2003 Subtext Readings

2003

DECEMBER 3, 2003
Laynie BROWNE & Robert MITTENTHAL

Laynie Browne's books include a novel, Acts of Levitation (Spuytenduyvil 2002) and three collections of poetry, most recently Pollen Memory (Tender Buttons 2003) and previously The Agency of Wind (Avec Books 1999) and Rebecca Letters (Kelsey Street 1997). Her work appears in the current issue of Conjunctions:40 and is forthcoming in Titantic Operas and Monkey Puzzle. Currently she resides in Oakland, California.

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: Bird Dog; Score, Aerial; The Kootenay School of Writing's Anthology: Writing Class; Rhizome; & Talisman. Recent work can be found on-line in The News, at http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/quarterm/whatsnews.htm, and in Alterra at http://members.rogers.com/alterra/mitt2.htm, and in W at www.kswnet.org/w/seven/w7.pdf. He is a curator of the Subtext reading series at Hugo House.

NOVEMBER 5, 2003
Leonard SCHWARTZ & Doug NUFER

Doug Nufer is the author of Never Again (ubu.com and forthcoming from Black Square and Negativeland (forthcoming from Autonomedia), two novels that follow formal constraints. By-products of these and of his novel-in-progress Circus Solus pop up in the magazines Monkey Puzzle and Chain, the anthology clear-cut (Subrosa), and on the Muse Apprentice Guild web site. He's an editor of American Book Review and a member of the performance troupe Staggered Thirds. An excerpt from his Novel Double / Double Novel can be found at http://www.speakeasy.org/~subtext/poetry/dougNufer/poem1.htm

OCTOBER 1, 2003
Jacqueline WATERS & Donna STONECIPHER

Jacqueline Waters is the author of A Minute Without Danger (Adventures in Poetry, 2001). She lives in Brooklyn. Parts of her manuscript, "I Don't Care About Anything, Do You?", have appeared in 6x6, Insurance, Boston Review and Aphros.

Donna Stonecipher grew up in Seattle and Tehran. She lived in Prague from 1994 to 1998 and graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 2001. Her poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Field, Indiana Review, New American Writing, and Web Conjunctions, among other journals. Her first book, The Reservoir, won the 2002 University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series Competition.

SEPTEMBER 3, 2003
David PERRY & C. E. PUTNAM

David Perry lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works as a freelance editor, multimedia producer, landscaper, occasional adjunct English professor (most recently at St. John's University) and writer. He is the author of two books, Range Finder (Adventures in Poetry, 2001) and Knowledge Follows. Recent poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Baffling Combustions, DC Poetry Anthology 2003 (http://www.dcpoetry.com/anth2003.htm), The Poker, The Baffler, and Monkey Puzzle. He also has work in the Subtext poetry archive at: http://www.speakeasy.org/subtext/poetry/davidperry/.

C.E. Putnam was born in Seattle Washington and has lived in three world capitals (London, Washington DC, and Bangkok). He maintains P.I.S.O.R. (The Putnam Institute for Space Opera Research) & operates FiftyCentsOffPress. Monkey Puzzle, Bird Dog, Pom2, Ixnay, 6ix, Pavement Saw, Tin Fish, Skanky Possum and http://canwehaveourballback.com/ 6putnam.htm contain some of his writings. He currently lives in Seattle and is a co-curator of the Subtext Reading Series.

AUGUST 6, 2003
Joe DONAHUE and Peter O'LEARY

Joseph Donahue has published several books of poetry, most recently Incidental Eclipse (Talisman House), heralded by John Ashbery as showing Donahue to be "one of the major American poets of this time." He is the co-editor, of The World in Time and Space: Toward a History of Innovative Poetry in our Time as well as Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. A previous member of the Subtext Collective, Donahue lives in Durham, North Carolina and teaches at Duke University. He edits on the on-line journal Titanic Operas.

Peter O'Leary resides in Chicago were he edits LVNG magazine. He has recently published the critical work, Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness (Wesleyan University Press) and a book of poetry, Watchfulness (Spuyten Duyvil). He is the executor and editor of Ronald Johnson’s work, editing To Do As Adam Did: Selected Poems of Ronald Johnson (Talisman Publishing House). His poetry can be accessed through the website www.culturalsociety.org/kontakion.

JULY 2, 2003
SUBTEXT 9th ANNIVERSARY GROUP READING

Readers included: Nico Vassilakis, Jeanne Heuving, John Olson, April Denonno, Ezra Mark, Bryant Mason, Roberta Olson, Kreg Hasegawa, Robert Mittenthal, Daniel Comiskey, C.E. Putnam, and many more.

JUNE 4, 2003
Allison COBB, Jen COLEMAN, Sarah MANGOLD

Allison Cobb is author The LIttle Box Book (Situation), The J Poems (BabySelf), Polar Bear and Desert Fox (BabySelf) and One-foot A History Play (BabySelf). Her full-length collection Born Two is forthcoming this from Chax Press. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jen Coleman is a poet in NYC and co-editor of the poetry journal POMPOM. She's also co-author of the chapbook Communal Bebop Canto with CE Putnam and Allison Cobb, and author of the chapbook Propinquity. You can see her work online at http://www.theeastvillage.com/v12.htm

Raised in Oklahoma, Sarah Mangold received an MFA from San Francisco State University. She is the author of Household Mechanics, selected by C.D. Wright for the 2001 New Issues Poetry Prize. She is also author of a chapbook, Blood Substitutes (Potes & Poets, 1998), and the editor of the Seattle-based magazine Bird Dog.
"When I think of an obvious alignment, I think of The Objectivists. Especially, the lone woman affiliated, the geographical isolate, Niedecker. I had always wished there were more of them, because they introduced me to a brand of lucidity, rare, oh rare in these dis-united states of poetry. The is 'not an airshow.' This is household mechanics. This living; it takes a lifetime."--C.D. Wright, from the Foreword

May 7, 2003
Rae Armantrout and David Bromige

Rae Armantrout has published eight books of poetry, including, NECROMANCE (Sun And Moon, 1991), Couverture (a selected in French translation from Les Cahiers de Royaumont, 1991), Made To Seem (Sun And Moon, 1995), The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001) and Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). Veil was a finalist for the PEN Central USA Literary Award in Poetry for 2002. Of Veil, Fanny Howe says, "There is something like a reflective fire surrounding each poem like a little wire aura. I am moved and amazed." Armantrout's poems have been included in numerous anthologies, including Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1993), Poems For The Millennium (California, 1998), and three editions of The Best American Poetry series. She teaches writing courses at the University of California, San Diego.

David Bromige came to Canada from the UK at age 13, settled in Vancouver in 1956, graduated from UBC in 1962, went to Berkeley as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar that fall, was befriended by Robert Duncan, who secured the publication of his first poetry book by Fred Wah in Buffalo in 1965, and his next by Black Sparrow 3 years later. He taught poetry at Sonoma State U. from '70-'93, when he took early retirement, but has taught short-term at various venues since, including U.San Francisco, and Naropa. His 35 books include a novel, a novella, a collection of stories, a songbook and some 30 poetry titles. In 1988, his selected poems, DESIRE, from Black Sparrow, won the Western States book award. He has awards from the NEA, the Canada Council, the Poets Foundation, and a Pushcart Prize. His latest book, published last year by Chax Press, Tucson, is AS IN T AS IN TETHER. He has lived in or near San Francisco for the past 40 years.

April 2, 2003
kari edwards and Rebecca Brown

kari edwards is a poet, artist and gender activist, winner of New Langton Art's Bay Area Award in literature (2002), author of A day in the life of p., and A diary of lies, editor of Electric Spandex: anthology of writing the queer text. Sie is also the poetry editor of I.F.G.E's Transgender - Tapestry. Hir work has been exhibited throughout the US, including Denver Art Museum, New Orleans Contemporary Art Museum, University of California - San Diego, and University of Massachusetts - Amherst. Work has appeared in a many journals including: Mirage/Period(ical), Van Gogh's Ear, Avoid Strange Men, Bird Dog, RealPoetik, and Raised in a Barn.

Rebecca Brown is the author of numerous books, most recently The End of Youth (City Lights, May 2003). She has also written a play, The Toaster which she hopes will be produced by New City Theater in Seattle either this fall or next winter. She teaches in the MFA low residency at Goddard College in Vermont and at the Hugo House in Seattle. Her work has been translated alot.

March 5, 2003
Rhoda Rosenfeld and April DeNonno

Rhoda Rosenfeld was born in Montreal and grew up in Quebec in the "la noirceur" era. She was a young adult during the time of the Quiet Revolution. In Vancouver since 1968, she is involved in both the visual arts and literary communities. Her art has been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Gallery, the Gallery Project at Britannia Library and the UBC Fine Arts Gallery. Her poems have appeared in West Coast Line, Raddle Moon, W and most recently online in The News, at: http:/www.interchange.ubc.ca/quareterm/The News.htm

April DeNonno is a Humanities and Sciences instructor at Cornish College of the Arts where she teaches contemporary literature, film, and cultural studies. Her Ph.D. dissertation from the University of Washington is titled "Model Thinking: The Posthuman Subject in John Ashbery's Poetry." Recent poems have appeared in the literary magazines MONKEY PUZZLE, FACTURE, and FINE MADNESS.

February 5, 2003
mARK oWEns and John Olson

mARK oWEns moved to Portland, OR in 2002. His participARTE poems have been realized in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Guadalajara, Mexico; Dayton, Ohio, Seattle, and Portland. His current project OHO INTERCAMBIO is a venue for multidisciplinary art exchanges both in the streets and through the mail. He has edited Nexus magazine from Dayton, OH and co-produced INN-BOX magazine from Guadalajara, Mexico. He takes naps.

John Olson is the author of Echo Regime, a collection of poetry from Black Square Editions. This spring Black Square Editions will also be bringing out Jurassic Chandelier, a collection of prose poems. "Inebriate of Air," an essay about air, will be published in an anthology this May called Writings on Air, from M.I.T. Press. His literary essays have appeared in a number of journals & magazines, including Talisman, Sulfur, Facture, First Intensity, the American Book Review, Rain Taxi, the Denver Quarterly & The Stranger. He is currently at work on a novel about Arthur Rimbaud & Billy the Ki