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Ryan Anderson
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Sep 27, 2024 1:03 pm
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Written Quincey at LowDown
Written Quincey &GÜDPPL LowDown Tulsa Sept. 21, 2024
The Sanctuary — a dimly lit Chicago nightclub where jazz, blues, and poetry collided — was a pivotal place in the movie Love Jones, where a young poet named Darius Lovehall (Larenz Tate) attempts to woo Nina Mosley (Nia Long), an aspiring photographer. Tulsa has its own version of The Sanctuary at LowDown, where Written Quincey (still young) recently took the stage as a teacher, a poet, and a rapper, in front of a crowd that loves jass. (I’ll explain what that means in a minute.)
The Big One: Issue Two Launch Party The Earl Los Angeles September 6, 2024
It seems the season of earthquakes is upon us. After a series of small tremors, a 4.4 on the Richter Scale shook the Eastside in August; just today, I was roused from my sleep by a mysterious rumbling. Now the Big One has come to town — although this time, it wasn’t the shifting of tectonic plates that created a disturbance but the emergence of a new literary magazine founded by born-and-raised California girls Gabrielle “Gabby” Sones and Johanna “Jo” Stone.
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Lindsey Smith
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Sep 8, 2024 10:03 am
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Elisa Harkins performing "Deadly"
Indigenous Language Poetry Night Woody Guthrie Center Tulsa Aug. 31, 2024
The story in Tulsa this Labor Day weekend was all about the Big Dam Party, and amid the celebration (and lingering questions) about the state of Water in the River, it stands to reason that other happenings in town may have been overlooked. Indigenous Language Poetry Night with Words of the People had additional wrinkles with last-minute lineup changes and technological hiccups. Nevertheless, a few enthusiastic poets and poetry fans ventured out into a rainstorm Saturday night to visit a different gathering place, the Woody Guthrie Center, for an evening that was a call to language reclamation in varying forms and presentations.
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Cassidy McCants
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Jul 28, 2024 11:37 am
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Edwin Canito Garcia and Zhenya Yevtushenko
Yevtushenko Reads Yevtushenko WOMPA Tulsa July 19, 2024
If you haven’t been to WOMPA yet, I’ll start by saying it’s unlike anything else in the city. It holds offices, event spaces, a hair salon, a screenprinting studio, vendors, art galleries, places to cook out, Airbnbs. Most of all, though, it feels like a place you can go, be, and maybe spark some creativity of your own, whether or not you think of yourself as an artist. It’s packed with color, antique and vintage-looking decor, extravagant rugs, maximalist-chic sitting areas.
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Lindsey Claire Smith
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Jun 14, 2024 4:58 pm
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Shape as a language: Layli Long Soldier's star quilts
An Evening With Layli Long Soldier 101 Archer Tulsa June 6, 2024
First, a confession: after 25 years of teaching poetry, I secretly worry that I still don’t “get” it. Even though my livelihood is based in the world of textual interpretation (I’ve published books about poetry, for gosh sakes!), would I have anything interesting to say about poetry if I hadn’t been immersed in academia for so long, well-versed (see what I did there?) in the language of understanding language?
Watch Lindo emerge from the stocks, seeking revenge.
Nora Grace-Flood Photos
Philadelphia Renaissance Faire at Fort Mifflin 6400 Hog Island Rd. Philadelphia May 27, 2024
Deadline Poet LindoYes checked out the Philly Faire, a three-day event held this year at the historic Fort Mifflin on the Delaware River, where he found himself a more active participant than he expected amid the scene of medieval confusion. Watch a video story of his time there above (including getting pelted with fluffy tomatoes in the stocks); read his poetic review to pictures below.
Philadelphia’s Parker administration took action Wednesday to remove 50 people remaining at a Kensington Avenue tent city, the final push in a month-long “encampment resolution” that’s cracking down on an area estimated to hold about 39 percent of Philly’s unhoused population. That news inspired community organizer and poet LindoYes to write the following poem, recalling the eviction of his own family when he was in the third grade. In the video above, he performs that poem, titled “Landlord,” from the scene of the encampment sweep.
Winter in America: The Speakeasy; Bold, Black & Brilliant — The Baldwin Edition Joyce Gordon Gallery 406 14th St. Oakland April 3, 2024
When I think of James Baldwin, the images that surface in my mind are often in black and white. Photographs, video clips, and even his words on the page appear stark and matter-of-fact. Walking into the Joyce Gordon Gallery and seeing over 40 faces and expressions of Baldwin, my connotation of him was elevated.
The traveling exhibition, “Frontline Prophet: James Baldwin,” features works from Detroit artist Sabrina Nelson. Pop art-style portraits of Baldwin covered the walls, infused with hues of bright red, cobalt blue, greens, and golds. Seeing Baldwin’s face in modern styles brought him out of the past and into the now in a refreshing way.
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Breezy Bratton
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Mar 29, 2024 10:58 am
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Kiana (Ki) Bryels and Jamel Griot at The Other Monday open mic
The Other Monday Open Mic The BLU House Oakland March 25, 2024
A laminated sign on the gate had graphics of hanging plants. It read, “The BLU House,” with the caption “A Creative Space,” and in the smallest font size towards the bottom, “Powered by BRP and Key Essentials.” I’d arrived at this West Oakland home for the Other Monday open mic.
I don’t feel fully comfortable walking straight into the home of someone whom I’ve never met, so I lingered outside awkwardly until artist Kylah Symone walked out and greeted me. In addition to being one of the night’s performers, she is a barber and a loctician, a rare combination in the Black hair care community.
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Cassidy McCants
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Mar 24, 2024 10:33 am
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Poets and musicians smash it up: Johnny Murrell, Cordney McClain, Zhenya Yevtushenko, Shay Lampkin, and Harvey Crowder
Poetry & Music Smash-Up Living Arts of Tulsa March 13, 2024
Apparently Zhenya Yevtushenko, our emcee for last Friday’s Poetry & Music Smash-Up, had been dreaming of this “one-night-only” event for some time. The rules: 10 poets are randomly paired with 10 musicians. Each pair gets 10 minutes to rehearse, then they perform. This was a rare chance to celebrate both local poetry and local music, two of Tulsa’s vibrant arts scenes, in one.
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K Hank Jost
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Mar 20, 2024 2:21 pm
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The Palace Reading Series Greenpoint, Brooklyn 2/19/24
I do my best in these articles to avoid reviewing the same folks. In a city like this one there’s always plenty new to find if one is willing to do the necessary seeking out. However, there’s also a fair amount of tried-and-true staples, places and recurring events that function as carousels of variety and, in the best of cases, serve as centers of gravity for the development of social scenes. Marissa Cadena and Rita Puska’s Palace Reading Series is increasingly becoming one of these events.
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Karen Ponzio
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Feb 21, 2024 11:13 am
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Ross Gay practiced what he preaches last night at Possible Futures, as the poet, essayist, and teacher offered a grateful crowd a selection of his work encompassing joy and tenderness that brought them from rapt silence to riotous laughter and everywhere in between.
Something’s happening in NYC right now. Whether it’s a blending of scenes that previously had very little to do with each other, or the last gasps of a living literary moment post-Covid. I cannot exactly diagnose it. I only know that things have gotten strange.
There’s been a slew of grander versions of what I witnessed last night. There was Madeleine Cash’s books release party, during which there were no readings. There was Car Crash Collective’s over booking the KGB Red Room with listed guests to the point that nearly no one from the street could get in. And then there was this thing last night — another over-crowded gathering of the uber-hip under the guise of independent art and culture.
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Brian Slattery
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Jan 16, 2024 11:12 am
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Memories of the Children’s Crusade. A vision of alien visitations in the future. Invocations of superheroes. Fist-raising calls for change. These were all part of the 28th annual Z Experience Poetry Slam on Monday, part of the Yale Peabody Museum’s celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s legacy of social and environmental justice. It capped two days of free events at the Peabody’s facilities and the New Haven Museum
