Ending the Season with a Bang

Thanks to all who came out to support Small Press Traffic at our end-of-the-season RELIQUARIUM, and thanks to all who donated from afar...

Thanks to Thirsty Bear for food, Cassie Smith for drinks, Kit Robinson & Bahia Son for music & dancing (!), Adam Fagin for all sorts of before-during-and-after help, Frank Bash, the SPT board members, all the artists & writers & celebs who donated auction items, and especially ED Samantha Giles, who set everything up - and then tore the house down w her MCing, auctioneering, and dancing...

see our flickr page for more photos & see you in the fall!!

Small Press Traffic needs YOU

Dear Friends of Small Press Traffic--

As you know, Small Press Traffic has been supporting the innovative writing communities of the Bay Area for more than 35 years. Each year you are invited to enjoy the communal and theatrical pleasures of Poets Theater, to hear a diverse array of writers from the Bay and far beyond read and discuss their work. Now, to help us keep the poetry love and logos happening, we are inviting you to attend and/or make a donation of any size to SPT.

Here's the 411:

On Saturday, May 22nd, SPT is about to host a new, mysterious and exciting event: It's called Reliquarium and will feature an auction of reliquary objects representing the artistic DNA of the smart and famous. You'll be able to bid on UNIQUE items such as:

a hat worn by JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
eyeglasses worn by JONATHAN LETHEM
a tear-stained handkerchief by LEMONY SNICKET
"treated" bound proof of All the Whiskey in Heaven: altered to a one-of-a-kind piece of art by CHARLES BERNSTEIN
a dream journal by JULIANA SPAHR
a skydiving outfit worn by BHANU KAPIL
a shadow box of used pill bottles by DONNA DE LA PERRIERE
a handwritten journal filled in at his grandmother's house by ANSELM BERRIGAN
Leg pendant from Catedral Metropolitana de la Asuncia de Mara in Mexico City worn around after FRANK SHERLOCK's 2007 emergency knee surgery, due to meningitis
the totally un-authenticated upper third molar tooth of GERTRUDE STEIN

and MANY MANY MORE!

PLUS: Kit Robinson's band Bahia Son will be playing Latin Jazz, Salsa and Cuban son!

The Reliquarium will take place at 5:30pm on Saturday, May 22nd at the:

Graduate Writing Studio
195 deHaro Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

The entrance fee of $20 includes beverages and nibbles graciously provided by ThirstyBear Brewing Company.

Do you live too far away to make the event? Is your social calendar already full? You can STILL help keep SPT afloat.

On of our Board members, Gloria Frym is pledging a matching grant of up to $500. So if you buy a ticket or make a donation as a result of this message, write GF on your check, she'll match the amount, up to $500. Each $ you donate means $2 to Small Press Traffic!

Please address checks to:
Small Press Traffic
California College of the Arts
1111 8th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

OR: just visit PAYPAL at www.paypal.com and make a secure and easy contribution. First, you'll need to take one minute to set up a secure PayPal account if you don't already have one. Then, log into your paypal account and select the "send money" tab and put smallpresstraffic@gmail.com in the "TO" recipient field and make a contribution in any amount. To indicate that you are contributing based on this email, you can include "RTM" in the note field.

No contribution is too small. Really!

Thanks!
Samantha

TOMORROW: Charles Bernstein and Norman Fischer!

Please join us for a conversation and book launch with poets Charles Bernstein and Norman Fischer!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010
8:00pm - 9:30pm
Taube Center for Jewish Life
3200 California Street San Francisco, CA

This new collection of essays (from the University of Alabama Press) by Jewish poets and writers (including Paul Auster, Jerome Rothenberg, Marjorie Perloff and others) highlights key issues of identity, and self–representation, and aesthetic practice for Jewish poets in the 20th century. Join two contributing poets, Charles Bernstein and Norman Fischer, for a discussion on how being Jewish reflects on their poetics and how the tradition of the avant garde informs their identities as Jews.

Charles Bernstein is the author of 40 books, ranging from large-scale collections of poetry and essays to pamphlets, libretti, translations, and collaborations. All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems ( 2010) from Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Recent full-lengtht works of poetry include Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006), With Strings (University of Chicago Press, 2001), and Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000). He has published two books of essays and one essay/poem collection: My Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999); A Poetics (Harvard University Press, 1992); Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Sun & Moon Press, 1986, 1994; reprinted by Northwestern University Press, 2001). Shadowtime (Green Integer, 2005) is the libretto he wrote for Brian Ferneyhough's opera and Blind Witness (Factory School, 2008) collects the libretti he wrote for Ben Yarmolinsky.

Bernstein is Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania.

He is the co-founder and co-editor, with Al Filreis, of PENNsound (writing.upenn.edu/pennsund); and editor, and co-founder, with Loss Pequenño Glazier, of The Electronic Poetry Center (epc.buffalo.edu). He is coeditor, with Hank Lazer, of Modern and Contemporary Poetics, a book series from the University of Alabama Press (1998 - ). He has been host and co-producer of LINEbreak and Close Listening, two radio poetry series.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Norman Fischer has been publishing poetry since 1979. Loosely associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets of the seventies and eighties, he maintains close creative and personal relationships with many writers from that movement. Fischer spent five years living at Tassajara Zen Monastery in monastic Buddhist practice where poets Jane Hirshfield and Phillip Whalen were fellow students. He enjoyed a particularly close relationship to Phillip Whalen whom Norman describes in the dedication of his book Slowly But Dearly as a fellow “poet, Zen priest, teacher, friend.” Norman is Philip Whalen’s literary executor.

This Friday! Eileen Tabios and Susan Gevirtz

Please join us for an evening of awesome.

May 7th
Timken Hall at CCA San Francisco
event begins at 7:30pm
$8-15 members and students FREE

Susan Gevirtz's recent books include Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press), Broadcast, and Without Event: Introductory Notes (forthcoming from eohippus labs. Along with teaching locally at various Bay Area institutions, with Greek poet Siarita Kouka she runs The Paros Symposium, on Paros island, an annual meeting of poets and translators from Greece and the United States.

Eileen R. Tabios has released 15 print, four electronic and 1 CD poetry collections, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, and a short story collection. Her most recent book is Rosary of Thorns: Selected Prose Poems 1998-2009.