news, song of the week

Van Morrison was born with sixteen red hairs damply coiled on a chest already barrel-thick. His urine smelled of peat. His father said if he ran too fast, his soul would lag behind his body, exposing him to danger in the form of timber trucks and falcons. His mother read to him from the epics of Ossian while four winds from the Baltic stirred the scraggled curtains. At school he was shown a photograph of Blind Willie McTell and spoke to no one for a week. Decades later, in California, …

Leah Umansky has just added new reading dates in support of her debut collection, Domestic Uncertanties(BlazeVox, 2013).

June 12th – Reading with John Reed and Dustin Luke Nelson at Molasses Books
June 15th – Reading at Walt Whitman’s Birthplace from 7-9 pm in Huntington, Long Island, NY

July (Northwest USA)

July 18- Reading with Carl Adamshick and Luke B. Goebel at Ristretto Roasters. Portland, Oregon
July 20- Reading — Felix Kulpa Gallery –Santa Cruz, California
July 24 – Reading with Tom Healy and Adam Fitzgerald at Richard Hugo House, …

Cynthia Atkins is hitting the road in support of her new book, In The Event of Full Disclosure.

July 22 – 7 pm
Sacramento Poetry Center
Launch: In the Event of full Disclosure
with Cynthia Atkins, Stephanie Brown & Geoffrey Nutter
curated by Tim Kahl
http://www.sacramentopoetrycenter.com/

July 26- 8:30 pm Reading
The Rapp Saloon Poetry and Open Mic
Santa Monica Int. Hostel, Hosted by Tresha Faye Haefner
July Features: Cynthia Atkins & Alexis Rhone Fancher
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rapp-Saloon-Poetry-Reading/122145672327-

July 30- TBA
San Francisco, CA
location TBA with Cynthia Atkins & Karen Carissimo

September 27-7 pm
Books & Co.
Launch reading, Lexington, VA
with Cyntthia Atkins and Erin …

Krystal Languell, author of Call the Catastrophists is hitting the road in the month of May. She’ll be joined by Robert Alan Wendeborn and they will be making stops in Arizona, Texas, and New Orleans.

May 25, 6:30pm
Casa Libre
228 N 4th Ave
Tucson, AZ 85705

May 26, 7:00pm
House Reading
Las Cruces, NM

May 28, 6pm
Marfa Book Company
With fiction writer Lily Hoang
105 S Highland
Marfa, TX

May 30, 7:30pm
Tiny Park
1101 Navasota Street, Suite 2
Austin, TX
May 31, 6pm
Diane Tape Series
Maple Street Book shop at Bayou St. John
3122 Ponce de Leon St, New Orleans, LA

*August 19, 7pm
with Becca …

Wonder is accepting manuscripts March 15 – May 15 for its first annual Wonder Book Prize, judged by Macgregor Card. They’re accepting full-length manuscripts of any genre. The author of the selected manuscript will receive a $300 prize and publication.

Please send a cover letter, your manuscript, and a $10 submission fee ($15 if you would like a final copy of the selected book). Please do not include your name in the manuscript. Each submission will be read blindly …

This B-Side originally backed the 1982 single “Lovely Money,” but I own it on the vinyl 1985 compilation Damned But Not Forgotten.  Talking about it now feels awkward–if I focus on what The Damned meant to my fourteen-year-old self, that’s mawkish.  If I discuss the lyrics or the music, it’s redundant.   It’s too personal, like talking about my family and expecting others to experience them as I do.  Maybe that’s it, though–maybe The Damned are family.  My cool British older cousins, the ones who helped me accept myself, the ones …

Sundays, Coldfront features five upcoming cross-borough readings in NYC. Check out this week’s picks.

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Henry Miller Festival Opening Night Party
Monday, May 13th @ 7 pm – 10 pm
The City Reliquary
370 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

Hosted by Ping Pong, the Henry Miller Library’s literary journal. (Facebook here.)

Big Sur/Brooklyn Bridge night of poetry, prose is hosted by Ping-Pong, a journal of art and literature published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library, Parachute: the Coney Island Performance festival, and the Brooklyn-based poetry blog: Poetry Crush, at the City …

Dare yourself not to sway, ever so slowly, to the bluesy, funereal cadence of this tune. This is a death march with swagger, a black and chrome hearse hauling through mud. This is a baby grand piano roped to the trunk and snare hits so late, they nearly yank the entire procession to a halt. Cave’s self-deprecating, self-aggrandizing hero does double-duty as both the captain and cargo of this ill-fated motorcade. “They’ll interview my teachers,” he croons, “who’ll say I was one of God’s sorrier creatures. They’ll print informative, six-page …

Sundays, Coldfront features five upcoming cross-borough readings in NYC. Check out this week’s picks.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Monday, May 6 @ 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading with Four Way Books Poets
NYU Bookstore, 726 Broadway, New York, NY

Alex Dimitrov, Yona Harvey, Allison Benis White, Bruce Willard and Jay Baron

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Monday Night Poetry: LOUIS JENKINS + GLYN MAXWELL
Monday, May 6 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St, New York, NY

LOUIS JENKINS is the author of Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005. Other books include An Almost Human Gesture (Eighties Press …

The lyrics to this lo-fi German song are few. They read like a scrawled diary, wistfully observing that the seasons revolve in an endless, disorienting loop. One year can seem so very long. On a November morning, the ripple of guitar and bursts of muted cymbals reflect the whisper of the snow. Listening, I thought of everything that tendered this moment. Leaving Berlin and moving to New York to start life over again, again.  This yearning punctuated by a ride cymbal, ringing like sleigh bells. Tocotronic’s wit often dwells in …