Last Living Room until September June 28 @ 7P

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Splabman

The 2nd SPLAB season in Columbia City (and 9th over all) ends on Tuesday, June 28 at 7PM. Your Wily Splabman facilitates and takes you on a poetry postcard journey. This August the annual Poetry Postcard Fest continues. Lana Ayers and I started this in 2007 and more info on past years is here: http://poetrypostcards.blogspot.com/

Here’s a handout on the exercise. As the handout says, Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser and Ted Berrigan have utilized the form/idea. At the last Living Room, we’ll give you a primer on the project, share some poetry postcards and invite participants to write their own. BYOP or a potentially hideous card will be provided for you.

A great essay on the Postcard Project by David Sherwin.

Writers of all ages 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 put on special events and continue programming. Please bring 8 copies of the work you plan to read. If you do not bring copies, they are available for 10c.

Living Room happens in the new SPLAB in the Cultural Corner of the old Columbia School, between Rainier AV S and 36th AV S, on Edmunds. We’re 2 blocks from the Columbia City Link Light Rail Station. Parking is available on the school grounds.)

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Listen (Splab audio)

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Splabman

Your Wily Splabman has been getting his grubby hands, voice and ears back into radio again thanks to KBCS.FM, 91.3. Host of the Friday edition of the music/public affairs hybrid The Morning Blend, he’s also been producing SPLAB Presents which has featured, in the last few weeks:

C.A. Conrad, wildlife biologist Dominick DellaSala, Nate Mackey, Allen Ginsberg from the SPLAB archive and Frances McCue. Her new book is The Bled a remarkable response to her husband’s sudden and accidental death in Morocco. All of the above linked HERE and much of it chopped into 5 minute soundbites for ease of digestion. SPLAB Presents airs Thursday afternoons around 4:30P on KBCS.Bon appetit!

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New from Nico V

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Splabman

Nico continues his rich line of inquiry on how visual information is processed:

staring@poetics

2011, 5″ x 8″, 56 pgs, Full Color.

ISBN 1-936687-03-8 | EAN-13978-1-936687-03-9
$12
To read about the book or purchase a copy –  http://xexoxial.org/is/staring_at_poetics/by/nico_vassilakis

from the book:

How do our retinal experiences alter what we think we know about alphabet? From minimal to maximal, the alphabet is explored and expanded on. From the contextual aggregates and combinations of letters to the visual elements that form a single letter. The visual poetry of alphabet insists that writing is the drawing of what and how we think, and within that writing, images accrue, the letters themselves, drawn, or otherwise printed, are illustrating or reproducing our thought.

Nico Vassilakis works with text and visual alphabet. Nico, with Crag Hill, edited the forthcoming The Last Vispo: Visual Poetry Anthology 1998-2008. He has published several books, including West of Dodge (redfoxpress, 2009), Protracted Type (blue lion books, 2008), Text Loses Time(Manypenny press, 2008), Disparate Magnets (BlazeVOX, 2009) and DIPTYCHS (Otolith, 2008). Nico lives in Seattle with the poet Crystal Curry and their kids..staring poetics:

http://staringpoetics.weebly.com/

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African Ideas of The Word (Living Room Tuesday 6.21.11, 7P)

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Splabman

What do onomatopoeia, scat singing, synethesia, word-as-image, l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poetry, the Dogon idea of “Mu” (via Nathaniel Mackey) and its connection to Charles Olson’s idea of “pre-utterance,” and ancient occult ideas of “nyama” and “heka,” all have in common? Something, I bet! Together, we’ll explore language outside of what it is supposed to “mean” and think about the words we use as aural, visual, and material. As always, please bring your own work to share. Anthony Warnke facilitates. 

Writers of all ages 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 put on special events and continue programming. Please bring 8 copies of the work you plan to read. If you do not bring copies, they are available for 10c.

Living Room happens in the new SPLAB in the Cultural Corner of the old Columbia School, between Rainier AV S and 36th AV S, on Edmunds. We’re 2 blocks from the Columbia City Link Light Rail Station. Parking is available on the school grounds.)

Living Room will not meet in July and August and resumes September 6, 2011.

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