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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Breezy Bratton Photo
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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CASSIDY MCCANTS PHOTO
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
JASON McBRIDE and ANAHIDNERSESSIAN with KATHYACKER’S WRITINGDESK Poetic Research Bureau Los Angeles Dec. 11, 2023
It’s a fact: Kathy Acker often wrote while masturbating. And she encouraged her students at San Francisco Art Institute to do the same. Jason McBride noted this at Poetic Research Bureau (PRB) for the paperback launch of his monumental biography Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker. The practice was one way the genre-smashing Acker soaked her novels in the emotional ups and downs of eros. At this ceremonial event, Matias Viegener—writer, author, teacher, friend of Acker, and executor of her will (she died in 1997 at age 50) — donated her legendary desk and chair to the PRB archives. It dramatically backdropped McBride’s talk. (Books for this event provided by Stories Books & Café.)
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Cassidy McCants
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Oct 5, 2023 3:42 pm
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Carver with Karl Jones at Magic City event.
Quinn Carver Johnson in Conversation with Karl Jones Magic City Books’ Algonquin Room Sept. 28, 2023
Slipping into Magic City Books on a quiet night for the launch of Quinn Carver Johnson’s The Perfect Bastard, I joined a small but enthused audience already talking with Johnson and Tulsa Artist Fellow Karl Jones, the event’s interviewer. Jones suggested we all grab one of the Algonquin Room’s comfy chairs and cozy up closer to the night’s talent. Between Jones and Johnson sat a sequined pink cowboy hat. The bejeweled spectacle is an emblem of Johnson’s explorations in their new poetry collection, which follows the “Perfect Bastard,” a nonbinary, queer pro wrestler, across four states in the mid-South.
The description online read:“In this ephemeral haven of sonic and poetic delights, the Afrogalactic Tea Party invites you to immerse yourself in a curated experience of taste and culture.”
CASUALENCOUNTERSZ: HOSTEDBYAGATHEPINARDANDSAMMYLOREN The Manor, Atwater Village, Cal. Sept. 23, 2023
When I arrive at this roving alt-lit reading, at a small, tastefully decorated house in Atwater Village, a sign on the door instructs, “Casual Encountersz: Enter through side gate.” First things first: the bathroom. Turning left after the kitchen, I find it nestled between two bedrooms. On one door, another handwritten sign warns, “Keep closed! Cats inside.” Behind the other door, I would learn, a 4‑month-old infant slumbers peacefully. (Mom is in the audience carrying a baby walkie-talkie.)
The invite had stated “BYOB — we’re chic, but beatnikz,” and yet a plastic bucket overflows with ice and flavored vodka sodas. (Mine was grapefruit guava.)
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Brian Slattery
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Sep 27, 2023 11:39 am
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Robinson.
On the last page of the new poetry anthology Never Ending Poetry — a celebration of the first year of Open Mic Surgery, the poetry reading series that happens almost every Tuesday at Never Ending Books on State Street — there’s an incisive poem by Alice Prael about a barrel in a field on fire, melting plastic. “Polymers propagating / intimate inanity / inane intimacy,” she writes. “It’s poison but it’s warm.” On the same page is a poem called “Ode to Baby Jesus” by Julie Meehan. “You’ll get nailed down,” she writes, “but you’ll get up again / They’re never gunna nail you down.”
The juxtaposition is just fine by Brian Robinson, who runs Open Mic Surgery and put together the anthology. “I love that one poem is a beautiful, really elegant” piece, “and then the last poem is an adaptation of a Chumbawumba song about Jesus,” Robinson said. To him, “that’s the dichotomy” of Open Mic Surgery itself. “Nothing is off the table.”
