For over 35 years SPT has been at the heart of where experimentation and community intersect. We are thrilled to invite you to our upcoming season- filled with tributes and performances and celebrations of community.
Our Fall lineup is as follows:
Sept 10: an evening with ARIANA REINES
at Timken Hall, CCA San Francisco
Sept 25: a talk by NATHALIE STEPHENS: Vigilous, Reel: Desire (a)s accusation
at Graduate Writing Studio, CCA San Francisco, 195 de Haro
Oct 9: community writing itself: conversations with vanguard writers of the Bay Area
with SARAH ROSENTHAL
and contributors MICHAEL PALMER, KATHLEEN FRASER, BOB GLUCK and CAMILLE ROY with a reading of LESLIE SCALAPINO by ELIZABETH TREADWELL
at Timken Hall, CCA San Francisco
Oct 19: an evening with HIROMI ITO (co-presented by Mills College)
at 7:00PM at Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland
Oct 22: the Shakers- a play by KEVIN KILLIAN and WAYNE SMITH
at Timken Hall, CCA San Francisco
Nov 19: a celebration of The Encyclopedia Project with TISA BRYANT, KATE SCHATZ and MIRANDA MELLIS featuring performances from TAMMY RAE CARLAND, GLORIA FRYM, BOB GLUCK, CHRISTIAN NAGLER, JOCELYN SAIDENBERG, SARA SEINBERG, CHULEENAN SVETVILLAS and SARAH FRAN WISBY Music from Jacob Eichert & Co., surprise cameos, and much, much more!
at Timken Hall, CCA San Francisco
Dec 4: a tribute to LESLIE SCALAPINO
at Timken Hall, CCA San Francisco
Dec 10: SPT's Lifetime Acheivement Award: ETEL ADNAN
site TBA
Dec 19: an evening with FIONA TEMPLETON
at Graduate Writing Studio, CCA San Francisco
** all events begin at 7:30pm unless otherwise noted
As we gear up for the Fall, I hope you will take a moment to renew your support of Small Press Traffic, which makes our events possible. Of course, as a member you’ll again receive free admission to all of Small Press Traffic regular events. But you’ll also gain the satisfaction of knowing that you are supporting some of the most exciting and innovative writers of our time.
Please renew your SPT membership today to help us reach our goal of 50 new and renewing members by September 30th. There’s no better time than now! You can visit www.paypal.com and use smallpresstraffic@gmail.com in the “To” field, or drop your renewal in the mail and send to 1111 8th Street, San Francisco, 94107.
Thank you and see you soon!
Samantha
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Poets Theater 2011
Dear Friends,
In a few months Small Press Traffic will be celebrating our ten-year anniversary of Poets’ Theater! Poets Theater is an annual festival in which innovative works are performed, enduring avant-garde plays showcased, and the boundaries of theater generally jostled by artists and writers in collaboration to ask questions around and negotiate the possibilities of poetics and – and in – performance.
Each year this event has brought large audiences in appreciation of, and in engagement with, this ongoing and evolving community of writers and performers, and is always one of SPT’s major fundraising events. This year we are delighted to announce two evenings of new plays and performance works and most importantly, we want you to be involved.
We’d like to invite you to consider contributing a performance to this year’s events, slated for January 2011.
Contributions could can range from brief play to improvised performance to participatory instructional pieces to cross-genre collaboration – or anything you might discover between or beyond those suggestions. For example, you could submit a two minute piece with the instruction to have it be performed four different times throughout the night by different performers. Or you could submit a more "traditional" 10 minute play or a set of instructions for the audience. You get the idea, right?
Unfortunately, given this is our big fundraiser, we won’t be able to offer payment for your participation, but the experience of the festival affords communion, conversation, sometimes a little collusion and always a lot of fun. We really hope you'll submit your ideas!
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
1. All proposals must be submitted September 15th to poetstheater@gmail.com.
2. Proposals must be no longer than one typed 8.5x11 page of text.
3. Proposals must be for performances that will not exceed 10 minutes in length.
4. Proposals should include the following: a basic idea (with maybe some lines of dialogue); general technical needs for the performance (music, lighting , props etc.); number of performers; and, if you are unable to attend but would like to send in a proposal for others to perform on your behalf, a suggestion for a director/performers.
5. Proposals should reflect the constraint of the performance space, which has a limited stage area, minimal lighting, and minimal rehearsal access.
We, of course, would love to accept every proposal we receive, but will sadly have to select only 15-20 proposals. We will notify contributors by October 1st regarding their submission, as well as next steps and further details for selected entries.
Please feel free to e-mail with questions and the like. We look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
David Buuck, Cecil Giscombe, Lauren Shufran, Karen McKevitt and Samantha Giles
The SPT PT ’11 Committee
In a few months Small Press Traffic will be celebrating our ten-year anniversary of Poets’ Theater! Poets Theater is an annual festival in which innovative works are performed, enduring avant-garde plays showcased, and the boundaries of theater generally jostled by artists and writers in collaboration to ask questions around and negotiate the possibilities of poetics and – and in – performance.
Each year this event has brought large audiences in appreciation of, and in engagement with, this ongoing and evolving community of writers and performers, and is always one of SPT’s major fundraising events. This year we are delighted to announce two evenings of new plays and performance works and most importantly, we want you to be involved.
We’d like to invite you to consider contributing a performance to this year’s events, slated for January 2011.
Contributions could can range from brief play to improvised performance to participatory instructional pieces to cross-genre collaboration – or anything you might discover between or beyond those suggestions. For example, you could submit a two minute piece with the instruction to have it be performed four different times throughout the night by different performers. Or you could submit a more "traditional" 10 minute play or a set of instructions for the audience. You get the idea, right?
Unfortunately, given this is our big fundraiser, we won’t be able to offer payment for your participation, but the experience of the festival affords communion, conversation, sometimes a little collusion and always a lot of fun. We really hope you'll submit your ideas!
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
1. All proposals must be submitted September 15th to poetstheater@gmail.com.
2. Proposals must be no longer than one typed 8.5x11 page of text.
3. Proposals must be for performances that will not exceed 10 minutes in length.
4. Proposals should include the following: a basic idea (with maybe some lines of dialogue); general technical needs for the performance (music, lighting , props etc.); number of performers; and, if you are unable to attend but would like to send in a proposal for others to perform on your behalf, a suggestion for a director/performers.
5. Proposals should reflect the constraint of the performance space, which has a limited stage area, minimal lighting, and minimal rehearsal access.
We, of course, would love to accept every proposal we receive, but will sadly have to select only 15-20 proposals. We will notify contributors by October 1st regarding their submission, as well as next steps and further details for selected entries.
Please feel free to e-mail with questions and the like. We look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
David Buuck, Cecil Giscombe, Lauren Shufran, Karen McKevitt and Samantha Giles
The SPT PT ’11 Committee
Friday, June 25, 2010
Reading Report: Aaron Vidaver & Dorothy Trujillo Lusk
(belated) Reading Notes: Aaron Vidaver & Dorothy Trujillo Lusk @ SPT 17 April 2010
(mishearings/mistranscriptions left intact)
AVid: "Primary Evaluations (1975-95)" — text from twenty years worth of reports from AV's time in the Canadian educational system. Ideologies of institutional & bureaucratic discourses — of the individual, trained in/thru language. A/poetics of the ideological state apparatus.
"Aaron has made good progress this year in reading"
"Aaron's own writings are fluent"
"I would like to see him become a more independent worker"
— 'confessional' in an uncanny, discomforting way — class on display, as framed from 'outside' (the 'individual') & 'inside' (the 'system'). Thinking here too of Dana Teen Lomax's _Disclosure_
"try not to include too many monsters, Aaron"
"When he expresses this information on paper..."
— increasing discomfort, like looking through someone else's personal files. But that's exactly what we're doing? Listening to such? Made yet more discomforting given the subject's reading them to us? (Still — we can keep at bat w/ 'oh, cute, what a precocious child!' - the pre-writer, the not-yet-Vidaver...)
"If you want to enjoy the next level, you'll want to put out more effort"
— effort, what is effort? what is a life? but the accretion of 'effort'? as determined by...?
—Who keeps this data? Where? (esp. pre-digital) (AV as archivist) (what states keep, what families keep)
"capable but erratic"
"failure's likely, unless a radical turnaround in effort"
— so many of these phrases also can be read/heard as commentaries on the text itself, self-reflections or meta-commentary
— and now onto 'post-secondary', here culled from teachers' margin notes on AV's writing:
"I think you get the point"
"Aaron, I *loved* reading your journal"
"Your throwaway remarks about Hegel and Marx..."
— as a teacher, impressed by extent of feedback — so intimate, anonymous (here, now, for/to us), at times seemingly rote/assembly line, yet still — addressed to *me*, when/where does such interpellation spill over into tenderness?
"I learn so much every time I read your journal"
— the archival impulse — q. of what a *self* is, over time, accumulated in language & documents — the 'complete works', autobiography (by other means?) of a writer/intellectual — the coming of age (non-fiction) novel — avoiding easy critique of nationalist educational systems, since foregrounded is the way in which one makes sense of oneself in response to such 'feedback' — & how the feedback develops over time, into what? a reputation? a sense of who/what-one-is? a guage of one's 'effort' (in relation to what norms, what expectations?). State-us updates.
-----
DTL:
The dense, thick, politicized language, at-times-neutered *you* & *my*, soft (?) anger...
"since I'm a whiner, only in person..."
quick — but not spitting — *intensities* — i.e. intimacies are not in and of themselves *positive*/good — abjection w/o cyncism or self-pity
(where my nipples touch yr nipples the political is personal)
"Why do I have a phony English accent?"
— canadian & class identities
"former sonnets all for the plunder"
"froth management"
"collected glut"
— *where* is 'Culture?" she asks — where/how/when does culture live/act?
"I want you all to get up for art"
"But how did I *get* here?"
— then some multi-lingual work — Chinook, Italian, Eastern European, French — purposively clunky prosodies pressing up against the glitch-play -> translations that retain DTL's stuttering pushing-pulsing pressing up against sense/nonsense sense-making/marking, as well as chafing some formalisms of 'pure' language v. tone/sound – 'old english' — "I dreamt as a dog"
"England — bunch of ships"
"Spain — bunch of ships"
("anti-tumblehome / for fallen comrades")
"Is that a penis in your pocket or are you just going to shoot me?"
— Such events as 'bringing the news' — from elsewhere, not just the 'reading' but the context, contrasts, talk, drinks, histories, counter-histories, jokes, gossip, torqued cynicisms, trans-local book-trade, cross-border interrogatives, all that & more ---
— David Buuck
(mishearings/mistranscriptions left intact)
AVid: "Primary Evaluations (1975-95)" — text from twenty years worth of reports from AV's time in the Canadian educational system. Ideologies of institutional & bureaucratic discourses — of the individual, trained in/thru language. A/poetics of the ideological state apparatus.
"Aaron has made good progress this year in reading"
"Aaron's own writings are fluent"
"I would like to see him become a more independent worker"
— 'confessional' in an uncanny, discomforting way — class on display, as framed from 'outside' (the 'individual') & 'inside' (the 'system'). Thinking here too of Dana Teen Lomax's _Disclosure_
"try not to include too many monsters, Aaron"
"When he expresses this information on paper..."
— increasing discomfort, like looking through someone else's personal files. But that's exactly what we're doing? Listening to such? Made yet more discomforting given the subject's reading them to us? (Still — we can keep at bat w/ 'oh, cute, what a precocious child!' - the pre-writer, the not-yet-Vidaver...)
"If you want to enjoy the next level, you'll want to put out more effort"
— effort, what is effort? what is a life? but the accretion of 'effort'? as determined by...?
—Who keeps this data? Where? (esp. pre-digital) (AV as archivist) (what states keep, what families keep)
"capable but erratic"
"failure's likely, unless a radical turnaround in effort"
— so many of these phrases also can be read/heard as commentaries on the text itself, self-reflections or meta-commentary
— and now onto 'post-secondary', here culled from teachers' margin notes on AV's writing:
"I think you get the point"
"Aaron, I *loved* reading your journal"
"Your throwaway remarks about Hegel and Marx..."
— as a teacher, impressed by extent of feedback — so intimate, anonymous (here, now, for/to us), at times seemingly rote/assembly line, yet still — addressed to *me*, when/where does such interpellation spill over into tenderness?
"I learn so much every time I read your journal"
— the archival impulse — q. of what a *self* is, over time, accumulated in language & documents — the 'complete works', autobiography (by other means?) of a writer/intellectual — the coming of age (non-fiction) novel — avoiding easy critique of nationalist educational systems, since foregrounded is the way in which one makes sense of oneself in response to such 'feedback' — & how the feedback develops over time, into what? a reputation? a sense of who/what-one-is? a guage of one's 'effort' (in relation to what norms, what expectations?). State-us updates.
-----
DTL:
The dense, thick, politicized language, at-times-neutered *you* & *my*, soft (?) anger...
"since I'm a whiner, only in person..."
quick — but not spitting — *intensities* — i.e. intimacies are not in and of themselves *positive*/good — abjection w/o cyncism or self-pity
(where my nipples touch yr nipples the political is personal)
"Why do I have a phony English accent?"
— canadian & class identities
"former sonnets all for the plunder"
"froth management"
"collected glut"
— *where* is 'Culture?" she asks — where/how/when does culture live/act?
"I want you all to get up for art"
"But how did I *get* here?"
— then some multi-lingual work — Chinook, Italian, Eastern European, French — purposively clunky prosodies pressing up against the glitch-play -> translations that retain DTL's stuttering pushing-pulsing pressing up against sense/nonsense sense-making/marking, as well as chafing some formalisms of 'pure' language v. tone/sound – 'old english' — "I dreamt as a dog"
"England — bunch of ships"
"Spain — bunch of ships"
("anti-tumblehome / for fallen comrades")
"Is that a penis in your pocket or are you just going to shoot me?"
— Such events as 'bringing the news' — from elsewhere, not just the 'reading' but the context, contrasts, talk, drinks, histories, counter-histories, jokes, gossip, torqued cynicisms, trans-local book-trade, cross-border interrogatives, all that & more ---
— David Buuck
Thursday, May 27, 2010
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!!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
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
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
Monday, May 10, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
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
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.
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