Poetic Research Bureau: April 2013

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

The Sonnets: Translating & Rewriting Shakespeare
Edited by Sharmila Cohen & Paul Legault

Featuring readings by:

Kate Durbin
Martha Ronk
Kelli Anne Noftle
Julia Bloch

and via technology Paul Legault

~

Saturday, April 20 2013
Doors open @ 7pm, reading starts @ 7:30pm

The Poetic Research Bureau @ Telic Arts
951 Chung King Rd.
Los Angeles, CA

The Sonnets, edited by the founding editors of the translation journal Telephone, pairs 154 poet-translators with each of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets--literally rewriting history, or at least the great Bard's poetic oeuvre. This collection of English-to-English "translations" includes work by Rae Armantrout, Mary Jo Bang, Jen Bervin, Paul Celan, Tan Lin, Harryette Mullen, Ron Padgett, Donald Revell, Jerome Rothenberg, Juliana Spahr, and many others.

In the tradition of Ezra Pound's Cathay or Jack Spicer's After Lorca, these versions explore the themes of their originals while completely re-authoring them--imagining a new Shakespeare, self-described in his dedication to The Sonnets as: "THE WELL-WISHING. ADVENTURER ... SETTING FORTH."

http://distranslation.com/index.php?/the-sonnets/the-sonnets/

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