Literary Oddities Sideshow Reading with Mutant Pinatas

I love when offbeat readings come my way, so I was excited to participate in Four Chambers Press' Literary Oddities sideshow experiment in the midst of the annual Mutant Pinata exhibit.

There were musicians playing in one corner as poets read simultaneously, exhibited as living art around the rest of the room.

Meanwhile there were other freaks working the crowd, jugglers, and a carnival barker trying to draw attention on the street. It was a symphony of chaos and it was beautiful.

With so much going on, I knew the expectation would be to do loud poems in a loud voice. But I wanted to see how much intimacy you could bring to an atmosphere like this, so I decided to alternate between loud poems that could fight to be heard amid the insanity and quieter poems that would read privately into one person's ear.

I try to be receptive to the magic of spontaneous moments that can happen at any live event so when I saw Bill Campana and his daughter walk in front of me, I said that I would do my "Poem Yet To Be Written By Bill Campana" next. Bill said he wished he had a copy, so we could perform it together. There would never be a more appropriate moment than right there, so I pulled him up and we bellowed out a duet that was almost enough decibels to break open a few of the pinatas.

It was so much fun that Bill suggested we try it again sometime with four of us reading it simultaneously like the infamous Zaireeka album from the Flaming Lips!
So at least there's that to look forward to.

To finish my set, I collaborated with the audience on a "cut-up poem" inspired by the technique William S. Burroughs used to love (but without the scissors). I read from Jeffrey McDaniel's book The Splinter Factory and every time someone hit me I would open to a different page and start reading at another random spot until getting hit again by the next person. It was a "Pinata Cento."

Selfie with Jack Evans, Ashley Naftule, and Four Chambers Asst. Editor Jared Duran who organized this whole thing.

KGB Bar anthology and local readings

Years ago, I stumbled onto an anthology called The KGB Bar Book Of Poems in a used bookstore. Being on the other side of the country from New York, I did not know that David Lehman and Star Black ran a weekly poetry series at the KGB Bar in the East Village. This book collects poems from some of the poets who read there during its first three years, including Charles Simic, Thomas Lux, Yusef Komunyakaa, Denise Duhamel, Marie Howe, Hal Sirowitz, John Ashbery, Robert Bly and plenty of other favorites so it's an impressive anthology of poetry on its own.

But along with a poem, it also includes anecdotes from those poets on the most memorable thing ever to happen to them at a poetry reading. This is what I love the best about this book. These tales and footnotes are hilarious, sad, sometimes even frightening and they echo in the back of my mind whenever I prepare for one of my own readings.

Erin Belieu was half way through her reading at an all-boys prep-school, when her wraparound skirt announced that it wasn't tied well enough, by dropping to the floor.

Denise Duhamel was threatened in the alley after judging a poetry slam at the Nuyorican Cafe.

But a common theme is showing up for a readings that are not well attended. Thomas Lux remembers entering an amphitheater (with several hundred seats) to find exactly ONE person in the audience. Additionally, that lone audience member was unconscious from a drug overdose. They called and waited for an ambulance to come get him and then went back home.


I also have a lot of empathy for these stories, since I have been hosting a monthly reading series for the past five years. We've had some rough and/or tragic situations here and there, but we are incredibly fortunate to have a wonderful audience that is talented and dependable.

We always begin with an open mic round. That's David Chorlton at the podium that co-host Bill Campana has dubbed "The Writer's Block."

Here are both of my distinguished co-hosts, Jack Evans and Bill Campana.

Our readings take place on 2nd Fridays
at {9} The Gallery in downtown Phoenix, if you're ever in the neighborhood.
1229 Grand Ave
Phoenix, AZ 85007

open mic starts at 7pm

Five Years of Caffeine Corridor Poetry Series and One Poem Translated Into Spanish

Five years ago, Jack Evans asked if I wanted to start a monthly reading series together. I had been approached about hosting readings before, but I had zero interest in squeezing something like that into my life. However, Jack is a revered local legend so there was absolutely no way I could pass up the opportunity to collaborate with him.

We have similar taste and priorities, so it was easy to agree on a common mission. Most of the poetry venues were so divided. This type of poetry goes on over here and that type of poetry goes on over there and they almost never crossed paths. But there were poets we liked from all of those different scenes/genres, so we decided to have two featured poets each month. That way we could sometimes pair up poets who would never end up reading together. People who came to see one poet would end up exposed to work they never knew about and sometimes it broadened some horizons. It worked better than we could have envisioned and it really caught on.

(for the record, I had way too much fun photoshopping this flyer)

We went through 5 venues and our open mic got big enough that we turned that component over to Bill Campana to host (because he's much better at that sort of thing). So to celebrate our 5th Year, Jack and I prepared brand new batches of poems to be read by the other person. We had done this several years ago, but that time was with poems that people likely already heard and might be familiar with. This time we wanted to trade identities and read poems that nobody had heard yet, so the first time they heard them would be in someone else's voice. It was so much fun and the "intros" and between poem banter became almost like a roast.

Another highlight was when one of our long-time regulars Ernesto Moncada (who was there for our very first reading, has featured for us twice, and contributed to our open rounds on many many months) surprised us by translating a poem from each of us into Spanish. That was a brand new experience for both of us and luckily I was able to get a video of him reading my poem "Other Meaning of Aloha" (from this issue of Up The River) before my camera died.

I wish all of my poems sounded that good. I should just go all Cyrano now and have Ernesto or Jack read my poems wherever I go.

Here's Ernesto posing with us three co-hosts after the 5th Anniversary show. I love this pic.

Making Connections: Water & Life In A Desert City – An Exhibition Where Visual Art Meets Poetry

I went to see the opening reception for Making Connections: Water & Life In A Desert City – An Exhibition Where Visual Art Meets Poetry at the Shemer Art Center.

Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker did a fantastic job curating this exhibit. Over the years, he's worked as a project manager for Public Art programs in Phoenix and Scottsdale, but he also has plenty of personal experience in the poetry and art scenes. So he knows pretty much everyone involved in those kinds of dark arts and he put his expertise to use, pairing up poets with a piece of visual art for the show.

It was exciting to finally see who else was involved in this project. Names like Sally Ball, Charles Jensen, newly appointed inaugural Poet Laureate of Arizona Alberto Rios, and my longtime co-host Jack Evans just to name a few.

Here is a peek at the multimedia piece that I got paired up with, from artist Sue Norton-Scott:

 

 I loved that piece and that was one of the coolest things about this show. If I stumbled onto this exhibit, that is the piece that would have captured my attention. It was easy to write up a companion poem.

But it wasn't just me. Most of the poets felt the same way about their match-ups. Vaughan-Brubaker knew enough about each of us so that his instincts led to some uncanny pairings. He is great at what he does and the only one in town, who could have pulled this off.

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