ARTIFACT*

ARTIFACT & SPT : 7.26.08 : Nakayasu : Levin : Bernes

2008-07-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

Artifact & Small Press Traffic present...

Sawako NAKAYASU
Lauren LEVIN
Jasper BERNES

Saturday, July 26, 2008
6PM Doors/6:30 Reading

@ Oakland Art Gallery
Frank Ogawa Plaza
199 Kahn's Alley
Oakland Ca 94612

$5 suggested donation

BIOS

JASPER BERNES is the author of Starsdown (in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni). He is a graduate student at UC Berkeley and lives in Albany with Anna Shapiro and their son, Noah.

LAUREN LEVIN grew up in New Orleans and just moved from Grand Lake to Temescal. Her chapbooks are Adventures (Your Beeswax Press) and In Fortune (a collaboration done for the dusie e-chaps project). Lauren edits the magazine Mrs. Maybe with Jared Stanley. There's news, and conversation about skeptical occultism, at the magazine blog.

SAWAKO NAKAYASU is a poet & translator living in the US & Asia. Her most recent book is a translation of Takashi Hiraide’s For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut (New Directions, 2008), and forthcoming books are Hurry Home Honey (from Burning Deck) and Textures Notes (from Letter Machine, a new press.)

links to photos of Artifacts of the past

2008-07-14T11:46:00.001-07:00

more photos from Melissa Benham

more photos from Michael Nicoloff

more photos by Alan Bernheimer

more photos of ye olde artifact by Stephanie Young

more photos from Alli Warren

Artifact: 6.28.08 : Bernheimer : Day : Sailers

2008-06-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

ARTIFACT PRESENTS...

Alan Bernheimer
Jean Day
Cynthia Sailers

Saturday, June 28th
Doors 6PM/Start 6:30PM

@Oakland Art Gallery
Frank Ogawa Plaza
199 Kahn's Alley
Oakland Ca 94612

$5 suggested donation

BIOS

CYNTHIA SAILERS is the author of Lake Systems (Tougher Disguises, 2004). She is currently writing a dissertation on perversion and group psychology for the Wright Institute in Berkeley. She is a board member of Small Press Traffic and previously co-curated the New Yipes Reading Series (formerly New Brutalism). Currently she lives in Alameda.

JEAN DAY’s many publications include the recent Enthusiasm: Odes & Otium (Adventures in Poetry, 2006) and Daydream (The Eponym) (Belladonna, 2008). New and recent works appears online at mark(s) <http://www.markszine.com/> and in forthcoming issues of The Siennese Shredder, Model Homes, Van Gogh’s Ear, and Sal Mimeo. Her poems have also appeared in a number of anthologies, among them Nineteen Lines: A Drawing Center Writing Anthology, The Best American Poetry 2004, Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women, From the Other Side of This Century: A New American Poetry, 1960-1990, and In the American Tree. She has spent much of the past three decades working for literary publishers in the San Francisco Bay Area, first as wearer-of-all-hats at Small Press Distribution and currently as associate editor of the journal Representations, published by the University of California Press.

Alan Bernheimer was born a New Yorker in 1948. Coastal inclination since. Europe before the age of reason. Graduated from Yale in 1970 and worked with words at various jobs. High-tech marketing for a long spell. A San Francisco Bay Area resident for thirty-some years. His most recent book is Billionesque (The Figures, 1999). Actor, playwright, director with SF Poets Theater in early 1980s and again more recently. Produced poetry radio show on KPFA 1979-80, In the American Tree. Literary nonprofit board member, currently Small Press Distribution. Heaven on earth: Paris.

Artifact & Nonsite Collective present...

2008-05-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday, May 24th

Michael BASINSKI
Jeanne HEUVING
David LARSEN

Please note our new earlier time:
6PM, Reading begins promptly at 6:30PM

$5 suggested donation

Oakland Art Gallery
Frank Ogawa Plaza
199 Kahn’s Alley
Oakland CA 94612

BIOS

Michael Basinski is The Curator of The Poetry Collection State University of New York at Buffalo. He performs his work as a solo poet and in ensemble with BuffFluxus. Among his many books of poetry are Of Venus 93 (Little Scratch Pad); All My Eggs Are Broken (BlazeVox); Heka (Factory School); Strange Things Begin to Happen When a Meteor Crashes in the Arizona Desert (Burning Press); The Idyllic Book (Michel Letko, Houston, Texas); Mool, Mool3Ghosts and Shards of Shampoo (Bob Cobbing's Writers Forum); Cnyttan and Heebie-Jeebies (Meow Press); By and The Doors (House Press); Un-Nome, Red Rain Two, Abzu and Flight to the Moon (Run Away Spoon Press): Poemeserss (Structum Press) and many more. See (or hear): RadioRadio on UBUWEB (see Basinski and BuffFluxus). His poems and other works have appeared in Dandelion, BoxKite, Antennae, Unbearables Magazine, Open Letter, Torgue, Leopold Bloom, Wooden Head Review, Basta, Kiosk, Explosive Magazine, Deluxe Rubber Chicken, First Offense, Terrible Work, Juxta, Kenning, Witz, Lungfull, Lvng, Generator, Tinfish, Curicule Patterns, Score, Unarmed, Rampike, First Intensity, House Organ, Ferrum Wheel, End Note, Ur Vox, Damn the Caesars, Pilot, 1913, Filling Station, Public Illumination and in others.

Jeanne Heuving's cross genre Incapacity (Chiasmus Press) won a 2004 Book of the Year Award from Small Press Traffic, and her book of poems Transducer (Chax Press) is just out. She has published multiple critical pieces on avant garde and innovative writers, including the book Omissions Are Not Accidents: Gender in the Art of Marianne Moore. She is concluding work on a new critical manuscript, The Transmutation of Love in Twentieth Century Poetry, which focuses on the poetics of Pound, H.D., and Robert Duncan as well as several contemporary poets. She is a member of the Subtext Collective, on the editorial advisory board of HOW2, and is a professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences program at the University of Washington, Bothell and in the graduate program in English at UW, Seattle. She is the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, NEH, and UW Simpson Humanities Center. In 2003, she was the H.D. Fellow at the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

David Larsen has been self-publishing his poetry in the Bay Area for 15 years. From 1999-2002 he co-edited the San Jose Manual of Style, and was a curator of the New Yipes film and poetry series during its 2005-2007 run. A collection of his poetry called The Thorn (Faux) came out in 2005, and his translation of Names of the Lion by Ibn Khalawayh will appear soon from Atticus/Finch. This summer, David leaves San Francisco for the state where he was born in 1970.

also...

Salon with Michael Basinski

Sunday May 25th
7:00-9:00 p.m.

Please email Tanya Hollis for street address at tanya@tanyahollis.com

Come meet Michael Basinksi, visual-performance-fluxus etc. poet and curator, in the wake of the May 24 Artifact reading.

Archival materials will be on display in Tanya's studio for your enjoyment--and you can touch them too! :)

Artifact : 4.26.08 : Armantrout : Giscombe : Warren

2008-04-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

Artifact presents:

Rae ARMANTROUT
C.S. GISCOMBE
Alli WARREN

Saturday, April 26, 2008

***Please note our new earlier time:
6PM, Reading begins promptly at 6:30PM

$5 suggested donation

***New Location:
Oakland Art Gallery
Frank Ogawa Plaza
199 Kahn’s Alley
Oakland CA 94612

Bios

Rae Armantrout’s most recent book of poetry, Next Life (Wesleyan, 2007), was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2007 by The New York Times. Other recent books include Collected Prose (Singing Horse, 2007), Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2004), The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001), and Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). Her poems have been included in anthologies such as Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1993), American Women Poets in the 21^st Century: Where Language Meets the Lyric Tradition, (Wesleyan, 2002), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford, 2006) and The Best American Poetry of 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2007.. In 2007 she received an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Armantrout is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, San Diego.

C.S Giscombe was born in Dayton, Ohio. Later he attended the State University of New York at Albany and Cornell University. He currently teaches at Berkeley and has
taught previously at Penn State, Illinois State, Cornell, among others. Giscombe also worked as editor of Epoch magazine throughout the 80s. His books are Postcards, Here, Giscome Road, Into and Out of Dislocation (FSG/ North Point) and his newest book, Prairie Style will be out from Dalky Archive in Fall 2008. Giscombe was the recipient of the Carl Sandburg Award for Giscome Road and grants and fellowships from the NEA, the Illinois Arts Council, the Fund for Poetry, the Council for the International Exchange for Scholars, etc. He is also a long-distance cyclist.

Alli Warren was born a Reagan baby and raised in the smog and wind of the San Fernando Valley. Duration Press recently published NO CAN DO. Other chapbooks include COUSINS (Lame House Press), HOUNDS, Yoke (Faux Press), and Schema (House Press). Alli lives in San Francisco, works at Small Press Distribution, and co-curates The New Reading Series at 21 Grand.

New Yorker: Armantrout

2008-04-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

only Rae Armantrout could get a poem not about sailboats in the New Yorker (April 7, 2008)

Integer

One what?

One grasp?

No hands.

No collection

of stars. Something dark

pervades it.

Metaphor
is ritual sacrifice.

It kills the look-alike.

No,
metaphor is homeopathy.

A healthy cell
exhibits contact inhibition.

These temporary credits
will no longer be reflected
in your next billing period.

“Dark” meaning
not reflecting,

not amenable
to suggestion.

sneak peek for may 24th...

2008-04-21T22:38:00.000-07:00

Repost: Help Tom Clark

2008-04-20T22:27:00.000-07:00

I'm reposting this from Dale Smith's blog because Tom Clark's in some dire straits after the collapse of New College...

Tom Clark needs your help. He is stranded with no salary and no medical insurance to cover costs due to a recent stroke. He also needs funds for medications to aid in the recovery of his wife, Angelica Clark, from surgery on her hip.

After 25 years on the faculty of the New College of California’s Poetics Program, payment on his salary and his insurance was abruptly stopped when the school came under scrutiny of federal and state auditors last fall.

Tom Clark has been an important voice in postwar American poetry since the 1960s. For a decade he was the poetry editor for The Paris Review. His many books appeared with Black Sparrow for nearly thirty years, and his biographies of Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson, and Edward Dorn have provided essential perspectives on the lives of these New American authors. He is a passionate and devoted teacher who deserves far greater recognition for his services to American poetry communities.

He needs your help now.

There will be a Tom Clark benefit reading in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, April 26, at 7 pm. A painting by Austin painter Philip Trussell will be auctioned, and broadsides and chapbooks by Clark will be available for purchase. Sliding scale donations are required at the door. Beer and wine will be available. All proceeds will be directed to Clark.

I am collecting donations as well from those of you outside of Austin who are willing to contribute. Please send what you can immediately to:

Tom Clark
c/o Dale Smith
2925 Higgins Street
Austin, Texas 78722

*

Background to the Situation

When the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) put the New College of California on probation in July 2007, I wondered what would happen to that 37-year-old institution. By November, the federal Department of Education refused to release $3 million in financial aid. That month, the school stopped paying faculty salaries. Since then, the school has lost its accreditation and it has closed doors indefinitely, stranding many former instructors with no income and a loss of health benefits. A February 28 article in the San Francisco Chronicle provides more details.

With Hoa Nguyen, Renee Gladman, Leslie Davis, Jeff Conant, Michael Price, and others, I attended the college in the mid 1990s, studying in the Poetics Program with David Meltzer, Lyn Hejinian, Gloria Frym, Adam Cornford, and Tom Clark. It’s a drag to think of that program’s disintegration, particularly since luminaries such as Robert Duncan, Joanne Kyger, and Diane di Prima had taught there over the years too.

I remember hearing Clark Coolidge, Lorenzo Thomas, Alice Notley, Barbara Guest, and others read there over the years, and I recall the cultural, material, and historic grounding of study in poetics at that time.

The attraction to the program centered on the fact that faculty in the Poetics Program were all poets, and yet instead of teaching in the traditional workshop format, instructors taught courses in poetics and in the material production of poetry.

My first semester included classes in Shelley, Backgrounds to Romantic Culture, and Lyn Hejinian’s class in poetic theory called, “The Language of Paradise.” Other semesters focused on Early Modern, Modernist, and American Renaissance periods, providing students with a thorough grounding in the theoretical, historical, and material backgrounds to the periods studied.

One semester I took Hejinian’s class on Stein, Clark’s on Olson, and Meltzer’s class on backgrounds to modernism, in which we read about John Reed, the IWW, and other revolutionary social movements that joined art and politics to influence change. I also was fortunate enough to study the art of letterpress printing with Jeff Conant.

Students were engaged with the creative possibility provided through poetry, and we worked to discover ways to increase our awareness of the art through study, conversation, and learning the skills necessary to publish magazines and chapbooks on our own. We learned how to extend conversations in poetry to existing audiences. And we learned how to listen to the ongoing dialogues that compose much of the contemporary verse we discovered in California and beyond at that time.

My years at New College grounded me in a serious education from which I could move forward on my own once the formal course work had been completed. I wrote a thesis on Philip Whalen, took my degree, and moved to Austin, where, with Hoa Nguyen, we began to produce magazines, books, essays, poetry, and host readings. New College’s emphasis on the material production of the poem as a social tool of engagement stuck with me. And as testament to the concreteness of this plan of study provided by New College, I was later accepted to a PhD program at the University of Texas based on this prior period of study and the resulting years of production.

By academic standards, the school was funky. But in terms of what was provided intellectually and creatively, it was essential and instructive.

Help those who have seen their livelihood damaged by the mismanagement of New College administration.

Send what you can today.

Please help Tom Clark.

The (New) Reading Series @ 21 Grand: Sunday, 4.20 : Myles & Nicoloff

2008-04-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

The (New) Reading Series @ 21 Grand
Sunday, April 20, 2008
6:30 pm // $3

Eileen Myles & Michael Nicoloff

LIVE @ 21 Grand
416 25th St at Broadway

EILEEN MYLES was born in Cambridge, MA in 1949. In 1974, she moved to New York where she studied poetry with Paul Violi, Alice Notley and Ted Berrigan. Her latest book is Sorry, Tree in which she describes "some nature" as well as the transmigration of souls from the east coast to the west. Bust Magazine calls Myles "the rock star of modern poetry" and Holland Cotter in The New York Times describes her as "a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant garde." She has been a professor of writing at UCSD since 2002.

All Things Myles

CA Conrad talks with Eileen Myles

MICHAEL NICOLOFF is the author of the chapbook "'Punks'" which was put out in print form by Taxt Press in 2007 and can now be found on the website Deep Oakland. His poetry and reviews have appeared in such fine publications as The Recluse, Mirage #4/Period(ical), The Orgasm Zine, and Traffic. Born and raised in Olympia, WA, he has hopped between coasts for the last several years. Right now, though, he lives on Alcatraz--the street--in Oakland, CA.

OPEN SPACE: SFMOMA BLOG

2008-04-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

from Suzanne Stein:

Dear Poets All,

Many of you know that a few months ago I was hired into a new position at the SFMOMA, and that one of my tasks was to build, launch, & choreograph a blog. What I proposed to do, and what I was subsequently hired to do, was to launch a blog not only on behalf of the SFMOMA per se, but on behalf of and driven by the collection of individuals outside and inside the museum. My first intention has always been to find a way to build a space which could function as a multidirectional portal between the local communities inside and outside or around the museum, and to find ways to make those communities visible and LEGIBLE to each other.

The obvious thing here is that a blog is in no small part a TEXT operation. There’s a COMMENT BOX. And I am now and will be into the future looking for collaborators, respondents, guest bloggers, commentators, writers, instigators. The focus will be on the super local—who lives, works, thinks, produces here in the Bay Area—but this email is reaching some of you also quite far away. Everyone is welcome and desired.

Please help populate and write into the space. Tell me what you want to do and see, what you like, and what should change. The blog is and will be a collective enterprise---

www.blog.sfmoma.org

Let everybody know

xxxooo

ps. we named it OPEN SPACE

pps So far it's not that kind to Internet Explorer 6, use firefox, safari, or internet explorer 7 if you can

SPD: OPEN HOUSE : 4.12.08

2008-04-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

Small Press Distribution Spring Open House & Book Sale
Saturday, April 12th
12 Noon - 4PM

20-5-% off all books!
Readings at 2PM

Poetry Trading Post
Trade a poem or story for a fee book!

Joanne Kyger, Bay Area master poet, has two recent books. About Now:
Collected Poems and Not Veracruz. She lives in Bolinas.

Marjorie Welish is a poet, painter, teacher and art critic. Her most
recent book Isle of the Signatories is just out from Coffee House.
She lives in New York.

Taylor Brady and Rob Halpern are the co-authors of Snow Sensitive
Skin, from which they'll read together at this event. Brady is an
education activist and the author of several books, most recently
Occupational Treatment. Halpern is a teacher and the author of
Rumored Place. Both are active in the Nonsite Collective and live in
San Francisco.

Free & Open to All!

SPD
1341 7th St. (@ Gilman)
Berkeley, CA
510-524-1668

Pegasus : 4.4.08 : Vitiello & Burger

2008-04-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

READING AT PEGASUS BOOKS

Poets CHRIS VITIELLO & MARY BURGER

Friday, April 4th, 7:30 pm
Free!

Chris is visiting from North Carolina. His 2nd book, Irresponsibility, was recently released from Ahsahta Press.

Mary lives in Oakland and is the author of Sonny (Leon Works) & co-edited Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative. She also edits Second Story Books.

Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
(510) 649-1320.

photos from Artifact : 3.22.08 : Buuck : Perez : Scalapino

2008-03-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

Craig Santos Perez reads

David Buuck performs

Leslie Scalapino reads

yay!

2008-03-24T15:42:00.000-07:00

hey all! I just want to say that Saturday's reading was a blast! the gallery is a great space, the directors are amazing, craig perez & leslie scalapino's readings & david buuck's performance were spectacular & everything went swimmingly. there was even a whole slew of cute poet babies!

if you weren't there, too bad for you. definitely come on over for our April 26th reading with RAE ARMANTROUT, CS GISCOMBE, & ALLI WARREN!

hello, with a fantastic line up like that, how could you miss it???

Artifact : 3 . 22. 08 : Buuck : Perez : Scalapino

2008-02-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

Artifact presents

David BUUCK

Craig Santos PEREZ

Leslie SCALAPINO

Saturday, March 22, 2008

PLEASE NOTE OUR EARLIER START TIME:
6PM Doors, 6:30 Readings begin

$5 donation at the door (no one turned away for lack of funds)

ALSO NOTE OUR NEW LOCATION!
Oakland Art Gallery
Frank Ogawa Plaza
199 Kahn's Alley
Oakland, CA 94612

Just steps away from 12th Street BART: Use the Frank H. Ogawa Plaza exit.

Directions may be found here.

Parking is free!!! & available at the following locations:

Dalziel Building (250 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza) Parking Garage (entrance on 16th Street at Clay Street)
Clay Street Garage (entrance on Clay Street between 14th and 15th Streets, behind City Hall)
City Center Garage (entrance on 11th Street between Clay Street and Broadway; also entrance on 14th Street)

BIOS

David Buuck is a Contributing Editor at Artweek, and a founding editor of Tripwire. His ongoing project BARGE, the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics, will be organizing (de)tours this summer as part of the Yerba Buena Center's Bay Area Now exhibition. Recent and forthcoming publications include Ruts, Runts, Between Above & Below, Paranoia Agent, Unmapped Landscapes, and The Suck. He teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute, and lives in Oakland.

Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam, has lived in California since 1995. He is a co-founder of Achiote Press and author of several chapbooks, including constellations gathered along the ecliptic (Shadowbox Press, 2007), all with ocean views (Overhere Press, 2007), and preterrain (Corollary Press, 2008). His first book, from unincorporated territory, is forthcoming this year from Tinfish Press. His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared (or are forthcoming) in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, Jacket, Sentence, and Rain Taxi, among others.

Leslie Scalapino is the author of thirty books of poetry, inter-genre or fictional prose, plays and criticism. Among recent books of poetry is: Day Ocean State of Stars' Night (published by Green Integer in 2007). New from UC Press, Berkeley, is: It's go in horizontal/Selected Poems 1974-2006. She taught for fifteen years in the Bard College summer MFA program, this year is teaching at Mills College, where she's also taught in the past---as well as teaching in the past at the San Francisco Art Institute and Otis Art Institute in L.A.

3/6 : Small Press Month Marathon & New Lit Generation reading

2008-02-25T11:04:00.000-08:00

Small Press Month Marathon & New Lit Generation reading

Thursday, March 6th 2008, 830pm

City Lights Book Store
261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway (North Beach)
San Francisco, Ca 94133

415-362-8193

spdbooks.org
MySpace.com/SPDbooks

Poetry Trading Post Trade a poem or story for a free book!

Manic D Press

Justin Chin, San Francisco, Gutted
Jon Longhi , San Francisco, The Rise and Fall of Third Leg
Alvin Orloff , San Francisco, Gutter Boys
Thea Hillman, San Francisco, forthcoming creative non-fiction collection, Intersex: For Lack of a Better Word
Jennifer Joseph, San Francisco, Editor and Publisher of Manic D Press

Sixteen Rivers Press

Jerry Fleming, Lagunitas, Swimmer Climbing Onto Shore
Margaret Kaufman, Kentfield, Snake At The Wrist
Jackie Kudler, Sausalito, Sacred Precinct
Nina Lindsay, Oakland, Today's Special Dish
Carolyn Miller, San Francisco, After Cocteau

Heyday Books
William E. Justice, Albany, Essential Saroyan
Nesta Rovian, Albany, Tree Barking: A Memoir
Stan Yogi, San Francisco, Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California's Great Valley
Lucille Day, Oakland, Chain Letter, a children's book, illustrated by Doug Dworkin

nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts
Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, San Francisco, Ichi-Ban and Ni-Ban and Manuel is destroying my bathroom
Aja Couchois Duncan, Commingled : Sight, San Francisco
Jacob I. Evans, San Francisco
Douglas "D. Scot" Miller, San Francisco
giovanni singleton, San Francisco, Editor of Publisher / nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts

O Books
Laura Moriarty, Albany, The Case
Bob Grenier, Bolinas, Phantom Anthems
Norman Fischer, Muir Beach, Precisely the Point Being Made
Leslie Scalapino, Oakland, Editor and Publisher of O Books
David Brazil, Oakland, Moe's Books

WritersCorps
Milta Ortiz, Oakland, Scatter My Red Underwear (theater piece)
Myron Michael Hardy, Oakland, www.rondeaurecords.com.
Antoinette Osborne, Notre Dame de Namur University
Robin Black
Annie Yu, City College
Indiana Pehlivanova, School of the Arts

Thanks to the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Marin Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and the Friends of SPD!

Artifact Reading Series Announces a New Partnership With the Oakland Art Gallery

2008-02-14T12:09:00.000-08:00

Artifact: a reading series of innovative writing, is pleased to announce that it will soon return from its hiatus in a new location at the Oakland Art Gallery. Centrally located in the hustle and bustle of downtown Oakland's Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, the Oakland Art Gallery provides a vital site for national and regional envelope-pushing visual artists to display work ranging from painting and sculpture to video and new media. The writers Artifact has hosted--who range from post-Language writers like Juliana Spahr and Lisa Robertson to New Narrative writers like Robert Gluck and Dodie Bellamy--are certainly no strangers to unknown aesthetic territory, and this shared aesthetic, as well as the beauty of the space itself, makes the Oakland Art Gallery an ideal venue for hosting Artifact's textual experiments. This partnership will have its official kick off on March 22nd, 2008, with a reading by David Buuck, Craig Perez, and Leslie Scalapino.

Artifact began in San Francisco's Mission District on November 20, 2004, in the living room of longtime friends and writers Melissa Benham and Chana Morgenstern. Recognizing a need for a new experimental poetry and prose venue, they began the Artifact Reading Series, which quickly became a vital social and artistic gathering spot for many Bay Area writers. Since then, the reading series has garnered praise in a number of newspaper and magazine articles. Venus Zine called it a "place for renegade literature," and Michelle Tea, writing in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, wrote that the series hearkens back to the "cozy salons of yore." Artifact maintains a partnership with Hooke Press (www.hookepress.com), which publishes chapbooks of "poetry, criticism, theory, writing, and ephemera" by past Artifact readers and other innovative writers, as well as Digital Artifact (www.digitalartifactmagazine.com), an online journal interrogating narrative in contemporary culture through fiction, criticism, experimental prose, and web-based audio-visual work.

Artifact is a Member of the Intersection Incubator, a program of Intersection for the Arts (www.theintersection.org) providing fiscal sponsorship, incubation and consulting services to artists.

SPD: Live at the AWP

2008-01-28T23:06:00.001-08:00

read what's happening at the AWP bookfair in NYC, as seen by Small Press Distribution's Brent Cunningham & Laura Moriarty as they fight the good fight....

http://awplive.blogspot.com/

Call for Submissions : Digital Artifact Magazine

2008-01-24T20:14:00.001-08:00

DIGITAL ARTIFACT MAGAZINE

ISSUE 2: TRANSNATIONALISM

**Call for submissions**

Deadline: May 15, 2008

Digital Artifact Magazine interrogates narrative in contemporary culture through fiction, criticism, experimental prose, and web-based audio-visual work. We're specifically interested in the impact of digital culture and globalization on contemporary narrative(s). How do these phenomena create new forms of story, text, language, and literature? What kinds of narratives have emerged from specific elements such as web sites, chatrooms, video games, Myspace, internet porn, digital photography, web cams, blogs, internet media and cell phones, as well as broad trends such as the breakdown of national boundaries, the increased speed of communication, and the globalization of culture, capitalism, and war?

The second issue of Digital Artifact will examine the idea of transnationalism. What is the transnational space in literature and art? How do we describe the textual and digital interactions between countries, classes, cultures, languages, and identities? How do we write/track border crossings, migrations, translations, trans-cultural identities and conversations? In particular, we are interested in narratives that cross boundaries between the countries of the so-called first, second, and third worlds, narratives of migration, war, global society, cosmopolitanism and refugee culture. What does nationalism mean in our time? What is your (trans)nationality? We invite creative responses that explore these question through fiction, criticism, experimental prose, or web-based audio-visual work. Our aesthetic tendencies are always on display at digitalartifactmagazine.com.

Submission Guidelines

We accept e-mail submissions only. Send submissions to digitalartifact@gmail.com. In the subject heading, include your last name and the word “submission.” Do not send previously published work, and let us know if the work gets accepted elsewhere. One submission per person, please. Include a brief (50-100 word) bio with your work. We will read and respond to submissions between May 15 and July 15. We regret that we cannot provide payment for accepted content at this time.

**We accept text pieces up to 2,000 words in length. Please paste your work as plain text directly into the e-mail. You may also send a text document as an attachment in addition to pasting the content, if formatting is important to the piece.

**For images, we accept visual files in pdf, jpeg, and gif format. Please send low-res (72 dpi) versions for submission review.

**For sound, send mp3 files, zipped if possible, at a length of 5 minutes or less.

**For video footage, email QuickTime files, compressed for web, again in the vicinity of 5 minutes or less. Links to videos posted online also work. If we have difficulty looking at your video due to compatibility issues, we will email you with information about uploading your submission to the Digital Artifact YouTube account.

digitalartifactmagazine.com
digitalartifactmagazine.blogspot.com
digitalartifact@gmail.com

Digital Artifact Magazine reading at ATA : 2.22.08

2008-01-24T20:08:00.000-08:00

Reading for Digital Artifact Magazine

Friday, February 22, 2008. 8 PM. $6
Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia St., SF
(415) 824-3890, ata@atasite.org
Wheelchair accessible

Digital Artifact Magazine is a new, web-based journal that explores digital and global culture using hybrid aesthetic tactics. Join us for a reading and screening by contributors from Issue 1 (Summer 2007), as we solicit submissions for Issue 2.

Readings by David Christensen, Soledad De Costa, Camille Roy, Will Skinker, Sarah Fran Wisby. Screenings by Faye Driscoll, Kara Hearn, Jessica Lawless, Julianna Mundim, Kirthi Nath, Katina Papson, Sherri Wood.

digitalartifactmagazine.com
digitalartifactmagazine.blogspot.com
digitalartifactmagazine@gmail.com

we're getting the band back together!

2008-01-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

Great news everybody! Artifact will be back in action beginning in March!

Thanks to Kaya Oakes recommendation (yay Kaya), I've just met with the wonderful peeps over at OAKLAND ART GALLERY & they are very excited to have us. It's a great space in downtown Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza (near 12th St. BART & Van Cleef's!). They've currently got a lovely show of painters Mike Henderson & Amy Kaufman. Go see.

We are terribly thrilled to be starting up the series again. It's been lonely without you.

More news to come as it unfolds...

Martian Poetics Class with Laura Moriarty & Brent Cunningham

2008-01-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

MARTIAN POETICS: A CLASS

Led By

Laura Moriarty (Author of Ultravioleta & 13 other books)

Brent Cunningham (Author of Bird & Forest)

TEN (10) CLASSES for $200
Meets Every Wednesday from 6:30pm-9pm
starting March 5th, 2008 ***Note date change***
Class meets at Small Press Distribution in Berkeley
1341 Seventh Street

CLASS DESCRIPTION: It's easy to forget how strange poetry is. Whether it's messages from martians, value for the ecstatic (from greek ekstasis, "to be or stand outside oneself"), or frankensteinian borrowings from areas generally believed to be "other" to poetry (science, philosophy, history, logic), we believe this shifty something else to be at the heart of why poetry interests us in the first place. We will look at some of the ways communities of poets have and might cultivate this something else rather than try to dispel or contain it. We will talk about the ways it shows up in scenes, aesthetic principles, and most often specific poems. We will take dispassionate looks at ekstasis, and ecstatic looks at dispassion. We will often write during class. There will be no workshopping, but for interested students there will be opportunities for one-on-one meetings outside of class at (cheap) hourly rates. There will be opportunities to browse the thousands of small press titles at SPD. And there will be a 30% discount for students! Throughout, we will all try to interrupt our own habits and patterns of thought to invite the different, other, and strange into the room.

LAURA MORIARTY'S A Semblance: Selected & New Poetry 1975-2007 is just out from Omnidawn Publishing. Other recent books are Ultravioleta, a novel, from Atelos and Self-Destruction, a book of poetry, from Post-Apollo Press. She has taught at Mills College and Naropa University among other places & is currently Deputy Director of Small Press Distribution. She received a Poetry Center Book Award in 1984 for Persia. She has also been awarded a Gerbode Foundation grant, a residency at the Foundation Royaumont in France, a New Langton Arts Award in Literature and a grant from the Fund for Poetry.

BRENT CUNNINGHAM is a writer, publisher and visual artist currently living in Oakland with his fiancee and new daughter. His first book of poetry, Bird & Forest, was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2005. After receiving his MA in English from SUNY Buffalo in 1998, he began working for Small Press Distribution (SPD) in Berkeley, the nation's only not-for-profit distributor of literary books. He currently holds the position of Operations director. A board member of Small Press Traffic since 2001, he was a founding curator of SPT's "Poets Theater Jamboree," an annual ritual of amateur experimental theater. In 2005 he and Neil Alger founded Hooke Press, a chapbook press dedicated to publishing short runs of poetry, criticism, theory, writing and ephemera. Hooke has published four titles so far, with two more on the way.

Poets Theater at Small Press Traffic

2008-01-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

Poets Theater: An Evening of Short Plays

Friday, January 18, 2008, 7:30 p.m.

“The Obituary Show” by CA Conrad
“Olive Oil from the Notebooks, a radio film” by Arnold J. Kemp

Hannah Weiner’s “RJ (Romeo and Juliet)” from CODE POEMS, directed by Suzanne Stein

“Up in Arms: an Oratorio at Tense Borders” by Mary Diaz

“a fierce vexation of a dream” by sara m. larsen

“Yoda in His Youth” by Dana Ward

plus a new play by Mairead Byrne and more surprises!

1980s Poets Theater Revivified
Three Plays Reexamined, Reanimated, and Restaged

Friday, January 25, 2008, 7:30 p.m.

“Particle Arms” by Alan Bernheimer (excerpts)
“Third Man” by Carla Harryman (excerpts)
“Creative Floors” by Kit Robinson

Poets Theater Cabaret Extravaganza

At a local venue to be announced

Sunday February 3, 2008 at 7:30 p.m.

SPT’s first Poets Theater Cabaret will feature several acts, ranging from musical and video numbers to speed lectures, performance art, fluxus events, impersonations, puppet theater, acts of mysticism, live psychotherapy, experimental astronomy, food art, avant-gossip, and maybe even some —gasp! — poetry!

Join us for a night of costumed ribaldry, artistic blasphemy, and cultural craziness, along with drinks, food, bizarre raffle gifts, and a silent auction of not-so-silent wonders! Audience participation welcomed!

See our new weblog (smallpresstraffic.blogspot.com) for updates, directions, auction items, photos, and more!

Timken Lecture Hall
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco

New Yipes: Sun. 1/20: Gudath and Harryman with video by Ezawa and Berezin

2008-01-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

7 pm
Sunday Jan 20
at 2 1 G R A N D
416 25th St corner B'way
Oak
$5

Carla Harryman is known for her genre-disrupting prose, poetry, and performance works. Recent publications include Open Box (Belladonna, 2007), Baby (Adventures in Poetry, 2006), Toujours l'epine est sous la rose (Ikko, 2006: tr. Martin Richet), and Gardener of Stars (Atelos, 2001). A collection of conceptual essays, Adorno's Noise, is forthcoming from Essay Press this spring. Recent performance pieces in Detroit, Montreal, Germany and Austria have featured bilingual choral improvisation and sound manipulation. Her 1994 work, Memory Play, will be staged at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in March 2008. She is also a participant in The Grand Piano collaboration, a ten-volume experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers originally identified with Language Poetry in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since her 1995 move out of the Bay Area, she has lived in Detroit.

Lauren Gudath lives in Petaluma, California, where the sky is always sunny and the butter and eggs are always fresh. There she writes sundry items for software companies and poems for a tiny audience that may include you. Lauren's publications include The Television Documentary (Second Story, 1999) and This Kind of Interpretation Brings Luck (Lucinda, 2000). Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Kenning, Chain, and Bay Poetics.

Also showing: video by Kota Ezawa and David Berezin

Please help a poet in need

2007-12-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

1 December 2007

“we interact as presence within presence
as spirit twice its equal in spirit
so that a range of beasts burns between us”
--Will Alexander, Exobiology as Goddess

Dear Poetry Community,

Will Alexander, one of our most original and energetic lights, is ill with cancer.

http://www.greeninteger.com/pipbios_detail.cfm?PIPAuthorID=7

The last few months have seen Will in and out of County USC, and otherwise unable to maintain his teaching and reading schedule. Will was freelancing, so his resources to financially cope with this situation are exhausted.

We are collectively asking you to help fund Will's living expenses while he is in treatment and working on recovery. Sheila Scott-Wilkinson, Will's long-term partner, is acting as Will’s primary caregiver and financial manager. She and Will have opened a special joint checking account to receive these monies. Checks can be addressed to 'Sheila Scott-Wilkinson', and mailed to the following address:

Sheila Scott-Wilkinson
400 South Lafayette Park Place, #307
Los Angeles, CA 90057

Love and Peace,

Thérèse Bachand
Jen Hofer
Andrew Joron
Harryette Mullen
Diane Ward