Living Room, Tuesday at 7P @ SPLAB
Paranomasia has nothing to do with a lack of ghosts. Rather, it comes from Greek, meaning word-shunting, and refers to the deliberate exploitation of words to achieve multiple meanings, ambiguities, humor, etc. (i.e., punning; i.e. cummings) — a way of subverting the dictionary’s prescription of a word to open it’s field for play. Such can be achieved through an infinite variety of means, including free-association, allusive variation, homonymy, you name it.
This week’s living room participants will engage in a brief workshop wherein they will be supplied with a “hinge word” around which to swing — to play — to pun. We’ll be shunting words — sidetracking and diverting their meanings — to make new ghosts of what dictionary dogma forces down our throats. Bring original work — punny or un — to have lovingly critiqued. Your guide is Alex Bleecker.
Writers of all ages, backgrounds and skill levels gather Tuesdays at 7P to read new work, the work of someone else or to just be in the engaging company of other writers. Your donation of $5 helps SPLAB continue our programming. Please bring 8 copies of the work you plan to read. Copies are no longer provided by SPLAB.
Living Room happens @ SPLAB in the Cultural Corner at 3651 S. Edmunds. (Look for the SPLAB sign on the wall and come inside.) We’re 2 blocks from the Columbia City Link Light Rail Station. (Parking is available on the school grounds.)
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.