In Case You Missed It: Thank You Angela and Evelyn!

In case you you missed the fantastic reading on Empires, please check out the following reading report by Carol Mirakove.

In addition, we've been lucky enough to engage the amazing CA Conrad to write our introductions this season, which are too lovely not to post.

CA Conrad's intro for Evelyn Reilly and Angela Carr:

(on podium have two little bowls, one with blueberries, one with shavings of papaya)

WELCOME!

Angela Carr, our first poet this evening lives and writes in Montreal. Our second poet Evelyn Reilly lives and writes in New York City. It is 333 miles between Montreal and New York City. 3, 3, 3, added together make 9, the perfect, indestructible number 9. The energy rises up the stem and circulates in the crown chakra, 9 is the home of the poet. 9 is the brain stem, lifting us into speech, into awareness, opening poems to epiphany.

The sugars which feed the brain stem of these two poets when writing their poems are as various as any thinking, creative being. In Montreal, one of Angela's favorite sources of natural sugar are blueberries, a local fruit feeding off the same sunlight where Angela walks and writes her poems.

(SAMANTHA GILES PAUSES TO EAT A BLUEBERRY, AND TO SAY, "Mm, Angela's poems!")

In New York City, one of Evelyn's favorite natural sugars is papaya, a fruit native to the tropics of the Americas, the equatorial light finding its way through her blood, into her mind, and poems.

(SAMANTHA GILES PAUSES TO EAT A BIT OF PAPAYA, AND TO SAY, "Mm, Evelyn's poems!")

We are fortunate to have these two poets with us today. Angela traveled 2,543 miles, Evelyn traveled 2,905 miles.

PLEASE HELP ME WELCOME ANGELA CARR AND EVELYN REILLY!


Reading Report by Carol Mirakove
Clementines & valentines & wine. CA Conrad was present this night by way of writing introductions for Evelyn and Angela: “9 is the home of the poet.” Samantha Giles paused to eat a blueberry.


Evelyn Reilly read from her book Styrofoam, informed largely by Industrial Specification Sheets from Dow Corning’s website.


Ankle bracelets on birds are made of PVC. A world of faux construction: “inter-pseudo kindess.” Plastic comes to life. X X X


As Reilly reads I experience a flow and ebb of judgment of plastics. It’s hard to imagine not judging plastics. But, experience trumps imagination: her language hit beauty, poetry.


Most of us are at our best when we submit (to love, in art). Is it even possible to be beautiful without giving in to beauty?


Reilly says her engagement with plastics began with an encounter of Rudolf Stingel’s art at the Whitney Museum. She cites a “human joy of fake materials.” Styrofoam is “not just an eco-rant.”


“We invented this word ‘nature’ as other. Language is part of the ecology problem.”


We can intellectually know that plastics are bad for the environment, they epitomize our greed, we may allow ourselves to be seduced by language.


It’s hard to keep up resistance. We long to make connections. Happiness is a survival tactic. Denial can feed contentment.


If this pattern is true, take care in choosing surroundings.



Angela Carr read from The Rose Concordance a translation of “Roman de la Rose,” a 13th-century poem by Guillaume de Lorris. Carr’s poem includes “allegorical figures like love, luxury, feeling.” Her reading was thrilling. Language was exceptionally alive:


“eating light or eating fountain”


“is this the critical substance of ‘drank’?”


“don’t wait for me to choose preciously between meaning and coincidence”


“our language is less in motion than motion”


Not that night. It wasn’t.