Spoken word artist gunned down in Miami

what does it say about our society when poets are gunned down on the street?

Spoken Word Artist Willie Lee Bell shot in Miami

Anne Blonstein (1958-2011) RIP

We were contacted this morning by Charles Lock informing us that Anne Blonstein had died on April 19th. It was conveyed to us in the following manner, that Anne would be very pleased to know her chapbook that those lips had language was going to be in the Beinecke. He then told me that she had died of cancer. Here's a brief obit and her current Wikipedia page link. The page does not yet mention her death:

Anne Blonstein

Anne , poet, died (cancer) in the Ita Wegman Clinic, Arlesheim, Switzerland, on 19 April 2011. Born on 22 April 1958, she had lived since 1983 in Basel; she leaves a brother, Steven. A celebratory reading will be held in Basel later this year.

Anne Blonstein

I had the pleasure of reading the mss. "that those lips had language" during our 2004 poetry chapbook contest and while I didn't believe it would win, I decided to keep the copy aside and return to it later. Which I did the following year when it published it, our first European poet, with much "across the pond" issues and problems mostly centered around Anne's insistence at using as her cover image a piece of art by Aloise Corbaz. It was also our first chapbook to have 4 prices in 4 different currencies listed on the back.

Anne and I had kept in touch even as her publishing fortunes improved and Plan B continued to add new poets and titles. Until illness forced her focus on sheer survival and I, not the worse for my ignorance, kept including her in our email blasts about new books and readings.

She's left us with a body of work, which for a writer is what needs to be left. The work. A clean body of that when the physical one betrays us.

end of the typewriter

a technology barely 100 years old is about to go the way of the Dodo bird


Last Typewriter Factory Closes


Many a writer will be greatly disheartened. It's a bit sad to be sure. I like manual typewriters more than electric ones. My personal preference.


long live the typewrite and all the words that were produced thusly.


till soon


stevenallenmay

want to share a bit of WOW

was notified earlier today that a copy of everything that Plan B Press has in print has been ordered by Yale University. That's right, Plan B Press books will be in the Yale library very soon! Exciting stuff!!

and now, we have a winner.....

Congratulations go out to Michael Fallon for his collection, Since You Have No Body. Winner of the 2011 poetry chapbook contest.

the entanglements of e-books

so, problems that don't exist with physical books - when to "erase" text! From the NY Times, Publishers and Libraries struggle over terms of e-books

more things to consider when wanting your work to go digital.

we could always coordinate by color

Home Decor for Bookworms


some people think of books as color swaths. ugh

tattooed poetry

I don't think I am really to go here but it certainly is an interesting conceptual idea. I haven't sat down and watched ten minutes of single word poetry reading but -

it does remind me of a photographer I knew in the 1990s who wrote a poem in three parts across the naked chests of three different people and then photographed the piece. It's similar to that.

and it's a permanent poem that has yet to be "captured" on paper.


enjoy!

Two New Releases! Spring 2011

Available right now: Voice Lesson's by Paulette Beete. A beautiful chapbook of poems focusing on a woman's many manifestations of finding her voice. Rich narrative poems. And the first release of the season!

Available for pre-order: Android by Lek Borja. Concise poetry exploring themes of alienation and post-modern living. Preorder today and save $2.

memory flashbacks while working on a new project..

.....so, the project I am working on currently is to comb through numerous VHS tapes which were recorded between 1995 and 2001 on which were countless poetry readings (in full) and recorded episodes of a public access TV show I produced during the same time frame called "(re)VERSE". (re)VERSE was a 30 minute poetry explosion - sort of MTV for the local poetry scene - and the reason I am combing these videos is to find the scattered readings of my own work, in particular the pieces that were to become my first book Plastic Sunrise. That book came out in 2003 just as I was about to present a monthlong poetry festival in Philadelphia called "Poets Among US".

I am going through these tapes with the intention of capturing the bits of me reading poems which make up Plastic Sunrise for a companion DVD for PS. And here I am going through tapes that I haven't viewed in years, an archive of a period of time in a specific area (Central Pennsylvania in the mid-to-late 1990s). The Monks Tunic in Lancaster, PA. Sahara Restaurant in Reading, PA. Butternut Inn in New Tripoli, PA. Stonehedge outside Tamaqua, PA. Other spaces I don't even recall and then I am floored by the incredible array of talent that was there. Many of whom have disappeared into the mist of memory. Awestruck, I fast forward through time (literally) to hear these great poets who faded back to the street or became Poet Laureate of the counties where they lived. And they were all sharing, reading, being present.

One of the poets from that place and time was Craig Czury who has served as Poet Laureate of Berks County, PA and who remarked over a decade ago that I was the archivist of "the scene", and I guess I had become that. Originally I was filming material for the TV show I created, that all changed in 1998 when I blathered out the whole "why not have a poetry reading every day of the month?" line which led directly to Bardfest, the Berks Bards, antijazz conspiracy, and Plan B Press.

Now I am threading the needle of my electronic recording machine to weave together the individual pieces of Plastic Sunrise soas to become a non-book book form of the material. Plastic Sunrise, the DVD footage. It's NOT an e-book, it's a DVD of my per(former) self presenting the work as it was originally written and unleashed. I do not merely "read" my work, there's a performative element in all of it. I am presenting live. Why present live like it's words trapped on yellowing dusty pages? Make the words KICK off the page. Don't hold the language hostage. Light the fuse and toss the bomb!

The project is about half complete - but it is so cool to see these stunning folk captured on tape from their "very, very past." I want to thank in advance Clint Weiler, Kerry Lance Graul, and Kim Rishaw-Seyler for manning the camera during that period. YOU are the videographers; you captured the moment. I just created the scene that you captured. Amen to collaboration!