Wednesdays at Four Plus
Spring 2003 Poetry and Prose January 29 -- May 4
at the State University of New York, Buffalo (Amherst Campus)

Pierre Joris and Nicole Peyrafitte
Poetry Reading and Performance
Weds., Jan. 29, Center for the Arts Screening Room, 4pm
Joris on (1) Celan and (2)The Lost New Americans: Owens, Schwerner, Eshleman, & Co.
Thurs., Jan. 30, 12:30, 438 Clemens Hall
Joris is a poet, essayist, translator, and anthologist. Recent books include Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999, 4x1: Tzara, Rilke, Duprey & Tengour translated by Joris, as well as the Poems for the Millennium anthologies co-edited with Jerome Rothenberg. He is a professor at SUNY-Albany. Peyrafitte is a visual multimedia artist, and singer. Her performances are a combination of electronic projections of her visuals, poetry, sound tracks, and voice. Program for event (please print out). 300 dpi photos: Joris, Peyrafitte.

Robert Grenier
Poetry Reading
Weds., Feb. 5, 4pm, CFA Screening Rm
Talk on Larry Eigner
Thurs., Feb. 6, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens Hall
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. "Reading Things," his last lecture at UB, has been transcribed for the EPC; read at this home page. Grenier lives in Bolinas, California.

Nathaniel Mackey
A Conversation with Nathaniel Mackey
Weds., Feb. 12, 12:30pm, 436 Clemens Hall
Poetry Reading
Weds., Feb. 12, 4pm, CFA Screening Room
Mackey's books of poetry include Whatsaid Serif (1998); Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (1994); and Eroding Witness (1985). His novels include Djbot Baghostus's Run (1993) and Bedouin Hornbook (1986). Mackey is also the author of Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (1993) and the editor of a magazine, Hambone. He is Professor of Literature at University of California, Santa Cruz. 300 dpi photo of Mackey.

Andrei Codrescu
A Stake in the Heart: A Macabre Valentine's Party (for just buffalo)
Fri., Feb. 14, 8 p.m., Hallwalls (TriMain Bldg, Buffalo), $10 admission
Poet, vampire novelist and NPR commentator, Codrescu headlines this fundraiser for just buffalo, which will include a reading, dancing, drinks, a Bloody Valentine poetry contest and the premiere of the locally produced film, "Zombie Sex Party III."

Something Wonderful May Happen
Film Screening (Buffalo Premiere)
Weds., Feb. 19, 4pm, CFA Screening Room
This lively film from Denmark presents part of the story of the New York School of poets. It includes readings and interviews with John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch as well as rare archival footage of Frank O'Hara. Two younger poets, David Lehman (author of The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets) and Charles Bernstein read poems and discuss the New York School. Also includes interviews with Jane Freilicher, Alfred Leslie, and Larry Rivers.

K. Silem Mohammad and Louis Cabri
Poetry Reading
Weds., Feb. 26, 4pm; CFA Screening Room
Talk by Mohammad: "Ill Lyric, or Enjamb Your Symptom!"
Tues., Feb. 25, 7:30pm, Rust Belt Books (Allen at Elmwood, Buffalo)
Talk by Cabri: "The Social Command"
Thurs, Feb. 27, 7:30pm, Rust Belt Books (Allen at Elmwood, Buffalo)
Mohammad currently teaches literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His books include hovercraft (Kenning, 2000), My Content (Faux Press e-books), and the forthcoming Deer Head Nation (Tougher Disguises). Cabri is author of The Mood Embosser (Toronto: Coach House, 2001); he teaches at the Alberta College of Art & Design, in Calgary, Canada, and recently co-edited two feature issues of letters to/from poets for Open Letter magazine, available online. 300dpi photo of Mohammad. 300 dpi photo of Cabris.

Robert Kocik
Talk "Poetry Exposition: Poetry May Take Any Substrate (including poetry). Certain findings: The Sexual Transmissibility of Artwork, Materialized Beatitude, Extraorganopoieia, the Susceptive System. A few Missing Social Services, including Poetry Outsource."
Tues. March 4, 8pm, Rust Belt Books (Buffalo)
Kocik's most recent publication is Overcoming Fitness (Autonomedia 2002). His work has also recently appeared in Ecopoetics 01. He lives in Brooklyn where he directs the Bureau Of Material

Poets against the War
Poetry Reading
Weds., March 5, 4pm, CFA Screeing Room
Rosa Alcala, Christopher Alexander, Charles Bernstein, Sarah Campbell, Eun Gwi Chung, Barbara Cole, Patrick Durgin, Michael Kelleher, Robert Kocik, David Landrey, Aaron Lowinger, Khalil Nieves, Gavin O'Brien, Linda Russo, Kyle Schlesinger, Tim Shaner, Jonathan Skinner, Jonathan Stalling, Sasha Steensen

Ben Friedlander
Poetry Reading
Sat., March 8, 2pm, Rust Belt Books (202 Allen St.,Buffalo)
Friedlander, Poetics Program Ph.D., returns to his old haunt from the University of Main, Orono. His most recent collections are A Knot Is Not a Tangle and Algebraic Melody. A critical work, Simulcast: Four Experiments in Criticism, is forthcoming from the University of Alabama Press. He is coeditor of Sagetrieb: Poetry and Poetics after Modernism.

Marjorie Perloff
Prose (Memoir) Reading from The Vienna Paradox
Weds., March 19, 4pm, CFA Screening Room
A Conversation with Marjorie Perloff
Thurs., March 20, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens Hall
Perloff's critical writing is a major force in the study of modernist and contemporary American poetry.Her most recent books include Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and The Strangeness of the Ordinary, Poetry On & Off the Page: Essays for Emergent Occasions, and 21st Century Modernism: The "New" Poetics. A republication of her classic study, The Futurist Moment is due from Chicago and New Directions will be publishing The Vienna Paradox, her memoir of Vienna, the Anschlus, and coming to America. Perloff, who lectures frequently throughout North America and Europe, is Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities Emerita at Stanford. Co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America.
See R.D. Pohl's Buffalo News Article on Perloff (pdf file). 300 DPI photo of Perloff.

David Antin
Talk/Performance
Weds., March 26, 4pm, CFA Screening Room
A Conversation with David Antin
Thurs., March 27, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens Hall
Antin is a poet, critic and performance artist, whose books include Definitions (1967), Autobiography (1967), Code of Flag Behavior (1968), Meditations (1971), Talking (1972 & 2001), After the War (A Long Novel with Few Words) (1973), Dialogue (1980), Tuning (1984), Selected Poems 1963-1973 (1991) and What It Means to be Avant-Garde (1993). His most recent book, from Granary, is A Conversation with David Antin, a dialogue with Charles Bernstein, part of which is available on-line from the Review of Contemporary Fiction, published as part of their special Antin issue. 300 dpi photo of Antin.

Jayne Cortez
Screening and discussion of film "Yari, Yari: Black Women Writers and the Future".
Fri., March 28, 8 pm, Hallwalls; $6, $5 students/seniors, $4 just buffalo members
Poetry Reading
Sat., March 29, 8pm., just buffalo's Hibiscus Room, Tri-Main Ctr., 5th floor; $6, $5 students/seniors, $4 members
Cortez's singing and speaking voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic, dynamic innovations in lyricism and visceral sound. Her poems have appeared widely in anthologies around the world. Her most recent book is Jazz Fan Looks Back.

Jackson Mac Low and Anne Tardos
Mac Low 80th Birthday Celebration
Poetry Reading/Performance
Weds, April 2, 4pm, CFA Screening Room
A Conversation with Jackson Mac Low
Thurs., April 3, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens
Tardos is a poet, performer, visual artist, and composer. She frequently writes multilingual poems and combines them with digitally modified video images. She is the author of the books Cat Licked the Garlic (Tsunami Editions 1992), Mayg-shem Fish (Potes & Poets 1995), and Uxudo (O Books/Tuumba Press 1999), and, new from Granary Books, The Dik-dik's Solitude. Mac Low is one of the major literary innovators of the 20th century and author of numerous books, including Representive Works 1938-1985. His most recent book is Doings: Assorted Performance Pieces 1955-2002, from Granary. Crayon magazine's first issue was a tribute to his 75th birthday. He lives in New York. 300 dpi photo of Mac Low. /// 300 dpi photo of Tardos

Peter Gizzi and Elizabeth Willis
Poetry Reading
Weds., April 9, 4pm, CFA Screening Room
Talk: Willis on "Christina Rossetti and Pre-Raphaelite Noir," Thurs., April 10, 12:30pm, 438 Clemens
Talk: Gizzi on Spicer, Thurs., April 10, 2:00pm, 438 Clemens
Gizzi and Willis return to UB, where they both received PhDs the Poetics Program. Gizzi, who currently directs the graduate writing program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is the author of Artificial Heart (Burning Deck), and editor of The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan). Willis is the author of Second Law (Avenue B), The Human Abstract (Penguin), and most coming this winter from Burning Deck, Turneresque; she teaches at Wesleyan. 300 DPI Photo of Gizzi. 300 dpi photo of Willis (by Juliette Valery).

Simon Ortiz
Talk
Tues., April 15, 12:30pm, 540 Clemens Hall
Poetry Reading
Weds., April 16, 4pm, CFA Screening Rm
Simon J. Ortiz is a poet-essayist-fiction writer-storyteller, from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico and a professor at the University of Toronto. His books include Men on the Moon: Collected Short Stories, Woven Stone, After and Before the Lightning, From Sand Creek, and his most recent, Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing, all published by the University of Arizona Press. Check out: Audio and video of Ortiz reading and Ortiz bio. Click here for 300 DPI photo of Ortiz.

Ed Sanders & Michael Boughn
Poetry Reading
Fri., April 18, 8 pm., at just buffalo's Hibiscus Room, Tri-Main Ctr. 5th floor. $6, $5 students/seniors, $4 just buffalo members
Sanders Workshop: "Investigative Poetry"
Sat., April 19, at just buffalo's Hibiscus Room (Time and price TBD)
Book Party and Signing for re-release of "The Family" (The Mansons)
Sat., April 19, 8 pm at just buffalo's Hibiscus Room, $6, $5 students/seniors, $4 members
Sanders is a member of The Fugs. His many publications include 1968, A History in Verse; America: A History in Verse (Vol 1,2,3); Tales of Beatnik Glory; and The Family, which was just rereleased by Thunder's Mouth Press with 140 additional pages. Boughn is a poet living in Toronto. He is the former editor of Buffalo's Shuffaloff Press

Ted Enslin
Poetry Reading
Weds., April 23, 4pm, Poetry/Rare Books Collection, 420 Capen Hall
Enslin's poetry has always followed musical forms, from the early work in Origin, through the long poems of the 1970s, Ranger, Synthesis and Forms. Then, and Now: Selected Poems 1943-1993 appeared in 1999. Selected Later Poems (1999) and the brilliant series Rings (2001) add to his score

Name
Poetry Reading & Release
Fri. May 2, 8pm, Just Buffalo's Hibiscus Room, Tri-Main Center (2495 Main St. Suite 512)
The reading will feature the poets of the new seventh issue of name, UB's undergraduate and growing poetry publication: Lauren Shufran, Jason Viola, Emily McClellan, Shane Meyer, Aaron Lowinger, David Tolkacz, Eric Gelsinger, Tawrin Baker, Lindsay Rogan, Jonathan Skinner, Ric Royer, Robin Brox, Brian Vanremmen, and more.

Charles Bernstein
Poetry Reading
Sun., May 4, 2pm
Burchfield-Penney Art Center (Buffalo State College, Rockwell Hall, Third Floor)
This reading is rescheduled from February. Bernstein's most recent books are Republics of Reality: Poems 1975-1995 and With Strings. He is a SUNY Distinguished Professor and Director of the UB Poetics Program. After 14 years at UB, Bernstein will be moving to the University of Pennsylvania in the Fall. See R.D. Pohl's article on, and interview with, Bernstein, from The Buffalo News. 300 dpi photo of Bernstein

Postponed:
Norma Cole
A Conversation with Norma Cole
Poetry Reading
Cole is the author of Mace Hill Remap (available on-line), Metamorphopsia, My Bird Book, Mars, Moira, Contrafact, Desire & Its Double, The Vulgar Tongue & Spinoza in Her Youth (Omnidawn, 2002), & editor/translator of Crosscut Universe, an anthology of poetry / poetics by contemporary French writers. She lives in San Francisco.

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC EXCEPT AS NOTED

"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 David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters, Department of English (Charles Bernstein); the Melodia E. Jones Chair in French, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (Gerard Bucher); The Poetry and Rare Books Collection (Robert Bertholf); Professor Myung Mi Kim; the Just Buffalo Literary Center; the Poetry Society of America, and Poets and Writers (with funding through a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts). The series is produced with the cooperation of the Center for the Arts, the Department of Media Study, and Talking Leaves Books.

Series coordinator and web design: Charles Bernstein.

For further information call (716) 645-3810 or contact us at Mdunlap@acsu.buffalo.edu. Visit our web site: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/poetics for updates and additional information.

Poetry Society of America