This Many Poets Went to Market: 69 FTW!

69 Eggheads, 3 Minutes to Cook

And who said conference poetry wasn't sexy? You say MLA. We say MLAwesome.

Zero-sum speed-sport pachinko-style poetasty. Everything poetry is not supposed to be –– for four-and-a-half hours!

This is the shadow convention. Screw the well-lit spaces. Guidebook for conventioneers ahead.

Doors open at 7:00, the reading will start at 7:30.

Poets will read for 3 minutes (or less); we place violators on the subway to the sea, MTA-guaranteed, by which we mean they shall never arrive. We have to be out of the venue by midnight, so windbags will be haters. If it sounds like a puptent happening, get this: it is a proper theater, so at least there are no chairs to fold!

There is a parking lot, and during the event there will be an inexpensive cash bar, but we have no other details on the space. It looks really great in the photos.

Did we mention there's a grand piano?






Artshare
http://artsharela.org
801 East 4th Pl.
Los Angeles, CA

Here is a Google map that shows how to get there from the convention center. It's not a short walk, and there a few streets you might want to avoid.
View Map

For instance, we would probably take Hope or possibly Grand from 11th to 7th, and then Spring from 7th to 2nd. Of course, there will be cabs available from coventioneer hotels.

Another option is to take the Metro, which costs $1.50 and leaves right from the convention center and lands in Little Tokyo. It stops running at midnight, however.
View Map

And then there is the bus, which despite what you might have heard, runs very well in Los Angeles. Brian Kim Stefans take it to work every day. You'll get a pretty good tour of downtown LA as well. It costs $1.50 exact change, but takes bills of course. There are several optional routes.
View Map

The website taxicabsla.org has a complete list of phone numbers for taxis that serve the area. The area that includes downtown is C. Taxis can be pricey but the distance is so short and there will be no traffic at that hour downtown. There are also taxi stands at the various hotels downtown, though I don't know much more about this as I never take taxis. Here are the relevant numbers from the site:

United Independent Taxi
(213) 483-7660 or
(310) 821-1000 or
(800) 411-0303

Yellow Cab
(310 or 213) 808-1000 or
(800) 200-1085

Bell Cab
(888) 235-5222 or
(800) 666-6664

Beverly Hills Cab Company
(310 or 800) 273-6611

Checker Cab
(310 or 800) 300-5007

City Cab
(818) 252-1600 or
(800) 750-4400

Independent Taxi
(323) 666-0050 or
(800) 521-8294

Near the site of the reading are a lot of neat restaurants and bars. Traction Ave. is kind of the new hip area of downtown. Down 3rd street is SCI-ARC, a great school with a fascinating lecture series. The Google map below shows you some (but not all -- click on the unnamed dots) of the restaurants in the area. Did we mention it's near Little Tokyo?
View Map

Mr. Maxwell offers the following recommendations for restaurants in the Little-Tokyo-adjacent neighborhood:

Under $15:

Daikokuya: Still some of the best ramen in LA, with excellent cloudy pork bone broth. It'll be a wait, but if it's cold, it's very worth the wait.

Senor Fish: Local mom'n'pop Mexican chain, but well above the mean for cheap eats. Get the fish taco special if your cash is low, and just want a decent, tasty lunch.

Suehiro Cafe: Bento box and noodles place. Japanese comfort food. Solid, if not transcendent, easy to get in, open until 3am.

$15-25:

Izayoi: Japanese Izakoya joint (small plates). Big with locals and the kids. Can be inconsistent, but also cheaper than some other options, and has its on nights.

Shabu Shabu House: Popular shabu joint, steamy hot broth, excellent sauces -- folks swear by it, but can be a bit of a wait at times.

Wurstküche: Craftsman beers and homemade brats. Gastropub in a German beer hall, often packed, long tables, family style. Good stuff, but can be 20 min wait to order and get food.

$25 and above:

Sushi Gen: One of the better sushi joints in LA. Definitely will want to call ahead. Not so cheap, but definitely very solid sushi.

Lazy Ox Canteen: Bistro/gastropub, a little more upscale, one of the better young chefs in LA. Can usually get in for lunch, but is more of a reservations place on evenings and weekends.

Mr. Timmons recommends the following bars and cafes to the south of ArtShare:

Villains Tavern - great for before or after reading - a kinda steampunk nowheresville, somewhere old west parisian feel - beautifully designed space - with outdoor patio and lots and lots of heat lamps - like 30 beers on tap - half of them belgians - paired with shots for $8 and old school fancy cocktails - nice balcony - Cherry Bacon Marmalade Burger - grilled cheese with cave-aged cheddar and tamarind chili - they also have veggie options though I'm not sure about vegan

Urth Caffe - a great place to go before the reading - they aren't open late - but they have really amazing coffee and tea and great sandwiches and food - very down to earth stuff - not cheap but not really expensive either

Church & State - only open until 11pm - good for before the reading - somewhat expensive but great cocktails - great coffee - very good food

(This escapade is sponsored, organized, and hosted by Brian Kim Stefans, Matt Timmons, and PRB Directors Andrew Maxwell, Joseph Mosconi, and Ara Shirinyan. If you see 'em, give 'em a shake or a drink.)

NADA GORDON & K. LORRAINE GRAHAM

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

NADA GORDON & K. LORRAINE GRAHAM

Sunday, January 2, 2011 at 7:30pm

The PRB@The Public School
951 Chung King Rd.
Los Angeles, CA

Doors open at 7:00pm
Reading starts at 7:30pm

$5 donation requested

Nada Gordon is the author of several poetry books: Folly, V. Imp, Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?, and foriegnn bodie-- and an e-pistolary techno-romantic non-fiction novel, Swoon. Her new book, Scented Rushes, is just out from Roof books. A founding member of the Flarf Collective, she practices poetry, song, dance, dressmaking, and image manipulation as deep entertainment. She blogs at ululate.blogspot.com.

K. Lorraine Graham is the author of Terminal Humming, (Edge Books), recent work has appeared in Eleven Eleven, the Zaoem International Poetry Exhibition at the Minardschouwburg, Gent, Belgium, and the Infusoria visual poetry exhibition in Brussels.  She lives in Carlsbad, CA, with her partner Mark Wallace and Lester Young, a pacific parrotlet. You can find her online at spooksbyme.org.

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

Cotner, Fitch & Krilanovich

Saturday, December 11 @ 951 Chung King Rd in Chinatown.

Lest the trio of names ring otherwise, they've arrived not to do your taxes or plan your estate -- but rather to ring the bells on a new PRB doorhandle, and kick our portable Tinguely machine into motion, once again.

Messrs Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch, hailing from NYC and Wyoming respectively, reanimate "pedestrian" literature in the recent UDP book, Ten Walks / Two Talks, a sneaky zigzag amid improvised thought maps and urban space, giving new swerve to the kinematic and analytic in a peripatetic tradition as old as toga parties or the buddy film. We'll leave it to Jon and Andy to unwind who is trucker and who is chimp in this glad dyad, but they're sure to blow up our chatroom with buggy repartee and collaborative intoxication, while the city nevertheless survives them like it does all fantasy creatures stumbling down alleyways in mothraic parade march.

And talk about creature (first) features -- dig Grace Krilanovich's consumptive thought burble of a book, The Orange Eats Creeps. It's a sort of "this land is your land and we'll eat it alive" reclamation project, populated by soul-starved anarcho-punks bumrushing the hobo costumes and mind trips, getting jumped and jumping everything that looks like meat and magic carpets. If the Twilight Saga were directed by Larry Clark in the drop-dead Gus Van Sant secular no-place of a Pacific Northwest instead of that CGI mattework substitute --  if the nevergonnadie tweens-with-fangs were huffing black light paint in gas station bathroom killzones like Gary Gilmore in a literary panic, you'd maybe grok the departure point for this choose-your-wrong-adventure novel. 

Need more breadcumbs? Ok, this one. And this one. And this.

Still hungry? Good. 

These are the new kids -- this is our new place. And no one gonna take the body down. But you can come and give it new lungs Saturday night.

Saturday Dec 11, 2010 at 7:30pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
951 Chung King Road

LA, CA 90012

Doors open at 7:00pm
Reading starts at 7:30pm

$5 donation requested. All funds go to the authors.

New Digs, Old Dudes, Present Findings

As Messrs Fagen & Becker had it in 1974, any minor world that breaks apart falls together again, and so it has.

The Messrs of the Poetic Research Bureau –– after six months of whim, errancy and reconstruction –– return to rearrange the chairs and podia, reopening their forum to peers and public alike. And should you read further, Public it is.

After two and a half years in southwest Glendale, where like Lou Reed in an imagined 1974 Berlin, they have constantly watched the bluebird fly over their shoulders (to Rally Burger, no doubt), the Messrs draw the curtains on a new prospect, this the one into which Robert Towne placed a hapless Jake Gittes in 1974 to do "as little as possible" while the world convulsed about him.

It's Chinatown: 951 Chung King Rd to be exact. New digs –– okay and huzzah! –– but old habits all the same.

You may recognize the address, home to the visible college of the open program: The Public School, a school with no curriculum save for that which, like Australopithecus afarensis dug up from the slate in 1974, has somehow been there all along. The Messrs promise not to call their discoveries Lucy -- they have no idea who that is. But the PRB nonetheless joins the Public School as active cohort, in deference to any collaborative future that shakes the pelvic girdle from its earthly Depression.

Believe in their enterprise. It's not quite like that of Donald Barthelme's protagonist in his tale of central planning gone awry "I Bought a Little City," published in mid-November 1974. The Messrs have not purchased Galveston, and they'd never shoot a dog. But like the interstellar radio message deployed from the Arecibo Observatory toward the M13 Great Globular Cluster in 1974, their aspirational reach is no less great and their career no less patient.

And you don't have to wait until year 27000 to receive the message. It arrives in December, when irregular programming recommences with readings by Grace Krilanovich and Messrs Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch, on the evening of the 11th. Check the calendar to the upper right for future noise. Of the rest, they'll remain silent, like the Indian Smiling Buddha that swallowed the mushroom cloud in 1974. Unlike him, however, they promise the tension will be creative.

Consider this the relaunch of yet another minor world, or yet another green world, mayhaps (though that LP would not be released until 1975, why quibble with promise?). When you want to visit, give these old Messrs a write.

As ever:  directors@poeticresearch.com

The PRB Recommends...

Karen Weiser & Anselm Berrigan @ Machine Project

Tuesday Night, Oct 12, 8pm.

Anselm Berrigan is a poet and author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Free Cell (City Lights, 2009). Other books include Zero Star Hotel, Some Notes on My Programming, and Integrity & Dramatic Life, all published by Edge Books. He is the poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail (brooklynrail.org), an arts and culture monthly in print and on-line, and co-editor of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (UCal, 2005) as well as the forthcoming Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (UCal, 2011). An archive of blog entries kept for The Poetry Foundation in 2009-2010 can be found here. He lives in New York City, where he grew up, and has worked in various capacities for The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church over the past thirteen years, most recently as a workshop leader.

Karen Weiser has published five chapbooks: Pitching Woo (Cy Press, Fall 2006); Heads Up Fever Pile (Belladonna, 2005); Placefullness (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004); Eight Positive Trees (Pressed Wafer, 2002), and Beneath The Bright Discus (Potes and Poets Press, 2000), which she coauthored with Nadine Maestas. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Chicago Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Canary, The Germ and The Hat and several anthologies including Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets (Verse Press, 2004). Her correspondence with Anne Waldman is part of a book entitled Letters To Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community (Saturnalia, 2008). She is also the recipient of a Fund for Poetry award and the Mellon Fellowship through the Center for the Humanities. She lives in New York City and has taught literature at St. John’s University and Barnard College. To Light Out from UDP is her first full-length collection.

PRB: New Collaborations

Just a note that the Poetic Research Bureau, after a summer hiatus, is beginning to peep up from its burrow, and will be hosting some visiting writers later this fall. Keep the ears pricked!

We our currently in the process of relocating our modest library from the Luna Playhouse, which is housing a new theater company that will soon begin programming in earnest, making for a slightly more crowded accommodation for the Bureau. We wish Luna well, and may occasionally do events there in the future, but most of our events will take place elsewhere.

One such place is Alias Books East, finely-curated by Patrick Paeper in Atwater Village. Patrick has agreed to let us host an event or two a month on Sundays thru Thursdays, so if you are passing through the LA basin, give the directors a write (directors@poeticresearch.com) and we'll see what's available.

Simultaneously, we are discussing possibilities for a more permanent mailing address with likeminded projects in Chinatown and elsewhere. Let us know if you hatch a scheme.

STEVEN FARMER & THOM DONOVAN

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

STEVEN FARMER & THOM DONOVAN

Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 4:30pm

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

Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm

$5 donation requested

Steven Farmer is a San Diego native who migrated to north Oakland in the early '80's. He's worked for years in restaurants, and started a second career in the IT industry, spending the last 10 years at Sun Microsystems (now Oracle). Books include Coracle, Tone Ward, World of Shields, Standing Water, Medieval, and just out: Glowball (theenk Books, NY, 2010). See also Crayon, Third Factory/Notes to Poetry , Poetics Journal, and Carlos Soto Roman's fabulous Elective Affinities website.

Of Glowball, Sianne Ngai says: "Is the word 'glow' now permanently ominous? What is the future of aesthetic enchantment in the society of the spectacle? In a book where poems become exploding dandelion heads of the spreadsheet and situation room, Steve Farmer radically estranges us from our present as if it were the future’s past. Glowball est a praeclarus quod perago libri."

There is a line in Glowball about Glendale. This will be Farmer's first visit to Glendale.

Thom Donovan lives in NYC where he edits Wild Horses of Fire weblog (whof.blogspot.com) and coedits ON Contemporary Practice. He is a participant in the Nonsite Collective and a curator for the SEGUE reading series. His criticism and poetry have been published widely in BOMB, PAJ: performance + art, Modern Painters, The Brooklyn Rail, and at the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog. Currently he is working on a book of criticism, Sovereignty and US: Critical Objects 2005-2010, and on the Project for an Archive of the Future Anterior (with Sreshta Rit Premnath). His book The Hole is forthcoming with Displaced Press.

ERICA LEWIS & STUART KRIMKO

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

ERICA LEWIS & STUART KRIMKO

Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 4:30pm

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

Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm

$5 donation requested

erica lewis lives in San Francisco, where she curated the Canessa Gallery Reading Series. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in P-Queue, New American Writing, Little Red Leaves, Parthenon West Review, BOOG CITY, Shampoo, and Word For/Word, among others. Collaborations with artist Mark Stephen Finein include camera obscura, just out from BlazeVox, and the precipice of jupiter (Queue Books).

Stuart Krimko is the author of The Sweetness of Herbert (2009) and Not That Light (2003), both published by Sand Paper Press in Key West, Florida. He is currently translating Daughters of Hegel, a 1982 novella by the Argentinian writer Osvaldo Lamborghini, into English. In addition to blogging about miscellany for thethepoetry.com and about wine for Embury Cocktails, Krimko is an Associate Director at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, where he lives and works.

Brandon Downing & Macgregor Card

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

BRANDON DOWNING & MACGREGOR CARD

Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 4:30pm

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

Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm

$5 donation requested

BRANDON DOWNING is a photographer, collagist, filmmaker and poet. A longtime member of the Flarf Collective, his books include Lake Antiquity: Poems 1996-2008 (Fence, 2009), The Shirt Weapon (Germ Monographs, 2002), and Dark Brandon (Faux Press, 2005). A feature-length collection of his short films, Dark Brandon: Eternal Classics, was released on DVD in 2007, with a further installment expected in 2010. Photographic work can be seen at www.brandondowning.org, while recent video projects can often be found at www.youtube.com/user/bdown68. He lives in New York City.

MACGREGOR CARD is a poet, translator and bibliographer living in Jackson Heights, NYC. His first collection, Duties of an English Foreign Secretary, is just out from Fence (December 2009). A new chapbook, The Archers, is forthcoming from Song Cave. With Andrew Maxwell he was co-editor of The Germ: A Journal of Poetic Research, from 1997-2005. He teaches poetry at Pratt Institute and is an associate editor of the MLA International Bibliography.

Joel Lewis & Sophie Sills

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

Doors open at 7:30pm
Reading starts at 8:00pm

$5 donation requested

JOEL LEWIS is the author of Learning From New Jersey (2007), Tasks Of The Youth Leagues (2006) , Vertical’s Currency (1999) and House Rent Boogie (1992). He edited Bluestones and Salt Hay, an anthology of contemporary NJ poets, as well as editing the Reality Prime, the selected poems of Walter Lowenfels and On The Level Everyday: the selected talks of Ted Berrigan. He has also written hundreds of articles, reviews, essays and profiles and currently is a staff writer at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. A social worker by day, he has taught creative writing at the Poetry Project, The Writer’s Voice and Rutgers University. And, for better or worse, he initiated the ill-fated New Jersey Poet Laureate position that was such a headache for Amiri Baraka. With his wife, film theorist Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, he resides in Hoboken.

SOPHIE SILLS recently relocated from San Francisco to Los Angeles after earning her MFA in Creative Writing at Mills College. Here, she writes poetry and literary criticism. She works for a Jewish Non-profit and teaches English at National University. She lives with her cat and she is happy.

CANCELED: Rod Smith & Mel Nichols

We regret to inform the audience that Rod/Mel's flight to Southern California was canceled, and as a result, all of their Los Angeles and San Diego readings with it.

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

ROD SMITH & MEL NICHOLS

Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 4:00pm

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

Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm

$5 donation requested

ROD SMITH is author ofDeed (University of Iowa Press), Music or Honesty (Roof ), The Good House (Spectacular Books), Protective Immediacy (Roof), In Memory of My Theories (O Books), and a CD of his readings, Fear the Sky(Narrow House Recordings). He is editor/publisher of Edge Books and is also editing, with Peter Baker and Kaplan Harris, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley (University of California). Smith is a Visiting Professor in Poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for the Spring 2010 semester.

MEL NICHOLS is author of Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon(National Poetry Series finalist), Bicycle Day (Slack Buddha), The Beginning of Beauty, Part 1: hottest new ringtones, mnichol6 (Edge), and Day Poems (Edge). Other recent work can be found in Poetry, New Ohio Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. She teaches at George Mason University

Sunday February 21 4pm: Electroacoustic Music from Central Europe & LA

Zbigniew Karkowski * Ulrich Krieger * Damion Romero * John Wiese

Ariana Reines & Jon Leon

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

A Valentine's Day Gift from

Ariana Reines & Jon Leon

Sunday, February 14, 2010 at 4:00pm

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

Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm

$5 donation requested

Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, FenceBooks: 2006), Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar: 2007), Mercury (forthcoming, FenceBooks: 2011), and the play "Telephone", commissioned by The Foundry Theatre and mounted in February 2009, with two Obies. Her full-length translations include My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, (Mal-O-Mar: 2009) and The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal by Jean-Luc Hennig, (Semiotext(e): 2009). She was Virginia C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at UC Berkeley in Spring 2009.

Jon Leon is a Los Angeles-based poet and novellaist. His books include Right Now the Music and the Life Rule (Hathaway, 2006), Hit Wave (Kitchen Press, 2008), Alexandra (Cosa Nostra Editions, 2008), and The Hot Tub w/ Dan Hoy's Glory Hole (mal-o-mar editions, 2009). He is an occasional contributor to Art in America.

Lease & Perriere :: Bernheimer & Timmons

TWO readings for the first week of February.

first up...

Joseph Lease & Donna de la Perriere

Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 7:30pm

Doors open at 7:30pm
Reading starts at 8:00pm

and then....

Alan Bernheimer & Mathew Timmons

Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 4:00pm

Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm

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

$5 donation requested

Joseph Lease's critically acclaimed books of poetry include Broken World (Coffee House Press) and Human Rights (Talisman House, forthcoming). His poem "'Broken World' (For James Assatly)" was selected for The Best American Poetry 2002 (Scribner). His poems have also been featured on NPR and published in Bay Poetics, No Gender, and elsewhere.

Donna de la Perrière is the author of True Crime (Talisman House, 2009) and the forthcoming St. Erasure (Talisman House, 2010). Her poems have appeared in No Gender: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards (Litmus Press/Belladonna Books, 2009) and Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006). She teaches in the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs at both California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University, and curates the Bay Area Poetry Marathon reading series at San Francisco’s The Lab gallery and performance space.

Alan Bernheimer was born a New Yorker. Coastal inclination since. Europe before the age of reason. Graduated from Yale and worked with words at various jobs. High-tech marketing for a long spell. Now solar. Bay Area resident for 30 some years. Adventures in Poetry published The Spoonlight Institute last fall. Earlier books include Billionesque and Café Isotope, both from The Figures.

Mathew Timmons has published prose, poetry and criticism in various places including: P-Queue, Flim Forum, The Physical Poets, Or, eohippus labs, Area Sneaks, Artweek, Artillery, The Magazine, X-TRA and The Encyclopedia Project. A chapbook, Lip Service (Slack Buddha), and an 800 page full color, large-format, hardbound book, CREDIT (Blanc Press), was recently published. His first full-length book, The New Poetics (Les Figues Press) and his micro-book collaboration with Marcus Civin, a particular vocabulary (P S Books) are forthcoming.

January 24: Difficult Music, In Spades

Having tested out the Luna Playhouse for sound insulation and absorption last Halloween, and finding it decidedly sympathetic to some stranger vibrations, here comes another test. Sunday, January 24th, from 3pm to 10pm, sound & conceptual artists, power electronics enthusiasts and rogue amplificados from Berlin to Baltimore descend on the the PRB's inner sanctum for some third ear massage. Nine acts, six hours, and three million ways to cry uncle.

The lineup (early show):

Sudden Infant (Berlin, more here), video
The Haters (GX Jupitter-Larsen, LA), video
R. Jencks (Bay Area), video
Cleanse (Detroit/LA, AKA Hive Mind)
John Wiese (LA)
Damion Romero (LA)

The lineup (late show):

Ear Nose & Throat (Baltimore, members of:
Matmos & Leprechaun Catering)
Wobbly (San Francisco)
Dimmer (LA, Thomas Dimuzio + Joseph Hammer)