Event Report - Julia Elliott

Fiction writer Julia Elliott read to an audience of approximately fifty people in the penultimate event of the spring 2008 New Writing Series on 10 April 2008. The event, introduced by David Kress, was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon) as well as both lo- and hi-end audio (thanks to Rebecca Griffin for the latter). A full set list follows the photo gallery below. For Kyle Kernan’s write-up in the Maine Campus, click here.

PHOTOS

Julia Elliott reads her story “The Whipping”

The writer entertained questions after her reading

Julia Elliott reads the name of one of two audience members who won copies of her band’s CD

Dave Kress scours the cube: “No more questions?”

SET LIST (compiled by Katie Lattari)

* Introduction by Dave Kress
1) “The Whipping”
- originally published in the Georgia Review

Questions
1) How long did it take you to write “The Whipping”?
2) How much personal experience went into “The Whipping”?
3) Did you revise “The Whipping”?
4) Was it particularly difficult to write the prayer scenes in “The Whipping”?
5) What do you think is the most important aspect of the short story?
6) Did you place alliteration in your story on purpose?
7) Did you find it hard to get “The Whipping” published?
8] Could you tell us something about your CDs [Elliot’s band “Grey Egg“]?
9) I noticed the inclusion of incongruous tastes and smells in the story; do you include that in your writing on purpose, and continually?
10) Was there more of the Arthurian novel included in “The Whipping” originally?
11) What’s the rest of your writing like, compared with “The Whipping”?
12) What does “texture” mean to you in terms of writing?
13) What/ who do you read?

Event Report - Koeneke & Friedlander

Poets Rodney Koeneke and Benjamin Friedlander read to an audience of approximately fifty people in the New Writing Series on 4 April 2008. The event, introduced by Steve Evans, was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon) and, thanks to Rebecca Griffin, hi-end audio. Full set lists follow the photo gallery below.

PHOTOS

Benjamin Friedlander addressing the NWS audience

Rodney Koeneke introducing a poem

Koeneke dons his neo-Benshi garb

Koeneke and Friedlander entertaining questions from the audience

(photos by Jennifer Moxley)

SET LISTS (compiled by Katie Lattari)

Benjamin Friedlander
- “It’s a pleasure to read for the home crowd…”
- Reads works in translation, originally in either German or Italian; then proceeds to his own poems
1) The Fox, the Cook, the Cock (translation)
2) Prayer of Exhortation or Encouragement (translation)
3) To Set Your Mind at Rest (translation)
4) Afternoon with Circus and Citadel (translation)
5) Brecht (translation)
6) History lesson
7) The Social Contract
8] Urban Renewal
9) Network News
10) Dictation
11) The Mind is a Bubble Sheet
12) The Emergency Broadcasting System
13) Dedication
14) Patriot Days
15) When a Cop Sees a Black Woman
16) Biological or Social Female Parent of a Child or Offspring and Its Poetry
17) Somebody Blew Up America
18] Hillary Duff
19) Fame
20) The Chinese Written Character is a Medium for Poetry
21) Beloved
22) Eliot
23) Me and My Gang
24) Charmed
25) Drew’s Old

Friedlander’s Commentary
- The poem “Hillary Duff” as his “statement on poetics”
- “Fame” is in memory of a friend; “may be my first FLARF elegy”
- “The Chinese Written Character is a Medium for Poetry”: “for Burt and Sylvester if only they were here”
- “Charmed” is a “Birthday Poem”: “My favorite thing about FLARF is the Birthday poems”

Rodney Koeneke
epigraph for this reading, derived from the sign of the University Inn: “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face”

from Rouge State
1) #50 Summer Acrostic Hotshot
2) #39 How to Find Safe Passage
3) #21 Sweethearts of what rodeo?

from Musée Mechanique
4) Afterword
5) Use Dips to Initiate
6) Pizza Kitty
7) Chary as Gary
8] In Memory of My Feelings
9) The World is Loud
10) Europe. Memory. Squid Parts. Grace.
11) The Adorno Corollary

from “Etruria” (manuscript)
12) ben friedlander
13) Rules for Drinking 40s
14) chinoiserie
15) Etruria

Film/ poetry “neo-benshi” performance for Guru Dutt’s film Pyaasa (1957)

Koeneke’s Commentary
-On “The Adorno Corollary”: the poem is referencing Adorno’s famous statement about poetry after Auschwitz
-On “Ben Friedlander”: this is a birthday poem
-On “Etruria”: “FLARF, like soylent green, is people”

Questions
1) How do you use Google searches to help sculpt your [FLARF] poems?
2) (To Koeneke) Do you have any audio files of your poetry available anywhere?
3) For birthday poems, how/ what do you search? Is there a certain way you go about it?
4) How much FLARF do you write in comparison to non-FLARF poetry?
5) (To Koeneke): How long did it take you to write the “neo-benshi” piece?
6) (To Koeneke): Are you striving for persona-type poems?
7) Do you think writing can change things?
8] To Koeneke): You like performance—do you have any background in theatre?

Event Report - Thomas Sayers Ellis

Poet Thomas Sayers Ellis read to nearly a hundred people in the Hill Auditorium on 20 March 2008 in an event cosponsored by the New Writing Series and the Honors College. In his forty-minute set, Ellis read from his book The Maverick Room and from a manuscript in progress (see set list below). The poet also took questions from the audience. The event, introduced by Steve Evans, was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon).

Event Report - Rivera & Moxley

Poets Eléna Rivera and Jennifer Moxley read to a capacity audience in the Soderberg Auditorium on 20 March 2008. Both writers read from work in manuscript (set lists below). The event was recorded on digital videotape (vhs and dvd duplicates available soon), on lo-fi audio (8-bit wav) and hi-fi audio (thanks to Rebecca Griffin). Benjamin Costanzi’s recap of the event for the Maine Campus is online here.

Event Report – Stephen Cope and Catherine Taylor

A full Soderberg Auditorium greeted poet Stephen Cope and experimental essayist Catherine Taylor for the third event of the spring 2008 NWS. Cope read from his latest manuscript, “The Bellerophonic Letter,” including several provocative poems such as “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Assassination of a President,” while Taylor read engaging excerpts from her latest hybrid genre essay “Duffer’s Drift.”

NWS Coverage in the Maine Campus

Benjamin Costanzi offers his take on the first NWS event of the season, a Valentine’s day reading by Mel Nichols and Rod Smith, in his article “D.C. Poets Deliver ‘Pope My Ride.’”

And Kyle Kernan gives an account of last Thursday’s Grady Awards reading here.

Our thanks to the Maine Campus for keeping the NWS on its style beat!

Event Report - Mel Nichols & Rod Smith (Setlist)

NWS Assistant Katie Lattari compiled the following setlist for Mel Nichols and Rod Smith’s reading on 14 February 2008 (see event report with photos here). The event was recorded on digital video tape and will be available in dvd and vhs formats shortly. A lo-fi (8-bit) audio recording was made, as was an archival quality audio recording (thanks to Rebecca Griffin).

Event Report - Mel Nichols & Rod Smith

Approximately thirty-five people turned out to hear a Valentine’s Day reading by D.C.-based poets Mel Nichols and Rod Smith. The first event of the spring ‘08 NWS featured new work by both writers and a lively question and answer session. Oh, and a singing puppet. And Flarf. And….

Full set-lists are on their way, as are some audio highlights. In the meantime, a few snaps from the event.

It just called to say it loved you….

Mel Nichols reading from her work

Rod Smith reading from his work

Rod Smith reading from his new book, Deed

NWS Assistant Katie Lattari diligently compiling the set list

Mel Nichols responds to a question from the audience

Rod Smith & Mel Nichols during the Q&A

Our V-Day mascot, looking a little melancholy as the event draws to a close

Event Report - Michael Davidson

An audience of approximately thirty-five people turned out to hear poet Michael Davidson read in the Arthur Hill Auditorium on the UMaine campus as part of the fall 2007 New Writing Series.

Davidson opened his set with two pieces—”Subject Matter” from Post Hoc and “You Were Saying” from The Arcades—that are scored for two voices (poet & UMaine professor Jennifer Moxley supplied the second voice). He then read further from Post Hoc, The Arcades, and “Bad Modernism,” a sequence from a manuscript in process. A question and answer period followed, during which Davidson spoke about the formal and conceptual constraints that shaped his sequence, “Screens,” and about the sources, more generally, of the various projects he’d read from. He also spoke about how the process of losing his hearing forced him to rethink some basic, aural-centered, assumptions he’d had about poetry. A detailed set-list will follow.

Davidson’s visit to UMaine, which also included a lecture drawn from his forthcoming book, Concerto for the Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body, was generously co-sponsored by the UMaine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Study.

The event, which was introduced by Steve Evans, was recorded on digital video tape; vhs- and dvd-duplicates are available through the English Department (contact Steve Evans or Hansie Grignon on FC).

Photo album

Michael Davidson reading from a new manuscript

Davidson and Moxley perform a poem for two voices

Some of Davidson’s many books

Entertaining questions after the reading

Event Report - Nakayasu & Kunin

More than sixty-five people came to the Soderberg Auditorium on November 8th to hear poets Sawako Nakayasu and Aaron Kunin read from their works. Nakayasu read as yet uncollected poems, selections from her volume Nothing Fictional but the Accuracy or Arrangement (She (Quale Press), and several translations from Four From Japan (Litmus Press). Aaron Kunin read from a poetry manuscript in progress and concluded with several chapters from the end of his forthcoming novel The Mandarin. Afterward, both poets took questions from the audience.

A digital video recording was made of the event. VHS and DVD duplicates will be available shortly.

Photo gallery

Sawako Nakayasu reads from new work

Aaron Kunin reading

Jennifer Moxley introduced Kunin’s reading

The poets entertained questions after the reading was over

Thanks to Katie Lattari for her work preparing this event report.