Julia Bloch & Frank Montesonti

The Poetic Research Bureau presents....

Julia Bloch & Frank Montesonti
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Doors open @ 7:30pm, reading @ 8pm

951 Chung King Rd., Los Angeles, CA

Julia Bloch grew up in Northern California and Sydney, Australia, earned an MFA at Mills College and a PhD at University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of Letters to Kelly Clarkson (published by Sidebrow Books in April 2012). She is the recipient of the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and the William Carlos Williams Prize for Poetry, is an editor of Jacket2, and recently moved to Los Angeles to teach literature in the Bard College MAT program.

Frank Montesonti is the author of Blight, Blight, Blight, Ray of Hope (Barrow Street Press), winner of the 2012 Barrow Street book contest, and the chapbook A Civic Pageant (Black Lawrence Press, 2009). He has been published in literary journals such as Tin House, Black Warrior Review, AQR, Poet Lore, and Poems and Plays, among many others. He has an MFA from the University of Arizona and teaches poetry at National University. A longtime resident of Indiana, he now lives in Los Angeles, California.

Abigail Child & Diane Ward, Saturday, March 31

The Poetic Research Bureau presents:

Abigail Child & Diane Ward
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Doors open @ 7, reading @ 7:30pm

The PRB @ the Public School
951 Chung King Road, Chinatown, LA

***

Abigail Child is in town to show some film and video at the Redcat, and is so mighty good as to stop by our little alleycat kennel to give a reading and throw up some projections on our wall. How often do you get to kick your feet up on the weekend and do home movies with Abigail?

Joining her is one the PRB's favorite LA scribblers -- urban explorer and all-around swell gal, Diane Ward. This one's a calendar highlight, folks. Hope to see you there!

***

Abigail Child: feats and deeds.  |  Diane Ward: histories and triumphs.

Saturday, March 24: Cal Bedient & Hillary Granvendyk

The Poetic Research Bureau presents:

Calvin Bedient & Hillary Gravendyk
Saturday, March 24th, 2012
Doors open @ 7, reading @ 7:30pm

951 Chung King Rd, Chinatown, LA

Calvin Bedient is the author of three books of poetry—Candy Necklace (Wesleyan), The Violence of the Morning (University of Georgia Press), and Days of Unwilling (Saturnalia Books)—with a fourth book coming out from Omnidawn in the fall. He is the co-editor of Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion. He lives in Santa Monica.

Hillary Gravendyk is the author of Harm (Omnidawn Press), out last fall. She is the two-time winner of the Eisner Prize in Poetry and her chapbook, The Naturalist, was published by Achiote Press in 2008..  Hillary is currently working on a critical book, Chronic Poetics, that explores intersubjectivity and embodiment in the poetic works of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, George Oppen, and Larry Eigner. She often collaborates with the photographer Benjamin Burrill and is interested in mixed-media forms. She lives in Claremont, California.

Phoebe Giannisi & Amanda Ackerman

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

PHOEBE GIANNISI & AMANDA ACKERMAN

Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 6:00pm
The PRB @ The Public School
951 Chung King Rd.
Los Angeles, CA

Doors open at 5:30pm
Reading starts at 6:00pm

$5 donation

Phoebe Giannisi (Athens, Greece,1964) is a poet and a PhD architect. She works as an Assistant Professor at Volos Department of Architecture (University of Thessaly, Greece) where she teaches design and literature poetics related to urban space and landscape. She is involved in public art practices. She is interested in the performative and acoustic dimension of poetry, and she organizes in situ poetic performances in public spaces. In 2010 she was co-curator for the Greek Pavilion of the 12th International Architecture Exhibition (La Biennale di Venezia) (www.greekark.com).

Amanda Ackerman is the author of four chapbooks: Sin is to Celebration (co-author, House Press), The Seasons Cemented (Hex Presse), I Fell in Love with a Monster Truck (Insert Press Parrot #8), and Short Stones (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press). She is co-publisher and co-editor of the press eohippus labs. She also writes collaboratively as part of the projects SAM OR SAMANTHA YAMS and U.N.F.O. (The Unauthorized Narrative Freedom Organization), whose audio text project Explanation as Composition was recently featured at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

Jaap Blonk & Mathew Timmons + Sound Poetry Workshop

Punxsutawney Phil may have predicted 6 more weeks of winter back in Penn's Woods, but out here on the New Coast spring has sprung (we reject groundhogs; we prefer our resident wild dog, John the Wolf King of LA).

Friday, we welcome Jaap Blonk and Mathew Timmons.

JAAP BLONK & MATHEW TIMMONS
Friday, March 2, 2012 at 7:00pm
The PRB @ The Public School
951 Chung King Rd.
Los Angeles, CA

Doors open at 6:30pm
Reading starts at 7:00pm

$5 donation

Jaap will be holding a sound poetry workshop the following afternoon.

VOICE/TEXT-SOUND/IMPROVISATION
A workshop by Jaap Blonk

A workshop for vocalists and performers who want to explore the inner depths and outer reaches of voice, text, music and sound in an exploratory improvisational framework. We will work in a playful way, using games and improvisational structures. Sometimes we will use short sound poems from the history of that genre and work on interpretations of them.

Working collaboratively, participants will develop materials and strategies for pushing formal and conceptual boundaries to create improvisational compositions.

On the way, we will encounter and practice many extended vocal techniques.

Depending on participants' interests and wishes, we can also go into notation possibilities and writing strategies.

Some vocal ability and the willingness to improvise and explore, are the only prerequisites.

Saturday, March 3, 2012 at 12:00pm
The PRB @ The Public School
951 Chung King Rd.
Los Angeles, CA

$5 donation


Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet. He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies. In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music. A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds. From around the year 2000 on Blonk started work with electronics, at first using samples of his own voice, then extending the field to include pure sound synthesis as well. He took a year off of performing in 2006. As a result, his renewed interest in mathematics made him start a research of the possibilities of algorithmic composition for the creation of music, visual animation and poetry. 

Mathew Timmons' book Joyful Noise for three or more voices was just released from Jaded Ibis press. His other works include: The New Poetics (Les Figues 2010), CREDIT (Blanc Press 2009), and The Archanoids (a CD of solo and collaborative sound poetries 2010). His visual and performance work has been shown at Human Resources Gallery, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Public Fiction, François Ghebaly Gallery, (323) Projects, LACE, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, California College of Art, Outpost for Contemporary Art, ArtSpeak Vancouver, LACMA, and the UCLA Hammer Museum. An active editor and curator, Mathew works as the General Director of General Projects and editor of Insert Blanc Press in Los Angeles.

February 26: Dorothea Lasky & Anthony McCann

The Poetic Research Bureau presents...

DOROTHEA LASKY & ANTHONY MCCANN

Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 6:00pm

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

Doors open at 5:30pm
Reading starts at 6:00pm

Dorothea Lasky is the author of Black Life, AWE, and the forthcoming Thunderbird, all from Wave Books. She is also the author of several chapbooks, including Poetry is Not a Project (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). She currently lives in New York City and can be found online at www.birdinsnow.com. 

Anthony McCann was born and raised in the Hudson Valley. He is the author of  I ♥ Your Fate  (Wave Books, 2011),  Moongarden  (Wave Books, 2006) and  Father of Noise  (Fence Books, 2003). In addition to these three collections, he is one of the authors of  Gentle Reader!  (2007), a book of erasures of the English Romantics, along with Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer.

The PRB Recommends...

Insert Blanc Press Benefit & Holiday Party

Saturday December 17 from 6-12pm

Weekend Gallery

4634 Hollywood Blvd 

Los Angeles, CA 90027

Donation at the door of $10 or more more

Matt Timmons would like to invite you to the Insert Blanc Press Benefit & Holiday Party at Weekend Gallery, 4634 Hollywood Blvd, LA, CA 90027 on Saturday December 17 from 6-12pm.

All donations will help cover expenses for Insert Blanc Press future and current projects and operations). Additionally, throughout the month of December Insert Blanc Press will run various tempting discounts on the whole catalog of books, all of which will also be available at the Holiday Party—many authors will be on-hand to sign copies of their books.

Artists & Writers performing at the Insert Press Benefit & Holiday Party include: Harold Abramowitz, Brian Ang, Allison Carter, Brian Joseph Davis, Robin Dicker, Kate Durbin, K. Lorraine Graham, Daniel Hockenson, Jen Hofer, Garrick Hogg, js makkos, Joseph Mosconi, Adam Overton, Christopher Russell, Ara Shirinyan, Brian Kim Stefans, Mark Wallace, and our special guests Dodie Bellamy, David Buuck & Kevin Killian.

Insert Blanc Press has published and promoted the work of over 60 artists and writers since it's humble beginnings in 2005. The PARROT series alone will publish the work of 23 writers over the course of its run and features the design work of the brilliant printer Margaret Lomeli. Blanc Press has recently published the enigmatic project (!x==[33]) Book 1 Volume 1 by .UNFO and has garnered attention by publishing the three volume series Tragodía by Vanessa Place.

Over the course of December Matt hopes to raise $5,000 for Insert Blanc Press in sales and donations to fund printing and press operations in 2012. He hopes to raise $2000 of the goal at the party on Saturday December 17. $2000 will go principally to funding the printing of the remainder of the PARROT series, which, if that goal is met, he hopes to have out by summer 2012. An additional $1500 will go to moving all of Blanc Press' publications to a new printer and distributor which will give us international distribution and access to sites like Amazon and actually lower the price of the books. Any additional money raised to meet our total goal of $5,000 will go towards publishing new projects in 2012, including Bruna Mori's Poetry for Corporations, Kate Durbin's E! Entertainment Diamond Edition, Joseph Mosconi's GRRR ARRRGH as well as a forthcoming project by Christopher Russell and many other projects I just can't tell you about quite yet.

Whether or not you can make it to the party, donations can be made to Insert Blanc Press anytime.

Past and current Insert Blanc Press artists include: Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Will Alexander, Brian Ang, Stan Apps, Janine Armin, Gary Barwin, Guy Bennett, Gregory Betts, Amaranth Borsuk, Franklin Bruno, Amina Cain, Allison Carter, Teresa Carmody, Marcus Civin, Ginny Cook, Dorit Cypis, Brian Joseph Davis, Katie Degentesh, Michelle Detorie, Robin Dicker, Sandy Ding, Kate Durbin, Bradney Evans, Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, K. Lorraine Graham, Nicholas Grider, Daniel Hockenson, Jen Hofer, Gabriella Juaregui, Maxi Kim, Janice Lee, Margaret Lomeli, Michael Magee, Joseph Makkos, Donato Mancini, Elana Mann, Sharon Mesmer, K. Silem Mohammad, William Moor, Bruna Mori, Joseph Mosconi, Jeffrey Joe Nelson, Julie Orser, adam overton, Vanessa Place, Amar Ravva, Dan Richert, Stephanie Rioux, Christopher Russell, Kim Schoen, Ara Shirinyan, Rod Smith, Michael Smoler, Brian Stefans, Stephanie Taylor, Jason Underhill, Mark Wallace, Christine Wertheim, and Allyssa Wolf.

Currently on view at Weekend Gallery: Jay Erker - This Is So Much Better - Erker's work often manipulates subjects from readily available popular imagery which, in a simple and personal way, investigates the notion of identity in public space, hierarchies of dissemination, and the desire for meaning in contemporary life.