Farid Matuk, October 14th, 7:00 p.m.

Join us next Friday, October 14th, 7:00 p.m., at the Rubin Center for Visual Arts on the UTEP campus.

Farid Matuk, Friday October 14th, 7:00 p.m.

Farid Matuk

The Dishonest Mailman is pleased to present

FARID MATUK

author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood

Friday, October 14th, 7:00 pm
Rubin Center for Visual Arts
on the UTEP campus

Rachel Levitsky, Thursday April 14th, 7:00 pm

Rachel Levitsky

Please join us for a poetry reading by the amazing Rachel Levitsky, poet and publisher of Belladonna Books, on Thursday, April 14th, 7:00 pm, at the Blumberg Auditorium (in UTEP’s Library).

Rachel Levitsky’s newest book, Neighbor, was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2009, and her first full-length volume, Under the Sun was published by Futurepoem books in 2003. She is also the author of five chapbooks of poetry, Dearly (a+bend, 1999), Dearly 356, Cartographies of Error (Leroy, 1999), The Adventures of Yaya and Grace (PotesPoets, 1999) and 2(1×1)Portraits (Baksun, 1998).

Neighbor (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)

Levitsky is the founder and co-director of Belladonna*, an event and publication series of feminist avant-garde poetics. In 2008 she was the only poet from the United States invited to attend The Tokyo Poetry Festival, and throughout 2008-2009 she served as the CPCW Fellow in Poetics & Poetic Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. She currently teaches college courses in two prisons in New York State.

Read a review of Neighbor here.

Click here to listen to Levitsky read from Neighbor.

Listen to Levitsky discuss her work. (from “Ceptuetics” on WNYU)

Joshua Marie Wilkinson — Wolf Dust

Joshua Marie Wilkinson to speak today

Joshua Marie Wilkinson joins us today to speak to Rosa Alcala’s graduate poetry seminar.  Visitors are welcome.  4:30-5:50, Liberal Arts 302, at UTEP.

From Selenography:

& thumbtacks in the
plastery wall we
are water
& bad water mixed
together so perfectly
the township

cannot discern our
motives
from the streetscape

we are scissored out from

 

Dishonest Mailman Poet of the Week: Joshua Marie Wilkinson

[W]hat gets called “accessibility” is a ruse to shelter us from encountering language that might alter us.

[from an essay on American poetry, at the Poetry Society of America.  Click here to read the essay.]

 

Read an excerpt from “Moth in the Projectorlight” here.

Born and raised in Seattle, Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of five books, most recently Selenography. He has also edited two anthologies for University of Iowa Press, including Poets on Teaching, due out fall 2010. A tour documentary about the band Califone, entitled Made a Machine by Describing the Landscape, is also forthcoming. He lives in Andersonville and teaches at Loyola University Chicago.

 

 

 

Click here to visit Joshua Marie Wilkinson’s website.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson will visit El Paso on Monday, October 18th.

Join us September 23rd, 7:00 p.m. for Rodrigo Toscano: Collapsible Poetics Theater

Rodrigo Toscano will join the Dishonest Mailman on Thursday, Sept. 23rd at 7:00 p.m., in the UTEP Union Cinema.  Toscano, winner of the National Poetry Series, is Director of the Collapsible Poetics Theater.

Toscano will stage a collaborative performance with UTEP faculty and students, including Christine Foerster, Maria Gomez, Silvana Ayala, and Angel Valenzuela.

“Poetics Theater is a test of poetry. The Collapsible Poetics Theater is an all volunteer effort, one that assembles itself within a given 24 hour period of each performance. Each locale (with its resident poets, experienced actors, experienced non-actors) brings an entirely new set possibilities. It is reminiscent of Commedia Dell’Arte in its traveling, portable, rapid-set up qualities. To be sure, Poetics Theater fits into the poetry scene as a baby does in itchy burlap; it fits into the drama scene as does a little crown, little scepter, little gown, all neatly stored in a metal suitcase (quite literally!). The dings are just dings. The persistent question is: can the poem be tested any further?”
– Rodrigo Toscano

We’re lucky to have this dynamic poet and performer out here on the border with the Dishonest Mailman.  Join us for what is sure to be a great event.

Conceiving a performance

Spine (Poets Theater Jamboree 2007) (photo by Cynthia Sailers)

“The Collapsible Poetics Theater (CPT) is a particular form and practice of Poetics Theater (PT). Poetics Theater is one of the Poetic Arts (other PA’s would include visual poetry, sound poetry, textual-experimental poetry, conceptual poetry, lyrical & song poetry, movie-telling, etc).” — Rodrigo Toscano

Jocelyn Saidenberg & David Brazil (photo by Cynthia Sailers) at Spine (Poets Theater Jamboree 2007)

“The text’s polysemic qualities, its distant-associative valences, its trope recombinatory potential, its very motility, is what aerates into the performance space, is what comes into ‘contact’ with those in the ‘contact zone’.”
– Rodrigo Toscano

New Link: Breach Journal

Here at the Dishonest Mailman, we’re always on the lookout for new blogs, presses, and journals to add to our links, all in an effort to provide the best possible experience for our readers.

To this end, we are pleased to announce the addition of Breach Journal to our list of journals.  Breach is a new online journal edited by J. Michael Martinez.  Click here to read Martinez’s poetics statement: “LaChiPo: A Decolonial Poetics.”

Click here to enter the Breach Journal site and see great work by some of our favorites: Blas Falconer, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, Roberto Tejada, Rodrigo Toscano, and more.

Craig Santos Perez post-reading post

Last night was our final Dishonest Mailman reading for the season, and as always, there was an amazing turnout — especially for a Tuesday.

Opening were El Paso poets Amanda North and AJ Lechuga. North evoked Billie Holiday’s strength and vulnerability, while Lechuga made us see and remember in terrifying and beautiful detail this border on which we live.

Headlining was poet Craig Santos Perez, and he did not disappoint. Demonstrating the possibilities of a projective, investigative, and relational poetics, Santos Perez’s work pieces together historical, personal, and linguistic fragments into a moving whole.  That’s not to mention his performance, which was engaged, thoughtful, and hilarious — not necessarily in that order.

Santos Perez ended with a poem about SPAM, the much derided — yet delicious — food product. Poet Sasha Pimentel-Chacon, the curator and organizer for this event, informed us that there is a restaurant on Alameda where you can get a hamburger with SPAM and weiners on it. Sign. Us. Up.  And by the way, can we get that with a side of poems?

Ben Saenz introduces AJ Lechuga

AJ Lechuga reading

Craig Santos Perez mini-chap (produced for the event) with Santos Perez in the background

Sasha Pimentel Chacon introduces Craig Santos Perez

Craig Santos Perez reading

Painter Sam Reveles watching Perez Santos

Thanks to Craig Santos Perez for coming out to El Paso, and for ending this season’s Dishonest Mailman Reading Series on a high note.  Thanks to Sasha Pimentel Chacon for organizing a great event.

The Dishonest Mailman Presents

CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ

Tuesday, April 27th
7:00 p.m.
at the Percolator Cafe
(217 N. Stanton Street, El Paso)

A native Chamorro from the Pacific Island of Guahan (Guam), Craig Santos Perez now lives in California.  he is the co-founder of Achiote Press, author of from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008), and several chapbooks.  His second full collection of poems, from unincorporated territory [saina], was published this year by Omnidawn Publishing.

With AJ Lechuga and Amanda North.

Music by the Stanton Street Collective.

(This post was updated on 4/27)