Poetry @ The Zeitgeist
The Latter-Day History
Wednesday May 21:
Poetry @ the Zeitgeist featuring Mariela Griffor, Christina Kallery, and James LaCroix.
Doors at 7.30p, the reading begins at 8.30p. As always, this is a smoke-free
and admission-free event.
Wednesday April 16 @ 8p:
Poetry at the Zeitgeist presents Edward Griffor, James Hart the Elder, and Kathryne Lindberg. They are going to be talking about poets and poetry, not necessarily reading some. Dig that.
Friday March 21 @ 8p:
White Print Inc. presents a book release celebration of Jonh Clark's debut publication Being Still. Also performing are poets Nandi Comer, Kim Hunter, and
James Hart III, as well as music by wolf ears and the jazz-electro-fusion of du-lab.
There will be cheap eats and drinks for all. This event is admission-free, though buying an author's book is always appreciated.
Wednesday March 19 @ 8p:
Poetry at the Zeitgeist presents Carly Sachs, Robert Fanning, and Kawita Kandpal.
Carly Sachs' the steam sequence (Washington Square Press) has won praise from poet Lynn Hejinian who said the work is “courageous and melancholy re-embodying of something that by its very nature can’t be remembered, is about the very limits of experience. Its substance has been subjected to erasure; something worse than time has tried to make it disappear. But it has refused to vanish completely; it will not abandon history.”
Robert Fanning: Tim Monaghan, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of The Ledge Magazine and Press said of Fanning’s The Seed Thieves (Marick Press) “These poems resonate with a most exquisite sense of longing and visceral intensity. Through his poetry, we appreciate the significance of memory and loss, while marveling at his uncanny ability to resurrect, in the most immediate sense, those occasions once relegated to obscurity.”
Kawita Kandpal: Speaking of Ms. Kandpal’s Folding a River (Marick Press), Alicia Ostriker, author of No Heaven, says, "This is a volume of memory and desire, landscape and water, and again water. Loss is redeemed by the sensuous beauty of Kandpal’s language, and the precision of her insights into ‘the darker cur rents.’ You will believe her when she names them ‘holy.”
Wednesday February 27, 2008 @ 8pm:
Poetry @ the Zeitgeist presents three new writers, Carolyn Maun, Zachary Neil Jones,and Mirinda Fleenary. As always, this
event is Smoke Free and Admission Free.
Wednesday December 12 @ 8pm:
Poetry @ the Zeitgeist features Michael Kelleher, Cheri L. R. Taylor, and Audra Kubat. This event is smoke-free and admission-free, but we encourage folks to buy books from these talented writers.
Michael Kelleher is the author of two collections of poems, Human Scale (BlazeVOX Books, 2007) and To Be Sung (BlazeVOX Books, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared at The Poetry Foundation Website, Jacket, ecopoetics, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Brooklyn Rail, The Buffalo News, Slope, and others, and he has read his work in the U.S., Canada, and as part of the Encuentro del Poesia Del Lenguaje in Havana, Cuba in 2001. With Ammiel Alcalay, he edits the 'OlsonNow' blog, which is dedicated to the poetry and poetics of Charles Olson. Since 2000, he has edited ELEVATOR, an artist's book poetry press.
Cheri L. R. Taylor is a poet, poetry teacher and tutor. She received her MFA from Vermont College and is currently working as a Senior Writer for the InsideOut Literary Arts Project which places writers in residence in Detroit Public Schools. She has four chapbooks of poetry and has been published in Rattle, Awakenings Review, The Café Review, Reintigration Today, Clean Sheets, Current Magazine, Ellipsis, Third Wednesday and others. Her short stories, Leaving Walloon ( a novel excerpt) and The Patriot, have both won awards in the Detroit Writers Annual Competition. Her first full length poetry collection, Wolf Maiden Moon, is currently in the publication process.
Audra Kubat usually sings her poetry having released records records (Million Year Old Sand, Since I Fell in Love with Music) on the Times Beach label. But she will be reading on this occasion. Like her songs her poetry is spare and magical. This will be her third appearance and her second reading @the Zeitgeist.
Wednedsay, November 14 @ 8pm:
Noreen Cashen, Jhon Clark, and Dennis Teichman.
Dennis Teichman has been an essential part of the Detroit literary scene from his days of hosting a literary arts radio program to his being publisher of Past Tents Press to the publication of V8. Teichman’s distinctive take on the post-industrial waste land and it’s influence on its human creators provides instinct, insight, and ironic inspiration.
Norene Cashen will be celebrating the publication of her first collection of verse The Reverse is Also True (white print press). Her work has appeared in Dispatch Detroit, (Doorjamb Press), Markszine.com, and the anthology Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poets 2001 (Wayne State University Press), and is currently included in the on-line project, gender-f. Norene has written about music and poetry for The Metro Times (Detroit) and various newspapers and magazines. She lives and works in Michigan.
Jhon Clark co-edited All The Days After: Critical Voices in Poetry and Artwork, published by Upsidedownculture collective 2003, and in 2005 was a member of the Critical Moment editorial collective, which is a journal of news, analysis and perspectives for Southeast Michigan. Currently, he works with Detroit Summer Collective, who works with youth in various capacities including the Live Arts Media Project (LAMP) and writes online at www.upsidedownhouse.blogspot.com.
Wednedsay, October 17:
Poetry at the Zeitgeist this month features Carly Sachs, Jeff VandeZande, and Ken Meisel.
Lyn Hejinian, speaking on Carly Sachs’ volume of poetry on the Holocaust, "the steam sequence": “Carly Sachs’s courageous and melancholy re-embodying of something that by its very nature can’t be remembered, is about the very limits of experience. Its substance has been subjected to erasure; something worse than time has tried to make it disappear. But it has refused to vanish completely; it will not abandon history.”
She teaches creative writing at George Washington University. With Reb Livingston, she curates the Burlesque Poetry Hour at Bar Rouge in Washington, D.C. Her poems have been published in Alimentum, Another Chicago Magazine, Beltway Quarterly Review, Coconut, Ekphrasis, Runes Review, poemmemoirstory, Goodfoot, No Tell Motel, Wicked Alice, and anthologized
in Best American Poetry 2004, Regrets Only (Little Pear Press) and Literary Lunch (Knoxville Writer’s Guild). Her latest book of verse, the steam sequence, (Washington Writers' Publishing House 2006) is an innovative and well imagined group of poems on the Holocaust that has won high praise from the likes of Lyn Hejinian and Laurie Sheck. Sachs received her MFA from The New School.
Jeff Vande Zande lives in Midland where he teaches at Delta College. His poetry and short stories have appeared in over fifty small press periocals including College English, Passages North, Rattle, Adirondack Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Fugue. Two of his poems were nominated for the 1999 Pushcart Prize, and poet Jim Daniels nominated his work for a 2003 Pushcart. In 2006, poet laureate Ted Kooser chose Vande Zande’s work to appear in American Life in Poetry. Vande Zande’s most recent work, the novel Into the Desperate Country, was nominated for a Michigan Notable Book Award.
Ken Meisel is a poet & psychotherapist. His work appears in over 60 journals including Cream City Review, Spillway, Lake Effect, Bryant Literary Review, Concho River Review, Soundings East & Sulphur River Literary Review. He has authored Sometimes the Wind (2002, March Street Press), Before Exiting (2006, Pure Heart Press) and Just Listening (2007, Pure Heart Press). The chapbook version of Just Listening won the 2006 Swan Duckling contest. Meisel also received honorable mention in the 2006 Rattle poetry contest and his work was included in Rattle's 2006 "Best Of" collection. The summer 2007 edition of River Oak Review contains a comprehensive review of his first three poetry collections. Meisel is a member of the Michigan Writers Voice.
Unfortunately Ms. Sachs was ill and did not even make it too Detroit. She is being re-scheduled for June 2008, we think.
This event is SMOKE FREE and ADMISSION FREE (though purchasing the authors' books is greatly appreciated).
September 19 at 8:00pm:
Poetry @ The Zeitgeist returns with Carla Harryman, Catherine Taylor, and Stephen Cope reading from new and recent work.
We start this season's poetry jumbalaya with readings by Carla Harryman, Catherine Taylor, and Stephen Cope.
Since the late 1970’s, Carla Harryman has been known for her genre-disrupting prose, poetry, and performance. Her most recent publications include the book length poem Open Box (Belladonna 2007), the novel Gardener of Stars (Atelos, 2001) and Baby (Adventures in Poetry), 2005. Adorno’s Noise, a collection of conceptual essays, is forthcoming from Essay Press. Harryman is co-editor of Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker (Verso, 2006) and a participant in the multi-authored experiment in autobiography, The Grand Piano. A recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2004-05) award in poetry, she is on the faculty of Wayne State University and the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College.
Catherine Taylor is a writer and filmmaker interested in experimental documentary work. Her essays, poetry, and reviews have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Typo, Xantippe, Postmodern Culture, and The Colorado Review. She was Associate Producer of the Emmy Award-winning documentary, The Exiles, and was a founding producer of The Human Rights Watch Film Festival. She is Senior Editor of /nor magazine and is a Founding Editor of Essay Press (www.essaypress.org), a small press dedicated to publishing innovative essays. Taylor is currently writing a hybrid genre book about South Africa. She is on the faculty at Ohio University.
Stephen Cope’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in XCP:Cross-Cultural Poetics, Mirage: A Period(ical), Denver Quarterly, Shark, The Germ, and elsewhere. In Spring 2001, he served as guest editor of The Review of Contemporary Fiction's special issue on the work of David Antin. Later this year, University of California Press will publish Cope's edition of George Oppen: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers, a collection of the previously unpublished writings the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet. He has taught at University of California, San Diego, Drake University, Ohio University, and Bard College.
Wednesday June 20 @ 8pm
This month Poetry @ The Zeitgeist features Ted Pearson, author of Songs Aside: 1992-2002 from Past Tents Press, Peter Marcus, whose The Singing Fish (Calamari Press) has received wide acclaim,
and Dan Featherstone whom we expect to read from his forthcoming book The Clock Maker's Memoir (Cuneiform Press). More info about these gents here.
This month, "Poetry @ the Zeitgeist" will feature long-time friends of the series Ted Pearson and Peter Markus, as well as Philadelphia's Dan Featherstone.
Ted Pearson has long been associated with the Language School poets, and his work is widely regarded for its epigrammatic intensity, trenchant lyricism, and improvisatory grace. After nine years' residence in Detroit, he returned to his native California. We welcome his visit to Detroit and his reading. His many books include Evidence: 1975-1989, Planetary Gear, and, Songs Aside: 1992-2002 from Past Tents Press. He co-edited Bobweaving Detroit: The Selected Poems of Murray Jackson (Wayne State UP, 2003).
Peter Markus is the author of The Singing Fish (Calamari Press), The Moon is a Lighthouse (New Michigan Press), Good, Brother (AWOL Press), and Still Lives with Whiskey Bottle (March Street Press). His stories and poems have appeared in such journals as the "Massachusetts Review", "Black Warrior Review", and "Northwest Review". He was for six years the writer-in-residence at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Markus is also Senior Writer with the Inside Out Literary Arts Project in Detroit.
Dan Featherstone is a poet, scholar, and teacher. His books of poetry include The Clock Maker's Memoir (Cuneiform Press, forthcoming 2007), United States (Factory School, 2005), and Into the Earth (Quarry Press, 2005). Shorter collections include The Clock Maker's Memoir: 1-12 (Handwritten Press, 2002), 26 Islands (Primitive Publications, 1999), Anatomies (Potes & Poets Press, 1998), and Rooms (PaperBrain Press, 1998). He teaches at Kutztown University and lives in Philadelphia with Rachel and their dog Fredo.
FRIDAY MAY 25 @ 8PM:
Audra Kubat will headline a special fundraising event for "Poetry at the Zeitgeist", along with jazz from Big Shorty,
and poetry from Mariela Griffor, Bill Harris, James Hart III, and Kim Hunter.
"Times Beach" recording artist Audra Kubat will headline a set of musicians and poets who will be passing the hat for the "Poetry at the Zeitgeist" monthly poetry series.
The fundraiser will also feature jazz from Big Shorty, as well as poets Mariela Griffor, Marick Press Publisher, Bill Harris, poet, Broadway playwright and Wayne State University English faculty member, James E. Hart III,
author of White Holes (Marick Press, 2005) and The Watchable Book (Weightless Language, 2003), and Kim Hunter, author of borne on slow knives (Past Tents, 2001). "Poetry at the Zeitgeist" has been providing free poetry readings
to the Detroit area for five years. It has included nationally recognized writers such as Melba Boyd, Carla Harryman, Ted Pearson, and John Rybicki. Proceeds from this benefit will be used to improve outreach
and helping with the travel expenses of writers willing to come in from out of town.
Wednesday May 16 at 8pm: A special event for "Poetry at the Zeitgeist" featuring Hayan Charara and Randa Jarrar. Doors will open at 7pm, and the reading will begin promptly at 8pm. More information about these authors below. A special edition of "Poetry at the Zeitgeist", this event will feature Hayan Charara and Randa Jarrar. As always, there is no charge for this event, though donations to the Zeitgeist are always greatly appreciated.
Hayan Charara is the author of two poetry books, The Alchemist's Diary (Hanging Loose, 2001) and The Sadness of Others (Carnegie Mellon, 2006), which was nominated for the National Book Award. He is also the editor of a forthcoming anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. Born in Detroit, he moved to New York where he lived for many years. He now makes his home in Texas. He is also a wood worker.
Randa Jarrar is the author of the forthcoming novel, A Map of Home. Her award winning fiction has been translated into Italian and Finnish and has appeared in Ploughshares as well as numerous anthologies. She made the PEN center's list of new and emerging writers, and has received notable nods in "Best American NonRequired Reading 2005" (ed. Dave Eggers). Her translations from the Arabic have appeared in many anthologies, including the forthcoming Words Without Borders: The World Through the Eyes of Writers. She is a columnist at Make/Shift magazine and a Zell Fellow at the University of Michigan's MFA program, and is currently at work on a collection of short stories.
SATURDAY MAY 12 at 8PM
Two events in one night! A special night of music and poetry with The Painted Bird featuring Dan Kahn, and
poets Alan Franklin, Dan Hammel, and Kawita Kandpal. Poetry begins at 8p in the Bar Gallery, and Music starts around
9pm in the Theater. More information about this event here.
Note: Admission for The Painted Bird performance will be on a sliding scale of $5 - $10.
First, in the "Bar Gallery", a rare Saturday edition of "Poetry at the Zeitgeist", featuring Dan Hammel, a young writer from Detroit, Alan Franklin, guitarist/singer/songwriter for Detroit's great anti-authoritarian rockers The Layabouts, and Kawita Kandpal, whose first collection of poetry, Folding a River, has just been published by Marick Press. This portion of the evening begins at 8pm, and is smoke-free and admission-free (though we do ask for donations to help pay the electric bill).
At 9pm The Painted Bird, featuring multi-instrumentalist Daniel Kahn, will perform in the theater. More details about the band on their "MySpace" page here.
"Like the grotesque Jerzy Kozinski novel from which they take their name, The Painted Bird reminds us that even if man is only an animal, he can still sing.”
Admission for the music of The Painted Bird is on a sliding scale, $5 - $10, and if you want to give more, you’re generosity would be greatly appreciated by all involved.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 18 at 8PM
This month's edition of "Poetry at the Zeitgeist", will feature
Terry Blackhawk, the founder of InsideOut, and the editor of DETROIT, the journal published by the Museum
of Contemporary Art Detroit, Lynn Crawford.
Terry Blackhawk founded InsideOut while teaching high school creative writing in Detroit. Her awards include a Michigan Council for the Arts "artist-in-residence grant", the Governor's Award for Art Education, and a Progressive Hero Award. Ms. Blackhawk is author of numerous essays and four poetry collections: Voices from the Myths (1998); Body & Field, (MSU Press, 1999); Escape Artist (BkMk Press, 2003), which received the John Ciardi Poetry Prize; and a Greatest Hits chapbook from Pudding House Press. Her poems have appeared in journals such as "Marlboro Review", "Michigan Quarterly Review", "Southern Poetry Review", "Florida Review" and "Artful Dodge".
Lynn Crawford is the author of four works of fiction, including Simply Separate People and Fortifiction Resort. Her work appears in various anthologies including, most recently: "marks", "Fence Fiction", "The Brooklyn Rail", "The New York Tyrant", "lacanian ink", "Lilies", "Cannonball Review" and "McSweeneys". She writes a regular fiction column for "marks", titled The Mind's Eye, responding to different Detroit based artists.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 21 at 8PM
This month features Vievee Francis, Matthew Olzmann, and Tommye Blount.
As always, this event is Smoke Free and Admission Free, though donations are greatly appreciated.
10.10.06 - Poetry @ the Zeitgeist
The Zeitgeist is proud to present yet another addition of Poetry @ The
Zeitgeist featuring Mariela Griffor and Kawita Kandpal. Be sure to come down this Wednesday, November 15th at 8 p.m. and join us!
Mariela Griffor is co-founder of The Institute for Creative Writers at Wayne State University and Publisher of Marick Press. Her work has appeared in periodicals across Latin America and the United States. Griffor Holds a B.A in Journalism and an M.A. in Communications from Wayne State University. Exiliana is her first book.
Kawita Kandpal received her M.F.A. in Poetry from Bowling Green State University. Her poetry has appeared in TriQuarterly, Puerto del Sol and Current. She is an English Instructor with Jackson Community College and Poet-in-Residence at Southwestern and Northwestern through the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. Her first collection, Folding a River, will be published by Marick Press in April 2007. Poetry @the Zeitgeist is Admission Free, Smoke Free.