Sunday, November 4, 2012

BASH #6:CAConrad and YOU! + (soma)tic workshop!


Hi All-

Please, tell everyone you know, CAConrad is coming to Boston for a (Soma)tics Workshop and a BASH poetry reading at the Brookline Booksmith.

Thursday 11/8 at 7:30PM: (Soma)tic Workshop at The Distillery Gallery, 516 E. 2nd Street, South Boston. There’s a suggested donation of $5-10, but we’d rather you come and not donate then not come because you can’t. CA will be making up a brand new (Soma)tic exercise on his train ride up from Philly, so this is gonna be awesome. It should run no later than 9, I would imagine, and it’s open to everyone – poet, artist, person, even a nine-to-fiver like me. If you’d like to have a chance to learn and create something new from the master and inventor of a type of creative exercise, or just have a really fun time, you should absolutely come.

Friday 11/9 at 7PM: BASH #6: CAConrad and YOU! At the Brookline Booksmith. CA’s opener will be poems and poets from the workshop attendees the night before, presenting the poems written to or inspired by the (soma)tic exercise CA comes up with the night before. Free, as always.

This is gonna be the last BASH for 2012, so let’s make these two events a complete blow out. Please let me know if you have any questions, and spread the word to all your friends and co-conspirators.

CACONRAD is the author of A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon, (Wave Books, 2011), and The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010/Chax Press, 2009). He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titledThe 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. He’s also a  2011 PEW Fellow, a 2012 RADAR and UCROSS Fellow, and a 2013 BANFF Fellow.

In the words of CA, a (Soma)tic exercise is as follows. “Soma is an Indo-Iranian ritual drink made from pressing particular psychedelic and energizing plants together. In Vedic and Zoroastrian traditions the drink is identified with the divine. The word Soma is derived from the Sanskrit and Indo-European tongues meaning "to press and be newly born."

Somatic is derived from the Greek, meaning the body. In different medical disciplines it can mean different things, from a cell or tissue, or to the part of the nervous system that controls sensations and movements.

My idea for a (Soma)tic Poetics is a poetry which investigates that seemingly infinite space between body and spirit by using nearly any possible THING around or of the body to channel the body out and/or in toward spirit with deliberate and sustained concentration.”

I really hope to see you there!

Jon Papas

Friday, July 20, 2012

BASH #4: Ariana Reines (With Special Guest)

BASH #4: Ariana Reines (With Special Guest) coming up, 8/10, 7PM. Look to this space in upcoming days for re-releases of the audio from BASH #1 (Nick Demske, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Rebecca Wolff) and BASH #2 (Jericho Brown, Thomas Sayers Ellis, and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon), interview questions with Ariana Reines, and details on the mystery guest which I'll hopefully have an announcement for soon!

Invite yourself to our facebook event! http://www.facebook.com/events/374033155996823/

Leave a comment too, while you're at it!

Monday, May 7, 2012

Hi-

Here's the audio for BASH #3, Black Ocean. Spend some time with DJ Dolack, Joshua Harmon, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, and Janaka Stucky.

http://soundcloud.com/jonpapas/bash-3-black-ocean

Bonus: you get to hear me mess up Joshua's book title!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

BASH #3: BLACK OCEAN ft. Janaka Stucky, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, DJ Dolack, and Joshua Harmon

Watch out, Coolidge Corner. On Friday the 13th, the verbal mindfuck whirlwind that is Black Ocean comes to Brookline Booksmith for BASH #3.

This is going to be absolutely killer. Check:

This is the launch party for Janaka's new book, The World Will Deny It For You, on Ahsahta Press. Janaka, if you didn't know, is the publisher of Black Ocean and Handsome, and was voted Boston's Best Poet in the Boston Phoenix in 2010, for real.

Greying Ghost (http://www.greyingghost.com/) will be producing a limited, special edition pamphlet for this event featuring one poem from each of the readers.

And speaking of the readers:

Paige Ackerson-Kiely is the author of In No One's Land (Ahsahta 2007), My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer (Ahsahta 2012) and other works of poetry and prose. She lives in rural Vermont, co-edits Handsome, and works at a homeless shelter.

DJ Dolack's work has appeared in numerous journals including Handsome, Lonesome Fowl, Salt Hill and Diode. His video reviews and Tourist Trap, NYC series can be found at Coldfront Magazine, where he is also the video editor. His most recent chapbook, 12 Poems, was published by Eye For An Iris Press (2010). His next chapbook, No Ser No., is forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press (2012) and his first full length collection, Whittling a New Face in the Dark, is forthcoming from Black Ocean (2013). He teaches writing at Baruch College and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Joshua Harmon is the author of a novel, Quinnehtukqut (Starcherone 2007), and of two books of poems: Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie (Akron Series 2010) and Scape (Black Ocean 2009). His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in journals such as Agni, The Believer, Colorado Review, New England Review, TriQuarterly, and Verse, and he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. He lives in western Massachusetts.

Janaka Stucky is the Publisher of Black Ocean and its literary journal, Handsome. He is the author of The World Will Deny It For You (Ahsahta 2012) and Your Name Is The Only Freedom (Brave Men Press 2009), and his poems have appeared in such journals as Denver Quarterly, Fence, North American Review, and Volt. In 2010 he was voted “Boston’s Best Poet” in the Boston Phoenix.


Finally, if you don't know Black Ocean, get updated and buy some books at http://www.blackocean.org/catalog/. Boston is lucky to have something as consistently exciting, radical, and new new new as Black Ocean, working and playing right here in our city. Come out, and celebrate Janaka's book release, Black Ocean's writers, and new lit in general, at BASH #3; BLACK OCEAN.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Reminder for BASH #2

Quick reminder-

As the fog of February / AWP / Seasonal affective disorder clears and/or worsens, don't forget about the upcoming BASH Reading with Lyrae, Thomas, and Jericho, presided over by Afaa Michael Weaver. I know I won't let you forget.


More to come!

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Second Bash Reading, 3/9/2012

BASH kicks off the 2012 season with one awesome reading.

Afaa Michael Weaver, poet, translator, oracle, empath, and first Elder of Cave Canem, introduces and presides over a reading of Cave Canem faculty, fellows, and prize-winners:

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, author of Black Swan and ]Open Interval[, 2009 National Book Award finalist, teacher, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and co-author of Poems in Conversation and a Conversation with Elizabeth Alexander.

Thomas Sayers Ellis, poet and photographer, is the author of Skin, Inc. and The Maverick Room, the co-founder of The Dark Room Collective, and a faculty member at Cave Canem, Lesley University, and Sarah Lawrence College.

Jericho Brown was the recipient of the American Book Award for Please, his first book. He was recently awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, and teaches at the University of San Diego.

This is going to be an amazing reading. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting up comments, interview questions, and other things about our readers, but for now let me leave you with some poetry.

"RR Lyrae: Matter" by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21776


"Track 5: Summertime" by Jericho Brown

Enjoy!