From Greg Bem:
Hello friends,
There’s a great event coming up Saturday (June 2, 2012) — the annual Allen Ginsberg Marathon at SPLAB in Columbia City. The event’s first portion starts at 8pm and features Mickey O’Connor and Band of Poets. (Survivors who make it to 7A, or those who arrive at 7A Sunday, get breakfast!)
But wait . . . there’s something else. Last year I was asked to lead the overnight portion of the marathon. I expected the night to go something like this: reading Ginsberg alone, silently, struggling with consciousness, a relatively unremarkable evening where nobody showed up and I had to hold down the fort by myself. Well, fortunately, thanks to a handful of amazing poets and artists and friends, the night turned into something else entirely . . . we stayed up watching Ginsberg films, performing Ginsberg poems, reading our own poems, singing our own songs, engaging in a round-robin of German Sound Poetry (a la Jason Conger), and even confronting the infamous Milutis Accordion.
So. It’s happening again this year. What to expect? We will be going ALL NIGHT LONG once again. I’m splitting the hosting duties with Aaron Kokorowski. We’re planning on getting a projector and screen to play a couple Ginsberg films, getting a sound system to listen to some of the wilder Ginsberg readings and songs, have a space for organic poetry, a mic for performance art of all kinds, live-tweeting and blogging, scheduled corpses and other writing exercises, food, beer, coffee, snus–we’ll have it all, and more. You can show up whenever you want. We will be ready for you.
What should you bring? Bring yourself. Bring anything Ginsberg-related. Bring your own poems. Bring canvases to paint on. Bring notebooks to draw on. Bring musical instruments–percussion, brass, strings, synths. Bring your cigarettes for your smoke breaks. Bring a beer or two (or . . .), bring chips, snacks, chili, dip, hummus, guac, salsa, pretzels, deli meats, fake meat delis. Bring weird clothes. Bring strange music. Bring coffee and tea and stimulants to supplement what we’ll have. Bring what it takes to make it until 7AM. All people surviving the evening will be treated to breakfast.
We’re going to create an artistic space that Allen Ginsberg would have admired. Something spontaneous. Something planned for the purpose of generative art. We’re going to get exhausted, get wild. It’ll be a party focused on creation. It’ll be a great experience and you should join. Please tell anyone that loves and appreciates Allen Ginsberg as person, poet, prophet, cultural caretaker.
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Greg Bem
