A Philadelphia Progressive Poetry Calendar

A lot of what follows comes from Nat Anderson’s wonderful omnibus literary calendar for Philadelphia, augmented primarily by the calendar at the Writers House web site (which Nat’s calendar seems to miss more often than not). The readings listed below are simply those I’m interested in. If I get to one quarter of them, I’ll be doing very well. I know there are things I’m missing (e.g. Eileen Myles and Erica Hunt are supposed to be at Temple in the Spring). So I may update it from time to time. Feel free to send me info of readings you think I should be including.

October

10, Thursday, 8: Novelist Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, Step Across This Line), with the Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture, Philadelphia Lectures, Montgomery Auditorium, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street. Tickets $12,or $8 for students, available through UpStages, 215-569-9700, with a $2 handling fee per ticket. Inquiries to Andy Kahan or Sara Goddard at 215-567-4341.

13, Sunday, 3-5: Four New Jersey Poets -- Alicia Askenase, Therese Halsheid, Toni Libro, and BJ Ward -- at the Manayunk Art Center, 419 Green Lane (rear) in Manayunk. $4 donation requested. For further information, call Poetry Director Peter Krok at 215-482-3363 or 610-789-4692, or MacPoet1@aol.com.

17, Thursday, 4:30: Bob Holman, dubbed "Ringmaster of the Spoken Word" by Henry Louis Gates, Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. Part of the 215 Festival. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT.

17, Thursday, 8: Poet Robin Blaser (The Holy Forest, Even on Sunday, Astonishments, librettist for Sir Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Last Supper), Temple Writers Series, Temple University Graduate Creative Writing Program, Temple Gallery, 45 North 2nd Street.

21, Monday, 8: Novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, Baudolino), Philadelphia Lectures, Montgomery Auditorium, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street. Tickets $12,or $8 for students, available through UpStages, 215-569 9700, with a $2 handling fee per ticket. Inquiries to Andy Kahan or Sara Goddard at 215-567-4341.

22, Tuesday, 7: Jessica Hagedorn (National Book Award nominee for Dogeaters, Gangster of Love, the poetry collection Danger and Beauty, the anthology Charlie Chan Is Dead), Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT.

22, Tuesday, 7:30: Novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, Baudolino), in a reading sponsored by the Gelllert Fund, Goodhart Theatre, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr. For further information, contact Helene Studdy at the Bryn Mawr College Office for the Arts, 610-526-5210.

24, Thursday, 8: CA Conrad and Frank Sherlock read from their collaborative poetry project in which they lead each other through different areas of the city and write about the experience, Molly's Cafe and Bookstore, 1010 South 9th Street, in the heart of the Italian Market, 215-923-3367.

27, Sunday, 3: Singing Horse Press presents Poet-Publishers Take the Stage -- readings by Rosmarie Waldrop (Split Infinites), Lewis Warsh (Touch of the Whip), and Chris McCreary (The Effacements) at the Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine Street. $10, $5 for members. Visit www.paintedbride.org or call 215-925-9914 for more information.

30, Wednesday, 7 PM (eastern time) A reading and conversation with CARL RAKOSI via live audiocast. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT or see the special website: www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/rakosi.html.

November

6, Wednesday, 5:00: John Norton, author of an experimental novella Re: Marriage (San Francisco: Black Star Series) was published in 2000. A book of prose poems and sketches The Light at the End of the Bog (San Francisco: Black Star Series, 1989, 1992) won an American Book Award. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT.

7, Thursday, 7:30: Award-winning poets and fiction writers Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient, Anil's Ghost, Running in the Family, In the Skin of the Lion, The Cinnamon Peeler, Handwriting) and Fanny Howe (Selected Poems, One Crossed Out, The End, Nod, Robeson Street). Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center, 2nd & Cooper Streets, Camden NJ, 1-856-964-8300 or wwhitman@waltwhitmancenter.org. $6; $4 to students and seniors; free to members.

12, Tuesday, 5:00: Forrest Gander, the author of five poetry books, including Torn Awake and Science & Steepleflower, both from New Directions. He is the editor of Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women and the translator, most recently, of No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez Colome and (with Kent Johnson) Immanent Visitor: The Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT.

13, Wednesday, 7:30: "Not To Be: Poetical Parody, Mock-Ups, & Outright Lies": the Rosenbach Museum and Library sponsors "an evening of poetic riffs and rip-offs" in conjunction with their Making Shakespeare exhibition, including William Henry Ireland's infamous forgeries. This panel of poets, reading both historical parodies and their own more seriously allusive work, will feature Nathalie Anderson, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Daisy Fried, Paul Muldoon, and Bob Perelman. Rosenbach Museum and Library, 2008 DeLancey Place. For more information, call 215-732-1600, or see www.rosenbach.org.

14, Thursday, Nathaniel Tarn & Toby Olson, 6:00: Two veteran poets & authors who really need no introduction here. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT.

14, Thursday, 8: Pierre Joris (Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999, 4x1: Tzara, Rilke, Duprey & Tengour translated by Joris, translator of Celan, Picasso, Blanchot, Kerouac and Abdelwahab Meddeb, co-editor with Jerome Rothenberg of the two-volume Poems for the Millennium anthology, Toward a Nomadic Poetics), Temple Writers Series, Temple University Graduate Creative Writing Program, Temple University Center City, 1515 Market.

18, Monday, 7: George Economou & Rochelle Owens. Two of the younger poets associated with the New American poetry and around such journals as Caterpillar. Both have recently moved to Philadelphia. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT

December

3, Tuesday, Time TBA: Rachel Blau DuPlessis. Among her books are Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan, 2001), part of her long poem project, and Genders, Races, and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry, 1908-1934 (Cambridge, 2001). She is also the author of Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers (1985), H.D.: The Career of that Struggle (1986), both from Indiana University Press, and The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice (Routledge, 1990), a book of experimental essays. She is the editor of The Selected Letters of George Oppen (Duke University Press, 1990), and the co-editor of three anthologies: The Objectivist Nexus: Essays in Cultural Poetics (Alabama, 1999), The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women's Liberation (Three Rivers/Crown, 1998) and Signets: Reading H.D. (Wisconsin, 1990). Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT

4, Wednesday, 2 events with Michael Ondaatje at Penn. 1:00 PM: Lunch with author Michael Ondaatje sponsored by Women's Studies, and co-sponsored with the Kelly Writers House. RSVP to wh@english.upenn.edu.  4:30 PM: Michael Ondaatje will read at Penn location TBA, sponsored by Women's Studies.

January

Nada. Are we expecting a heavy winter this year or what?

February

26, Wednesday, 4:30 PM: The Poet & Painters series presents poet Ron Padgett. Cosponsered with the Graduate School of Fine Arts and the Creative Writing Program. Padgett is also the author of New & Selected Poems (David R. Godine, 1995), The Big Something (1990), Triangles in the Afternoon (1979), Great Balls of Fire (1969), and other collections. Two new volumes are forthcoming: Poems I Guess I Wrote and You Never Know. ). Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT

27, Thursday, Norma Cole – may be reading at Writers House, Temple or both.

March

5, Wednesday, Noon. Lunchtime discussion with Johanna Drucker, poet and book artist. 6:00 PM, reading. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT

11, Tuesday, 4:30 PM: The Poet & Painter Series presents Steve Clay Editor of Granary Books. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT

19, Wednesday, 5:00 PM: Dennis Barone. He is the author of three books of short fiction: Abusing the Telephone (Drogue Press, 1994), The Returns (Sun & Moon Press, 1996), and Echoes (Potes & Poets Press, 1997). He is also the author of a novella, Temple of the Rat (Left Hand Books, 2000), and he is editor of Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Most recently Quale Press published The Disguise of Events, a chapbook (July, 2002). Left Hand Books published his selected poems, entitled Separate Objects, in 1998. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT

20, Thursday, Time TBA: Brad Leithauser. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT

27, Thursday, 8: Symposium on Blues, Jazz, and American Literature, with Pew Fellows Sonia Sanchez (Does Your House Have Lions? and Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems) and Major Jackson (Leaving Saturn), with critics Robert O'Meally (Director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, editor of the anthology The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, biographer of Billie Holiday etc) and Farah Griffin (If You Can't Be Free, Be A Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday). Scheuer Room Kohlberg Hall, Swarthmore College. For further information, contact Peter Schmidt at pschmid1@swarthmore.edu.

April

3, Thursday, 4:30: Simon Ortiz, the great Acoma poet. Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, on the Penn campus. For more information, call 215-573-WRIT.

8, Tuesday, 7:30: Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott (Omeros, Tiepolo's Hound, The Bounty, The Odyssey: A Stage Version, What the Twilight Says), in a reading sponsored by the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry, Thomas Great Hall, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr. For further information, contact Helene Studdy at the Bryn Mawr College Office for the Arts, 610-526-5210.