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February 2009

Sunday, 2/1

Monday, 2/2

Alicia Puglionesi, Terry B. Heled Travel Grant presentation

"We are ghosts: art of deception in the theater of war"

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

As a way of memorializing her mother, Terry B. Heled, and of honoring the students of her alma mater in gratitude for the encouragement her own research and writing received while she was at Penn, Mali Heled Kinberg (C'95) has created the Terry B. Heled Travel and Research Grant at the Kelly Writers House that, each summer, will enable a student to travel for the purpose of conducting the research that will lead to a significant writing project.

Alicia Puglionesi is the first ever winner of the Terry B. Heled Travel and Research Grant. She is a senior English and Cognitive Science major at Penn. She has worked with Writers House previously on a project about neurotheology, and is very grateful for the opportunity to work with this community again.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 2/3

A Reading and Conversation with Ray Scheindlin (C'61)

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Co-sponsored by: the Jewish Studies Program
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

The newest book by Ray Scheindlin (C'61), The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi's Pilgrimage, combines new translations of Judah Halevi's poetry with a critical examination of some of his letters. He is the author of many books, including A Short History of the Jewish People: From Legendary Times to Modern Statehood (Oxford, 2000), The Book of Job (Norton, 1999), and Wine, Women and Death: Mideavil Hebrew Poems on the Good Life (Oxford, 1999).

Review of The Song of the Distant Dove: "This luminous and elegant study brings to life one of the most remarkable personalities of medieval Judaism, the Spanish Hebrew poet and philosopher Judah Halevi at the moment of his fabled pilgrimage to the land of Israel, and in doing so, captures an entire Jewish culture in all its complex yearnings. By combining his unequaled gifts as a scholar, literary translator, and interpreter of poetry, Scheindlin has produced a book quite unlike any other in contemporary Jewish writing." —David M. Stern, Ruth Meltzer Professor of Classical Hebrew in the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Literary scholars will find much that is new here, for Scheindlin is the most sensitive reader of these texts among Hebrew poetry scholars today. He also places the Hebrew poet squarely in his Islamic/Arabic context. With his integrated, interdisciplinary approach to the poet's pilgrimage, blending literature, philosophy, religion, and history, the author makes a very important contribution." —Mark Cohen, Princeton University, author of Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 2/4

A reading by Chinese poet Zhimin Li

presented by Writers without Borders

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Charles Bernstein
Listen: to an audio recording of this event on PennSound
Watch: a video recording of this program via KWH-TV

Writers without Borders features writers from around the world whose fiction, drama, poetry, memoir, journalism, and performance art demand an international — and, what's more, a globally minded — readership and response. Support for Writers without Borders comes from the Office of the Provost, supplemented by a generous start-up grant from Seth Ginns (C'00).


Poet and scholar Zhimin Li is currently serving as Associate Professor in The School of Foreign Studies of Guangzhou University, as well as Director of The Chinese and Western Culture Study Institute and Director of The English Training Center of Guangzhou University. He also serves as the Secretary-General of English Poetry Study Association of China, and the Vice Secretary-General of Foreign Literature Study Association of Guangdong Province. Li's books include Appreciations on William Shakespeare's Works (1998, 2001, 2005, 2007), Selective Readings of Twentieth Century English and American Poetry (2003), New Chinese Poetry under the Influence of Western Poetics: The Origins, Development and Sense of Nativeness (2005), and Poetics Reconstruction: The Form and The Image (forthcoming in 2008).


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 2/5

A lunch with poet Zhimin Li

presented by Writers without Borders

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Writers without Borders features writers from around the world whose fiction, drama, poetry, memoir, journalism, and performance art demand an international — and, what's more, a globally minded — readership and response. Support for Writers without Borders comes from the Office of the Provost, supplemented by a generous start-up grant from Seth Ginns (C'00).

Poet and scholar Zhimin Li is currently serving as Associate Professor in The School of Foreign Studies of Guangzhou University, as well as Director of The Chinese and Western Culture Study Institute and Director of The English Training Center of Guangzhou University. He also serves as the Secretary-General of English Poetry Study Association of China, and the Vice Secretary-General of Foreign Literature Study Association of Guangdong Province. Li's books include Appreciations on William Shakespeare's Works (1998, 2001, 2005, 2007), Selective Readings of Twentieth Century English and American Poetry (2003), New Chinese Poetry under the Influence of Western Poetics: The Origins, Development and Sense of Nativeness (2005), and Poetics Reconstruction: The Form and The Image (forthcoming in 2008).


A reading and conversation with Professor Lisa New

6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

Introduced by: Rebecca Bushnell
Reception: to follow
Listen: to an audio recording of this event
Watch: a video recording of this program via KWH-TV

Elisa New is Professor of English at Harvard University where she teaches American literature from the Puritans through Philip Roth. She is the author of The Regenerate Lyric: Theology and Innovation in American Poetry (1992 Cambridge) and The Line's Eye: Poetic Experience, American Sight (Harvard, 1999). A third scholarly work, Where the Meanings Are: Studies in the Literature of New England, also to be published by Harvard University Press, is nearing completion.

Lisa will read from her forthcoming memoir, Jacob's Cane: One Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of Baltimore and London, A Memoir in Five Generations, to be published fall 2009 by Basic Books.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 2/6

WriteOn!

3:30 PM - 5:50 PM in the KWH

For more information: contact Jen Green at jennin@sas.upenn.edu

Write-On! is a children's literacy program generously supported by Penn alumni Brian and Jerilyn Perman. We work with the Lea Elementary school and the Penn Alexander school to bring Penn students and West Philadelphia youth together in a meaningful way.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Saturday, 2/7

WriteOn!

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM in the KWH

For more information: contact Amanda J. Steren at amandajsteren@gmail.com

Write-On! is a children's literacy program generously supported by Penn alumni Brian and Jerilyn Perman. We work with the Lea Elementary school and the Penn Alexander school to bring Penn students and West Philadelphia youth together in a meaningful way.

Sunday, 2/8

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Monday, 2/9

A meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee (the "Hub")

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

RSVP: to jalowent@writing.upenn.edu

From the time of its founding in 1995-1996, the Kelly Writers House has been run more or less collectively by members of its community. Our original team of intrepid founders — the group of students, faculty, alumni, and staff who wanted to create an independent haven for writers and supporters of contemporary writing in any genre — took for themselves the name "the hub." "Hub" was the generic term given by Penn's Provost, President, and other planners who hoped that something very innovative would be done at 3805 Locust Walk to prove the viability of the idea that students, working with others, could create an extracurricular learning community around common intellectual and creative passions. To this day, the Writers House Planning Committee refers to itself as "the hub" — the core of engaged faculty, student, staff, and alumni volunteers from whom the House's creative energy and vitality radiates.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 2/10

A reading and conversation with poet Mark Halliday

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Co-sponsored by: the Creative Writing Program
Introduced by: Greg Djanikian
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Mark Halliday has a Ph.D. in English from Brandeis University. He has taught at Wellesley College, the University of Pennsylvania, Western Michigan University, Indiana University, and has been at Ohio University since 1996. His books of poetry are Little Star (1987), a National Poetry Series selection, Tasker Street (1992), winner of the Juniper Prize, Selfwolf (1999), and Jab (2002). He had a new book at this year in September called Keep This Forever, from Tupelo Press (2008). Four of his poems have been featured in the online magazine Slate, and he currently teaches creative writing at Ohio University.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 2/11

Speakeasy

Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 2/12

A lunch and conversation with poet Tisa Bryant

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Moderated by: Rachel Levitsky
RSVP: to wh@writing.upenn.edu to reserve a spot
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Tisa Bryant was born on a U.S. Air Force base during the Vietnam War, and raised in Boston & Plymouth, MA. As a writer, poet, and radical cineaste, Bryant's work often traverses the boundaries of genre, culture and history, splicing, juxtaposing and threading seemingly disparate elements from personal history, film, and observations as a global citizen, into multi-layered texts that demand new forms. Her first book, Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from Eurocentric film, literature and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them. In her introduction to Tisa's recent reading, Stacy Szymaszek, director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York, said, "Like the great Edouard Glissant, her work is at once novel, essay and poetry, these modulations emerging and transmuting in a practice he calls 'spiral retelling.'" Bryant has served as a juror for the San Francisco International, Gay and Lesbian, and Independent film festivals, has written essays for the gallery shows of visual artist Laylah Ali, and is a founding editor/publisher of the hardcover annual, The Encyclopedia Project.

F-Word launch party: issue #5

5:00 PM in the Dining Room and Arts Cafe

The mission of the F-Word is two fold: first, to provide an outlet for feminist literary discourse, and second, to increase awareness about feminist issues among members of the Penn Community. To find out more about this or other Penn publications, visit our Publications page.



Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 2/13

WriteOn!

3:30 PM - 5:50 PM in the KWH

For more information: contact Jen Green at jennin@sas.upenn.edu

Write-On! is a children's literacy program generously supported by Penn alumni Brian and Jerilyn Perman. We work with the Lea Elementary school and the Penn Alexander school to bring Penn students and West Philadelphia youth together in a meaningful way.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Saturday, 2/14

WriteOn!

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM in the KWH

For more information: contact Amanda J. Steren at amandajsteren@gmail.com

Write-On! is a children's literacy program generously supported by Penn alumni Brian and Jerilyn Perman. We work with the Lea Elementary school and the Penn Alexander school to bring Penn students and West Philadelphia youth together in a meaningful way.

Sunday, 2/15


Monday, 2/16

LIVE at the Writers House presents Leeway Foundation Award Winners

a live taping of Allison Harris, Valerie Harris, Ann Marie Kirk and Stephanie Yuhas

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Michaela Majoun
produced by: Erin Gautsche
listen: to an audio recording of this event

"LIVE at the Writers House" is a long-standing collaboration of the people of the Kelly Writers House and of WXPN FM (88.5). Six times annually between September and April, the Writers House airs a one-hour broadcast of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art, along with one musical guest -- from our Arts Cafe onto the airwaves at WXPN. "LIVE" is broadcast on WXPN. "LIVE" is made possible through the generous support of BigRoc. For more information about the show, or if you are interested in reading or being a part of the audience, contact series producer Erin Gautsche (gautsche@writing.upenn.edu) c/o "LIVE at the Writers House," 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia PA 19104-6150.

Courtney Fairchild
Courtney Fairchild		 Allison Harris
Allison Harris		 Ann Marie
Ann Marie Kirk		 Valerie Harris
Valerie Harris		 Stephanie Yuhas
Stephanie Yuhas

Winifred Collier-Bolkus was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. She received her doctorate degree of education degree (Ed.D.) from Widener University. Dr. Collier-Bolkus has taught at Rosemont College and performed several special education workshops for the Philadelphia School District and the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children.

Dr. Collier-Bolkus was awarded a Certificate in Advanced Professional Development with Distinction for Assistive Technology Application from the Center on Disabilities located at California State University, Northridge.

Her mission is to inspire children with disabilities to realize that they can leap to success by taking one leap at a time. Winnie Is Able To Leap To Success is the first in a series of books illustrating that children with physical and mental disabilities can reach their goals in education, independent living, and recreational activities. She used a frog as the main character that has one hand, encouraging readers to "leap" to success and never stop trying. This book is also intended to encourage able-bodied persons to think positively about people with disabilities.

Courtney Fairchild was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. At 18 she released her first independent album and moved to LA. She completed her second record, Long Way, with Stanley Recordings engineer and producer John Would in 2002. In 2006 she followed Stanley Recording to Philadelphia, and released her third album, Quit, in 2007. During the summer of 2008, she sequestered myself in a friend's guest house and wrote the majority of her latest record. Fueled at times by copious amounts of bourbon and an illness that left her with a fever and a series of bizarre dreams, she hammered out the skeleton of the record, 11 Chances. She lives in a row house in South Philadelphia, awaiting its release.

Allison Harris is the editor and co-author of The Dolphin Tavern Book Project, a multi-media collaborative work of fiction, illustration, photography, and painting. She received the Leeway Art and Change Grant in 2008, and is the Administrative Assistant at the Kelly Writers House.

Valerie Harris is a writer, teacher, publisher and filmmaker. Valerie began writing plays in the 1970s, and saw her works performed nationally, at such venues as the famed Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop in New York City, Karamu Theater in Cleveland and the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. Over the years, she has worked on a number of writing and publishing projects related to art, women, and the African-American community. As a teaching artist, Valerie strives to assist individuals in appreciating the cultural landscape of their communities -- the history, traditions, conflicts and creative expressions -- and seeing themselves as active participants in it. Valerie's current project, of which she is writer and producer, is a documentary film entitled, "A Highway Runs Through It" documents the story of the African American community in Darby Township -- their history, battles with Redevelopment and Zoning authorities, and the enduring spirit that has defined their presence in Delaware County for more than 220 years.She is a 2008 Leeway Foundation Transformation Award recipient, and a 2009 PA Council on the Arts Fellow in the category of Arts Commentary.

Ann Marie Kirk is a dancer, poet, photographer with 35 years of experience as a teacher, social worker and advocate for social justice. Raised in Brookhaven, Ann Marie now resides in the woods of Green Lane, PA. As a single mother, she raised two daughters and a son in the house she heats with wood that is growing on the property. Now adults, her children are employed in social work, nursing and teaching, respectively. Ann Marie is the Co-Founder and Director of Art for Justice, a not for profit organization that supports and exhibits inmate art to promote dialogue to find effective, humane ways to prevent crime, reduce levels of incarceration and improve the criminal justice and correctional systems. Ann Marie's work with Art for Justice involves working with inmate artists, photographing, writing and organizing exhibits to bring public awareness to the humanity locked within the prisons of our state.

Stephanie Yuhas is an award-winning writer, producer, and designer whose films have been featured on the front page of YouTube.com, MySpace.com, CollgeHumor.com, and in dozens of international film festivals. The last project she worked on was a musical that involved a girl rolling around in raw meat, and in addition to her current project, "American Goulash", she is developing a feature film involving robotic uteruses. She leads an interesting life. You can see some of this insanity online by visiting Shinygrape.com. Yuhas also the Executive Producer of Project Twenty1, an organization dedicated to networking, inspiring, promoting and exhibiting original film and animation through a series of festivals, industry events, and workshops. You can find out more about Project Twenty1 by visiting NotJustAFilmFestival.com.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 2/17

A celebration of Ron Silliman and The Alphabet

6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Charles Bernstein and Bob Perelman
listen: to an audio recording of this event on PennSound
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Ron Silliman has written and edited over 30 books to date. Silliman was the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts in 1998. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons, and works as a market analyst in the computer industry.

The Alphabet is a remarkable and notorious literary achievement, decades in the making, one continually debated, discussed, and imitated since fragments first appeared in the 1970s. Consisting of twenty-six smaller books, one for each letter of the alphabet, it employs language in ways that are startling and innovative. Over the course of the three decades during which it has appeared -- in journals, magazines, and as stand-alone volumes -- its influence has been wide-ranging, both on practicing poets and on critics who have had to contend with the way it has changed the direction of American poetry.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 2/18

Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve and Alexis Alexanian

a conversation on film

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Co-sponsored by: the Cinema Studies Program
Listen: to an audio recording of this event
Watch: a video recording of this program via KWH-TV

Alexis Alexanian and Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve Alexis Alexanian's most recent production, not including her 6-month old baby, Gemma, is Ethan Hawke's The Hottest State, starring Mark Webber and Catalina Sandino Moreno, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is currently playing theaters across the US.

Alexis is an independent producer with over 15 years experience in the motion picture industry. Alexis started her career in production on larger budget studio films from Mississippi Burning to Jacob's Ladder, A League of Their Own and Striptease.

In 1999, Alexis partnered with Gary Winick and John Sloss to form IFC's groundbreaking digital initiative Independent Digital Entertainment (InDigEnt). At InDigEnt, Alexis produced nine digitally-shot feature films including Richard Linklater's Tape (LGE), Ethan Hawke's Chelsea Walls (LGE), Rebecca Miller's Independent Spirit Award winner Personal Velocity /(UA), Gary Winick's Tadpole (MIRAMAX), and Peter Hedges' Pieces of April (UA).

In May 2002 Variety named her as one of their "10 Producers to Watch". Alexis started Elixir Films with her brother David and has been developing and producing Elixir Films' slate of projects since January 2003. In 2004 they produced the international television series Long Way Round, (BRAVO, SKY) starring Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 2/19

7-up on Trash

featuring: Arielle Brousse, Faith Cole, Cecilia Corrigan, Sue Dannenberg, Erin Gautsche, Fran Ryan, Robert L. Schuyler, and Isaiah Thompson

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

listen: to an audio recording of this event
Watch: a video recording of this program via KWH-TV

7-up on Trash features seven people speaking for seven minutes each about trash (trash T.V., scrappers, composting, archeology, urban design, Philadelphia garbagemen, labor history, celebrity culture, and found art).

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 2/20

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Saturday, 2/21

WriteOn!

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM in the KWH

For more information: contact Amanda J. Steren at amandajsteren@gmail.com

Write-On! is a children's literacy program generously supported by Penn alumni Brian and Jerilyn Perman. We work with the Lea Elementary school and the Penn Alexander school to bring Penn students and West Philadelphia youth together in a meaningful way.

Sunday, 2/22

Monday, 2/23

A reading by Robert Coover

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: SEATING STRICTLY LIMITED; please RSVP to whfellow@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9749
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Funded by a grant from Paul Kelly, the Kelly Writers House Fellows program enables us to realize two unusual goals. We want to make it possible for the youngest writers and writer-critics to have sustained contact with authors of great accomplishment in an informal atmosphere. We also want to resist the time-honored distinction -- more honored in practice than in theory -- between working with eminent writers on the one hand and studying literature on the other.

Robert Coover Robert Coover is an avant-garde novelist, critic and playwright lauded for experimental forms and techniques that mix reality and illusion, frequently creating otherworldly or surreal situations and effects. A leading proponent of hypertext fiction and metafiction, Mr. Coover is known as a true revolutionary in contemporary American literature and language.

Mr. Coover's first novel, The Origin of the Brunists, won the William Faulkner Award in 1966. He is also the recipient of the Brandeis University, American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment of the Arts, Rhode Island Governor's Arts, Pell, and Clifton Fadiman Awards, as well as Rockefeller, Guggenheim, Lannan Foundation, and DAAD fellowships. His latest honor is the Dugannon Foundation's REA award for his lifetime contribution to the short story.

His most recent books are The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Directors' Cut, Stepmother, and A Child Again. Other works include the collection of short fiction, Pricksongs and Descants, a collection of plays, A Theological Position, such novels as The Public Burning, Spanking the Maid, Gerald's Party, Pinocchio in Venice, John's Wife, Ghost Town and Briar Rose.

As the T.B. Stowell Adjunct Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University, Mr. Coover teaches courses in electronic writing and mixed media, including "CaveWriting," a spatial hypertext writing workshop in immersive virtual reality, as well as standard workshops. He is one of the founders of the Electronic Literature Organization and he created Brown's Freedom to Write Program in 1989. The New York Times said, "As his dazzling career continues to demonstrate, Mr. Coover is a one-man Big Bang of exploding creative force."

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 2/24

A brunch conversation with Robert Coover

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

10:30 AM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: SEATING STRICTLY LIMITED; please RSVP to whfellow@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9749
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Funded by a grant from Paul Kelly, the Kelly Writers House Fellows program enables us to realize two unusual goals. We want to make it possible for the youngest writers and writer-critics to have sustained contact with authors of great accomplishment in an informal atmosphere. We also want to resist the time-honored distinction -- more honored in practice than in theory -- between working with eminent writers on the one hand and studying literature on the other.

Theorizing presents Rodolphe Gasché

"Secularization and the Concept of Faith"

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Co-sponsored by: the Department of English and Mods Reading Group

Rodolphe Gasche

"The way we speak and think today of "secularization" is still largely indebted to Karl Löwith's landmark work, Meaning in History (1949). This paper seeks to explore the limits of Löwith's concept, arguing that "secularization" is not only a deeply Christian conception, but that it also presupposes a concept of faith that restricts its scope to the religions of the Book. Furthermore, I intend to show that, paradoxically, the temporality characteristic of secularization implies a Greek model of time, that is, of circular time." ----Rodolphe Gasché

Rodolphe Gasché holds the Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature at SUNY Buffalo. His interests concern 19th- and 20th-century French literature, critical theory, and its relation to continental philosophy since early Romanticism. Besides translating major works by Derrida and Lacan into German and publishing numerous articles in a variety of scholarly journals, he has published several books, including: Die hybride Wissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1973), System und Metaphorik in der Philosophie von Georges Bataille (Bern: Lang, 1978), The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard, 1986), Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge: Harvard, 1994), The Wild Card of Reading: On Paul de Man (Harvard, 1998), and Of Minimal Things: Studies on the Notion of Relation(Stanford, 1999). Most recently Gasché completed The Idea of Form: Rethinking Kant's Aesthetics (Stanford, 2003). Before coming to Buffalo, Gasché taught at the Freie Universität (Berlin) and Johns Hopkins University.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 2/25

Speakeasy Open Mic Night

poetry, prose, and anything goes!

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 2/26

Lyn Hejinian & Jennifer Scappettone

a lunchtime conversation between poets

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

moderator: Rachel Levitsky
co-sponsored by: CPCW
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Jennifer Scappettone is the author of From Dame Quickly (forthcoming from Litmus Press in 2008), and of several chapbooks: Ode oggettuale, a bilingual poemetto translated into Italian with Marco Giovenale (La Camera Verde, 2008); Err-Residence (Bronze Skull, 2007); and Beauty [Is the New Absurdity] (dusi/e kollectiv, 2008). She is at work on a manuscript called Exit 43, an archaeology of the landfill and opera of pop-ups, for Atelos. Other current projects include Lagoon/Lacuna: Venice and the Digressive Invention of the Modern, a critical monograph on the city of Venice as a crucible for modernist experimentation; Neosuprematist Webtexts, filmed phrasal stills; poetry for The Last Performance [dot org], a text-visualization project sponsored by the Goat Island Performance Collective; and a range of translations from Italian. She was guest editor of Aufgabe 7, devoted to contemporary Italian poetry of research. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing and associate faculty of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

Lyn Hejinian's most recent published book of poetry is Saga / Circus (2008). A collection of works written in collaboration with Jack Collom, Situations, Sings, also came out in 2008. The Language of Inquiry, a collection of essays addressed to issues in poetics and epistemology, was published in 2000. She is the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets. Other collaborative projects include Qúê Trân with music by John Zorn and text by Hejinian, two mixed media books (The Traveler and the Hill and the Hill and The Lake) created with the painter Emilie Clark, and the award-winning experimental documentary film Letters Not About Love, directed by Jacki Ochs. She is one of the ten authors of a multi-volume project titled The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980. Hejinian teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

PoemTalk records episode #20

Al Filreis, Alan Loney, Mecca Sullivan, and Herman Beavers discuss Amiri Baraka's "Kenyatta Listening to Mozart"

4:30 PM on the third floor

Co-sponsored by: the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and the Poetry Foundation
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
for more information: poemtalkatkwh.blogspot.com

For each episode of PoemTalk, four friends and colleagues in the world of poetry and poetics convene to collaborate on a close (but not too close) reading of a single poem. We talk through and around the poem, sometimes beyond it, often disagreeing, always excited by what we discover as we talk, and perhaps after twenty-five minutes we've opened up the verse to a few new possibilities and have gained for a poem that interests us some new readers and listeners.

Alan Loney, poet and freelance writer, made limited edition books by hand from 1974 to 1998, most recently as the printer and co-director of The Holloway Press at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. In 1995 Loney convened the first conference on The History of the Book in New Zealand and co-edited a series of essays derived from that conference (A Book in the Hand, eds. Penny Griffith, Peter Hughes & Alan Loney, Auckland University Press 2000). He began publishing poetry in the late 1960s and has described his discovery of Charles Olson's Maximus Poems as decisive: "Everything I have written since then has een informed by the lessons learnt in that, for me, extraordinary and illuminating encounter" ("The Influence of American Poetry on Contemporary Poetic Practice in New Zealand," Journal of New Zealand Literature 10, 1992).

Alan Loney was the Auckland University Literary Fellow in 1992. He resigned as printer and co-director of the Holloway Press in 1998 and now lives in Melbourne, Australia.

His recent poetry collections are: Envoy (Puriri Press, 1996), Sidetracks: Notebooks 1976 - 1991 (AUP, 1998), Mondrian's flowers (Granary Books, USA, 2002), Imago Mundi (Melbourne, limited edition, 2003) and Rise (Janus Press, USA, 2003).

Loney's recent prose titles include: Reading/Saying/Making: Selected Essays 1977-2000 (The Writers Group, 2001), The Falling: a memoir (AUP, 2001), Bruno Leti Studio 2002 (limited edition, Melbourne, 2002), Bruno Leti, Survey, Artists Books 1982-2003 (Geelong Gallery, 2003), Caroline Williams: Uneasy White (Janne Land Gallery, 2003), Meditatio: the printer printed: manifesto (Cuneiform Press, USA, 2004), Leonardo on nothingness (Electio Editions, 2004), Kairos: Where there is poetry (Electio Editions, 2004).

KWH ART opening for That's What She Said: Female Voices in Embroidery

work by Elaine Reichek and Andrea Dezsö, with presentation by Ilinca Iurascu

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Listen: to an audio recording of this event
Watch: a video recording of this program via KWH-TV

The exhibition includes selections from Dezsö's sampler series "Lessons from My Mother" and Elaine Reichek's "As She Likes It."

On "As She Likes It":

Elaine Reichek summons the wit of William Shakespeare in samplers from her "As She Likes It" series of 2001. In the tradition of the historical sampler, the passages she selects from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Troilus and Cressida" serve as instructional lessons in female behavior. Here, women protagonists speak forcefully about their sex and their place in the world; of a woman's resilience, empowerment and moral strength.
—Margaret Mathews-Berenson

On "Lessons from My Mother":

The Transylvanian-born Dezsö has embroidered dozens of her mother's sayings...Each of these small pieces includes neatly stitched diagrams and begins with the statement "My mother claimed that..." followed by such homilies as "...you should not hold back your bowel movement or else the feces will come out through your mouth" and "my sister was a rubber accident." The latter image includes a blue condom surrounded by beaded spermatozoa with wriggling metallic-thread tails. Such homey and intimate details recall Philip Larkin's pithy lament: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad."
—R.C. Baker (The Village Voice)

The opening will also inaugurate a special ongoing collaboration between the Writers House and Penn's Rare Book & Manuscript Library featuring a rotating selection of artists' books in the foyer vitrine display.

For more information, contact curator Kaegan Sparks (kwhart@writing.upenn.edu).

Andrea Dezsö is an artist and a writer. She has shown at the Jack Tilton Gallery, The New York Armory Show, Art Basel Miami, Museum of Arts & Design and BravinLee Programs. Her work was reviewed in ArtForum, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Print, MarieClaire and Metropolis. Her writing appeared in McSweeney's, Print and Esopus. A book about Dezsö's art, creative process and obsessions titled "Andrea Dezsö: Fetish Book" was published in 2006. Dezsö is the recipient of a 2008 Kamiyama Fellowship, 2007 NYFA Fellowship, a 2007 Six Points Fellowship and the Ucross Foundation's 2005 Lois Nellie Gill Award for Female Visual Artist of Exceptional Merit. She is Assistant Professor of Media Design at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. You can see some of her work at her website.

Ilinca Iurascu received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught on modern German and European literature and film. Her current research interests include new media and technology studies, interdisciplinary approaches to epistolary literature and genre fiction.

Elaine Reichek is an artist known for her use of the age-old medium of embroidery to examine contemporary issues. In many works based upon the sampler—a traditional embroiderer's exercise incorporating narrative images, patterns, and motifs framed by verbal homilies and lessons—Reichek remakes existing images from high and low art, replacing the aphorisms of the sampler with quotations from a wide variety of sources throughout history and literature. Born in New York, she received a B.F.A. from Yale University and a B.A. from Brooklyn College. She has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus, OH, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Belgium, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and Tel Aviv Art Museum, Israel. She lives in New York City.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 2/27

WriteOn!

3:30 PM - 5:50 PM in the KWH

For more information: contact Jen Green at jennin@sas.upenn.edu

Write-On! is a children's literacy program generously supported by Penn alumni Brian and Jerilyn Perman. We work with the Lea Elementary school and the Penn Alexander school to bring Penn students and West Philadelphia youth together in a meaningful way.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Saturday, 2/28

WriteOn!

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM in the KWH

For more information: contact Amanda J. Steren at amandajsteren@gmail.com

Write-On! is a children's literacy program generously supported by Penn alumni Brian and Jerilyn Perman. We work with the Lea Elementary school and the Penn Alexander school to bring Penn students and West Philadelphia youth together in a meaningful way.