There was a small group for the 1st Living Room in our comfy new space. Maryna Ajaja had an excellent poem entitled Vertigo, based on dream imagery. Her film background is quite an asset for her verse. (She works for SIFF). She read a piece by William Carlos Williams, Russia, which added to the theme of dream imagery and the consciousness which produces it.
Is this what the poet is after? Creating this state, a dream or dream-like state? Perhaps it’s one mode.
Monica Schley workshopped a new sestina based on the odd directions Erik Satie would use to guide performance of his compositions. Sestinas are difficult forms. Paul Hunter said they were “poems poets write for other poets.”
Your Wily Splabman read a piece from his latest series Kozer Variations, as well as a poem from the brand new book A Time Before Slaughter.
We left just as folks were getting in for the 9:30 showing of the new Michael Jackson film.
We hope to see you Tuesday night at 7, in the 2nd floor lounge of the Columbia City Cinema, 4816 Rainier Av S.
About Splabman
Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.
