Fall 1998 Poetry and Prose September 16 - November 13
at the State University of New York, Buffalo (Amherst Campus)

Steve Swallow, David Torn, and Chris Massey
Concert
Sat., Sept. 5, 8pm
Hallwalls (2495 Main Street, Buffalo)
Bass Great Steve Swallow, Avant Guitar's King Snake David Torn, and Buffalo's own
Different Drummer Chris Massey back from Europe for a first time trio performance with host Robert Creeley.

Fred D'Aguiar
Lecture: "Jim Jones in Paradise: Caribbean Literature Since 1978"
Tues., Sept. 15, 1:30pm
Clemens Hall 438
Poetry and Prose Reading
Weds., Sept. 16, 4pm, Center for the Arts (CFA) Screening Rm
D'Aguiar's four poetry books are published by Chatto & Windus (London). His first novel, The Longest Memory, won England's Whitbread First Novel Award and was filmed by Channel 4. His second, Dear Future, is published by Avon. He teaches at University of Miami (Florida) where he directs the MFA program.

Robert Kelly
Gerrit Lansing
Moon, Magic, and Poetry
Fri., Sept. 18, Poetry/Rare Books Room (420 Capen)
Poetry Readings: 11am; Talks: 2pm
Each poet will read in the morning and then we will continue, after lunch, with talk and discussion. Robert Kelly is the author of over 50 books of poetry and fiction, including Not This Island Music and A Transparent Tree. He teaches at Bard College. Gerrit Lansing's lifework in poetry has been collected in Heavenly Tree / Soluble Forest, from Talisman House. He lives in Gloucester, Mass.

Paul Friedrich
McNulty Chair Lecturer
Lecture: "Comparative Poetry/Poetics: Microsystemic Soundings versus The World Sample"
Tues., Sept. 22, 3:30pm
540 Clemens Hall
Talk/Performance: "Russian Poetry: Readings/Translations/Critiques"
Weds., Sept. 23, 4pm
CFA Screening Rm
Friedrich is the author of many articles and books of anthropology, criticism, linguistics, and poetry - most recently Music in Russian Poetry. He teaches at the University of Chicago.

Geoff Ward
Lecture: "Teleotropic Syntax in the Whispering Gallery"
Thursday, Sept. 24, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Poetry Reading with Linda Russo
Fri., Sept. 25, 8pm
Cornershop Gallery (82 Lafayette at Dewitt, near Niagara, Buffalo)
Ward is the author of Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets and coeditor of Re:Joyce. Text. Culture. Politics. (both from St. Martins). He has two new poetry books:
Rilke's Elegies, Barbarously Recast and Translations from the Finish. Ward is the head of the English Department at the University of Dundee, Scotland.

Brenda Farnell
Lecture: "Talking from the Body in Nakota Storytelling Performance"
Tues., Oct. 6, 3:30pm
540 Clemens Hall
Talk/Performance: "Speech and Other Gestural Movements: Toward a Dynamically Embodied Poetics"
Weds., Oct. 7, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Farnell is a modern dancer turned linguistic anthropologist whose work pushes the boundaries of "language" toward a semiotics of the moving person. Her publications include Do You See What I Mean?: Plains Indian Sign Talk and the Embodiment of Action, and a CD-Rom, WIYUTA: Assiniboine Storytelling with Signs. She teaches at the University of Illinois-Urbana.

Joseph Lease
Poetry Reading
Fri., Oct. 9, 8pm
Cornershop Gallery (82 Lafayette at Dewitt, near Niagara, Buffalo)
Lease's Human Rights is new from Zoland Books. He lives in Boston, where he is poetry editor of The Boston Review. He teaches poetry writing and composition at Tufts.

Note: the previously scheduled Oct. 14 reading by Michel Deguy has been postposed to the spring.

Maria Damon
Lecture: "Hannah Weiner: Clairvoyance And Trauma"
Thurs., Oct. 15, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Maria Damon teaches literature at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry (University of Minnesota Press, 1993) and a member of the National Writers Union.

Robert Grenier
Poetry Reading
Weds., Oct. 21, 4pm
CFA Screening Rm
Talk: "Realizing Things"
Thurs., Oct. 22, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Robert Grenier's books include Phantom Anthems, A Day at the Beach, Sentences, and What I Believe: transpiration/transpiring. He edited the 1976 Selected Poems of Robert Creeley as well as several collections of Larry Eigner. He lives in Bolinas, California.

Christian Prigent
Pierre Ouellet
Third Jones Chair French Poetry Festival (II)
Bilingual Reading
Weds., Oct. 28, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Talks
Thurs., Oct. 29, 10am
438 Clemens Hall
Prigent is founder of the French avant-garde magazine TXT. He is a leading practitioner of experimental poetry - Ecrit au couteau (Written with a Knife); fiction - Commencement (Beginning); and literary criticism - Ceux qui merdrent (Those Who Crap). Ouellet is a poet, novelist, and critic whose books include Chutes: la littérature et ses fins (L'Hexagone). He teaches at the University of Quebec at Montreal.

Myung Mi Kim
Poetry Reading
Weds., Nov. 4, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Kim's books include Under Flag (Kelsey Street), The Bounty (Chax), and new from Sun & Moon, Dura. She teaches writing at San Francisco State University.

Lisel Mueller
Silverman Poetry Reading
Fri., Nov. 6, 8pm
250 Baird Hall
Mueller received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Other collections include The Need to Hold Still, The Private Life, and Waving from Shore.

Eileen Myles
Camille Roy
Portable Talk Series
Mon., Nov. 9, 4pm
438 Clemens Hall
Myles most recent book is "School of Fish" from Black Sparrow. She edited The New Fuck You / adventures in lesbian reading from Semiotext(e). She lives in New York and Provincetown. The title of her talk is "Keeping Score. "Roy lives in San Francisco, where she works as a software engineer. Her books of prose and fiction include Cold Heaven (O Books), Rosy Medallions (Kelsey St.) and most recently Swarm (Black Star Series). The title of her talk is "My Utopia".

Judd Hubert
Third Jones Chair French Poetry Festival (III)
Lecture: "Reading Performative Metaphors"
Weds., Nov. 11, 12pm
930 Clemens Hall
A native of Lille, France, Judd Hubert's books include Corneille's Performative Metaphors, Metatheater" The Examples of Shakespeare, and Molière and the Comedy of Intellect. He is a professor, emeritus, of the University of California, Irvine.

Marcelin Pleynet
Third Jones Chair French Poetry Festival (IV)
Bilingual Poetry Reading & Talk
Weds., Nov. 11, 4pm
CFA Screening Room
Pleynet has been an editor of two of the most important magazines in France, Tel Quel and L'Infini. A literary critic, art historian, and a novelist, Pleynet is renowned as a poet - and author of Les Trois Livres and La Méthode.

Renée Hubert
Third Jones Chair French Poetry Festival (V)
Lecture: "Removable Boundaries: Illustration and Bookarts"
Thurs., Nov. 13, 12:30pm
438 Clemens Hall
Renee Hubert's books include Surrealism and the Book and Magnifying Mirrors: Surrealism and Partnership and with Judd Hubert, The Cutting Edge of Reading: the Artist's Books (Granary Books). She is Professor of French and Comparative Literature Emerita at the University of California, Irvine.

"Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" is a Poetics Program production sponsored, in part, by the James H. McNulty Chair, Department of English (Dennis Tedlock); the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities (Robert Creeley); the Melodia E. Jones Chair in French, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (Raymond Federman); the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters, Department of English (Charles Bernstein), the Poetry and Rare Books Collection (Robert Bertholf); and in consultation with Professor Susan Howe. The series is produced with the cooperation of the Center for the Arts and the Department of Media Studies, and Talking Leaves Books and made possible, in part, by the Poetry Society of America and Poets & Writers, Inc., through a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. Design by Susan Bee. Coordinated by Charles Bernstein. For further information call (716) 645-3810 or contact us at Mdunlap@acsu.buffalo.edu. Visit our web site: writing.upenn.edu/epc.

This Fall's series is dedicated to the memory of Al Cook.