetry From Real Life" (description below), and I will be providing feedback on people's poems during the "speed dating with an editor" event. I'm also super excited to attend the event and catch the other panels, especially the Poetry and Engagement panel. Check out the website, and I hope to see you there!
TO MAKE THE WORLD IN WORDS: WRITING POETRY FROM REAL LIFE Our best material often comes from our lived experience, but that doesn’t make it any easier to write. Writing from real life presents its own thorny set of questions: How true does this have to be? What will people who know me think? This is real, but is it interesting? The poets on our panel will discuss how to navigate these questions and more, including the advantages poetry has over fiction and non-fiction when getting to the truth. Panelists: Dan Brady (Strange Children, Barrelhouse Poetry Editor), Celeste Doaks (Cornrows and Cornfields), Gina Myers (Philadelphia, The Tiny Editor)  Did the dream of speed begin with the birth of the car? Or was that the dream of escape–of hopping in the car and going, leaving your life and responsibilities behind? And is this desire for speed and escape a particularly American thing? Bruce Springsteen has said that the Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” is every song he has ever written, about which poet Ryan Eckes notes, “It’s not a song about overthrowing capitalism but of escaping it.”
In General Motors (Split Lip Press), his third collection of poetry, Eckes offers another vision for America–a glimpse at how different things could be if people were to recognize their collective power and reclaim public spaces. General Motors is a timely, alive, and necessary collection. Read the full review at Fanzine. On Tuesday, March 13th I am reading at the Writers & Words series in Baltimore alongside Joyce Lombardi, Jamesha Caldwell, and Karen Bennett. The reading starts at 7pm at Charmington's (2601 Howard St.).
In advance of the reading, I answered a few questions. I might have said I hope to be a couch in the next life. You can read the interview here. Please join us on Sunday, February 25, for a night of readings upstairs at Tattooed Mom featuring Steven Karl, Raena Shirali, Boston Gordon, and Steven Perez. Doors at 7 pm and reading at 8 pm.
Steven Karl is the author of two poetry collections, Sister (Noemi Press, 2016) and Dork Swagger. Recent poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from the Journal of New Jersey Poets, Elderly, Dream Pop Press, Bear Review, and Sublevel. He is an editor for Sink Review and was born in Philly, raised in S. Jersey, and currently lives in Tokyo, Japan, with his wife and daughter. Indian American poet Raena Shirali is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), an experimental collection grappling with standards created by an invisible system and enforced by family, relationships, and violations of women’s rights in a reckoning of intersectional identity. Born in Houston, Texas, & raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Shirali earned her MFA from The Ohio State University. Boston Gordon is a poet and writer living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They run the You Can't Kill A Poet reading series - which highlights queer and trans identified poets in Philadelphia. Boston earned their MFA in Poetry through Lesley University. They are a winner in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s inaugural Cultureshare. They received a Leeway Foundation Art & Change grant in 2017. They have previously been published in The Fem, Bedfellows, Tinderbox, Guernica and more. Steven Perez is a writer and musician living in Philadelphia. His work has been published in Bedfellows, Sink Review, La Galería Magazine, Southeast Review, Fourteen Hills, and Zoomoozophone Review. His self-released chapbook, in palm, can be found on Issuu. He also records music under the name clarence.  I am super honored to have some poems in the new issue of Summer Stock! The issue includes work by:
Jessica Bozek Brandon Brown Reed Bye billy cancel Dara Cerv William Corbett Jim Dunn Cori Gabbard Ed Go melissa christine goodrum Kevin Kilroy Amy King Anna Kreienberg Martha McCollough Gina Myers Cory Nakasue Charlotte Seley Eileen R. Tabios Gilmore Tamny Christie Towers Luis Humberto Valadez Donald Vincent Michael Whalen Jon Woodward Daniel Wuenschel The issue cover art is also by Dara Cerv. Information about the contributors is here. Big thanks to the editors, Andrew K. Peterson and Jared Hayes! At the Ploughshares blog, Kimberly Ann Southwick reviews my Barrelhouse chapbook Philadelphia. Read the review.
Tonight I'll be reading with Mike Ingram and Bud Smith in The Hatchery Reading Series at the Monkey Bar in Kensington. Details on the Facebook event page - https://www.facebook.com/events/128420391119582/  |
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January 2019
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