Friday, August 26, 2011

"The Bubble: The Limits of Pop Music"


Another year, another panel for me to moderate at the Hopscotch Music Festival...look how sick the roster is! (Sick meaning awesome.) UPDATE: note the date change from Thursday to Saturday, reflected below. 


The Bubble: The Limits of Pop Music
Saturday, Sept. 10: 3–5pm
Raleigh City Museum
with
Wayne Coyne (of The Flaming Lips)
Mark Richardson (Editor in Chief of Pitchfork Media and author of Zaireeka)
Chris Stamey (of the dB’s)
Julianna Barwick
Sam Herring (of Future Islands)
David Tompkins (author of How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War
II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks)
Moderated by: Brian Howe
With music by Chris Stamey

Friday, August 19, 2011

Archers Feature in the Indy

Check out my story in the Indy about the Archers of Loaf reunion. Stoked for the show tomorrow night!

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Reading Announcement: Tanya Olson & Ansel Elkins


***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—SPREAD FAR & WIDE***

On Saturday, 27 August 2011, at 8 pm sharp, the Wax Wroth Reading Series returns in a new location, Carrboro’s lovely Looking Glass Café. The featured reader is Durham’s TANYA OLSON, the tireless Third Friday coordinator who recently won a Fellowship from the Lambda Literary Foundation, which celebrates and nurtures LGBT literature. Greensboro’s ANSEL ELKINS,  currently racking up prizes and fellowships of her own, will read first. Admission is free, though you can support the Café by purchasing a wide variety of beverages, from espresso to alcohol, and food. Come and hear two terrific area poets, both winners of Boston Review’s “Discovery” prize, who are both receiving well-deserved attention in the wider literary world.
  
Quick Facts

What: Poetry reading
Who: TANYA OLSON & ANSEL ELKINS
When: Saturday – 27 August 2011 – 8 pm
Where: The Looking Glass Café – 601 West Main St., Carrboro, NC
  
About the Readers

On tumorous claws, rats boarded the ship.
They left their mothers behind. That glossy hawk
kept tethered to deck, he left his mother behind.
Clinging fleas, dirt, and mites showed resilience,
leaving mothers behind. Viruses persevered
in the blood and left their mothers behind.
 --Tanya Olson, from “Zeno’s Boat"

Durham’s TANYA OLSON has published work in Boston Review, Beloit Poetry Review, Cairn, The Fanzine, Bad Subjects, Main Street Rag, Pedestal, Elysian Fields, and Southern Cultures. She won first prize in the 2005 Independent Weekly Poetry Contest and was a runner-up for the 2009 Rita Dove Award. She is the recipient of an Emerging Artist Grant from the Durham Arts Council and was the 2008 Fortner Award winner. In 2010, she won the Boston Review “Discovery” prize for poetry and was named a 2011 Lambda Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation. She helps coordinate Durham’s Third Friday, is a member of the Black Socks poetry group, and serves on the board of the Carolina Wren Press.

____

Return the tree, the moon, the naked man
Hanging from the indifferent branch
Return blood to his brain, breath to his heart
Reunite the neck with the bridge of his body
Untie the knot, undo the noose
Return the kicking feet to ground
--Ansel Elkins, from “Reverse: A Lynching”

Greensboro’s ANSEL ELKINS won the Boston Review “Discovery” prize for poetry in 2011, as well as an NC Arts Council Fellowship. Her poetry is featured or forthcoming in The American Scholar, The Believer, Best New Poets 2011, Boston Review, The Daily Beast, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, The Southern Review, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She is a recent graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at UNC-G, and was the poetry editor of The Greensboro Review.
  
About the Looking Glass Cafe

601 West Main St., Carrboro, NC
(919) 967-9398

The Looking Glass is a vibrant, comfortable, and spacious café located in the heart of Carrboro. A dedicated lot and nearby municipal parking offer easy access. Admission is free, and alcohol, coffee, and food will be on sale. We’ll try to begin at 8 pm and wrap up by shortly after 9, leaving plenty of time to enjoy the café and mingle with the readers. 

About the Wax Wroth Reading Series

Wax Wroth is a sporadic poetry reading series organized by Brian Howe whenever he feels like it and has the opportunity to present something really cool. Prior Wax Wroths have been held at the art space at 715 Washington in Durham, and have featured readers such as Tony Tost, Heather Christle, and Chris Tonelli. This reading marks Wax Wroth’s debut in Carrboro.

Series organizer Brian Howe is a Durham-based journalist, critic, poet, and et cetera. Find out more about his work at http://waxwroth.blogspot.com/. Questions regarding the Wax Wroth Reading Series may be directed to brian.g.howe@gmail.com.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Best opening lines ever?

Brahms dreamt
the complacent
girl’s allergy to calamine
lotion screwed up her cat’s
psyche.



-from "Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1" by Wayne Koestenbaum

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

20 Years of Ron Liberti

"American Checkbook etc." by Ron Liberti

In the Indy, check out my review of Ron Liberti's poster and print show at the new Ackland Museum Store.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

We aeronauts of the spirit!

All those brave birds which fly out into the distance, into the farthest distance--it is certain! Somewhere or other they will be unable to go on and will perch down on a mast or a bare cliff face, and they will even be thankful for this miserable accommodation! But who could venture to infer from that, that there was not an immense open space before them, that they had flown as far as one could fly! All our great teachers and predecessors have at last come to a stop...; it will be the same with you and me! But what does that matter to you and me! Other birds will fly farther! This insight and faith of ours vies with them in flying up and away; it rises above our heads and above our impotence into the heights, and from there surveys the distance and sees the flocks of birds which, far stronger than we, still strive whither we have striven, and where everything is sea, sea, sea! And whither then would we go? Would we cross the sea? Whither does this mighty longing draw us, this longing that is worth more to us than any pleasure? Why just in this direction, thither where all the suns of humanity have hitherto gone down? Will it perhaps be said of us one day that we too, steering westward, hoped to reach India, but that it was our fate to be wrecked against infinity? Or, my brothers? Or?