TENDENCIES: Poetics & Practice

This series of talks by major poets, titled in honor of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, explores the relationship between contemporary poetic manifesto, practice, queer theory and pedagogy.

The next event features talks by:

Jack Kimball
Stacy Szymaszek
CAConrad

…followed by a discussion/Q&A session.

on Thursday, May 6
at 6:30 PM
FREE

at CUNY Graduate Center
in the Skylight Room (9100)
365 Fifth Avenue, NYC

Jack Kimball is a self-described after-language poet based in Boston but often identified with New York. A number of his books are published by Potes and Poets Press (Witness Protection, 1997; Quite Vacation, 1998; Frosted, 2001). Terrence Diggory suggests “identification of that press with Language poetry has established a context for the reception of Kimball’s work. For instance, in a blurb for Frosted, Tony Towle noted ‘mysterious ironies and enjambments, lines that are stunningly odd, and various kinds of oblique narrative that may owe something to “language” influences, but are often also resonant of Jimmy Schuyler.’” Resonating with another New York poet, Kimball set one complex goal, later modified, in recent work, Post~Twyla (published 2006, republished 2010): to keep a sardonic diary, compressing reactions to every page of John Ashbery’s masterpiece Flow Chart by way of fake haiku and renga-like short verse and prose commentary. Publisher of Faux Press, Kimball blogs at pantaloons.blogspot.com. He does not twitter.

Stacy Szymaszek was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI. From 1999 to 2005, she was the Literary Program Manager for the nonprofit literary organization Woodland Pattern Book Center. In 2005 she moved to New York to serve as Program Coordinator at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. In 2006-07, she served as Monday Night Reading Coordinator. She became Artistic Director in 2007. She is the author of the chapbooks Mutual Aid (gong press, 2004), Some Mariners (Etherdome, 2004), There Were Hostilities (repair, 2005), Pasolini Poems (Cy Press, 2005), from Hyperglossia (Belladonna Books, 2005), Stacy S: Autoportraits (OMG! Press, 2008), Orizaba: A Voyage with Hart Crane (Faux Chaps, 2008), from Hyperglossia Hot Whiskey Press, 2008) and from Hart Island (Albion Books, 2009). Her first full-length book, Emptied of All Ships, was published in 2005 and her second book Hyperglossia in 2009, both with Litmus Press. http://www.litmuspress.org/szymaszek.html (photo by John Sarsgard).

CAConrad is the recipient of The Gil Ott Book Award for The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009). He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge(Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined(Factory School, 2010). The son of white trash asphyxiation, his childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. Visit him online at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com and with his friends at http://PhillySound.blogspot.com(photo by Stacy Szymaszek).

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TENDENCIES: Poetics & Practice is curated by Tim Peterson (Trace).

All events are co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, CLAGS (the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies), The Graduate Center PhD Program in English, and the GC Poetics Group.