Small Wonders THIS Saturday Night 6-9 at The Drawing Studio

This piece Modern Times (acrylic on gessoed paper) is one of many in the show running through Decembre 19th. For more images and details about the show and the reception click the post title. Happy Tuesday +V.

Poems By Gail Easterling at Back Room Live

The scarf in this photo was a gift from her to me from her trip to China. Click the post title to read the poems- Hope you enjoy them!

Poodlebird!

I spent an awsome morning w/ this little bird, watering some wild flower sprouts.

Al and and Caterpillar

I have been listening to Paul Simon lately, we'll call the caterpillar Betty.

BACK ROOM LIVE SATURDAY NIGHT A TRIBUTE TO MARLON EVANS

Curated by WENDY BURK w/ writing from JOSEPH O'CONNELL, FRANCES SJOBERG, FRANCI WASHBURN and SIMON J. ORTIZ

MARLON B. EVANS, 1952-2009. Photograph by Joe O'Connell.

Simon J. Ortiz is a poet, fiction, and creative non-fiction writer, and a professor at Arizona State University in the Department of English and American Indian Studies. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, essays, and children's literature; they includeWoven Stone, Out There Somewhere, from Sand Creek, Beyond the Reach of Time and Change, The Good Rainbow Road, Earth Power Coming, and After and Before the Lightning. His Indigenous heritage is Acoma Pueblo, and he is an advocate of Indigenous liberation and de-colonization.

While I was teaching one summer in American Indian Languages Development Institute (AILDI) at U. of Arizona in the early 2000s, perhaps 2002 or 2003, I met Marlon Evans. I immediately liked him. Even though I felt a bit self-conscious when I realized he regarded me as a role model! I was practically a hero to him, for crissakes! Because I was a writer! Because I wrote and published poetry and stories featuring Native people he identified with. Rural people struggling, urban people having a hard time, urban street people.Indigenous people sometimes jobless, neglected and moneyless. Luckless, having trouble with the law, with booze, with poverty.Marlon enrolled in a course on Native fiction in which I had students write essays related to the literature we studied. I had them relate the stories we studied to their own lives, the stories they lived. Right away I noticed Marlon always wrote papers that spoke closely of his life, culture, experience, and his identity as O'odham. He always identified so closely with his land, culture, and community as an O'odham person, and that was really the basis of my regard and respect for him. And I shall always remember Marlon speaking several times of his dream "to write the real story and make the real film of Ira Hayes," the O'odham who was the WWII war hero for raising the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima, "not that Hollywood shit about a drunken Indian played by Tony Curtis!"

Photo by David Burckhalter, courtesy of the University of Arizona Press.

Franci Washburn is an Assistant Professor with a dual appointment in American Indian Studies and the Department of English at The University of Arizona. She has published journal articles, essays in edited volumes, poetry, and a novel, Elsie’s Business. A second novel, The Sacred White Turkey, is due for release from University of Nebraska Press in the summer of 2010. Marlon Evans was her friend.

Frances Sjoberg was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and raised in Globe, Arizona. She holds a B.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Poetry. She is now a law student at the University of Arizona College of Law where she is Articles Manager for Arizona Law Review and Chapter President for the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. Before law school, she was the Literary Director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center. While at the Poetry Center, she coordinated symposia on Indigenous Language & Poetry and on Conceptual Poetry & Its Others. A chapbook of her poems, Outcrop, was published by Chax Press. Her favorite things are silent Ks and homonyms.

Frances's friendship with Marlon extended from collaboration at the University of Arizona Poetry Center to early morning hikestogether on Tumamoc Hill.

Joe owns Creative Machines, a nine-person company that makes interactive museum
exhibits, public art, and simple machines to help the neediest people around
the world. Although (over) educated in the liberal arts, Joe is basically a
'maker' at heart—someone who compulsively has to put things together and
gradually expands the materials and processes he works with over his
lifetime. He grew up in New Jersey, making all sorts of gadgets in his parents'
basement. Joe began Creative Machines in 1997 to make museum exhibits. Many of
his sculptures (and indeed his entire business) are powered by photovoltaic
arrays. Partly triggered by recent travels, Joe has turned towards making
machines and art for the world's most needy people. He aims for work that is
not a weak derivative of what works in the affluent West, but new forms that
can only emerge in places far from the center.

Joe writes poetry as a hobby and has enjoyed many years of friendship and
collaboration with Marlon.

Check it out!

Harriet Homemaker

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Slow and Low

September 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment

BACK ROOM LIVE ! CURATED BY TREVOR CALVERT

BACK ROOM LIVE Currated by TREVOR CALVERT

With BHANU KAPIL ! RYAN BARTLETT ! STEFFI DREWES ! Thanks Trevor +V.

Steffi Drewes’ poems have appeared in Bombay Gin, BlazeVOX, American Letters & Commentary, Aufgabe, Traffic, Fourteen Hills, and Beeswax Magazine, among others. Her manuscript, Wheel to Wing, was selected as a finalist for Switchback Books’ Gatewood Prize in 2008. A native Iowan, she now lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a contributing editor for MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine.

Ryan Bartlett graduated from Mills College in 2002 with an MFA in poetry. In the past, Ryan was employed as an adjunct professor at Touro College and Yeshiva University in New York City. His work has been featured in Five Finger Review, Word Riot, The Chaffey Review, and the anthology, Involuntary Vision. He is currently an assistant professor at Crafton Hills College and the faculty advisor for the school’s literary magazine, The Sand Canyon Review. Ryan lives in Redlands with his wife and two sons.

Bhanu Kapil is an escaped dog of some kind, an immigrant de-packed but available for visits to...well....dog parks. Apart from this, she teaches writing year-round at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and as part of the low-residency MFA at Goddard College in Vermont. This semester, she is teaching graduate classes on experimental prose and memoir, and an undergraduate class on narrative and architecture. Since 1998, she has had a private practice as an integrative bodyworker, focusing on a fusion of soft tissue/structural and energy work. Three full-length works of experimental writing have been published by small presses in the U.S., most recently "humanimal [a project for future children]", from Kelsey Street Press.

Boat and clouds

Found: in Tucson Az. sky full of cloud shows and trail detritus for boat building.

Ink and Paint NOW SHOWING at Lanesplitter 4799 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland

x42" $100.00

67"x42" $300.00

36"x42" $200.00

42"x36" $200.00

22"x30" $100.00

15.5"x15" $25.00

22"x30" $100.00

x18" $40.00

INK AND PAINT by Valyntina Grenier

RECEPTION

MONDAY JULY 27TH

7pm~10pm

Ten works using acrylic, ink and H2O on paper range in sizes from 15.5"x15" to 67"x42." Each piece comes ready to hang. For information contact lifelongpress@gmail.com

Additional specs. to come Happy Day +V.

Back Room Live ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! Mumolo ! Burford ! Zetter ! Prickett

MAURICE BURFORD ! SHARON ZETTER ! BEN PRICKETT ! and this months currator SARA MUMOLO ! for poetry and prose !

Maurice Burford lives and writes in a giant squid's den in Ashland, Oregon. He has been published in NOÖ Journal, Cannot Exist, Pindeldyboz, and My Name is Mud, and co-author (w/ Jess Rowan) of the chapbook Prithee (Abraham Lincoln Press, 2009). In his leisure hours he cracks eggs and co-edits PinchPinchPress (pinchpinchpress.blogpot.com) and (occasionally) blogs at pandapandapandaalex.blogspot.com.

Sharon Zetter writes words between co-editing the journals Retired Unicorn and MARY, book binding, and battling with paint and yarn. She is currently working on building a dacha, possibly made of straw, with five other humans. Documentation of their exploits can be found at dachaproject.com. Her poems have found home in Hanging Loose, Slipstream, Ink Node, Soft Skull and Blood Pudding Press.

SARA MUMOLO curates the Studio One Reading Series in Oakland, CA . She edits CALAVERAS with Alisa Heinzman. Previous projects including editing MARY Magazine and co-editing Sorry IV Snake . Find her poems forthcoming in Coconut, Typo, Letterbox, Dusie & Cannibal. Read some now in Shampoo, Barnaby Jones 2, Hoboeye, Article Journal & Berkeley Poetry Review.

Ben Prickett is a recent graduate of the M.F.A program at Saint Mary’s College, where held the MFA advisory board scholarship for literary excellence. He is from Birmingham, Alabama, and now lives in Oakland.

Elizabeth Terrazas

PAINTINGS!

719 Washington Oakland Ca 94607

Openning tommorrow night 7pm-10pm

2009 BAY AREA POETRY MARATHON THIS Saturday night June 20th 7pm!

“An ear and mind opener… this event delivers the real thing: edgy stuff, poetry with a real bite!” –SAN FRANCISCO  magazine

the first *******2009 BAY AREA POETRY MARATHON******* is THIS Saturday Night!
Come hear poetry by: ME * SAMANTHA GILES * CAROLINE GOODWIN * OWEN HILL * SARA MUMULO * ERIC OLSON * STEPHEN VINCENT * DELLA WATSON * JESSICA WICKENS at THE LAB, 2948 16th Street (@ Capp), San Francisco *1 block from the Mission BART stop*

Hope to see you there +V.

from Pedagogy of Love Model and a link to wunderkammer

You don’t know me

You me we don’t know

We

Know 

Don’t 

No

            unanswerable

un-

“explicit design”

“in the gaps”             unknown

unknowable

unknown 

unanswerable

unanswerable unknown

unanswerable unknown

unanswerable unknown

unanswerable unknown

unanswerable unknown

unanswerable unknown

un-

  attempt

  attempt; to fail

  attempt, to fail

to fail?

to fail an attempt to fail

  Innocence

Presence

Present innocence

[be here]

Want 

         to be here

I want to— here

The Post Title is linked to Wunderkammer! Thanks for continuing make a place for my poems and photos +V. Wunderkammer is a curious collection of art, poetry, and prose. Wunderkammer is now seeking creative work that falls into these categories: Collection (deadline--June 14, 2009), Obama (deadline--June 28, 2009), Ecopoetics (deadline--July 12, 2009)

BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! BERMEO ! RHEE ! PEREZ ! YEE !

Check out backroomlive.wordpress.com for new writing from Debbie Yee ! Margaret Rhee ! Oscar Bermeo ! Craig Santos Perez ! Also look for guest curators Sara Mumolo in June and Trevor Calvert in August !

  Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is the author of Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest and Heaven Below.

His poems appear in Achiote Seeds, BorderSenses, CrossBRONX, Ozone Park, and Spindle, among others.  Oscar has been a featured writer at a variety of institutions including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Intersection for the Arts, Kearny Street Workshop, Bronx Academy of Letters, Rikers Island Penitentiary, San Quentin Prison, the Loft Literary Center, Sacramento Poetry Center, UC Berkeley, UNC-Chapel Hill, NYU and many others.

He now makes his home in Oakland, with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.

For more information on Oscar and his poetics, please visit his website, http://oscarbermeo.com, or his blog, http://geminipoet.blogspot.com.

Debbie Yee is an attorney, poet and arts & crafts enthusiast.  A Kundiman fellow, Debbie's poems have appeared in 32 Poems and Barn Owl Review, among others.  Her poem, "Cinderella's Last Will and Testament", was selected for The Best American Poetry 2009. http://www.debbieyee.com

Margaret Rhee is an emerging interdisciplinary writer, scholar, and artist, dedicated to social justice.  She is a doctoral student in Comparative Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, lover of full bodied coffee and wine, and a Kundiman fellow in poetry. http://www.aapw-la.org/

 

Craig Santos Perez is a co-founder of Achiote Press (www.achiotepress.com) and author of from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008). His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others. He blogs at blindelephant.blogspot.com.

BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! WICKENS ! WATSON ! BURK ! HOLIDAY ! BRENNAN !

Click the post title NOW ! RIGHT NOW ! for a travel essay by LAURA BRENNAN, poetry by HARMONY HOLIDAY and WENDY BURK and  collaborative epistolary poetry by DELLA WATSON and JESSICA WICKENS. SCROLL DOWN FOR PICS & BIO'S FROM THIS MONTH'S WRITERS

Laura Brennan

Activities:Alchemy.

Interests:Tomfoolery, clandestineness, manipulation, esotericism and the abstruse.

Post-its, Q-tips, Jason Toothpaste, Lush, spell check and Dictionary.com.

Kale, peanut butter, wild mushrooms, nutritional yeast, fish in cans, dark chocolate covered almonds, mustard oil, smoothies and seeds high in omega fatty acids.

Funny faces, singing things that are generally spoken, breaking into dance, thumb war and applying a light amount of pressure to the back of someones knee.

Lavender, ylang-ylang, Himalayan Cedar, sweet orange, clary sage and patchouli.

Smiling wrinkles, whispering, blowing kisses, fishy face and blowing on peoples stomachs.

And bikes and goats and spring time.

 

Jessica Wickens' poems have appeared in Little Red Leaves, Eleven Eleven, Floating Holiday, The Whirligig, Spell, Switchback, and Blink. She studied anthropology at the University of Chicago and creative writing at California College of the Arts. She co-edits the literary journal Monday Night, recently founded Skeptic Press and sits on the board of Small Press Traffic. A native of Michigan, she currently works at a legal services center and lives in Oakland with human and feline companions. 

Della and Jessica are currently working on collaborative a poetry collection.

 

Della Watson holds degrees from the University of Kentucky and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the co-founder of the reconstruction room, a Chicago-based reading and performance series. Her poetry has appeared in Limestone, Make, The Hat, Denver Quarterly, Tarpaulin Sky, Parcel, nanomajority, Free Verse, The New Yinzer, eye-rhyme, alice blue, elimae, Left Facing Bird, Sorry for Snake, Mirage, word for/ word and others. She blogs at Wunderkammer  and The Green Life.

Wendy Burk is the author of a poetry chapbook, The Deer, and the translator of Tedi López Mills’s While Light Is Built, from Kore Press. Her work has also appeared in journals including TWO LINES, Tin House, Colorado Review, and PMS. With poet Eric Magrane, she has recently completed a manuscript of collaborative poems from National Park Service residencies in Michigan, Arkansas, and Florida.

Harmony Holiday-Oppen poem in the place of bio (pronouns have been changed )

Sunnyside Child As the builders Planned, the city streets Put leaves in summer air in lost Streets above the subway. And in this Achievement of the houses, this Air, a child Stands as a child, Preoccupied To find her generation, her contemporaries Of the neighborhood whose atmosphere, whose sound In her life's time no front door, no Hardware ever again can close on

Alphonse Berber FRIDAY NIGHT through June 6!

"You, Me, and Everyone We Know"

kitsune_noir_diorama

will open with a public reception for the artists this Friday at 6pm and will continue until June 6.

For more information, please visit www.alphonseberber.com

Eating My Cake and Having It Too, Benjamin Cowden.

Timothy Kadish, Three Waldos, Four Parachute Men, Seven Mushrooms, Eight Tanks, and Four Turtle Doves.

Inagaki, Untitled (Gericault #1), charcoal on rives bfk, 86 x 42 .

BACK ROOM LIVE! NOW! RIGHT NOW! RICKEL ! HUDSON ! HAMEL ! CHOI !

IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT ! click the post title for new writing by  Boyer Rickel ! Chiwan Choi !Victoria A. Hudson ! and NEW ! Life-long Press Co-Editor Gillian Hamel ! Also, check out our new and up-dated Pages: Submissions, Contributors, Thank You.  

Submit some pages of your own!

Tucson is a real cloud-show, also

coyote, humming-birds, doves, quail, cottontails, snakes and lizards doing their push-ups or wagging their tails.

2 more days to see "Works on Paper" at Rockridge Cafe 7:30am-3:pm all work half price!

These works, ready to hang, are available for $25-$45 !

Back Room Live !ON LINE! Saturday Night ! February 28th !7:PM! Goldman ! Cully ! Moctezuma ! Durback !

Lara Durback thinking about energy or that space in between every person and thing. And her name always confusing. Never committing to a form of art but always writing first. Talking, music, food, handmade leather earrings, printing, digging through trash & gluing, dancing, yoga. People people people people and cats and public transportation.

Jose's father's name is Jose, and his father's father's name was Jose too. Hence, 'Jose-Luis'; which gratifies this scrivener's sense of self-worth in a world filled with Joses, famous and none-too-famous. To his friends, he is Jose, and to one very good friend, it is 'Josef' - others may refer to him as 'Joe' or 'Yousef' - yet no one calls him 'Pepe' because he still is (bless him) 'Pepito'. His father is a poet/metaphysician, a pater-in-spirit published; and his father's father was a boxer, a dragon given to drink & toxicity. So proceed the events enchained by the recurrence of a name - variations on a theme lost in a conspectus of what JHVH increases - a genealogy as yet unwrit, dim-seen... The present Jose(-Luis) resides in Illadelph, PA

Barbara Cully is the author of Desire Reclining (Penguin, 2003); The New Intimacy (Penguin, 1997), which won the National Poetry Series Open Competition; and Shoreline Series (Kore Press, 1997). She teaches in the Department of English at the University of Arizona as well as in the Prague Summer Program. Poems from a new collection appear in CUE and Sonora Review, and are forthcoming in Tight.

Following an initial stab at political satire for The Sunday Times of London, the Brooklyn-born writer has remained a recurring nightmare for British readers. Steven got his start in the UK, working at London's premier listing's magazine, Time Out, and subsequently for The Guardian, filing film features, theatre reviews and covering the major European film festivals. His credits in the UK also include BBC Children's Television, GQ, Cosmopolitan, The Evening Standard and The Face. In the US his work has been published in The New York Times, Premiere and Interview Magazine. 

Specializing in film coverage, Steven has worked as a Hollywood correspondent and frequent contributor to The Sunday Times and Esquire in the UK, with numerous covers for both publications. His interviews include : Martin Scorsese, John Travolta, Samuel Jackson, Sharon Stone, Woody Allen, Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, Jude Law, Kevin Costner, Ray Charles and Timothy Leary amongst numerous others. 

Approached by former Disney animator, Raul Garcia, he scripted the animated feature, Sian Ka'an, featuring the voices of Salma Hayek, Placido Domingo, Alfred Molina and Cheech Marin. Additional credits include two animated Eloise holiday specials from Film Roman & Handmade Films (based on the books by Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight), featuring the voices of Tim Curry, Lynn Redgrave, Brad Garrett and Jim Belushi. 

On line

Saturday February 28th 7pm 
at

VANISHING POINT BY MARGUERITE HARRIS Feb 15th 6-9pm Free!

MicroClimate Resident Artist
MARGUERITE HARRIS
Technology and Culture
A film/video/computer generated environment. 
Sunday, February 15 6-9PM Free, CLIMATE THEATRE 285 9TH STREET SF, CA 94103

Using repetitive, minimalist imagery, Marguerite Harris explores "the documentation of natural forms as archived events, buried within the digital frame." She creates films and immersive video environments which fluctuate or multiply and can be temporally and spatially disorienting; the spectator is engaged as both subject and activator of the work. 
In the MicroClimate Project Space the artist will be showing digital computer generated stills from her hand-made film "Flowers & Leaves #1 & #2" (2007),. She will experiment with activating the Project Space through experimental live-feed video looping.

New! Works on Paper by Valyntina Grenier

Twelve works using acrylic, ink and H2O on paper range in size from 30"x22" to 67"x42." Each piece comes ready to hang w/ an artist-made slip and dowel weight and hanging system. All arelight-weight and several can be hung 2 ways.They are priced to sell from $50.00 to $280.00.
I hold a BA in English from UCBerkeley and an MFA from Saint Mary's College. I am the editor-in-chief of Life-Long Press and the curator/ MC of Back Room Live, a monthly multi-genre reading series formerly held at Mc Nally's Irish Pub. Back Room Live is now on line at backroomlive.wordpress.com.  Join us for our debut posting Saturday, January 31st,  at 7pm and the last Saturday of every month at 7pm to read and comment on the work of 4 new writers! 

The Rockridge Cafe is at 5492 College Ave in Oakland they are open Sunday-Monday from 7:30am-3pm.

WIP's 2

NOW SHOWING at Khana Peena on College

Khana Peena is at 5326 College Ave. in Rockridge click the post title for restaurant hours and info. The food is delicious!
My Pager's in My Other Pants
After the Modern Styles: abstract lyricisim, minimalism, abstract symbolism
Acrrylic on canvas
5'X5'
$621.00

My Pager's in my Other Pants is titled after a mixed tape made by my friend Lukas Champagne which I listened to while composing Autopoiesis 2 my second annual show of paintings for the Lanespliter in July of 2007. During the month of May I composed ten paintings (acrylic on canvas or cedar) ranging from 6"x6" to 5'x5'. This painting is the fourth in my series Strains. The first paintings in the series were gennerated from a sketch I made after the minimalist style in 1997 while watching The Andromeda Strain. The term strain has several connotations. Those which provide a lense for the viewing of this painting : (music) a series of musical phrases that create a distinct melody of a piece, (biology) a variant of a plant, virus or bacterium, or to pass through a filtering agent such as a strainer, to embrace or clasp tightly; hug. The image to the right, the original sketch for My Pager's in My Other Pants, was composed during an art history class in 1998.
To view the other paintings in the Strains series and others go to lifelongpress.blogspot.com. Or to see some new works on paper from the series to the right visit the Rockridge Cafe January 22nd through May 6th.

HAPPY NEW YEAR NEWS!!!!

BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! January 31st 2009 ! ROBERT HASS ! SARAH GARRIGAN ! VERONICA CARLOS-LANDA ! JENNY DRAI ! backroomlive.wordpress.com 7pm !

Join us for our debut posting! Coming soon backroomlive.blogspot.com a photo archive of the Back Room Live reading series from Mc Nally's Irish Pub in Oakland. Also, Thursday January 8th join us live at Book Zoo in Oakland at 7pm w/BRL Editors Choice Edition/ contributors ! Brenda Hillman ! Sara Mumolo ! Barbara Claire Freeman ! Craig Santos Perez ! See you there +V.

Jenny Drai likes to say she was raised by wolves, but really she is the child of librarians, which may or may not be the same thing. A graduate of the poetry program at Saint Mary's College of California, her work has appeared in Court Green, Five Fingers Review, and The Tiny as well as other journals. She has written a novel, John Clare, which awaits publication, and is currently working on a novella, Dark Age, about a fifth century book of laws, a list of names, and a divorced writer with too much time on her hands. She likes to swim and run and enjoy scotch in a responsible fashion in Oakland, California, but she has also lived in Chicago, Hamburg, and Munich. She works in the home furnishings industry.

Veronica Carlos-Landa is a Mexican-American poet who has lived in California all of her life and never plans to leave. She received her BA from UC Berkeley and her MFA from St. Mary's College. Vero, as her friends affectionately call her, also teaches, learns, loves, sews, knits, and loves to drink beer.

Sarah Garrigan is a student at the University of California at Berkeley working towards a degree in English. She is currently a Co-Publicity Chair for the Berkeley Poetry Review. After college, she looks forward to living in a box while discovering what exactly one can do with a B.A. in English. She enjoys drinking chai lattes, wandering around San Francisco, and pretending to work on her senior thesis.

Robert Hass teaches English at the University of California at Berkeley. His most recent book of poems is Time and Materials (Ecco). He has translated Japanese poetry (The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa, Ecco)and, with the author, many volumes of the poems of Czeslaw Milosz. He's married to Brenda Hillman.

Works In Progress

/BRL Editor's Choice Edition/ Available LIVE at BOOK ZOO

Special and Staple-copy editions of BRL in store now CLICK THE LINK FOR STORE HOURS!!!

BOOK ZOO 5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY this Friday 7pm!!!!

Book Zoo will celebrate its fifth year of operation on this historic evening. Bring food, drinks and presents! All are welcome. FREE!!! Click the post title to check out their cool website+V.

BRL'S BIG BOOK ZOO BOOK BASH BON VOYAGE 7pm Thursday Jan 8th 2009!

BRL'S BIG BOOK ZOO BOOK BASH BON VOYAGE 7pm Thursday January 8th 2009!
The cover image for /BRL Editors Choice Edition/ photo ! Geatan Chabanol ! Cover Art ! Allyson O'Brien ! Layout/Design/Editor ! Valyntina Grenier ! Copy Editors ! Sarah Garrigan ! Gillian Hamel ! Binders ! Jenny Drai ! Sara Mumolo ! Jane Miller ! Gillian ! Me ! Writers ! HARMONY HOLLIDAY ! BRENDA HILLMAN ! CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ ! BARBARA CLAIRE FREEMAN ! SARA MUMOLO !


Hi there,
Please join LIFE-LONG PRESS at BOOK ZOO January 8th 2009 7pm for our Big /BRL Editors Choice Edition/ Book Bash Birthday Bon Voyage Party ! No we'll not be bashing books WE LOVE THEM ! We'll hear from contributors ! SARA MUMOLO ! CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ ! BARBARA CLAIRE FREEMAN ! BRENDA HILLMAN ! We will have copies of the edition for sale ! The Bon Voyage is for Life-long Press ! BACK ROOM LIVE will be going on line ! The Birthday is my 33rd ! I am realy looking forward to celebrating w/ you ! +V.

Sara Mumolo works at Studio One Art Center in Oakland CA and runs the Studio One Reading Series. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Shampoo, Hoboeye, Dusie, Typo & others. Find her chapbook Brain in a Vat at Stormy Petrel Press.

Barbara Claire Freeman is a literary critic and professor of literature who has recently turned her full attention to writing poetry. She is the author of The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women's Fiction (University of California Press, 1998, pbk. 2000), among many other works of criticism and theory. Formerly an Associate Professor of English at Harvard, she teaches creative writing for the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space, Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, Modern Review, Parthenon West, and New American Writing,. She is the current recipient of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Award, the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize (Sarah Lawrence College, 2007) and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Craig Santos Perez is a co-founder of Achiote Press and author of from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008). His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared (or are forthcoming) in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others.

Brenda Hillman has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Loose Sugar (1997), Cascadia (2001), and Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005), all from Wesleyan University Press. She has also edited Emily Dickinson's poetry for Shambhala Publications, and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, co-edited The Grand Permisson: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood (2003). Hillman serves on the faculty of Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California, where she is Olivia C. Filippi Professor of Poetry. She is involved in anti-war activism with CodePink. These pieces are from Practical Water, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in 2009.

So that's
Thursday January 8th 7pm
at Book Zoo
6395 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland 94609

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! JANUARY ! 2009

Last BIG BACK ROOM LIVE ! this SAT DEC 6TH 7PM ! and second publication event of the year!!!!!

Well the magazine is nearly ready!!!! On thursday night from 6-10pm we will be binding 55 special editions and stapling 95 copy editions if you'd like to help send me an email!!!! And by help I mean loan your time, bookbinding tools or staplers???? And don't forget about our big event this Saturday night at Mc Nally's at 7pm chaeck out the readers and bios below. Hope to see you their++V.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITING WORKSHOP

with poet, essayist, & musician Chris Stroffolino in a fun, nurturing, non-accredited setting

7 or 8 Three-Hour Sessions; 1st WINTER session begins LATE DECEMBER (or EARLY JANUARY. Dates & times to de be determined depending on the needs of the class (We will do our best to accommodate people’s schedules—most likely a weeknight). The workshop may culminate in a public reading /performance/talk, depending on the interest of the class.

Class Size: minimum of 7, maximum of 10.

Cost: $250: Check, money-order or cash are all acceptable.

Class Description: Do you have something to say, but don’t quite know what is the best way to communicate it? Do you need to write for the sake of self-knowledge or catharsis, but aren’t sure if you want to make it public? Did a friend, teacher or other professional writer call your writing a ‘mere journal entry?’ or a ‘song lyric?’ Did they say your poetry rhymed too much, or maybe not enough? Did they say your prose was too poetic, or had too many ideas and not enough characters? Are you frustrated that the writing they often claim is ‘better’ than yours doesn’t really speak to you? Do you believe your writing may very well be able to better the lives of others? Do you believe in magic? Do Ya?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions (or even if you think they’re silly), this is the workshop for you. Taking each student’s writing and/or performance pieces as its starting point, this workshop encourages students working in varying different ‘genres’. Students may work within one genre throughout the entire course, but will be encouraged to explore a range of stylistic options including poems, manifestoes, creative non-fiction, dialogue pieces, songlyrics, poem-paintings, texts that redefine or de-define genre, ‘hybrid texts’ or ‘non-poetry.’ Students will offer critiques of each other’s work to create a dialogue within a ‘unity in diversity’ approach. By the end of the class, students can expect a deeper understanding into the creative process as well as the business of publishing or other ways of making their work public. Note: This class is intended for all levels.

Chris Stroffolino is the author of seven books of poetry, including Speculative Primitive (2004), Scratch Vocals (2003), Stealer’s Wheel (1999), Light As A Fetter (1997), Cusps (1995) and Oops (1994). He also published two books of literary criticism, Spin Cycle (2001), and, with David Rosenthal, a book length study of Shakespeare’s 12th Night (2000). Since 2001, he’s been singer/songwriter for Continuous Peasant, and has also performed and recorded with The Silver Jews, Jolie Holland, Greg Ashley, Brian Glaze, and Rising Shotgun. His music and cultural criticism has appeared in The Bigtakeover, Kitchen Sink, Big Bridge. He was a recipient of a 2001 New York Foundation for the Arts grant before moving to Oakland where he was Visiting Distinguished Poet at St. Mary’s College from 2001-2006. He has also taught at San Francisco Art Institute, Mills College, Rutgers University, NYU, LIU, Temple, Drexel among others, and received a 2008 Grant from the Fund For Poetry. His poetry has been widely anthologized, and translated into Spanish, Bengali, Hungarian, and Dutch. He also has edited literary journals and curated several reading/talk series.

To Register, contact Chris Stroffolino at chris.stroffolino@gmail.com or 415-260-7535. Spaces are limited. No more than 10 students will be accepted per class. Interested students should submit a short 1-3 page sample (or 2 MP3 if working in primarily an audio format).

LAST BIG BACK ROOM LIVE OF THE YEAR ! SAT DEC 6TH 7PM !

Back Room Live Two Year Anniversary and Life-long Press Publication Event ! JANE MILLER ! BRIAN TEARE ! CHRIS STROFFOLINO ! HARMONY HOLIDAY ! Issues of /BRL Editors Choice Edition/!!! SATURDAY DECEMBER 6TH ! 7pm ! Mc Nally's Irish Pub ! Come Join The Party!

Thank you ! Javier O. Huerta ! Jenny Drai ! Stephen Vincent ! Sarah Garrigan ! Lukas Champagne ! Janet W. Hardy ! Eleanor Johnson ! Della Watson ! Ailene Sankur ! Jennifer K. Sweeney ! Chad Sweeney ! Valyntina Grenier ! Sara Mumolo ! Jenny Drai ! Gillian Hamel ! Craig Santos Perez ! Zach Demby ! Rebecca Guyon ! Victoria A. Hudson ! Amanda Benson ! Veronica Carlos-Landa ! Linda Norton ! Ben Perez ! Ben Prickett ! Sarah Fattig ! Lyn Hejinian ! Brenda Hillman ! Graham Foust ! Geoffrey G. O'brien ! Lisa Gschwandtner ! Jack Morgan ! Jarrod Roland ! Erika Stati ! Patrick Holian! Lily Brown ! Victoria Hudson ! Clare Becker ! Evan Sicuranza ! Kathryn FK ! Eleanor Bayne Johnson ! Rebbecca Brown ! Jack Morgan ! Juliet Kinkade ! Tyler Williams ! Allison Landa ! JP Lacrampe ! Trevor Calvert ! Cielo Lutino ! Jeffrey Knutson ! Nicole Polidoro ! Pablo Lopez ! Sara Mumolo ! Challen Clarke ! Angelo Nikolopoulos ! Teresa Hovis ! Sarah Garrigan ! Beatrix Chan ! Alicia Bleuer ! Lukas Champagne ! Adam Watkins ! Sharon Lynn Osmond ! Andrew Kenower ! Lily Brown ! David Spataro ! Harmony Holiday ! Jason Sattler ! Blake Ellington Larson ! Vicki Hudson ! Jenny Drai ! Janet W. Hardy ! Hillary Gravendyk ! David Larsen ! Julie Choffel ! Scott Berger ! Thomas Cooney ! Ben Brashares ! For Making Art in Public ! BACK ROOM LIVE ! OAKLAND ! NOVEMBER 2006 ! DECEMBER ! 2007

Thank you ! Stephanie Young ! Margaret Rhee ! Francois Loung ! Jonny Hernandez ! For Being Willing !

Thank you Tony and Tobias for making room for us!!!!

AND THANK YOU THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO ARE A PART OF THE LIFE-LONG PRESS COMMUNITY ! you have my heart +V

Stroffolino's the author 7 books of poetry (all out of print), most recently Speculative Primitive (2004 Tougher Disguises). Also, a book of essays on contemporary poetry (Spin Cycle), co-edited a Critical Edition of Shakespeare's 12th Night. Various Rock Bands (Silver Jews, Continuous Peasant, Rising Shotgun, etc). Won a Fund For Poetry grant in 2008 and a NYFA grant in 2001. Was VIsiting Distinguished Poet at St. Mary's College (2001-2005). Essays on music, and pop culture in BigTakeover, Kitchen Sink, Oakbook, etc.

Harmony Holiday is a graduate student in the MFA program at Columbia University. She teaches dance and writing part time in New York and is currently completing her first collection "Negro League Baseball" and working a chapbook entitled "Scripture for the Perverts" based on Freud's "Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality."

Brian Teare is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and MacDowell Colony. He was also a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. He has published poetry and criticism in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Provincetown Arts, St. Mark's Poetry Project Newsletter, Seneca Review, Verse and VOLT, among many other journals. His first book, The Room Where I Was Born, won the 2003 Brittingham Prize and the 2004 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. Two new books are forthcoming: Sight Map (University of California, 2009) and Pleasure (Ahsahta, 2010). He lives, teaches and makes books by hand in San Francisco.

Jane Miler’s recent collection is Midnights, poetry and prose in Saturnalia Press’s artist/poet Collaboration Series, #4, 2008, with visual art contributed by Beverly Pepper and an introduction by C.D. Wright. Jane has also published several poetry collections with Copper Canyon Press, most recently a book-length collection, A Palace of Pearls.

Congratulations Mr President

CHANGE is my savings plan!

!VOTING DAY!

!Endorsements from Life-long Press!
I was talking w/ a friend, Suchi, about tomorrows election some weeks ago and she wondered why it is not called "Voting Day." I know there are a few days on which we are meant to hit the poles or meet our vote by mail dead lines however, like Suchi I feel that if it were called voting day perhaps more people would feel compelled to vote. I also believe, as was my voter status in my late teens and twenties, that many people do not vote because they find voter information ballots and conflicting television adds "overwhelming" or "confusing." Because many Americans are simply not taught how to vote inquiry into the issues and candidates and the act of voting itself is seen as a "task" rather than a RIGHT and the opportunity to educate one's self is not undertaken. At this point I take my right to vote as fundamental to my behavior as a; citizen, artist, worker, family member, friend, student and educator. It is my privilege to go public w/ the choices I will be making on voting day. I have based my decisions on the voter information pamphlet for the general election and for Alameda County, conversation at the work place and w/ friends, television adds and news programs, as well as the San Francisco Bay Guardian. There are a few issues I am still undecided about and would love to hear your input so please comment w/ any of your opinions. I also want to wish Suchi a happy Voting Day Birthday, thanks for inspiring my thinking and my decision to spend a little extra time to share my opinions in public.

PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESEDENT Obama/ Biden
US REPRESENTATIVE 9TH DISTRICT Lee
STATE SENATOR 9TH DISTRICT Hancock
STATE ASSEMBLY 14TH DISTRICT Skinner
SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE #9 Hayashi
COUNCIL MEMBER AT LARGE Kaplan
AC TRANSIT DISTRICT DIRECTOR AT LARGE ?
AC TRANSIT DISTRICT DIRECTOR AT LARGE WARD 2 Harper

STATE MEASURES
1A Yes
2 Yes
3 No
4 No
5 Yes
6 No
7 ?
8 No
9 No
10 No
11 No
12 ?

SCHOOL
N Yes

CITY OF OAKLAND
NN No
OO Yes
VV Yes
WW Yes

WINNERS OF THE 2008 LIFE LONG PRESS PUBLICATION CONTEST!

I am pleased to announce the winners of the first annual Life-long Press publication contest! Join us to celebrate the release of the publication and the two year anniversary of Back Room Live at Mc Nally's Irish Pub in Oakland on Dec. 6th 2008 and at Book Zoo to hear the contributors of /BRL Editor's Choice Edition/ live on January 8th 2009 (further info. about both events to follow). The editions will be available live, on line and at Bay Area Book Sellers. Thank you so much to those of you who sent me pages; I am excited to announce that Back Room Live will be going on line Saturday January 29th 2009 at 7pm! I'll be launching a new blog to post the work of four writers the last Saturday of each month and will be requesting/ accepting submissions beginning Feb 1st (details to be posted).
Congratulations ! BARBARA CLAIRE FREEMAN ! BRENDA HILLMAN ! CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ ! HARMONY HOLLIDAY ! SARA MUMOLO !
Harmony Holiday is a graduate student in the MFA program at Columbia University. She teaches dance and writing part time in New York and is currently completing her first collection "Negro League Baseball" and working a chapbook entitled "Scripture for the Perverts" based on Freud's "Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality."

Craig Santos Perez is a co-founder of Achiote Press and author of from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008). His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared (or are forthcoming) in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others.
Brenda Hillman has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Loose Sugar (1997), Cascadia (2001), and Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005), all from Wesleyan University Press. She has also edited Emily Dickinson’s poetry for Shambhala Publications, and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, co-edited The Grand Permisson: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood (2003). Hillman serves on the faculty of Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, where she is Olivia C. Filippi Professor of Poetry. She is involved in anti-war activism with CodePink. These pieces are from Practical Water, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in 2009.
Barbara Claire Freeman is a literary critic and professor of literature who has recently turned her full attention to writing poetry. She is the author of The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women's Fiction (University of California Press, 1998, pbk. 2000), among many other works of criticism and theory. Formerly an Associate Professor of English at Harvard, she teaches creative writing for the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space, Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, Modern Review, Parthenon West, and New American Writing,. She is the current recipient of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Award, the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize (Sarah Lawrence College, 2007) and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Sara Mumolo works at Studio One Art Center in Oakland CA and runs the Studio One Reading Series. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Shampoo, Hoboeye, Dusie, Typo & others. Find her chapbook Brain in a Vat at Stormy Petrel Press.

CHANGE

φ
Rivals make haste I hear. Give good
honest soldier. Come sit down awhile,
westward, beating one Peace —speak to it
with wonder, it would be spoken to
and will not answer fantasy.

Sensible and true, king to thyself,
ambitious on the ice twice— now jump
this dead martial watch. In my opinion,
our state toils the subject, the land,
brazen for implements of war—
whose sore tasks divide the laborer

the day. The whisper goes as you know
to combat, our known world as a sealed
compact, ratified by law, life, lands—
seized against inheritance. Now,
mettle hot and full in skirts, list lawless food,
enterprise, our state. Strong hands take it.

The main motive/ the source/ the chief head—
comes armed. The question of these wars
the mind’s eye in little graves the sheeted dead
as stars, trains of fire, disasters, the sun.
Influence stands sick. Eclipse—
fear, fates, omen. Earth, blast me!

The cock crows. Stay and speak. Don’t strike.
Stand. Tis’ here— We do wrong! Violence as air.
Malicious mockery started a guilty thing. Trumpet—
lofty, shrill-sounding. Sea or fire earth or air extravagant and erring—
confine this sent object. Wholesome-power, gracious-time,

walk our watch tonight, celebrate dawning all nightlong.
Needful Loves, our duty? Let’s do it— run every sense.

Photography by Angela Scrivani Now Showing!

TONIGHT Monday October 13th from 6-10pm, Angela Scrivani, me, is having a SOLO Photography reception. The show will be at the Lanesplitter Pizza and Pub at 2033 San Pablo Ave in Berkeley CA, and I would like to invite YOU to come enjoy it. There will be pizza, beer, and of course photos at the reception . I'm really hoping you can make this event. The show will be up till October 31st. The pictures would love to see you.
Love and photos,
Angela Scrivani

NOW SHOWING IN THE MISSION

These pieces of mine along with work by ELIZABETH TERRAZAS, SHALISHA LOYD and JENNIFER GUEN will be on display at Cafe La Boheme through October. Details of my paintings La Ciudad de Los Quatros, Alice and Today, Lord, Cloud can be viewed below (all are for sale).

3318 24th St San Francisco, CA 94110
Mon-Thu 6:00 a.m.-10:30 p.m.
Fri-Sat 6:00 a.m.-10:30 p.m.
Sun 6:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
(415) 643-0481
SECONDS from BART

BACK ROOM LIVE SATURDAY NIGHT OCTOBER 25TH 2008

BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! October 25th ! Curator M.C. CRAIG PEREZ ! STEPHANIE YOUNG ! MARGARET RHEE ! FRANCOIS LOUNG ! JONNY HERNANDEZ ! Mc NALLY'S IRISH PUB 7pm !

UNFORTUNATELY DUE TO MISSHEDULING TTHIS READING DID NOT TAKE PLACE, THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO WAS WILLING
Stephanie Young lives and works in Oakland, California. She's the author of Telling the Future Off (Tougher Disguises, 2005) and Picture Palace (ingirumimusnocte, 2008), and she edited the anthology Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006). Recent editorial work includes the collaborative website www.deepoakland.org. Find her online: www.stephanieyoung.org/blog.

Originally from Strasbourg, France, françois luong currently lives in San Francisco. Other work of his has appeared or is forthcoming in Cannibal, Parthenon West Review, New American Writing, and elsewhere. He is also working on a translation into English of chutes, essais, trafics by Rémi Froger and into French of wide slumber for lepidopterists by
a.rawlings.

JTH (Johnny Hernandez) is a writer who has been born and raised in and around southern California. JTH currently resides in Emeryville and has been the recent recipient of the Academy of American Poets award for 2008. A recent graduate of the University of California at Berkeley in English, JTH is pursuing an MFA degree from Mills College. His most recent collection of poems entitled 'U' is his first published collection.

Margaret Rhee is an interdisciplinary writer and artist. Currently she is a doctorate student in the program in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. She has written academic articles on representation, race, and sexuality for Amerasia Journal; the anthology Crash Course: Reflections on the Film 'Crash' for Critical Dialogues About Race, Power and Privilege; and the journal of Sexuality Research and Social Policy. Previously she worked as writer and editor in Los Angeles for "YOLK Magazine,""Chopblock.com," and "Back Stage." She earned her BA in creative writing at the University of Southern California, and her MA in Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. She is Kundiman fellow, where in the hot, humid, and gorgeous summers of Virginia, she fell in love with poetry.

Craig Santos Perez is the co-editor of Achiote Press and author of from unincorporated territory (Tinfish Press, 2008).

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! OCTOBER ! 2008

So that's,
Sat.Oct 25th at 7pm
McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
Minutes from the Rockridge BART Station
and on the 51 bus line


There will be no reading the last Saturday of November!

Saturday December 6th Back Room Live Two Year Anniversary and Life-long Press Publication Event w/ JANE MILLER, BRIAN TEARE, CHRIS STROFFOLINO, HARMONY HOLIDAY, and issues of /BRL Editors Choice Edition/!!!

Thursday January 8th BRL at Book Zoo A Celebration Reading!!! w/ readers from the /BRL Editors Choice Edition/ to be announced

Year of the Wild Cat TODAY IN SF

This Saturday, October 4th Year Of The Wild Cat will open the show at Bender's in San Francisco with 45 minutes of heaven and hell performed by Caroline Lorre on lead vox, Len Lauro on vox and rythmic bass, Adam Briggs on drums and Mike Burns on bass guitar, followed by The Boiling Suns. Bender's is a comfortable local oriented venue with full bar, kitchen, great stage, booth seating and pool tables plus GREAT tap. Admission is $5, all of which supports the bands. Open all afternoon, Bender's is at 806 S.Van Ness Ave. between 19th and 20th street in the 94110 area. Show starts at 9:30pm. Be prepared to rock!

MAPP THIS SATURDAY OCTOBER 4TH!!!

The Mission Arts and Performance Project invites public and private spaces around the San Fransisco mission district to host free arts events. Visual artists, writers, performance artists and muscians come together to make and show art in the community. I'll be reading/singing poetry THIS Saturday October 4th at Cafe La Boheme w/ writers HARMONY HOLIDAY GILLIAN HAMEL STEFFI DREWES JESSICA WICKENS MYRON MICHAEL SARA MUMOLO ELIZABETH TERRAZAS and

visual artists ELIZABETH TERRAZAS SHALISHA LOYD JENNIFER GUEN

w/ music by RYAN CHRISTOPHER PARKS CRISTINA ORBE

Music begins at our location at 6pm. MAPP events will be going on around the neighborhood all day.



Art work will be on display at Cafe La Boheme through October.

Cafe La Boheme
3318 24th St
San Francisco, CA 94110
Mon-Thu 6:00 a.m.-10:30 p.m.
Fri-Sat 6:00 a.m.-10:30 p.m.
Sun 6:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
(415) 643-0481
SECONDS from BART

BACK ROOM LIVE SATURDAY NIGHT SEPTEMBER 27TH 2008

BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! September 27th 2008 ! Javier O. Huerta ! Jenny Drai ! Stephen Vincent ! Sarah Garrigan ! Mc NALLY'S IRISH PUB 7pm !

Javier O. Huerta's debut collection *Some Clarifications y otros poemas* (Arte Publico 2007) received the 31st Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from UC Irvine. New work has appeared in *Achiote Seeds*, *In the Grove*, and *Palabra*. He is currently a contributing writer for the Poetry Foundation's *Harriet* blog. He lives in Oakland and studies in Berkeley.

Sarah Garrigan is a student at the University of California at Berkeley working towards a degree in English. She is currently on the editorial board for the Berkeley Poetry Review and enjoys wandering around San Francisco, drinking chai lattes, and listening to jazz while attempting to write papers.

Jenny Drai keeps telling everyone she was raised by wolves, but actually she grew up in a bungalow. Good times. Her poetry is forthcoming in Court Green and has appeared in 580 Split, Five Fingers Review, Sorry for Snake, and Spinning Jenny, as well as the Back Room Live anthology. She also has translations of Rilke published in a Bartlett's anthology. The wolves were actually her babysitters and taught her how to write. Also, they let her stay up past her bedtime sometimes and drink sodapop. Thank you.

Poet and Artist Stephen Vincent lives in San Francisco where he leads walking and writing workshops. Recent poems and reviews appear in Kadar Koli, 26, New American Poetry (2008), Big Bridge, and Galatea Resurrects, with soon forthcoming work in Vanitas, Crayon and Jacket. He is the author of 10 books of poetry, most recently Walking Theory (Junction Press: 2007). The Braunstein Gallery (San Francisco) will exhibit his haptic works in Jan/Feb 2009. His blog of poems, photographs, haptics and commentary is found at http://stephenvincent.net/blog/



LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! SEPTEMBER ! 2008


Saturday October 25th Guest Curator and M.C. CRAIG PEREZ w/ writers STEPHANIE YOUNG, MARGARET RHEE, FRANCOIS LOUNG, JONNY HERNANDEZ!

There will be no reading the last Saturday of November!

Saturday December 6th Back Room Live Two Year Anniversary and Life-long Press Publication Event w/ JANE MILLER, BRIAN TEARE, CHRIS STROFFOLINO, HARMONY HOLIDAY, and issues of /BRL Editors Choice Edition/!!!

LLP PHOTO SHOW w/ images by Gaetan Chabanol

Gaëtan Chabanol is a French Video editor, director and photographer, living in Paris.
You can check his short movies on http://www.myspace.com/gaetanchabanol

Back Room Live Saturday Night August 30th 7pm

BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! August 3oth 2008 ! Lukas Champagne ! Janet W. Hardy ! Eleanor Johnson ! Della Watson ! Mc NALLY'S IRISH PUB 7pm !

Eleanor Johnson is a poet and teacher at U C Berkeley, finishing up her dissertation on the differences between prose and meter, and working on a new collaborative manuscript of ekphrastic poetry.

Lukas Champagne has been asked, variously, whether he thinks in prose; whether he'd like to try the potato gun; and would he "please stop drinking?" Other favorites include: "how do you plead?" and "been writing much?" He writes and threatens to turn cartwheels in Oakland.

Della Watson grew up in Kentucky. Her poetry has appeared in Free Verse, The Hat, Denver Quarterly, Tarpaulin Sky, Sorry for Snake, alice blue, elimae, word for / word, and other fine journals. She is currently employed by the Sierra Club, where she is a blogger for The Green Life. http://sierraclub.typepad.com/greenlife/

Janet W. Hardy is a mass of seeming contradictions: mother and slut, dominatrix and homebody, intellectual and showtune queen. The author or coauthor of ten groundbreaking books about relationships and sexuality, including The Ethical Slut(75,000 copies sold to date, with a second edition coming in 2009 from Ten Speed Press), Janet has traveled the world as a speaker and teacher on topics ranging from ethical multipartner relationships to erotic spanking and beyond. She has appeared in documentary films (Slut, Beyond Vanilla, Vice and Consent, BDSM: It's Not What You Think), television shows (SexTV, The Dr. Susan Block Show), and more radio shows than she can count. Janet is the mother of two grown sons and the veteran of many relationships, kinky and vanilla, with men and women and people in between. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from St. Mary's College of California and a B.A. with honors from the University of California at Davis. She is the owner of Greenery Press, which has been publishing "reading for the sexually adventurous" since 1992, and teaches English composition and creative writing at the university level. Her other books include Radical Ecstasy (with Dossie Easton), The Sexually Dominant Woman: A Workbook for Nervous Beginners, The Compleat Spanker, and Sex Disasters… And How to Survive Them (with Charles Moser, Ph.D., M.D.). Her essay "Ex" will be included in Ask Me About My Divorce, coming from Seal Press in 2009; it was also a finalist in the Event and New Letters creative nonfiction contests. Her article "When Love Trumps Gender: Gays and Lesbians in Opposite-Sex Relationships" has been provisionally accepted for Best Sex Writing 2008 from Cleis Press. Her writing has appeared in publications as various as The Sondheim Review, Clamor, and EIDOS. She often fantasizes about being handcuffed to Stephen Sondheim's piano.

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! AUGUST ! 2008


So that's,
Sat.Aug 30th at 7pm
McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-9463
Minutes from the Rockridge BART Station
and on the 51 bus line


Saturday September 27th look forward to readings by Sarah Garrigan, John Shoptaw, Stephen Vincent and Jenny Drai!

Saturday October 25th Guest Currator and M.C. Craig Perez!

YOU'RE MINE YOU

one person isn't from many solitudes
she gives validiction
she gives from instinct infinetesimal selves
out of the household
she keeps pained expressions
out of the household
she disregards infinetesimal selves
out of the household

uncesingly she isn't public unending under unending another not subconcoiusly

she isin't alike paralell to some center
she isn't unalike from some surface equality
she stays
she unberths haters w/ dificulty
she distoys hate beneath the surface or under perciscely
she wakes apart/ untethered/ boundless
she forgetts waking apart then she begins
she makes w/ infinetesimal selves
she isn't stable tethered
she isn't wild apart

she is revealed
she yes longer
possessionless
some joys she gave away
stayed after
she is a warrior

nothing became parallel
everything became some
death she created
you can hear her
bang screws

BACK ROOM LIVE SATURDAY NIGHT JULY 26TH

BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! JULY 26th 2008 ! AILENE SANKUR ! JENNIFER K. SWENEY ! CHAD SWEENEY ! VALYNTINA GRENIER ! Mc NALLY'S IRISH PUB 7pm !

Ailene Sankur's life is very simple: Mexican food, the beach, Diet Coke, cigarettes, Law and Order episodes. And a little writing thrown in for good measure.


Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of the poetry book,
Salt Memory, winner of the 2006 Main Street Rag Poetry
Book Award. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing
from Vermont College. Her poems have recently appeared
in: Barrow Street, Water~Stone, New York Quarterly,
Hunger Mountain, RUNES, Subtropics and elsewhere. She
won The Ledge Poetry Prize for 2007 and was nominated
for two Pushcart Prizes in 2007 as well. She has been
awarded a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission
and a Residency at Hedgebrook to complete her memoir,
A Great Deal Of Light Falls On Everything. She serves
as an associate editor for DMQ Review and lives in San
Francisco with her husband, poet Chad Sweeney.

Chad Sweeney edits Parthenon West Review with his
buddy David Holler, and is the author of the books An
Architecture (BlazeVOX, 2007), Arranging the Blaze
(Anhinga, 2009), and A Mirror to Shatter the Hammer
(Tarpaulin Sky, 2006). Chosen for Best American
Poetry 2008 by Charles Wright, Sweeney's poems and
translations have appeared in New American Writing,
Verse, Colorado Review, Slope, Crazyhorse, Black
Warrior, Volt, Barrow Street, Denver Qtly, American
Letters & Commentary, H_ngM_n, and elsewhere. He's
currently editing an anthology of poetry and prose
from the first 15 years of the National WritersCorps,
which will be released by City Lights Books next
February. Chad will enter the Ph.D. program in
literature/poetry at Western Michigan University this
September, with his beloved partner by his side, poet
Jennifer K. Sweeney.

Valyntina Grenier is an artist living and working in Oakland Ca. She Curates Back Room Live and is the editor of Life-long Press. She holds a B.A. from U.C. Brekeley and an MFA from Saint Mary's.

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! JUNE 2008

So that's,
Sat.JULY 26th at 7pm
McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-9463
Minutes from the Rockridge BART Station
and on the 51 bus line

Reception for Autopoiesis 3 July 28th

If you are in the bay area on Monday July 28th please join me at the Lanesplitter between 7pm and 9:30pm to celebrate the completion of my third annual showing of paintings! That's 4799 Telegraph Ave (at 48th) Oakland, CA 94609

Autopoesis 3 July 1st - 31st 2008

Eight new paintings by V.E. Grenier now showing at the Lanesplitter Temascal! Ranging in size from 48"x12" ~ 54"x 54" and on sale July 1st 2008. To view the paintings in person and have a slice or pint stop by 4799 Telegraph at 48th in Oakland. Sunday ~ Thursday 11:am-1:am, Friday ~ Saturday 1:30am.

Introducing a new series Color Plates
This series is dedicated to Rhiannon and Carl for your appreciation of my series Symbolic Translations of the Binomial Theorem. Your conversation in my kitchen about the use of paint on the back ground reminded me that I had actualy blended the color on the canvas, which is what I have done for these paintings. I've also taken note of my proclivity towards striation and its beauty in certain plant life.
TODAY, LORD, CLOUD ~ a Tripctych acrylic on canvas $750The title of these paintings is a line of Christopher Nealon's from his poem "Concept and Catagory" in his book /The Joyous Age/. I have been particularly in love w/ page 67 for some time and have written an opposite emulation which is posted between the details below
Adorno Component

We're possibly out of cake
our brainstay
Tomorrow: earth, clear skies
Degrees of intervention and departing
Spontaneously combusting selfblind
Either embitterment or cathexis. Sleep,
Leave off--
That was us arriving something fast
That was making against some same
Sine and rain we
think of the beads of sweat gathering
along the outside of a water glass
Calm down against them and we do
have a pool
on some deeper hunter from go

And from the series Shoot the Moon 4 new paintings. Take all four for $1,000
FAMILY PORTRAIT acrylic on canvas $575
I began the first sketches in this series in 2000. Since then I have been working from a master sketch composed for my first show at the Lanesplitter in 2006. To date I have composed 9 paintings all acrylic on canvas from that sketch.



J+V acrylic on canvas $200 each or $525 for all three
Each of these canvasas are 48"x12"
J





+



V



LA CIUDAD DE LOS QUATROS acrylic on canvas $750
The intial sitting of this painting was composed live as a part of MAPP the Mission Arts and Performance project hosted by Sara Mumolo and Jack Morgan at L's Cafe in fall of 2007. Thanks for inviting me to make art in public, this painting is dedicated to the two of you.

Below is the mastersketch and a deatails from my first compositions in the series Shoot the Moon
GATHERING

CONFERENCE

Summer Readings at Studio One Art Center

Summer Readings at Studio One Art Center
All readings 730 to 930pm in Great Hall

July 11th
Poets Trevor Calvert and Barbara Claire Freeman

August 1st
Poets Jack Morgan and Kaya Oakes
Fiction writer Jarrod Roland

September 5th
Poets William Moor and Daphne Gottlieb


Studio One is at 365 45th ST Oakland 94609
The cross is Broadway.
Entry is donation on a sliding scale of $3 -$15

BACK ROOM LIVE ! THIS SATURDAY NIGHT

Back Room Live ! This Saturday Night ! June 28th 2008 ! Sara Mumolo ! Jenny Drai ! Gillian Hamel ! Craig Santos ! Mc Nally's Irish Pub 7pm

Craig Santos Perez is a co-founder of Achiote Press and author of several chapbooks, most recently: preterrain (Corollary Press, 2008). His first book, from unincorporated territory, is forthcoming this year from Tinfish Press. His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, Jacket, Sentence, and Rain Taxi, among others.

Jenny Drai was raised by wolves. This is also where she learned to write. Humanity has been slightly more disappointing but has published her in 580 Split, Five Fingers Review, Sorry For Snake, Spinning Jenny, and the Tiny as well as the Back Room Live anthology
and other journals. After a long break she is blogging again at I Was A Feral Child: That's Why I Act This Way (http://jennydrai.blogspot.com) where, if you so choose, you can read all about the decomposing dead cat on her front lawn. And other
things. Thank you.

Gillian Hamel has been a participant of several failed literary exploits, both real and imaginary. Her work has since appeared in the fully operational Sorry IV Snake magazine, thanks to two particularly lovely and thorougly existent people. As a recent graduate of Berkeley's English department, she has yet to become gainfully employed and spends most of her time reading xkcd, drinking at home, and practicing linguistic terminology on her boyfriend.

The space and context of Sara Mumolo's poetry is forged from the blood and tears of full-grown men.

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! JUNE 2008

So that's,
Sat.June 28th at 7pm
McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-9463
Minutes from the Rockridge BART Station
and on the 51 bus line

7:30pm This Mother's Day Sunday Life-long Press Live at Pegasus !

Life-long Press Live at Pegasus ! w/ /Back Room Live/ contributors !
Janet Hardy ! Sara Mumolo ! Lucas Champagne ! Jack Morgan !
V.E.Grenier ! Sunday May 11th ! 7:30 PM

Janet W. Hardy is the co-author of "The Ethical Slut: A Guide to
Infinite Sexual Possibilities," which will be published in a new
updated edition in 2009 by Ten Speed Press; she has also authored or
coauthored nine other books about sexuality and relationships. She is
an MFA candidate at St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA, and is hard at
work on a very strange book called "Girlfag."

A scholar and a gentleman
Jack Morgan's work has appeared
The most hated poet in the San Francisco Bay Area
Jack Morgan coedits
Sorry for Snake

V.E. Grenier is the editor in chief of Life-long Press, a poet,
painter and bartender. She holds a B.A. in English from UCB and is in
her last semester of MFA work at Saint Mary's. She curates the
multi-genre reading series Back Room Live and is currently promoting
/Back Room Live/ a publication comprised of the writing of 26 of Back
Room Live's Readers.

Lukas Champagne would have authored his memoir /The Face of
Insurmountable Drunkenness/ had he persevered in said face.

Sara Mumolo teaches at Studio One Art Center in Oakland CA. She
attends the MFA program at St. Mary's College of CA. Poems have
appeared in Shampoo, Hoboeye Arts Journal, Article Journal, Berkeley
Poetry Review, Rock Heals (A Narrow House Weekly), Indelible
Kitchen and others. She co-edits the poetry journal Sorry for Snake
and curates with the Mission Arts & Performance Project.


LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! APRIL ! 2008

So that's,
Sun. May 11th at 7:30pm
Pegasus Downtown
2349 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94618
(510 )649-1320

DON'T FORGETT ABOUT OUR TWO EVENTS THIS WEEKEND!!!

FRIDAY Book Zoo
April 25th at 7pm ~ with /BackRoomLive/ Contributors ~ Trevor
Calvert ~ Challen Clarke ~ Zach Demby ~ Eleanor Johnson ~ Blake
Ellington Larson ~ Sarah Garrigan

SATURDAY Mc Nally's
BACK ROOM LIVE ! April 26th 7pm ! Linda Norton ! Ben Perez ! Ben
Prickett ! Sarah Fattig !

! BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! April 26TH 7PM!

BACK ROOM LIVE ! Saturday Night ! April 26th 7pm ! Linda Norton ! Ben Perez ! Ben Prickett ! Sarah Fattig ! We'll have copies of /Back Room Live/ available for $8 !

Ben Prickett is an MFA student at St.Mary's College. Originally from Birmingham, he lives in Oakland.

Sarah Fattig is a poet whose work has been featured in Laurus and Octopus Magazine. Originally from Nebraska, she currently lives in Berkeley with her husband and their two dogs.

Benjamin L. Perez's poems have appeared in various print and on-line publications, including Watchword, Sacramento News and Review (SN&R), and Ishmael Reed's Konch. In 2005 Spuyten Duyvil published his experimental and transgressive novel, The Evil Queen: A Pornolexicology (making Dennis Cooper's top 10 list for that year). His main literary influences are the Oulipo movement and his dyslexia, which is quite severe.

Linda Norton is the author of /Hesitation Kit/, a chapbook of poetry published by Etherdome Press in 2007. Her essay and collages, called /The Great Depression and Me/, are posted online as a web exhibit at Counterpath Press. She is currently completing /My Little Brown Book/ a memoir and /The Public Gardens/ a full-length collection of poetry. She works at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley as an editor in the oral history office, and prior to 2002, she worked for many years for the University of California Press. Norton is a lyricist member of ASCAP. She wrote the text for Landscaping for Privacy, set to music by composer Eve Beglarian. Along with music for poems by Csezlaw Milosz, Stanley Kunitz, and William Blake, Landscaping for Privacy is available on Beglarian's CD Tell the Birds (2006).
LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! APRIL ! 2008

So that's,
Sat. April 26th at 7pm
McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-9463
Minutes from the Rockridge BART Station
and on the 51 bus line
BACK ROOM LIVE IS A 21 AND OVER EVENT

3 LLP EVENTS SOON ARRIVING!!!

Book Zoo
Friday April 25th at 7pm ~ with /BackRoomLive/ Contributors ~ Trevor Calvert ~ Challen Clarke ~ Zach Demby ~ Eleanor Johnson ~ Blake Ellington Larson ~ Sarah Garrigan

Pegasus Downtown
Sunday May 11th 7:30pm ~ with /BackRoomLive/ Contributors ~ Janet Hardy ~ Lukas Champagne ~ Sara Mumolo ~ Jack Morgan ~ V.E. Grenier

Back Room Live
Saturday May 31st with ~ Veronica Carlos ~ Victoria A. Hudson ~ Zach Demby ~ Rebecca Guyon ~ Amanda Benson ~ Daniel Andrews

CHECK OUT OUR EXTENDED SHED. OF EVENTS TO THE RIGHT

Dislocated Elbow

Poet on Guard

I’m starting to count some money

Hallee hollers my name and flicks the lights

So I lock the cage and run up

Hallee’s on the phone Emily’s on the mats face down

Her arm

I run back down stairs to get my cell phone

I ‘m confused I don’t know what I’m doing
my phone is up stairs my keys are in my hand

I make one call Hallee makes the rest and I keep my hands on Emily

I tell her to try not to hold her breath and go ahead and breathe
and holler and cry

Emily has a keen sense of humor and we laugh

I go ahead and ask Hallee to go ahead w/ opening up the pub
she looks at me

I’m sorry I say I know it’s hard I’ll help you as soon as I can
I just need to stay down here with her right now

Emily asks me to go out to her car so I can change out her flower caked converse
I take charge of her keys and blue tooth and cell phone
She keeps her hat on

Me and the two women that have arrived help her sit up

Two men are here too to help get the pub up and running

Holding Emily up reminds me of holding up my grandmother
during a heart attack

“Why do I feel like I can’t breathe Valy?”

“Just try to relax Gram I’ll rub your hands just try to relax and breathe
slow and deep”

I needed to hold her so she could sit up so they could help her
we movie her from room to room they decide on a breathing tube


Once we have Emily safely on the stretcher one of the EMT’s asks me if I’m a mother

I told my mom that I love women yesterday

No I say
She looks me in the eyes she says “You should be”

I ride in an ambulance for the first time and stay with Emily until her sister arrives

I keep my hands on her tell her to breathe to try not to hold her breath and go ahead
and cry and holler

“I know it doesn’t seem like it but you’re ok”

At a certain point one of the doctors says the drug they’re going to give her
to put her elbow back in place may cause her to stop breathing

“you’re not going to let me go are you doc”

“We’ll breathe for you”

And Emily in the middle of it all says to the doctor
“Can I just tell you one more thing— eventually I’ll be wanting to know
if I’ll ever be able to pee again”

On my way back to work I hold myself together I walk not in a hurry and feel tired
8 hours of sleep over the past few days

I pick a young fennel sprig to roll between my fingers and look at the people I pass by

Back in the restaurant Hallie and I have a hug I tell her to go ahead and take a break
a walk around the block, she asks me if I’m sure I don’t need one

“I just had one but I’ll pee and then you can go”

We all make it through the day not to busy not too slow Emily comes through
She’ll be back to her other job in a week or two

Round about the 5 o’clock rush the kitchen computer goes down
I use my cell phone to sort out computer issues
field to go orders on the house phone hand writing tickets and hope
all the food makes it to the tables

My relief arrives we have a hug I fill her in on some things, have a pee, go to grab
my stuff

I sit down on the steps to breath and cry

Another co-worker comes in to grab something she sees me we don’t say anything
she squats down to wrap her arms around me

I clock out and rest at the end of the bar w/ a Picpoul spritzer and though I could just
sit home and sob I go to hear three women read poetry

From Bar to Book by Ailene Sancur

Lifelong Press Turns Literary Readings into Published Work Photos: Victoria Hudson (McNally's), Angela Srivani (B&W).
Valyntina Grenier is no stranger to poetry: by her undergrad senior year, she had already put together two chapbooks. She is finishing her second year as an M.F.A. poetry student at St. Mary’s College of California. She is also no stranger to bars: she works as a bartender at Lanesplitter (http://www.lanesplitterpizza.com/) in Oakland. And it was her friendship with two other East Bay bartenders on which she built her multi-genre reading series Back Room Live. Most people go to bars to have mindless fun, to relax, get wasted; Valyntina used them to as a vehicle for “…a polyphony of voices, united by the desire to make art, enjoy language, and drink a pint or two.”
First, Sheila from the wonderful dive Hotsy Totsy Club in Albany let Valyntina read the poetry from her first chapbook. (Incidentally, the Hotsy Totsy, not in a particularly trendy, or safe, East Bay neighborhood where the only competition comes in the form of the Club Mallard or the Ivy, wins the dive bar competition against San Francisco any day.) The readings went well; surprisingly well-received by the bar crowd. After those experiences, she toyed with the idea of doing another reading series at a bar. After befriending Tony, the bartender at McNally’s Irish Pub on College in Oakland, she asked if she could do a reading series there. He agreed, and after a few months it became a regular event: the last Saturday night of each month.
Valyntina, now in her M.F.A. program, decided to bring together others from the program—students and faculty—as well as other Bay Area poets and authors. Literary readings have long been thought of as the property of dim bookstores, mousy clerks shakily whispering introductions to authors, bad wine, and an intellectual elitist. With the Back Room Live series, Valyntina wanted to get away from that. She says, “My initial impetus was the sense that if you’re not in academia, and even sometimes if you are, you can feel left out of literary events. So I thought by bringing it to the bar, people would be engaged in it. Really just to broaden the community, get different genres of writers together and people together who wouldn’t necessarily go to hear writers…”
The reading series became so popular Valyntina decided to publish a Back Room Live Reading Series magazine, the first Volume and Issue being sold at the reading Saturday March 29 as well as online, at Diesel Books, Book Zoo and Pegasus. The magazine is published through Valyntina’s other venture: Life-long Press Publishing.
She began Life Long Press when publishing her first two chapbooks. The name comes from her hope to (obviously) have a long happy life, and the Long Life Veggie House, a Chinese restaurant next to Krishna Copy--where she does her printing and copying work --on University Ave. in Berkeley. Now, in a business savvy not usually associated with poets, she has a bank account, a tax I.D. number, and collects donations. In the do-it-yourself savvy commonly associated with broke-ass poets, she had help: volunteers Trevor Calvert (with an M.F.A. of his own from Mills College), Eleanor Johnson (working on her doctorate at U.C. Berkeley) and Challen Clarke and Zach Demby, a couple both working on their M.F.A.’s at St. Mary’s College with Valyntina.
It is Zach Demby, another poet who perhaps puts the goal of Back Room Live best—or most lyrically--in his Editors’ Note:
“Like radio hymns and cactus land brushings" (Larson p40)
“Back Room Live requires a fisheye lens. The humble and normatively curved lenses often used to capture the particular will be useless here. Sure, tangents could be taken, dualities could be observed (hey, it’s not front room live...) but when it comes down to it, BRL is more about bringing people together than finding differences between them. It is a mosaic, a community of language.”
This Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 7 p.m. is the next BACK ROOM LIVE at Mc Nally’s Pub in Oakland.
Friday, April 25, 2008 at 7 p.m at Book Zoo. It will be a Celebration Reading of Back Room Live Magazine 2008, with the contributors reading. Copies will be available for $8. Reading: BLAKE ELLINGTON LARSON creates photographs, writes music and poetry. His most recent chapbook /Live-In Dreams/ has been eaten by the troll that is modern technology. He has since written more poems. He has recently quit smoking and resides in Oakland, CA. CHALLEN CLARKE is named after a distant relative with a clubfoot who disappeared one day. So she limps and writes. SARA GARRIGAN is a student at the University of California at Berkeley working towards a degree in English. She is currently on the editorial staff of the Berkeley Poetry Review. After college, she looks forward to living in a box while discovering what exactly one can do with a B.A. in English. She enjoys reading everything that comes to hand, unobtrusively correcting grammatical errors, and compressing herself into brief biographical paragraphs. ZACH DEMBY has managed to keep all ten of his fingers, and most of his toes. His mother is very proud. TREVOR CALVERT lives in Oakland, has studied poetry at Mills, and is currently studying to be a librarian. Some of his writing can be found in /Bay Poetics/, VeRT www.litvert.com and /Loop 5/. He studies and teaches Japanese martial arts, is interested in puppets, and loves comic books. ELEANOR JOHNSON is an archive-spelunker and renegade medievalst, resident of Oakland, native of New York.
Friday April 25th 7pm
Book Zoo
6395 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland 94609

MUMOLO AND MORGAN ARE AT IT AGAIN

Sarah Mumolo and Jack Morgan are quite a team. They've just put out the third issue of /Sorry for Snake/ the cover for which is above and features the tallents of Mathew Rohrer, Feliz Molina, Jared White, Mark Cunningham, Trevor Calvert, Gillian Hamel, K. Silem Mohammad, Juliet Cook and Erika Staiti. I contributed the bird and the word three to the cover art done by Jack. You can purchase the new issue at Pegasus Downtown Berkeley or online at-- http://stormypetrelpress.blogspot.com/ for four dollars including shipping. Look out for the issue release reading, dates coming soon.
They're also hosting annother MAPP Event! The Mission Arts and Performance Project invites public and private spaces around the San Fransisco mission district to host free arts events. Visual artists, writers, performance artists and muscians come together to make and show art in the community. For more information go to http://www.redpoppyarthouse.org/mappabout.htm. I'll be reading at L's Caffe w/ writers: Ann Svilar, Chad Sweeney & Della Watson. Look forward to music by "Hello Handsome" & "Bull" and view live mobile making by Sharon Zetter.
That's Saturday April 5 7:30pm
2871 24th Street
415/2060274
Pick up a 'Mapp' at L's to check time and locations of the other events happening as apart of the MAPP art walk. All events are walking distance from one another in the mission. Mapp is hosted by Red Poppy Art House http://redpoppyarthouse.org/#

M&M, you make it happen.

BACK ROOM LIVE THIS SATURDAY NIGHT!

You are invited to BACK ROOM LIVE ! a Life-long Press Publication Event ! Saturday Night ! March 29th 7pm ! With poets ! LYN HEJINIAN ! BRENDA HILLMAN ! GRAHAM FOUST ! GEOFFREY G. O'BRIEN ! Come celebrate our first printing of /Back Room Live/ at Mc Nally's Irish Pub in Rockridge ! We will have copies available for $8 ! For address and info about this months writers look below !

Life~long Press At Book Zoo Friday April 25th 7pm

Please join us for a Life~long Press ~Celebration Reading~ at Book Zoo on Friday Evening~April 25th at 7pm ~ with /Back Room Live Magazine 2008/ Contributors~ Trevor Calvert ~Challen Clarke ~ Zach Demby ~ Eleanor Johnson ~ Blake Ellington Larson ~ Sarah Garrigan ~ We'll have copies available that evening for $8~

Blake Ellington Larson creates photographs, writes music and poetry. His most recent chapbook /Live-In Dreams/ has been eaten by the troll that is modern technology. He has since written more poems. He has recently quit smoking and resides in Oakland, CA.

Challen Clarke is named after a distant relative with a clubfoot who disappeared one day. So she limps and writes.

Sarah Garrigan is a student at the University of California at Berkeley working towards a degree in English. She is currently on the editorial staff of the Berkeley Poetry Review. After college, she looks forward to living in a box while discovering what exactly one can do with a B.A. in English. She enjoys reading everything that comes to hand, unobtrusively correcting grammatical errors, and compressing herself into brief biographical paragraphs.

Zach Demby has managed to keep all ten of his fingers, and most of his toes. His mother is verry proud.

Trevor Calvert lives in Oakland, has studied poetry at Mills, and is currently studying to be a librarian. Some of his writing can be found in /Bay Poetics/, VeRT www.litvert.com and /Loop 5/. He studies and teaches Japanese martial arts, is interested in puppets, and loves comic books.

Eleanor Johnson is an archive-spelunker and renegade medievalst, resident of Oakland, native of New York.

Life~long Press~Oakland~April 2008

So that's
Friday April 25th 7pm
at Book Zoo
6395 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland 94609
FINALLY AN ALL AGES EVENT!

What's Happening w/ Life-long Press!

Well, There’s been; plenty of food, music too, a few beverages and lots of fun working around here. The magazine is in layout and features the linguistic styling of~
Zac Demby+Evan James+Steven Goldman+Valyntina Grenier+Sarah Garrigan+Julie Choffel+David Spataro +Lukas Champagne+Harmony Holiday+Rebecca Brown+Hillary Gravendyk+Victoria A. Hudson+Tyler Williams+Sharon Lynn Osmond+Jean-Pierre Lacrampe+Lily Brown+Elanor Johnson+Thomas Cooney+Nikol Polidoro+Jenny Dray+Challen Clarke+Trevor Calvert+Janet W. Hardy+Blake Larson+Sara Mumolo+Jack Morgan+Scott Berger
The photos are by Angela Scrivani and were taken to be featured in an interview by Steven Goldman with me about Back Room Live and Life-long Press. Pick up a copy of /Back Room Live/ at our Publication Event Saturday March 29th ~ Details below ~ And be on the lookout for BRL in book stores, on the shelves and in the air.

BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURDAY NIGHT ! MARCH 29TH 7PM!

You are invited to BACK ROOM LIVE ! a Life-long Press Publication Event ! Saturday Night ! March 29th 7pm ! With poets ! LYN HEJINIAN ! BRENDA HILLMAN ! GRAHAM FOUST ! GEOFFREY G. O'BRIEN ! Come celebrate our first printing of /Back Room Live/ at Mc Nally's Irish Pub in Rockridge !

Brenda Hillman is the author of seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Cascadia (2001) and Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005). She is Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at St. Mary's College of California, and is also working against war with CodePink, a social justice group.

Geoffrey G. O’Brien is the author of Green and Gray (2007) and The Guns and Flags Project (2002), both from the University of California Press, and coauthor (in collaboration with the poet Jeff Clark) of 2A (Quemadura, 2006). He teaches verse writing and literature in the English Department at UC Berkeley and at San Quentin State Prison.

To settle for a single dimension, a single representation results in only bad things: bad first dates, limited reading lists, and pesky wars in places such as...umm...Iraq. Foust's book is a reminder that even daily objects should be strange to us, that in order for us to be honest observers of who and what surrounds us, it is necessary—at times—for us to act as strangers among them. (Kaethe Schwehn, CutBank)

Lyn Hejinian’s most recently published books are My Life in the Nineties (Shark, 2003) and The Fatalist (Omnidawn, 2003). A new book, Saga/Circus, will be published this coming fall. She is also one of the ten authors of the currently on-going series of volumes titled The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980. Hejinian is the editor of Tuumba Press and the co-editor of Atelos. Other projects include Qúê Trân with music by John Zorn and text by Hejinian (available on New Traditions in East Asian Bar Bands; Tzadik, 1995); two mixed media books, The Traveler and the Hill and the Hill (Granary Books, 1998) and The Lake (Granary Books, 2004) created with painter Emilie Clark; and the award-winning experimental documentary film Letters Not About Love, directed by Jacki Ochs (1998; distributed by New Day Films). She teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! MARCH ! 2008

So that's,
Sat. March 29th at 7pm
McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-9463
Minutes from the Rockridge BART Station
and on the 51 bus line

Join us on Saturday April 26th for writers Linda Norton, Ben Perez, Ben Prickett ans Sarah Fattig! Be looking out for BRL in the Book Store, live and on the shelves. And check out our updated schedule for Life-long Press events to the right.

Post Provisional Primary Poling Place

The theme of the yoga class I went to yesterday was "resistance." She, the teacher, asked us to think about what we believe in, what we want from ourselves and for the world, our mantra, as a counter force to "resistance," and of that force emanating from our bodies. Of course I thought of kindness. And initially thought of that coming from the heart. After I voted I felt happy (and proud) and found myself looking at peoples eyes while walking to meet a friend for food and drinks. People were looking me in the eyes too, really looking and seeing something that made them; smile, look a bit confused and even say hello. Kindness.
In this sense, kindness, fueled by the heart moves w/ the eyes. That's not to exclude the movement of kindness by aural or physical means just to say that I was experiencing something important about the directive (and reflexive) power of kindness by looking.

BACK ROOM LIVE SATURDAY NIGHT FEBUARY 23RD 7PM!

BACK ROOM LIVE ! Saturday Night ! Febuary 23rd 7pm ! With prose writers and poets ! Lisa Gschwandtner ! Jack Morgan ! Jarrod Roland ! Erika Stati ! BACK ROOM LIVE ! Mc Nally's Irish Pub ! Rockridge !

Erika Staiti is writing and thinking about the line that divides Oakland and Berkeley. She lives in oakland. She works in berkeley. The line curves on its own.

Lisa Gschwandtner has studied creative writing at the University of Virginia; the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She is currently a student at St. Mary's MFA program in fiction. She lives in Berkeley.

Jarrod Roland is a poet and prose writer living in San Francisco. His work has appeared in several journals, and many people like him because he is kind and gentle. Every man wants to be him and every woman wants to be with him. He also moonlights as Jack Morgan's personal stylist.

JackMorgan edits Sorry for Snake, a poetic journal. JackMorgan won the Judith Stronach award for poetry. JackMorgan is the author of 2 chapbooks entitled /Your/ and /Dearest Children of the Revolution, I am Pleased to Announce my Resignation/. His illustrations and graphic design have been published worldwide. Jack Morgan has curated reading series in Hannover, Germany and the SF Bay Area. He currently helps curate the Holloway Reading Series at UC Berkeley.

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! FEBUARY ! 2008

So that's,
Sat. Febuary 23rd at 7pm
McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-9463
Minutes from the Rockridge BART Station
and on the 51 bus line

Join us for the Life-long Press Publication event on Saturday March 29 w/ poets Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Geoffrey G. O'Brien and Graham Foust, as well as copies of our first publication /Back Room Live/. Check out the extended shed. for Back Room Live to the right.

BACK ROOM LIVE TONIGHT AT MC NALLY'S!

January 26th 7pm ! Mc Nally's Irish Pub ! Victoria Hudson ! Patrick Holian ! Clare Becker ! Lily Brown !

BACK ROOM LIVE is a monthly multi-genre reading series at 7pm on the last Saturday of each month
(barring major holiday or sporting event).

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! JANUARY ! 2008

McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-9463
Minutes from the Rockrdige BART Station
and on the 51 bus line

Check out Blurbs about this months writers below and the extended shed. for BRL to the right.

Images of, Paint, Paintings, and V.E.Grenier painting 05/07

Gathering, detail

Gathering, detail

Gathering, detail

Gathering, detail

Gathering. detail

Conference, detail

Conference, detail

Conference, detail

Conference, detail

Conference, detail

Conference, detail

Gathering, detail

Gathering, detail

Gathering

from Night Birds
Noveau Moon and Gray Light

My Pager's in My Other Pants

Strains, detail

From Shoot The MoonConference and Gathering

Strains

Strains, detail

Translations of the Binomial Theorem A

mixing paint

Strains

painting Translations of the Binomial Theorem

Translations of the Binomial Theorem Or

Translations of the Binomial Theorem A, Or, B

studio Autopoiesis1

Translations of the Binomial Theorem A

Strains, detail

Gathering

Alice

Strains, detail

Conference w/ master sketch

Conference w/ master sketch and drawing

Translations of the Binomial Theorum in process

Poast Card Image for Autopoiesis2

My Pager is in My other Pants on the porch

Gessoing for Autopoiesis1

Translations of the Binomial Theroum Or and B

Lanesplitter OaklandAutopoiesis1

Results of The Life Long Press Challege Grant are In!!!

This funds drive has been more of a success than I could have imagined esp. considering I had not imagined having one at all. So, I would like to thank our initial donor and the many others who followed suit. I am deeply moved. The funds will be put to good use. The work of 25 writers will be represented. The magazines will be ready for the publication event on March 29th. I hope to see you there or at one of the many other Back Room Live readings upcoming (shed. to the right).
We have raised- $1,440.00 + a very generous matching grant which brings the grand total to $2,880.00!

Challenge Grant Extended Until January 17th!

Good news! The primary donor for the Life-long Press challenge grant has agreed to go beyond the initial $1,000 dollars promised. No donation is too small. Every dollar contributed equals two!
Just click the donate button to the right and follow the PayPal instuctions.

Afgahanistan, Life and Spirit of Kabul- Now Showing!

Photography by Mojhgan Mohtashimi showing at the LightRoom Gallery Jan. 7th-Feb. 15th. 2263 5th St. Berkeley, Ca 94710. Reception Saturday, Jan 12 3-6pm. For more information about the artist and the gallery go to http://www.mojhgan.org and http//:www.lightroom.com

! BACK ROOM LIVE ! SATURADY JANUARY 26TH ! 7PM !

! BACK ROOM LIVE ! Is back in action ! Saturday Night ! January 26th 7pm ! Mc Nally's Irish Pub in Rockridge ! With poets and prose writers ! Lily Brown ! Victoria Hudson ! Clare Becker ! Patrick Holian ! BACK ROOM LIVE is a monthly multi-genre reading series produced by Life-long Press, always at 7pm and on the last Saturday of the month (barring major holiday or sporting event).

After a chance encounter with John Madden, Patrick discarded his childhood ambition of becoming a writer to pursue a career in competitive rambling. Also, he's broken his nose and femur, and wants to thank all of you for being here.

Claire Becker lives in Oakland and teaches at the California School for the Blind. Her poems have been published in Typo, Tarpaulin Sky, The Alembic, 580 Split, the tiny, Octopus, and H-ngm-n and are forthcoming in Octopus #10. Her chapbook Untoward was just published by Lame House Press. She holds an MFA from St. Mary's College and a BA from Pomona College and studies in the Program in Visual Impairments at San Francisco State. Her presence can be felt at humanisanimal.blogspot.com.

Victoria Hudson finds winter gardening a bit more challenging than spring and summer gardening. When not protecting fledging plants from frost, she tends to feral cats and other procrastinations. Occasionally she writes poetry and prose.

LilyBrown holds an M.F.A from Saint Mary's College of California and currently lives in San Francisco. She is the author of the chapbook The Renaissance Sheet, published by Octopus Books in 2007. Kitchen Press will publish her second chapbook, Old with You, in 2008. Poems have appeared in Typo, Octopus, Fence, Tarpaulin Sky and Handsome and are forthcoming in Pleiades, 26 and Cannibal.

LIFE LONG PRESS ! OAKLAND ! JANUARY ! 2008

So that's,
Sat. January 26th at 7pm
McNally's Irish Pub
5352 College Ave
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-9463
Minutes from the Rockrdige BART Station
and on the 51 bus line

Violence | Kindness

One of my co-workers rolled up to the door w/ a friend after closing time. Which isn't rare, so my first thought/words were, "%@&?, we're almost out of here." But I could see he was hurt so I motioned them to another door. He was really hurt. They had been jumped. His friend was hurt too but not as badly. They didn't want to call the police. I locked the door and went for the first aid kit to see what was under all that blood. There's no crying in waitressing. I cleaned up his face with a warm wet towel, asked questions, found a cold pack, asked a few more times about calling the police, found the bacitracin, asked my other co-worker to call a cab, gave him some acetaminophen in lieu of ibuprofen (better for inflammation). We waited. His friend rode home. We locked his bike in the back. He wanted to sleep. I kept asking about a concussion, giving motherly advice and putting my hands on him whenever appropriate. A third co-worker got out of bed to come take him home.

My fellow closer said he was worried about safety for the first time. I wondered if I was safe riding my bike home. They had been attacked when vulnerable, one man down, my co-worker attempting to help his friend up. I was already in rout while my fellow closer and I said our goodbyes. I thought about war. Violence. Wounded soldiers, but mostly wounded people who beget what they get. I'm not defending the perpetrators.

I can see where violence comes from. Us. The tears start a quarter block from home. In my apartment I make it to the bathroom, sit on the edge of the tub and sob (I share the wall against my bed w/ my neighbors toddler and I don't want to disturb her sleep w/ despair). I feel sorry for myself being alone with this shock/ world-ache. I think of reaching out, wishing for someone to put their hands on me. I think of his face. I think of the children who have seen their mothers face wounded that way (and worse) who have felt theirs, their father's, their bodies. And war again and innocence. Humans’ enactment and defense of violence. I wish to be sheltered or depart from the world’s seemingly insurmountable violence while I sob for a few more moments. Then I think, I can do-- this!

I can write KINDNESS and mean it! I can write RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS! Be kind to people whether you want to or not. I'm not so naive to think that my friends could have been kind to their attackers any more than innocent people on the ground could be kind to missiles to prevent the onslaught of physical and emotional pain. I wonder if my friend’s attackers had experienced any kindness from strangers that day?

When you feel; threatened, afraid, offended or just plain mad, think a moment, or a few, or minuets (if you don't need to run or holler for help), whatever it takes. "By any means necessary" PRACTICE KINDNESS!

Life Long Press is pleased to announce

The editorial board; Trevor Calvert, Elinore Baine Johnson, Zack Demby, and Challen Clark, for //Back Room Live// LLP’s first official publishing venture, an anthology of prose and verse, due out in March. Thank you C, Z, B and T-- I’m happy to be working with you +V.

Life Long Press is Accepting Donations On Line!

Help us keep the fire burning! Click the donations button to the right and make a tax-deductible contribution to Life Long Press any time using your major credit or debit card or your PayPal account. Thanks to all of you who have contributed. Be expecting an update January 17th about the outcome of our Maching funds drive!

Year Of The Wild Cat Live @ The Parkside Today!

Hey there, Year of The Wild Cat is playing a show in a few hours- 5pm at thee Parkside. Original Rock tunes and covers;
Jack the Ripper ! Pat Benetar ! Black Dream ! Patsy Montana ! Its a Free/All Ages show at 1600 17th street in SF.

Maching Funds Grant for Life Long Press-- Donations period from Dec. 11 - Jan. 8, 2008

Life Long Press is pleased to announce it has received a very generous matching grant of $1000. The donations period will be open from now until January 8th 2008. Even small donations will help ensure that we are able to meet our goal.

The first official project /Back Room Live Magazine/ due out in March will contain poetry and prose form the nearly 50 people who have read for Back Room Live this past year. Hope to see you at the next reading!

Saturday January 26th 7- 9:30pm at Mc Nally's Irish Pub in Oakland with readers; Victoria Hudson, Lily Brown, Clare Becker, and Patrick Holian.

Please forward this link along to anyone you think might be interested in finding out more about Life Long Press!

Happy Holidays,
Valyntina Grenier
Editor-In-Chief

Autopoesis 2

The images below are from my second annual show Autopoiesis 2 at the Lanespliter in July of 2007. In the month of May I composed ten paintings (acrylic on canvas or cedar) ranging from 6"x6" to 5'x5'.


My Pager's in my Other Pants
Acrylic on Canvas 5'x5'
The title for this painting came from a mixed tape made for me by friend and writer Lukas Champagne.

These paintings are from the series Marriage

XX
Acrylic on Canvas 3'x3'

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XY
Acrylic on Canvas 3'x3'