Daphne Marlatt Workshop at Cascadia Poetry Fest

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Splabman

We’re pleased to announce legendary Canadian poet Daphne Marlatt will be part of a reading at the Cascadia Poetry Fest and will be conducting a workshop at Spring Street Center, Friday, May 1, 2014, 9a-1p. Cost: $80. Email Paul Nelson at pen@splab.org, or do it online here: http://splab.org/contact-us/

In a Word, or Many: Where Language meets Terrain
Limited to 15 participants.

Daphne Marlatt

Daphne Marlatt

This poetry workshop (which does not exclude prose) will investigate the ways words come to us in the act of writing when we situate ourselves on the threshold between our outer and inner worlds, with language as the sill for that threshold.  We will look at how perception works linguistically, moving through lexicon and syntax, and relationally, within the locale, creatures and persons that sustain us. There will be writing time in the workshop as well as time for discussion and exchange.

Bio: Daphne Marlatt has published more than twenty books across a wide range of genres, including poetry, fiction, criticism, and theory.  She has also been the founder of ground-breaking journals, including Tessera and periodics, and an editor on several other journals.

She has published three innovative novels: Zocalo, Ana Historic, which received critical acclaim, and Taken.  Her early poem sequence, Steveston, led to the writing of The Gull (2009) an award-winning Noh play based on the traditional Japanese drama form.  Marlatt’s The Given (2008), a long narrative poem, won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.  She was awarded the Order of Canada in 2006 for her contributions to Canadian literature.

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SPLAB Turns 20

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Splabman

Contact: Paul Nelson                                                                                      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tel: 206-422-5002
E-mail: pen@splab.org

SPLAB TO CELEBRATE 20Th ANNIVERSARY JANUARY 18th IN SEATTLE
(Event Includes Announcement of Cascadia Poetry Festival Lineup for May 2014)

Seattle, WA, January 6, 2014—SPLAB was founded in 1993 in Auburn, Washington, by poet/interviewer Paul E. Nelson and moved in August, 2009, in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood. Over the past 20 years, SPLAB has brought many renowned poets to the Puget Sound Region, including Anne Waldman, Andrew Schelling, Michael McClure, Wanda Coleman, Jerome Rothenberg, Eileen Myles, Ethelbert Miller, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Joanne Kyger, and others, staged several Super Bowl of Poetry events, the annual Allen Ginsberg Open Mic Poetry Marathon, conducted over 500 interviews and organized the 1st annual Cascadia Poetry Festival in Seattle in 2012.

SPLAB celebrates its 20th anniversary with help from local poet Judith Roche, and will announce the lineup for the 2nd Cascadia Poetry Festival, to be held May 1-4, 2014 on the campus of Seattle University and at the Spring Street Center.

The anniversary celebration will also be held at Spring Street Center, 1101 15th Avenue in Seattle, beginning at 7pm. The event is free and open to the public. Donations will be accepted. Registration for the festival will also be available at the event.

The Cascadia Poetry Festival is an international event which seeks to bioregionally animate & culturally construct Cascadia by gathering writers, artists, scientists and activists to collaborate, discover and foster deeper connection between all inhabitants and the place itself. On May 1-4, 2014, renowned and  emerging poets from the region will present talks on Cascadian culture and illustrate how that is presented in the best poetry of the region..

For more SPLAB event information, visit www.splab.org.

For more festival information, visit www.CascadiaPoetryFestival.org

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SPLAB 20th Anniversary (Jan 18, 2014)

Posted on December 4, 2013 by Splabman

It was December 13, 1993, when It Plays in Peoria Productions was formed in Auburn, Washington. A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to, among other things: Injecting a Little Wisdom into the Information Age. We were started as an organization that existed to create public affairs programming for regional radio stations and, at our peak, we syndicated a weekly program to 18 stations. We created over 450 hours of original interview programming between 1993 and 2004.

http://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/

http://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/

http://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/

http://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/

In 1997 the Northwest SPokenword LAB was co-created by me (Paul Nelson) and recent arrival from Boulder, Danika Dinsmore. (See this note). We found a space (an abandoned store front) at 14 S. Division in a 100+ year old livery stable, which became our poetry center. Described by one visitor as “a center for culture in the bowels of Auburn” we hosted over 400 events between 1997 and 2004, including visits by Anne Waldman, Michael McClure, Andrew Schelling, Ethelbert Miller, Wanda Coleman, Ed Sanders, Eileen Myles, Diane diPrima, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Jerome Rothenberg and other legendary poets, a Teen Slam series which culminated in a team being taken (thanks to the Alhadeff Foundation) to San Francisco in 200, for the National Teen Poetry Slam Championships (which was the impetus to form a Youth Speaks chapter in Seattle, many workshops, critique circles, Red Cedar medicine circles and other events.

In 2009, SPLAB was re-launched in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood and the name of the organization was officially changed to SPokenword LAB (SPLAB). To see one season of activities, click here.

On January 18, 2014, at 7pm at the Spring Street Center at 15th & Spring in Seattle, we celebrate 20 years of spokenword activism and announce the headliners of our 2nd Cascadia Poetry Festival. You are welcome to attend.

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Raven Chronicles Release Party

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Splabman
Raven Chronicles FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DECEMBER 1, 2013
presents
A Reading & Reception, celebrating our new publication, 
RACE: UNDER OUR SKIN, VOL. 19, of 
Raven Chronicles, A Seattle- based Journal of Art, Literature & The 
Spoken Word.
 
 JOIN US! Open to all.
 Magazine on Sale: $9.00.
 Bring a family or cultural dish to share.
December 13, Friday, 7:00 p.m.
Free
Jack Straw Cultural Center, 
4261 Roosevelt Way N.E.
(Corner of 43rd & Roosevelt Way NE)
University District, Seattle
Readings/Performances by poets:
Anna Balint (M.C.), Laura Dá, Paul Hunter, M.S. Johnson, Casandra Lopez, Lawrence Matsuda, Jeanne Morel, Shankar Narayan, Tina Schumann, Judith Skillman & JT Stewart
 
This edition of Raven Magazine was published in conjuction with Seattle’s Pacific Science Center’s exhibition: Race: Are We So Different?, and the City of Seattle’s The Arts and Race & Social Justice Initiative.

Race: Under Our Skin: Many agree that race is a social construct, born out of ideas of superiority and inferiority, a social construct that has shaped our history, both collectively and individually, and continues to do so. Race plays a part in how others define us, as well as in our individual sense of who we are, and what group, or groups, we belong to. Race continues to confer both privilege and discrimination, evoke both pride and fear, call up/suggest both inclusion and exclusion. Yet racial boundaries have never been simple, have never remained unbroken, or unchallenged, or static. Mulatto, half-breed, mixed-race, other; passing, blood quantum laws, land, civil rights, integration; immigrants, refugees, illegals, legals, country of origin, what temples we pray in, what makes its way into school textbooks…

Essays/Memoirs by
Paul Nelson, Why Cascadia? Why Poetry?
Susan Platt, Haida Gwaii: Tradition Resurrected
Eve Gil, Reinventing the First Kiss, An Homage to Alice Munro
Stacy Lawson, My Yerushe
David Holt, American Indian Poets in the Mixed Blood Experience
Lita Kurth, The Shadow of Racism on our Tongue
Georgia McDade, Post Racial?
Mariana Romo-Carmona, Welcome to America
Elizabeth Woody, The Long Memory
Interviews with artists by
Thomas Hubbard: Alfredo Arreguin
Susan Platt: Gender is Race, Tatiana Garmendia
Fiction by
John Mannone, Fractures in Black & White
Patty Somlo, Cowboy
Poems by
M.S. Johnson, Dennis Caswell, JT Stewart, Gail Tremblay, Tiana Clark, Paul Hunter,
Laura Dá, Dana Dickerson, Chelene Knight, Casandra Lopez,
Lawrence Matsuda, Jeanne Morel, Shankar Narayan, Tina Schumann,
Judith Skillman, Diane Woodcock, Changming Yuan
Art/Photos by
Alfredo Arreguin, Richard Baldasty, Allen Braden, Sharon Carter,
Tatiana Garmendia, Kathleen Gunton, Thomas Hubbard,
Carolyn Krieg, Irene Kuniyuki, Susan Platt, Willie Pugh,
Marilyn Stablein
Reviews by
Laura Lee Bennett, Thomas Hubbard, Anita Endrezze
James Bertolino, Susan Platt, Anna Bálint, Zara Raab
Anna Bálint reviews the film, Fruitvale Station, directed by Ryan Coogler, featuring Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Kevin Durand, Octavia Spencer (Weinstein Company, Distributors, 2013). Based on the 2009 fatal shooting of Oscar Grant III by a BART police officer on a BART subway platform in Oakland, California.
Laura Lee Bennett reviews Deborah Akers’s book of poems, backward pilgrim (I-BeaM Books, 2013).
Thomas Hubbard reviews James Bertolino’s book of poems, Every Wound Has A Rhythm (World Enough Writers, 2012).
Anita Endrezze reviews Dan Taulapapa McMullin’s Coconut Milk (University of Arizona Press, 2013)
       and Carmen Gimenez Smith’s Milk and Filth (University of Arizona Press, 2013).
James Bertolino reviews Derick Burleson’s USE, A Poem (Calypso Editions, 2012).
Susan Platt reviews editor Valerie Cassel Oliver’s rAdIcAl prEsEncE, Black Performance in Contemporary Art (Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2013).

 

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