Poetic Research Bureau: Mark Nowak

The Poetic Research Bureau presents....

Mark Nowak

Thursday, November 5, 2009 @ 8:00pm

Doors open at 8:00pm
Reading starts at 8:30pm

$5 donation requested

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3706 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206

Mark Nowak is a poet, social critic, labor activist, and author of, among others, Coal Mountain Elementary and Shut Up Shut Down, a New York Times "Editor's Choice." His work has also been included in Goth: Undead Subculture and American Poets in the 21st Century: the New Poetics. Nowak is "regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature," encouraging students to engage in all forms of poetry and expression, not just those found in mainstream literature and art. He is also the editor of the journal, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics.

About the Bureau

The Poetic Research Bureau is a valise fiction and portable literary service in Northeast Los Angeles.

Our living room at 951 Chung King Rd in Chinatown hosts an extended community of autodidacts and guessworkers caught up in language, inquiry and the unguarded arts. Just as it is: a community free school by day, and by night, a non-professional public forum for presentations, readings, screenings and sundry intellectual exchanges.

As an out-of-pocket California milk-crate boosterist enterprise, the PRB also serves as the irregular literary umbrella for projects such as occasional poetry journal The Germ ('97-'05), edited by Andrew Maxwell and Macgregor Card; and art-lit mag Area Sneaks, edited by Rita Gonzalez and Joseph Mosconi.

As a research bloc, the Bureau attempts to cultivate composition, publication and distribution strategies that enlarge the public domain. It favors appropriations, impersonations, 'compost' poetries, belated conversations, unprintable jokes and doodles, 'unoriginal' literature, historical thefts and pastiche. The publication emphasis is on ephemeral works, short-run magazines and folios, short-lived reprints and excerpts in print-on-demand formats, and the occasional literary fetish objects of stupidly incomparable price and value.

Several reading series are hosted at 951 CKR, and we welcome writers whose work lacks the 'commercial tendency' while harboring the bright, high-minded intentions that often lead to broad panic, righteous perversions, improbable arguments, and the ill-served cul-de-sacs of genius. The series are coordinated by the aforementioned Messrs Maxwell and Mosconi. If you're sympatico, passing through town, or need a megaphone, 50 seats and a big blank space, give us a write.

contact: directors@poeticresearch.com

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Mark Nowak

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