Friday, October 5th, feat. Tongo Eisen-Martin, Daniel Tiffany, Andrew Joron, and Ciaran O'Driscoll

Please join us on Friday, October 5th from 7:30-9:30 pm

for a reading featuring Tongo Eisen-Martin, Daniel Tiffany, 
Ciaran O'Driscoll, and Andrew Joron!

*****

author bios & photos below.

All of our readings are free & open to the public.

Snacks, wine & Lagunitas beer will be served.

365 45th Street | Oakland | 94609

Here's a map.

+ a huge thank you to our generous sponsors!

Lagunitas Brewing Company
Clorox Company Foundation
Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation 

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, Someone's Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book Heaven Is All Goodbyes was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award.

Daniel Tiffany is a poet and theorist who lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of Southern California. Stanzas from his current project, a book-length poem, have been published, or will be appearing, in BOMB, Iowa Review, FENCE, Colorado Review, The Tiny, Journal of Poetics Research (Australia), Flash Cove (Australia), VOLT, Horsethief, Lute & Drum, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, West Branch, Brooklyn Rail, and Bennington Review (along with an interview about the project in Tupelo Quarterly). Tiffany is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, from presses including Action Books, Tinfish, and Omnidawn (along with a chapbook from Noemi Press). Poems from The Work-Shy (Wesleyan University Press, 2016)—his most recent collection, produced in collaboration with BLUNT RESEARCH GROUP—have appeared in museum exhibitions in the US and been adapted for theater. His poetry has also appeared in journals such as Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, jubilat, Lana Turner, the Poetry Project Newsletter, Gulf Coast, Chicago Review, and many others. In addition, he is the author five volumes of literary criticism and has published translations from French, Greek, and Italian. He is a recipient of the Chicago Review Poetry Prize and the Berlin Prize (awarded by the American Academy in Berlin).

Ciaran O’Driscoll, a member of Aosdána, has published six collections of poetry, including Gog and Magog (Salmon, 1987), his New and Selected Poems, Moving On, Still There (Dedalus, 2001), and Life Monitor (Three Spires Press, 2009, due for re-publication by Red Hen of California in 2018). His work has been translated into many languages. The Old Women of Magione, his fourth collection was published in a dual language edition as Vecchie Donne di Magione by Volumnia Editrice in 2006 and a Selected Poems in Slovene translation, was published in 2013 by Kud France Preseren. In addition he has been represented in many foreign anthologies of Irish poetry. Liverpool University Press published his childhood memoir, A Runner Among Falling Leaves, in 2001. His novel, A Year’s Midnight, was published by Pighog Press in 2012. He has won a number of awards for his work, including the James Joyce Prize and the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

Andrew Joron is the author of The Absolute Letter, a collection of poems published by Flood Editions (2017). Joron’s previous poetry collections include Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems (City Lights, 2010), The Removes (Hard Press, 1999), Fathom (Black Square Editions, 2003), and The Sound Mirror (Flood Editions, 2008). The Cry at Zero, a selection of his prose poems and critical essays, was published by Counterpath Press in 2007. From the German, he has translated the Literary Essays of Marxist-Utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch (Stanford University Press, 1998) and The Perpetual Motion Machine by the proto-Dada fantasist Paul Scheerbart (Wakefield Press, 2011). As a musician, Joron plays the theremin in various experimental and free-jazz ensembles. Joron teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University.

Sunday, January 26: The Lana Turner Glamour Reading (#Six release)

Come celebrate the release of Lana Turner #Six on 

Sunday, January 26 from 7-10 p.m. 

Hosted by the journal's co-editors: 

David Lau & Calvin Bedient

Admission is free.

Beverages & snacks will be served.

Featuring:

Brian Ang's current poetic project is The Totality Cantos, for Atelos. He edits ARMED CELL in Oakland.

Rusty Morrison's Beyond the Chainlink (Ahsahta) is just published (January 2014). After Urgency won Tupelo’s Dorset Prize, the true keeps calm biding its story won the Academy of American Poet’s James Laughlin Award, Ahsahta’s Sawtooth Prize, the N. CA Book Award, the DiCastagnola Award from PSA. Her first book, Whethering, won the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poems are anthologized in the Norton Postmodern American Poetry 2nd Edition, The Arcadia Project: Postmodern Pastoral, Beauty is a Verb, and elsewhere. She is co-publisher of Omnidawn.

Andrew Joron is the author of Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems (City Lights Books, 2011).

Juliana Spahr:  In addition to Commune Editions, Juliana Spahr edits the book series Chain Links with Jena Osman and the collectively funded Subpress with nineteen other people. With David Buuck she wrote Army of Lovers; she has done other recent collaborative work with Stephanie Young, Joan Retallack, Claudia Rankine, Joshua Clover, and Chris Chen.

Brenda Hillman teaches at Saint Mary's College where she is Olivia C. Filippi Professor of Poetry; her most recent collection is Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire.

Geoffrey G. O'Brien is the author of 4 books of poetry, most recently People on Sunday.

Alli Warren's first book is Here Come the Warm Jets (City Lights, 2013). New work can be found in The Emerald Tablet, Elderly, and Compost. 

Michael Palmer has lived in San Francisco since 1969. His most recent collections are Active Boundaries (Selected Essays and Talks) (New Directions, 2008), Madman With Broom (selected poems, with Chinese translations by Yunte Huang, Oxford University Press, 2011) and Thread (New Directions 2011). A new collaboration with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Times Bones, will have its San Francisco premiere in April 2014. He has taught at various universities in the United States, Europe and Asia and published translations from a variety of languages, in particular French, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese.

Lauren Levin is from New Orleans and lives in Oakland. She wrote Working (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), Song (The Physiocrats), Keenan (Lame House Press) and Not Time (Boxwood Editions). She co-edits the Poetic Labor Project and Mrs. Maybe.

Joshua Clover has appeared in every issue of Lana Turner. He has collaborated on poetry, critical writing, and conferences with Chris Nealon, Chris Chen, Aaron Benanav, Annie McClanahan, Louis Schwartz, Jasper Bernes, and Juliana Spahr; with the lattermost two, he edits Commune Editions. 

& the editors:

David Lau is co-editor of Lana Turner. He is the author of a recent chapbook, Bad Opposites (speCt! Books), and a collection of poems, Virgil and the Mountain Cat (UC Press, 2009). He teaches writing at Cabrillo College and UC Santa Cruz.

Calvin Bedient is the author of four books of poems, the most recent being The Multiple (Omnidawn Publishing) and Days of Unwilling (Saturnalia Books).  He is co-editor of Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion.

Friday, November 2nd with poets Andrew Joron, Dora Malech, and Michael Leong. Plus the theremin/percussion duo Cosmists!

Join us on Friday, November 2^nd at 7:00 PM for an All Souls Show of poetry and music with Andrew Joron, Dora Malech and Michael Leong!  

The night will also feature theremin and drums duo Andrew Joron and Mark Pino, otherwise known as Cosmists.  

Please note, this event begins at 7:00 PM. Beverages and snacks will be served.

Special thanks also to our emcee for the evening, Robert Andrew Perez!

 

Andrew Joron is the author of Trance Archive: Newand Selected Poems (City Lights, 2010). Joron’s previous poetry collections include The Removes (Hard Press, 1999), Fathom (Black Square Editions, 2003), and The Sound Mirror (Flood Editions, 2008). The Cry at Zero, a selection of his prose poems and critical essays, was published by Counterpath Press in 2007. From the German, he has translated the Literary Essays of Marxist-Utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch (Stanford University Press, 1998) and The Perpetual Motion Machine by the proto-Dada fantasist Paul Scheerbart (Wakefield Press, 2011). Joron plays theremin in the dark ambient group Cloud Shepherd as well as in the instrumental rock trio Crow Crash Radio.

Dora Malech was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1981 and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She earned a BA in Fine Arts from Yale College in 2003 and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2005. She has been the recipient of a Frederick M. Clapp Poetry Writing Fellowship from Yale, a Truman Capote Fellowship and a Teaching-Writing Fellowship from the Writers’ Workshop, a Glenn Schaeffer Poetry Award, a Writer’s Fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy, and a 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. The Waywiser Press published her first full-length collection of poems, Shore Ordered Ocean, in 2009 and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center published her second collection, Say So, in 2011. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, Best New Poets, American Letters & Commentary, Poetry London, and The Yale Review. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa; Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, New Zealand; Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois; and Saint Mary’s College of California in Moraga, California. Her paintings and drawings are available at the Chait Galleries in Iowa City, Iowa. She lives in Iowa City, where she writes, draws, teaches, and coordinates the Iowa Youth Writing Project, an arts outreach program for children and teens.

Michael Leong is the author of two books of poetry: e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012), which won a "Face Out" grant from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.  He has also published a translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat, I, the Worst of All (BlazeVOX [books], 2009).  He is the recipient of a 2012 &NOW Award for his chapbook The Philosophy of Decomposition/Re-Composition as Explanation (Delete Press, 2011), and his newest chapbook, Words on Edge, was chosen by Rob Fitterman as the winner of Plan B Press' 2012 Poetry Contest.  He is a lecturer at Rutgers University where he completed a dissertation on the contemporary long poem and the archive.

Mark Pino began playing the drums at age eleven. Previous to that he had loved listening to music, and his parents’ catholic tastes in music opened up his ears to many different styles. Pino began playing publicly in the SF Bay Area in the early 1990’s, and since then has played regionally and nationally in many different bands. Mark considers himself a band player; the interaction with other musicians remains important to him, as does the act of manipulating physical instruments for sound and music making. Over the course of his career, Pino has played with all sorts of people in all sorts of settings, and is grateful to all of them, as well as to his teachers who shared their knowledge with him.  

Robert Andrew Perez lives in Berkeley, California with two biologists. Unlike most poets, he is literally rolling in the dough, working for a deep dish pizza company not in Chicago. He holds various other odd jobs, including but not limited to mobile DJing for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs and miscellaneous aca-drone for the English departments of UC Berkeley and Saint Mary’s College (where he earned his BA and MFA, respectively). He is also the blog manager for the Underpass Reading Series and an associate editor for speCt!, a book arts letterpress poetry imprint, both based on Oakland. He is the recipient of the Lannan Prize for Saint Mary’s College and a Lambda Literary fellow. His recent work can be found in publications such as The Cortland Review, Writing Without Walls, and The Offending Adam.

Garrett Caples Interviews Andrew Joron for Studio One's April 2nd Reading

GARRETT CAPLES: You’ve recently had your selected poems, Trance Archive, published by City Lights; it goes back to your first book in 1987. What is it like, at this point in your career, to take a backwards glance at your trajectory as a poet? Do you see more disjunctions or continuities in the development of your work?

ANDREW JORON: My first poem was published three decades ago in a science-fiction magazine. In fact, I spent the first half of my career as a poet in the science-fiction field, an unusual trajectory for a poet. I regarded science fiction as a place where the Romantic imagination was still alive; the affinities between science fiction and surrealism informed my practice for most of that time. Eventually, my work exceeded the conventions of the genre, and I began to realize that the experimental poetry scene was much more conducive to the kind of poetry I was writing. So, in my late thirties, I abandoned the writing community I’d grown up in––science fiction––to join another. This leap was accomplished without a great shift in my practice: I was (and still am) writing what I consider to be a mode of “speculative lyric.” But this work has received a warmer welcome in the experimental-poetry scene than it ever did in science fiction, so I have never regretted “leaving home.”


GC: At a reading once, you claimed that many of your poems were secret biographies of letters of the alphabet. Can you elaborate on this?

AJ: I said that? Usually I think of language as a system coming to us from an Inhuman starry background, a kind of coding that appropriates our animal bodies. So I guess letters share the fate of our bodies––they’re arbitrary squiggles with the weight of the Ideal imposed on them. So poems participate in the fate of letters before words. Of patterns before meaning. This is one of the definitions of a hieroglyph. The science lies in seeing the hieroglyph (and by extension, the poem) as a complex system, overboiling its own parameters, and moving unpredictably toward an ontological rupture.


GC: What is the relationship between your work and anarchism, given your connections with philosopher Paul Feyerabend and surrealist mystic Philip Lamantia?

AJ: It’s probably naïve of me to think so, but I see a group of improvising musicians as embodying, in microcosm, the social relations of a liberated world: each musician is listening to––responsible to––the others as a way of energizing his or her own expressivity. Directional structures, “ideologies,” even leadership positions, arise only to be changed mid-flight, like the motion of a flock of birds. It will be a challenge to extrapolate this model to the techno-global world, but if the goal is the achievement of non-coercive, non-hierarchical social relations, it’s got to end up looking something like what Marx called “the free association of the producers.” This phrase resonated with the surrealists, for obvious reasons. Feyerabend taught me that “anything goes!” in the knowledge disciplines, and Lamantia provided me with a similar sense of permission in the poetic sphere.


GC: Why did you never take a literature course during your post-secondary school education?

AJ: This goes back to the nonlinear way in which I became a poet: in my college days I aimed to become a science-fiction writer. This was in the early seventies, a time when postmodernism had not yet taken over the academy. So science fiction was not taken seriously in the literature departments of most schools, including Berkeley. Instead of majoring in literature, I got my degree in the history and philosophy of science. Of course, along the way I discovered that I cared more about language as a speculative substance than about language as a platform for plot and character––and became a poet almost against my will. Beyond this, I have always felt stifled and regimented by the school routine. The library at Berkeley, with its millions of books, has been my real teacher, up to the present day.


GC: Would you characterize your playing of the Theremin as a literal poetics of the body?

AJ: The theremin is the quintessential musical instrument of science fiction, but it is also a Communist instrument, having been invented by the Russian engineer Leo Theremin in the wake of the 1917 revolution. In my prose-poem sequence “Constellations for Theremin” I call the theremin “the lyre of the Russian Revolution.” The design of the theremin is almost one hundred years old, but it’s still a vanguard musical instrument: it’s the only instrument, in fact, that’s played without being touched by the performer. Instead, the player passes his or her hands through an electromagnetic field generated by two antennas. The player’s interference in this field creates an ethereal musical tone. I feel that what results is not only the sound of my physical body caught in this field, but, in a moment of transfiguration, the emanation of my inner being undulating in the ether. The positions taken by my body while playing the theremin do indeed correspond to the shapes of letters in some futuristic language of the unsayable.

Garrett Caples is a poet who lives in Oakland, CA. He is the author of The Garrett Caples Reader and Complications, and is an editor at City Lights, where he curates the Spotlight poetry series. Wave Books will publish his pamphlet Quintessence of the Minor: Symbolist Poetry in English in May 2010.


Andrew Joron is the author of Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems (City Lights, 2010). After a decade and a half spent writing science-fiction poetry, culminating in his volume Science Fiction (Pantograph Press, 1992), Joron began to elaborate other forms of lyric speculation. This work has been collected in The Removes (Hard Press, 1999), Fathom (Black Square Editions, 2003), and The Sound Mirror (Flood Editions, 2008). The Cry at Zero, a selection of his prose poems and critical essays, was published by Counterpath Press in 2007. Joron is also the translator, from the German, of the Marxist-Utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch’s Literary Essays (Stanford University Press, 1998). He lives in Berkeley.

Andrew Joron, Steve Langan and Music from Free Rein.

Friday April 2nd
7:00pm

Steve Langan is the author of Meet Me at the Happy Bar (BlazeVOX, 2009), Notes on Exile and Other Poems, and Freezing. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, and on Cliff Island, Maine, and he teaches in the University of Nebraska MFA in Writing program. Langan's poems are in recent issues of Drunken Boat, Fence, The Iowa Review, MAKE, Notre Dame Review and Zoland Poetry.



Free Rein is an improvisational unit playing dark ambient/drone music. Its members consist of Andrew Joron on theremin and waterphone; Brian Lucas on 6-string bass, tapes, and wordless vocals; and Joseph Noble on wind instruments and percussion.


Andrew Joron is the author of Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems (City Lights, 2010). After a decade and a half spent writing science-fiction poetry, culminating in his volume Science Fiction (Pantograph Press, 1992), Joron began to elaborate other forms of lyric speculation. This work has been collected in The Removes (Hard Press, 1999), Fathom (Black Square Editions, 2003), and The Sound Mirror (Flood Editions, 2008). The Cry at Zero, a selection of his prose poems and critical essays, was published by Counterpath Press in 2007. Joron is also the translator, from the German, of the Marxist-Utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch’s Literary Essays (Stanford University Press, 1998). He lives in Berkeley.


Studio One Art Center
365 45th St
Oakland 94618
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