General Idea

GI 6: Etter, Fletcher, Hess, and Spallholz

2012-02-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

GENERAL IDEA 6 is on March 31 at 7PM at Brickbat Books (709 South 4th Street, Philadelphia, PA) with readings by Sarah Rose Etter, Sasha Fletcher, Mickey Hess, and Julianna Spallholz.

A retired shipbuilder, Mickey Hess is Associate Professor of English at Rider University, where he teaches arc welding, mig welding, and creative nonfiction. In the early months of 2012, he has released two books: The Nostalgia Echo (a novel) and The Novelist & the Rapper (stories). He is hard at work on a biography of the rap star Ol' Dirty Bastard.

photo by Katie Reing

Sarah Rose Etter's chapbook, Tongue Party, was selected as the winner of the 2010 Caketrain Chapbook Contest by Deb Olin Unferth. Her work has appeared in The Black Warrior Review, Salt Hill Journal, The Collagist and more. She lives in Philadelphia where she co-curates the Tire Fire Reading series.

Julianna Spallholz's short (and very short) fiction has appeared in Caketrain, Denver Quarterly, Sleepingfish, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere. Julianna has performed and collaborated her work with musicians, visual artists, a DJ, and a chef. For the moment, she lives in upstate New York. Her book, The State of Kansas, is available from GenPop Books. Please visit her website at http://www.juliannaspallholz.com/

Sasha Fletcher is the author of the novella WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS AND WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE CLOUDS [ml press 2010] and the poetry chapbooks I AIN'T ASKED ANY PARDON FOR ANYTHING I DONE [the greying ghost 2011] and I CANNOT PRETEND TO BE A GHOST TODAY [paper pusher 2012]. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

GI 5: Greg Bem & Gregory Laynor

2011-12-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

General Idea 5 presents former Philadelphia poets Greg Bem and Gregory Laynor on Tuesday, December 27th at 5:00 at Moonstone Arts Center/ Robin's Books in Center City: 110A S. 13th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19107.

Greg Bem used to live a hearty life in Philadelphia and was a member of the New Philadelphia Poets, but then he moved to Seattle in August, 2010. In the year and four months since the migration, he has regularly volunteered for the poetry non-profit SPLAB and the Columbia City Public Library. He co-curates a dynamic multimedia performance series (called the Breadline) with poets Alex Bleecker and Jeremy Springsteed, works in the schizoid Search Engine Marketing/Optimization industry, and attends the Information School at the University of Washington. In September he organized and hosted Silence and Communication, a 20-feature event dervied from Cagean aesthetic, which helped get Greg shortlisted for the Stranger's Genius Award. The most important thing a poet can do, Greg believes, is help promote the advancements and document the actions of friends, villains, self, and the masses.

Gregory Laynor is living in Seattle, where he is studying & teaching at the University of Washington and curating readings & talks at the Hedreen Gallery. Recent work appears in EOAGH and Fence. He is co-editing the collected writings of Gil Ott for Chax Press. He is on the Internet at academicpoetry.com.

Vids from GI 4: DC Poets & Writers

2011-12-09T07:40:00.000-08:00


DC Poets!

Back: Jenn DePalma, Buck Downs, Ken Jacobs, Cathy Eisenhower

Middle-ish: Mel Nichols, Adam Marston, Casey Smith, Katy Bohinc

Front: Chris Nealon

DC Poets & Writers | Dec 3 | Fergie's Pub 4:30 PM

2011-11-23T07:57:00.000-08:00

Come celebrate the DC literary community in Philadlphia on Dec 3, 2011 4:30 PM at Fergie's Pub (1214 Sansom Street).

Readings by:
Katy Bohinc
Adam Marston
Ryan Walker
Mel Nichols
Cathy Eisenhower
Ken Jacobs
Buck Downs
Jenn DePalma
Casey Smith
Chris Nealon

Katy Bohinc studied mathematics & comp lit (French, English & Mandarin) at Georgetown University. She is working on a manuscript.

Adam Marston was at the poetry work-study at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute this year and is an undergraduate at George Mason University. He has a squid that is a pink kite.

Cathy Eisenhower is a poet and librarian in Washington, DC. Her first full-length collection is forthcoming from Edge Books. Read from her chapbook Language of the Dog-Heads, and read her poems in nanomajority and word for/word.

Mel Nichols’s most recent books are Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon (Edge Books, 2009) and Bicycle Day (Slack Buddha, 2008). She teaches at George Mason University.

Ryan Walker's poetry collection You Will Own it Permanently is available

here.

Ken Jacobs has lived in and about Washington D.C. for more than thirty years. A chapbook, Sooner, from Phylum Press was released in December 2009 & he has poems in ‘The Portable Boog Reader′, the online journal 'Everyday Genius' and forthcoming at 'Sentence' and 'Wheelhouse Magazine'.

Buck Down's newest book is BLACK PEPPERMINT, available at www.buckdowns.com. Buck sends poetry postcards across the country and around the world every month, and posts occasional essays at www.bucksmonthly.com.

Jenn DePalma earned her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2006. She owns and runs Bona Terra, a garden design and installation company and has participated in DC reading series Cheryl’s Gone, In Your Ear, and Bridgestreet Books. Her artwork has been shown at Transformer Gallery and G Fine Art. She is half of the performance art collaborative the YAY team.

Christopher Nealon teaches American literature, aesthetic theory (especially the history and theory of poetry), and the history of sexuality. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1997, and taught at UC Berkeley from 1996 to 2008.

Casey Smith is the author of "Opulent Stone Moccasins" in the"Publishing the Unpublishable" series (/ubueditions 2010) and various infrequent pieces in magazines, journals, art catalogs, etc. Lately he has worked with a wide number of printmakers, typographers, and book artists on visual poetry broadsides: Nilay Lawson, Jim Wilder, Kerry McAleer-Keeler, Georgia Deal, and Paulette Palacios are among his recent collaborators. Since 1997 he's been fortunate to teach amazing students at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington DC, where he also organizes readings and literary events.

Vids from GI 3: Bloof Books Tour

2011-11-23T06:22:00.000-08:00

Shanna Compton reads for GI!

Maureen Thorson reads for GI!

Vids from GI 2: Card, Covey, Lyalin, Kaschock

2011-11-23T06:20:00.000-08:00

Natalie Lyalin reads for GI!

MacGregor Card reads for GI!

Bruce Covey reads for GI!

Kirsten Kaschock reads for GI!

GI 3: Bloof Books | Nov 5 | Fergie's Pub 7 PM

2011-10-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

On Saturday November 5th, 2011 at Fergie's Pub (1214 Sansom Street) at 7 PM, the General Idea series presents BLOOF BOOKS, with readings byAnne Boyer, Shanna Compton, Jennifer L. Knox, and Maureen Thorson.

ANNE BOYER was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1973, and grew up in Salina, Kansas, a small, flat city occupying the center of the contiguous United States. She continues to live in Kansas and works as an Assistant Professor of the Liberal Arts at the Kansas City Art Institute. She is the author a book of poetry, The Romance of Happy Workers (Coffee House Press, 2008), and a forthcoming novel from Bloof Books, JOAN. She has also written a number of chapbooks including Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse (Effing Press 2006), Art Is War (Mitzvah Chaps 2008), The 2000s (Free Poetry 2009), and most recently, My Common Heart, available from Spooky Girlfriend Press. She is the publisher of small works of strange literature through Hey Tiger! press, as well as the former editor of the poetry and poetics journal Abraham Lincoln. Other recent work can be found at SF Moma's Open Space, The Rumpus,Property Press, and The Columbia Poetry Review,as well as on her website, anneboyer.com.

SHANNA COMPTON’s books include Down Spooky (Winnow, 2005), For Girls & Others (Bloof, 2008), and Gamers (Soft Skull, 2004), and the chapbooks Rare Vagrants(Dusie, 2010), Scurrilous Toy (Dusie, 2007), and others. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, Verse, McSweeney’s, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, the Poetry Foundation’s website, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a new poetry collection called The Blank Verge, forthcoming from Bloof Books in Spring 2012. She lives on the internet at shannacompton.com.

JENNIFER L. KNOX was born in Lancaster, California—home to Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Space Shuttle. Her books of poems are The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway (2010), Drunk by Noon (2007), and A Gringo Like Me (2005), all available from Bloof Books. A volume of her verse in German, Wir Fürchten Uns,was published by Lux Books in 2009. Her poems have appeared in four volumes of the Best American Poetryseries, Best American Erotic Poems, Great American Prose Poems: From Poet to Present, and Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books.www.jenniferlknox.com.

MAUREEN THORSON is a poet, publisher, and book designer living in Washington, D.C. She is the author of the new book Applies to Oranges (Ugly Duckling, 2010), and a number of chapbooks, including Twenty Questions for the Drunken Sailor (2009),Mayport (2006), which won the Poetry Society of America's National Chapbook Fellowship, and Novelty Act (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004). Her poems can be found in many anthologies and journals, including the forthcoming Yale Anthology of Younger American Poets, Exquisite Corpse, Hotel Amerika, LIT, The Hat, and 6×6. Maureen is the publisher and editor of Big Game Books, a small press dedicated to emerging poets. She is also the co-curator of the In Your Ear reading series at the DC Arts Center and the founder of NaPoWriMo, an annual project in which poets attempt to write a poem a day for the month of April.

Vids from the Baltimore Event

2011-10-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

Some vids from General Idea's September event featuring Baltimore poets & writers! Unfortunately, the battery in our camera died just before our last amazing reader, Chris Mason, took the stage. If anyone has any film or audio of Chris' reading, please send it to us!

GI 2: CARD, COVEY, KASCHOCK, LYALIN | Oct 29 | Brickbat Books 7 PM

2011-09-12T20:18:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, October 29th, 7 PM, at Brickbat Books, 709 South 4th Street, Philadelphia PA, THE GENERAL IDEA SERIES present readings by Macgregor Card, Bruce Covey, Kirsten Kaschock, and Natalie Lyalin.

Macgregor Card lives in Queens. A new chapbook, The Archers, was recently published by Song Cave. His first full collection, Duties of an English Foreign Secretary, came out in December 2009 from Fence Books. A 7-inch album is forthcoming from Unicorn Evil. Poems are recent, a little old, or forthcoming in Clock, Vlak, Poor Claudia, EOAGH, Aufgabe, Bright Pink Mosquito, Best American Poetry, The Recluse, Telephone, Supermachine, The Brooklyn Rail & Fence. From 1997-2005 he co-edited The Germ: A Journal of Poetic Research with Andrew Maxwell (archives at www.germspot.blogspot.com). He is an Associate Editor at the Modern Language Association, teaches poetry at Pratt Institute, & programs the Monday night reading series at The Poetry Project.

Bruce Covey is the author of five books of poetry, including, most recently, Reveal (BitterCherry, 2011) & Glass Is Really a Liquid (No Tell, 2010). He lives in Atlanta, GA, where he edits Coconut Poetry & curates the What’s New in Poetry reading series at Emory University.

Kirsten Kaschock is the author of two books of poetry: A Beautiful Name for a Girl and Unfathoms. Her first novel, Sleight, is scheduled to be published by Coffee House Press in fall 2011. She is currently a doctoral fellow in dance at Temple University. Kirsten lives with her three sons and their father in Manayunk, where she works with words, bodies, and when she is lucky—other people.

Natalie Lyalin is the author of Pink and Hot Pink Habitat (Coconut Books 2009) and the chapbook Try A Little Time Travel (Ugly Duckling Presse 2010). She is the co founder and co editor of GlitterPony Magazine and Agnes Fox Press. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at The University of the Arts.

Baltimore Poets & Writers

2011-09-03T20:04:00.000-07:00

Respect!

Baltimore Poets in Philly

Back: Christophe Cassimassima, Rupert Wondolowski, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, Chris Mason, Chris Toll, Les Wade, Joe Hall. Front: Justin Sirois, Stephanie Barber, Adam Robinson.

GI 1: Baltimore Poets & Writers | Sept 3 | Fergie's Pub 5 PM

2011-08-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 3, 2011
Fergie's Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Phila, PA. 5 PM

Come see & hear Baltimore's great poets & writers read from their works. Featuring readings by:

Adam Robinson
Chris Toll
Chris Mason
Les Wade
Christophe Cassimassima
Justin Sirois
Joe Hall
Cheryl Quimba
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
Rupert Wondolowski
Stephanie Barber

Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he runs Publishing Genius Press and plays guitar in Sweatpants, a rock band. His first book, Adam Robison and Other Poems was nominated for the Goodreads Poetry Award. He self-published his second book, Say, Poem. He is also the editor of Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2011. He has an MFA from the University of Baltimore and is a contributor to HTMLGiant.

"Baltimore based poet and futurist metaphysical collage artist Chris Toll has published a collection of poetry with Publishing Genius. The Disinformation Phase (2011, 60 pages) wafts toward the reader, intoxicating the oxygen in its path, oozing a slow morning fog along the way. I mean this in a profoundly positive sense, of course." [continue reading]

"If you don’t know Chris Mason, let’s learn to. If you haven’t read HUM WHO HICCUP, let me say: it is an enchantment, a spell of words, it is poetry poetry & art as poetry & visual arrangement of poetry & remixing poetry. If you read HUM WHO HICCUP you will become lost in traps of words, a bear on a deadfall, only you won’t die but will instead lose blood, so much blood that you will hallucinate, & dream poetry, & the dream will be you holding hands with Chris Mason, wandering."

Born to the children of immigrants in (of all places) oklahoma city, my [Les Wade] family eventually headed to california, thereby reduplicating the exodus of other legendary okies. since then, i have lived in st. louis, los angeles, the inland empre, seattle, and finally baltimore, with stops in berlin, hamburg, and paris. no longer such a nomad, but nonetheless, i still remain a little antsy.

Christophe Casamassima is the founder of Furniture Press and the author of Ore.

"In his collection of poetry, Secondary Sound, Justin Sirois demonstrates a command of prose which extends to his new book, MLKNG SCKLS. Subtitled "deleted Word documents from the laptop of Salim Abid, April 2004," this slim novella consists of excerpts from Sirois's yet-to-be-published novel Falcons on the Floor, which was written in collaboration with Haneen Alshujairy, an Iraqi refugee." [continue reading at Bookslut]

Joe Hall‘s first book of poems is Pigafetta Is My Wife (Black Ocean Press 2010). His poetry and fiction have appeared in Gulf Coast, HTML Giant, Barrelhouse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Zone 3 and elsewhere. With Wade Fletcher he co-organizes the DC area reading series Cheryl’s Gone. His second book, The Devotional Poems, is forthcoming in 2013. He no longer lives in a trailer park.

Cheryl Quimba is a recent graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at Purdue University. Poems of hers have recently appeared in Dusie, Phoebe, Tinfish, and 1913. She currently lives in Baltimore (obviously) and works as a publications assistant at Johns Hopkins University.

Jamie Gaughran-Perez is a co-director of Narrow House, bass player for Sweatpants, and pretty serious about fish tacos. He lives in Baltimore and works in DC at Threespot. This is how he gets his Facebook on.

Rupert Wondolowski is the author of The Whispering of Ice Cubes, Humans Go Outside to Hurt You, and a few others. His work has appeared in Murdaland, Lost and Found Times, Rampike, Open 24 Hours, Fell Swoop, Rock Heals, Peek Review, and numerous other literary journals. He is the editor of The Shattered Wig Review and host of the erratically held Shattered Wig Nights at the glorious 14 Karat Cabaret. He occasionally gets to read his work on WYPR's treasured program "The Signal" and to pass judgment on authors far more accomplished than himself in book reviews in Baltimore's City Paper.

Stephanie Barber is an American artist who, though having produced and shown work in many media, is best known as an experimental filmmaker, video artist and writer whose films include catalog, dogs, total power:dead dead dead, shipfilm "dwarfs the sea" "the inversion, transcription, evening track and attractor" and many other short films and videos.