2000 Subtext Readings

2000

December 6, 2000
Jodi Lundgren, plus readings of the poetry of Betsy Warland

Please note that Betsy Warland will be unable to attend the reading due to serious illness. In tribute, several members of the local poetry community will be reading selections from her work. Warland, the author of nine books, is perhaps most known for her way of working with silence; the unsayable; the secreted; the unknowable. Her scoring of the blank spaces on the page evoke as much meaning as her inscribing of written language. Join us as we honor her work with this special reading.

Jodi Lundgren's first novel, Touched, was recently released by Vancouver's Anvil Press and she has read from it in Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto, and Tempe, Arizona. She has previously been published in literary magazines such as Trivia, Paragraph, sub-TERRAIN and in the anthology Beyond Bedlam (Chicago: Third Side Press). Her work is forthcoming in a special issue of The Capilano Review and in the Anvil Press anthology, In the Trenches. Her critical writing has appeared in Canadian Literature, Matrix, and Essays on Canadian Writing.
Raised in Victoria, Jodi holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Concordia University in Montreal. She currently lives in Seattle where she teaches in the English department and in the Canadian Studies program at the University of Washington. She is completing a dissertation titled Genre, Nation, Subject: Contemporary Fictions of Canada.

November 1, 2000
Clint Burnham and Brian Carpenter

Clint Burnham lives in Vancouver, where he teaches at Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and at the University of British Columbia running a liberal arts program for low income people. His books include The Jamesonian Unconscious (criticism, Duke, 1995), Steve McCaffery (criticism, ECW, 1996), Be Labour Reading (poetry, ECW, 1997), Airborne Photo (fiction, Anvil, 1999), and, forthcoming, A4isms (aphorisms, House) and Buddyland (poetry, Coach House). Work has appeared recently or is about to appear in Sulfur, Queen Street Quarterly, W, Capilano Review, West Coast Line, and Matrix.

Brian Carpenter's poems have appeared in W, Tinfish, and the electronic
journal, Pen & Sword. His first two chapbooks, Aspect Cycle and The Green Island Problem, are forthcoming from Daiku Productions.

Wednesday, October 4th
Laynie Browne and Susan Howe

Laynie Browne's recent books are Gravity's Mirror, The Agency of Wind (Avec), and Clepsdra. Work is forthcoming in Conjunctions and abacus.

Susan Howe's most recent book of poems is Pierce-Arrow (New Directions). Critical works include: The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History, and My Emily Dickinson. Her poems have been widely anthologized and she has won two American Book Awards and a Guggenheim. She teaches at SUNY Buffalo.

Wednesday, September 6th
Willie Smith and Paul Nelson with Stephanie Skura

Willie Smith is a Seattle fiction writer and author of the novel Oedipus Cadet (Black Heron). His work has appeared in numerous publications including Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Motel, and Lost and Found Times. According to critic Kirby Olson, "If James Joyce had wanted to write like Dashiell Hammett, and had a sense of humor, he would have written like Willie Smith." Jessie Bernstein wrote: "Willie Smith has a reason for writing that goes hand in hand with my reason for reading: surviving under a crushing weight by proving daily that it is not a crushing weight. This writing is the only kind of argument that beats universal inertia. Heads roll here." Kirkus Review says: "This is a quirkily original novel. . . . The telegraphic, Celinesque style has its own energy . . ."

Stephanie Skura is a choreographer/dancer who has performed and taught extensively around the world. Her approach to movement as consciousness blends well with Nelson's approach to poetry as consciousness made physiological. She directed, choreographed for, and performed with her dance company Cranky Destroyers in New York, before coming to Seattle in 1993, and is currently focused on teaching Skinner Releasing. She is on graduate faculty at the UW Professional Actors Training Program, and recipient of a "Bessie" New York Dance and Performance Award. She was cited by Matt Richter in The Stranger as one of a handful of local artists who are changing the way we see theater, and a major American Experimentalist by Dance Ink.

Paul Nelson is a broadcast interview host, holistic journalist, and poet. He founded the non-profit organism It Plays in Peoria Productions and is an organizer of The Northwest SPokenword LAB (SPLAB!), an intergenerational spokenword performance, resource, and outreach center. Nelson's poetry books are: We Don't Celebrate Halloween in Cuba: and other stories from Auburn and Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Invisible Maniac. His work has appeared in Raven Chronicles, Point No Point, Real Change, and The Temple. His "sense of the mythic", said Jean Houston, "is down and dirty as well as sublime." He is a Jazz Host at KPLU-FM, 88.5.

Wednesday, August 2nd
Sarah Mangold and Spencer Selby

Sarah Mangold recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco. She has a chapbook, Blood Substitutes, from Potes & Poets Press. Recent work appears in Ribot, Tinfish, and Outlet. About her work, John Olson writes: "The writing is discrete and mobile, like corpuscles."

Spencer Selby was born in 1947 in Iowa City, Iowa. He is editor/publisher of SINK Press, as well as The List of Experimental Poetry/Art Magazines, and co-editor of the visual poetry magazine Score. Author of eight books of poetry, most recently Task (Tenerife: Zasterle, 1999), Selby's work appears in a variety of anthologies, including: The Art of Practice: Forty-Five Contemporary Poets (Hartford: Potes and Poets, 1994), Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Jersey City: Talisman House, 1995), The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry: 1994-95 (Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1996). He is also author of two books of visual work: Stigma (Oakland: Score, 1990) and Malleable Cast (Cleveland: Generator Press, 1995).

Wednesday, July 5th
April Denonno and Andrew Joron

April Denonno's poetry has appeared in print and electronic literary journals, including Fine Madness, Switched-on Gutenberg, and Portlandia Review of Books. Recent poems are from a manuscript-in-progress called Kind Mocking Type. She is a graduate student in English at the University of Washington and is currently writing a dissertation on John Ashbery.

Andrew Joron is the author of several books of poetry, most recently The Removes (Hard Press, 1999). He has also translated the Literary Essays of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch (Stanford University Press, 1998). Joron's poems, translations, and essays have appeared in numerous magazines, including Sulfur, New American Writing, The Germ, and Jacket.

Wednesday, May 31st
Roberta Olson and Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Roberta Olson's poetry has appeared in Angle, Antenym, Talisman, and Explosive Magazine. She has been a poetry editor at Art Access, and guest curator for various reading series.

Rachel Blau DuPlessis is a poet and essayist. She is also known as a feminist critic and scholar, with special interest in modern and contemporary poetry. She has published several volumes in her long poem project, Drafts, most recently Renga: Draft 32 (Beautiful Swimmer). Drafts 1-38, Toll is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. Her books of criticism include: Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth Century Women Writers and The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice. Critical works published in 2000 are Gender, Races and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry, 1904-1934 and The Objectivist Nexus. She is on the faculty at Temple University, and winner of Temple University's Creative Achievement Award in 1999.

Wednesday, May 3rd
Robert Mittenthal and Barrett Watten

Robert Mittenthal is a Seattle-based poet and critic. He is author of Martyr Economy (Sprang Texts) and Ready Terms (Tsunami Editions). His poems have appeared in a variety of publications including: Aerial; The Kootenay School of Writing's Anthology: Writing Class; Mirage (a periodical); Rhizome; Alterra; and Talisman. He is a curator of the Subtext reading series at Hugo House.

Barrett Watten's most recent book, Bad History, is part of the Atelos series devoted to comissioning cross-genre works. Previous books include: Opera-Works, Decay, Plasma / Paralleles/ "X", Complete Thought, and Progress, Frame: 1970-1990. His books of essays are: Total Syntax and Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union (with Michael Davidson, Lyn Hejininan, and Ron Silliman). He is engaged in several critical projects on modernism and is on the faculty at Wayne State University. Before moving to Detroit, he was an active presence in the Bay Area writing community for more than 20 years. He edited several magazines including This, and Poetics Journal, and is closely associated with so-called Language poetry.

Wednesday, April 5th
John Olson and Liz Waldner

John Olson's poetry has appeared in many literary journals, including Talisman, New American Writing and Sulfur. His criticism has appeared in the American Book Review and locally in both The Weekly and The Stranger. Recent chapbooks include Eggs and Mirrors, from Wood Works Press, and Logo Lagoon, from Paper Brain Press. He has a forthcoming book called Echo Regime. He is currently teaching a course at the UW Extension program in writing the prose poem.

Liz Waldner is director of the creative writing program at Cornell College in Mt Vernon, Iowa. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in a variety of publications including: The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, Tinfish, Nimrod, Exquisite Corpse, Talisman, and Shenandoah. Her books include With the Tongues of Angels, Bus Stop and Homing Devices (O Books). She is the recipient of the 1999 Robert Winner Memorial Prize of the Poetry Society of America, the 1999 Iowa Prize for Poetry, and a 1998 Lannan Foundation Award.

Wednesday, March 1st
Nico Vassilakis and Lissa Wolsak

Nico Vassilakis is working on "Nothing". He collects shoehorns and enjoys colanders. His most recent book is Orange: A Manual. He is a member of the Subtext Collective.

Lissa Wolsak lives in Vancouver, where she works as a metalsmith. Her first book is The Garcia Family Co-mercy (Tsunami Editions). She is currently working on the long poem Pen Chants. An essay, An Heuristic Prolusion, has recently been published as the first of a new series of chapbooks, called Documents In Poetics, published by Friends of Runcible Mountain.
About Heuristic Prolusion, David Bromige writes: "This essay to me is as vital as Olson's Projective Verse / Human Universe . . . She finds such force in words, exemplary in her quick listening. You can't read it just once, life's too brief. You can read it forever."

Wednesday, February 2nd
Jeanne Heuving and Carla Harryman

Jeanne Heuving has recently completed a work of experimental prose, SNOWBALL, a collage of assorted revelations. She has a chapbook, Offering (bcc press), and has work published in several journals including Common Knowledge, Clear-Cut, and Talisman. In addition to her critical book on Marianne Moore, Omissions Are Not Accidents (Wayne St U Press), she has published critical articles on several innovative women poets. She teaches in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences program at the University of Washington, Bothell and in the English Graduate program at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is a member of the Subtext Collective.

Carla Harryman has published many books of experimental prose and poetry, most recently, THE WORDS: after Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories and Jean-Paul Sartre (O Books). She is coming to Seattle from San Francisco where she is directing a play. She teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit, and is very active in the SF Bay literary community. Other books include: Percentage, Under the Bridge, Property, The Middle, Vice, Animal Instincts, In the Mode Of, Memory Play, There Never Was A Rose Without A Thorn (City Lights).

Wednesday, January 5th
Bryant Mason and Jen Hofer

Bryant Mason is a long time member of the Subtext collective. His work has been described variously as "lightheartedly paranormal" and "born of an almost religious fervor." He promises to leave his ukulele at home.

Originally from the SF Bay area, Jen Hofer lives in Mexico City, where she is editing and translating an anthology of contemporary poetry by Mexican women to be co-published by U Pittsburgh and Hotel Ambosmundos. Translations and poems can be found in Explosive, Facture, Kenning, Rhizome, Skanky Possum and in her chapbook from a+bend, as far as. She is also a member of the performance group Groundzero Telsonic Outfit.