Dodie Bellamy
In town for a celebration of an exhibition by feminist artist Carolee Schneemann, Dodie Bellamy read from The Buddhist at the Henry Art Gallery on October 20th, 2011 and an excerpt was featured on SPLAB Presents for the week of October 31, 2011.
Her whole reading is archived here.
Brenda Hillman finished off the SPLAB 2011 Visiting Poets Series in fine fashion November 11 and 12 with a brilliant talk on Innovation and Activism in Poetry Friday the 11th (Veterans Day), a workshop that left at least one participant “buzzing all day” and a reading featuring her brilliant new work. One long-time stalwart of the local poetry scene said it was “the best reading I have ever seen her give.”
So, the audio of the reading is here. (Paul Nelson’s intro here.) (Post-reading Q & A here.) Video here: Intro, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Thank you Ra’anan David for the video.
The interview she did with Paul Nelson is here.
Read about the confrontation she & her husband had with the SWAT team called out to the UC-Berkeley Occupy Rally here.
Brenda Hillman Workshop
On September 24th 2011, poets gathered (at SPLAB) & in 450 cities around the world in an event called 100 Thousand Poets for Change. The event is designed to change how we see global community and work to cure symptoms of a world that, in Gary Snyder’s words, is “upside down.”
Seattle’s venue for 100 Thousand Poets for Change was SPLAB in Columbia City and the featured poet was Suquamish native Cedar Sigo. After growing up on the Port Madison Indian Reservation across the Sound from Seattle, he attended Naropa University on a scholarship and now lives in San Francisco. His new book is published by the famed City Lights and is entitled Stranger in Town. SPLAB Presents for the week of September 12. For the week of September 19th. The entire interview can be downloaded here.
Audio from 100 TPC: Brian McGuigan, Eugenia Toledo, Lawrence Matsuda, Nilki Benitez, Judith Roche, Deborah Woodard, Frances McCue, Carletta Carrington Wilson, Cedar Sigo workshop, Cedar Sigo reading.
As I prepare to make one last presentation at one last Living Room in Columbia City, I am taking a moment to look back and consider all the great things that happened in our three year run here.
My wife Meredith and I planned to relocate to Seattle as soon as my oldest daughter Rebecca graduated from Auburn High. I left Queen Anne in 1992 for a house in Auburn with my first wife, Janice. It was a promise I made to Rebecca to stay in Auburn until she graduated from high school that kept me there, for I felt, culturally, more like a Seattle-ite than a Slaughter-ite. She graduated in June of 2009.
As we plotted our move to Seattle, the first notion Mer and I had was to follow former Auburn residents Dick Burkhardt and Mona Lee to the Othello neighborhood, close to the Link Light Rail line and more diverse than most Seattle neighborhoods. As we looked for homes to rent, increasingly we were drawn to Columbia City’s amenities, the great restaurants, the cultural vibrancy and also its proximity to light rail. We settled at 43rd & Alaska on August 1, 2009, (yes Seafair weekend, ugh) and soon were deciding to invest in the neighborhood in the best way we knew how, through service and, specifically, through the literary arts. Restarting SPLAB here seemed like a great idea.
After coordinating the poetry stage at the 2009 Bookfest Paul Doyle organized in the former Columbia School and getting involved in the Columbia City Business Association and the Rainier Valley Cultural Center, we were able to stage a season of Living Room events at the old Columbia City Cinema thanks to Paul Doyle’s generosity, as well as welcome Visiting Poet Michael McClure to the RVCC. We also re-introduced the Ginsberg Marathon in this neighborhood, thanks to Empire Espresso. We got a great logo designed by David Sherwin and a wonderful website designed by Tim Aidlin.
Neighborhood contacts led us to having a SPLAB of our very own for the first time since the original Northwest SPokenword LAB in Auburn at 14. S. Division.
We were able to share a space with Joanne Lauterjung Kelly, and when she relocated to Burma, Shelley Morrison and later Karen Kinney moved their respective organizations to what was being called the Cultural Corner. This, in the part of the Columbia School not occupied by the Torah Day School. The terms we good and the space a warm and open one, perfect for literary events and writer’s critique circles. A former elementary school classroom. Subud Brother Jim O’Halloran helped me cleanse the space.
When I look at all the poets who read at that space, including Nate Mackey, Brenda Hillman, Cedar Sigo, C.A. Conrad, Sam Hamill, Tim McNulty, Trevor Carolan, dan raphael, Mickey O’Connor, Nico Vassilakis, David Rowe, Donate Mancini, Louis Cabri, Frances McCue, Flavia Rocha, Chuck Pirtle, Judith Roche, Nilki Benitez, Jourdan Keith, Larry Matsuda, Brian McGuigan, Jed Myers, John Burgess and the Band of Poets, David Thornbrugh, Joan Laage, Eugenia Toledo, Carletta Carrington Wilson, Deborah Woodard, Kim Goldberg Catherine Owen, Kate Braid, Maleea Acker, Heidi Greco, Kathleen Flenniken, Katherine Whitcomb, and many more, I am stunned.
When I look at the list of Living Room topics from just this past season, linked here, I wonder how we did it all. Having amazing facilitators over the past couple of years was fortuitous. Thank you Alex Bleecker, Jeanne Morel, Maryna Ajaja, Greg Bem, Jeremy Springsteed, Anthony Warnke, Joe Chiveney, Scot Brannon, Graham Isaac, Nadine Maestas, Mary Sherwin, Kristen Young and Jeanine Walker. (The fact that Greg, Alex and Jeremy met through SPLAB and created the engaging and popular Breadline reading series makes letting go a little easier.) And what a gas the last Gineberg Marathon was! Thanks especially to Greg Bem and Aaron Kokorowski.
Wabi Sabi donated dinner for Michael McClure’s visit. Poets & Writers was often the first to make a grant for any given literary event and 4 Culture gave us a sizable one for Nate Mackey and Brenda Hillman. The State Commission on Humanities and WESTAF also provided some funding.
Mer and I did all this as volunteers and we are so much better off for having done it.
With the arrival of Ella Roque on March 17, 2012, our time is not as available and our finances will require future versions of SPLAB to be self-sustaining. We have plans to make that happen, so stay tuned to your friendly neighborhood E-Fishwrapper. It is our email newsletter which comes out usually twice a week.
I am grateful to Tutta Bella for stepping up with a donation of food for our last Living Room, Tuesday, June 26.
Please consider attending 100 Thousand Poets for Change, produced by SPLAB in association with the Richard Hugo House on September 29, 2012. Details coming here soon. And thanks to everyone who had a little part.
Brenda Hillman Workshop, Nov 2011
