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.
Woodworker Jesse Rinyu and Poet LindoYes attempt to fix their shared sculpture's nutty brain.
LindoYes performs his poem, "Irregular Heartbeat."
The Poetry Gumball Machine Project Museum for Art in Wood 141 N. 3rd St. Philadelphia April 27, 2024
“Tough love is being punched until you don’t cry — and crying is the only thing that stops the punching from hurting as much,” Philly Poet and local organizer LindoYes recited softly. His words were resonant enough to reach his audience without relying on a mic as he stood next to a wooden robot designed to dispense his poems — and social service supports — to the city at large.
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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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K Hank Jost
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Mar 13, 2024 3:14 pm
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Micsters Peter Vack, Serena Rubin
Lily Lady Presents Honey’s Brooklyn, NYC 3/12/2024
In writing this review, I’m struggling up front with where to put my focus. A six-person bill is quite a lot for a reading —usually, four readers is the max my attention can tolerate, though it is often also the case that the readers are unified in theme, approach, and scene.
This event, curated by artist/writer/filmmaker/the other usual etceteras Lily Lady, covered a wide spread of approaches and genres. To put it all as shortly as possible before I make my decision about who and what to discuss, we the audience were treated to autofiction, diary entries, curatorial notes, a critical essay, and Peter Vack … There was a lot going on.
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Alicia Chesser
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Feb 9, 2024 3:10 pm
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ALICIA CHESSER PHOTO
Sharing stories in the light
Live Lit Night Heirloom Rustic Ales Tulsa Jan. 25, 2024
If, like me, you sometimes harbor romantic fantasies about literary experiences that happen in dark, gritty, hole-in-the-wall venues (probably with some sort of bongo drum / absinthe accompaniment), trying to find something like that in Tulsa may leave you disappointed. “Beat” we ain’t. But there’s something to be said for sharing stories in the light. About as far from dark and gritty as it’s possible to be, Heirloom Rustic Ales is one of several local spots hosting regular writer’s nights these days — all rooms that turn out to be warm, welcoming, well-lit settings for, well, lit.
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Brandon Sward
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Jan 19, 2024 9:07 am
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Cyrus Dunham reads at Casual Encountersz.
CASUALENCOUNTERSZ Baert Gallery Los Angeles Jan. 17, 202
One day I googled how to create the perfect cheese board. I came across the following formula: something sharp, something creamy, something fresh, something funky, something nutty. On the surface, it is difficult to find much to argue with. A variety of textures and flavors, like flowers in a bouquet. Both the assembly of the cheese board and the literary reading must make a whole greater than the sum of the parts, while catering to a seemingly diverse clientele of largely bourgeois sensibility.
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A. J. Brown
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Jan 15, 2024 12:35 pm
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CURRANTJAMLAUNCHPARTY Frogtown Creative Los Angeles Jan. 6, 2024
On a crisp January evening, the sleepy backstreet that houses Frogtown Creative was abuzz. New and familiar faces in the L.A. literary world filtered through the little compound for Currant Jam’s fourth issue launch party. Copies of the issue crowded a little table beside custom T‑shirts. Currant Jam, despite being a relatively new fixture in the alt-lit world, is a fixture nevertheless. Founded and edited by Emily Ann Zisko, Brooke Hallie Metayer, Marie Claire Marchant, and Olivia Aquilina, Currant Jam hosts fiction and nonfiction, art, and profiles of local artists and brands, as well as whole zines.
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K Hank Jost
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Nov 27, 2023 11:23 am
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Palace Reading Series The Palace Bar/ Greenpoint Palace Greenpoint, Brooklyn Nov. 21, 2023; ongoing Tuesday nights
It’s the week of Thanksgiving and, by and large, the city is empty. The transplanted nature of NYC’s population is never more apparent than during the holiday season. But on this Thanksgiving week evening, the backroom of the Palace Bar in Greenpoint was filled seat-for-seat with reading attendees, and stool-for-stool along the bar with regulars.
“Yeah, we were nervous that no one’d come out tonight. Everyone’s out of town,” Marisa Cadena, one of the monthly event’s organizers and last night’s readers, said of the crowd. “So we booked only Greepoint locals for the show.” Needless to say, the neighborhood turned out!
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K Hank Jost
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Nov 21, 2023 10:54 am
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Jackie Wang, Eileen Myles spit.
The Segue Foundation Reading Series featuring Eileen Myles Artists Space Tribeca, NYC Nov. 18, 2023
Everything worth knowing about in NYC is tucked away in some nook or cranny. There’s no space for anything in all this new construction, venue demolition, and gentrification on the back of legacy’s corpse. Artists are kin with the rats, burrowing underground to hold their meetings bunkered up wherever they can. Enter Tribeca’s Artists Space. Walk down Canal Street, past the fake designer-brand open-air market and the dregs of Chinatown, a barber’s pole marks our entrance down Cortlandt Alley. Once inside, ignore the gallery itself displaying thoughtfully curated, contemporary, political abstractions. Head down the stairs to the basement beneath the hollow sidewalk above.
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Jack Skelley
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Nov 15, 2023 10:39 am
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CASUALENCOUNTERSZ alt-lit reading No Moon LA Los Angeles Nov. 2, 2023
Strip poker with a blow-up doll, Minnesota meth murder, sub sex addiction, Jet Blue fuckups, a bloody foot accident, a publicist undergoing a nervous breakdown, and other compelling topics: Must be the latest Casual Encountersz (CE) extravagonzo… this time back at Chinatown’s No Moon LAgallery, packed wall-to-white-wall and spilling outside with a cross-section of L.A. word nerds and other scenesters. Multi-dozens of them.
The glut of such events is now an embarrassment of riches, with happenings nightly in L.A. (Time for our city to declare a lit “scene war” on NYC!)
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K Hank Jost
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Oct 27, 2023 2:49 pm
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Wednesday night lit: Nat Kimber, Daisy Kashin, Mark Salzwedel debrief the KGB.
NYC Writer’s Circle Reading KGB Bar 85 E. 4th St., NYC Oct. 25, 2023
To quote featured poet Greer Gibney, as a gesture toward summary of Wednesday evening at KGB, the magic of this reading series is in that subtle “merge from I to We.” Gibney’s poem with that message describes in soft lyric the budding of a romance in the languorous heat of high July, but this brisk October evening — overcrammed near to locking elbows in a bar with a desperate need for additional seating — those of us gathered experienced en masse the sweaty sublimity of this very merging.
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K Hank Jost
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Oct 17, 2023 2:21 pm
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Dylan Morgan reads what we need.
Dolan Morgan’s Chapbook Release Reading Black Spring Books Williamsburg, Brooklyn Oct. 13, 2023
Black Spring Books is famously situated in a building once occupied by the legendary Henry Miller (a literary figure I’ll give you my honest opinions about in private; at a later date; far, far away). The store has been amply profiled in The New York Times and other publications, so for those in the know there’s not much left to be said.
For those not in the know, here’s the necessary information: It’s a great shop, a necessary shop — cozy and featuring a beautifully muraled backyard where readings are hosted at night and, most assuredly, contemplation is done during the day. Small, stacked to the ceiling, as well curated as one could possibly hope for a used bookstore to be — I even found a vintage volume of Brian Jacques’ prequel to his Redwall series, a grand work of epic children’s fantasy, a modest scholar’s cross between Tolkien and The Wind in the Willows, I devoured in middle school — All to say, and all have said it: in a landscape of corporate and failing bookstores, Black Spring is a sight for sore eyes, what every reader with a few bucks in their pocket is looking for.
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Madeline Connors
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Oct 10, 2023 11:45 am
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Rauwerda on ... instagram!
DEPTHSOFWIKIPEDIA Annie Rauwerda The Regent Theater Los Angeles, Oct. 5, 2023
I like the Instagram account Depths of Wikipedia. It’s a curation of the best the internet has to offer: funny, interesting, poetic, and often strangely profound. The account is a portal to the online margins, where the peculiar and arbitrary meet — for example, look no further than a Wikipedia list of sexually active popes. I’m not alone in my admiration. The account, curated by Annie Rauwerda, has earned 1.2 million followers. She has built a tiny empire of baffling digital detritus.
However, Instagram accounts are not meant to be experienced in real life. They exist on our phones for a reason. They’re certainly not comedy shows, despite Annie Rauwerda’s valiant effort to pass off a meandering PowerPoint as one big meta-joke at the L.A. stop of her touring showDepths of Wikipedia Live at the Regent on Oct. 5.
During a show at Albany’s Fuze Box Sunday, performance artist/activist Vermin Supreme unveiled the platform of his 2024 presidential campaign, and that platform is ponies. (He’s a single issue candidate.) Ponies will revitalize America, he said. Ponies lower our dependence on foreign oil. Ponies are a renewable resource. And ponies are delicious.
The evening’s spectacle transformed Albany’s perennial punk rock nightclub into a political rally from a parallel Dadaist universe.
