this week in literature

POETS: TIGER BARK PRESS

pilgrim

Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia St. between West Fourth & Bleecker Sts.
Wednesday, January 13, $7 (includes free drink), 6:00
212-989-9319
www.corneliastreetcafe.com
www.tigerbarkpress.com

Steven Huff’s relatively new Tiger Bark Press, which focuses “on high quality poetry, with occasional forays into the realms of literary criticism and non-fiction,” presents three of its poets in a special evening at the Cornelia Street Cafe. British-born writer Martin Walls reads from THE SOLVAY PROCESS, world traveler Karen Swenson from A PILGRIM INTO SILENCE, and Pushcart Prize nominee Estha Weiner from TRANSFIGURATION BEGINS AT HOME. Former postal worker and longtime editor, teacher, and writer Angelo Verga serves as host.

COIL

Performance Space 122
150 First Ave. at Ninth St.
January 6-17, $20 per performance, $55 passport for any five shows
www.ps122.org

The COIL festival is back at P.S. 122, featuring fourteen companies performing over twelve days, some in conjunction with the Under the Radar festival running concurrently at the Public Theater. Among this year’s presentations are Richard Maxwell’s ADS, which looks at the theater itself; Gisèle Vienne’s hard-hitting JERK, based on text by Dennis Cooper; Morgan Thorson’s HEAVEN, with live music by LOW; and the return of Temporary Distortion’s AMERICANA KAMIKAZE, which ran at P.S. 122 last fall. We can’t recommend Megan V. Sprenger / mvworks’ “…within us.” highly enough; when we caught the show last May at P.S. 122, we called it “a brilliant evening-length piece of confrontational dance theater that gets right in the audience’s face — literally. . . . a thoroughly involving hour that leaves the talented dancers and the brave audience feeling energized and alive.” Several off-site COIL productions include LeeSaar the Company’s PRIMA at the JCC, WaxFactory’s BLIND.NESS at the Abrons Arts Center, and Maria Hassabi’s SoloShow at a private studio in Chelsea; when we saw SoloShow at P.S. 122 in November, we referred to is as “a highlight of the Performa 09 biennial,” a beautifully constructed piece that displays Hassabi’s awe-inspiring athleticism and strong body.

UNDER THE RADAR

Stephen Earnhart’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE should be one of the highlights of the Under the Radar festival

The Public Theater (and other venues)
425 Lafayette St. between East Fourth St. & Astor Pl.
January 6-17, $15-$30
212-967-7555
www.publictheater.org

Held in conjunction with the APAP Conference, the sixth annual Under the Radar festival comprises twenty theatrical productions from seven countries, with well-known companies as well as lesser-known entities bringing their work to the Public Theater and other venues. SITI Company’s Anne Bogart and Charles L. Mee Jr. have teamed up with the Martha Graham Company for AMERICAN DOCUMENT, which will be shown as a work-in-progress. Andrew Dawson gets up close and personal with the moon in SPACE PANORAMA. Sekou and Steve Connell examine morality in THE WORD BEGINS. Doris Mirescu and Dangerous Ground Productions turn John Cassavetes’s HUSBANDS into a three-hour presentation, while the Ohio Theatre transforms Haruki Murakami’s dense THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE into a 105-minute multimedia drama at their space on Wooster St. Pig Iron Theatre Company reprises its Obie-winning CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN at the CSV Cultural Center, while Phil Soltanoff and David Barlow go crazy in LA PARTY at HERE Arts Center. During the festival, the LuEsther Lounge at the Public Theater will be hosting live music and dance performances for free (January 7-17, 9:00 pm – 1:00 am), including Reggie Watts and DJ Reborn on January 7, ELEW on January 9, Rachelle Garniez on January 10, and the Middle Church Jerriese Johnson Gospel Choir on January 17.

WEARING WHITMAN’S WORDS

Jennifer Heuer, "This Is the City & I Am One of the Citizens," 2009

A TYPOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION
Lucky Gallery
176 Richards St., Red Hook
Open Saturdays & Sundays 1:00 – 6:00 through January 10
Closing party: Saturday, January 9, 6:00 – 9:00
Admission: free
www.luckygallery.com

The Lucky Gallery celebrates the written word, the commercial image, and the T-shirt in a rather poetic exhibition curated by Ben Peterson. Nine artists (Ed Nacional, Friends of Type, Jennifer Heuer, Jessica Hische, Justin Thomas Kay, Meg Paradise, Pablo A. Medina, Pillow Fort, and Travis Simon) created new pieces for the show, selecting and designing quotes from Walt Whitman’s LEAVES OF GRASS and turning them into T-shirts that were given out at the December 5 opening. While the front of each shirt was colorfully designed by the artist, the back contains the same quote in Slate and Egyptian Slate typefaces, demonstrating the visual language of words, especially in an era when more people than ever before know about font usage because of the computer. Whitman himself trained as a printer’s devil and a typesetter in his early years, when he lived and worked in Brooklyn. There will be a closing party on January 9 at 6:00 featuring the artists, special guests, readings, and a performance by Boston band Voyager.

FIRST SATURDAYS: TRANSFORMATION

Cordero will get Saturday night party started at Brooklyn Museum on January 2 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, January 2, free after 5:00 (some events require advance free tickets available an hour or two before showtime)
718-638-5000
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum’s monthly First Saturdays program rings in the new year with its monthly array of free activities, beginning at 5:00 with Cordero, a rousing live band formed by Ani Cordero in Tucson in 1999 with members of Calexico and Giant Sand and based in New York City since 2000; Cordero plays smooth, surprisingly subtle Latin pop that is always on the verge of busting loose. At 6:00, Daphne Brooks will talk about funk rock and James Brown. At 6:30, the Midnight Checkout Queens will play live along with a screening of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001). At 7:00, Venus Ensembles will headline the annual Winter Masquerade Ball, so be sure to come in costume. At 9:00, John Sellers will talk about his book PERFECT FROM NOW ON: HOW INDIE ROCK SAVED MY LIFE. Also at 9:00, Expressway Music hosts a karaoke contest for free FELA! tickets, and Jonathan Toubin spins tunes during the always hot dance party. And as always, the evening includes a gallery talk, a hands-on art workshop, and admission to all of the current exhibitions: “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” “James Tissot: ‘The Life of Christ,’” “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets,” “Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video,” “Patricia Cronin: ‘Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found,’” and “From the Village to the Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith.”

NEW YEAR’S DAY MARATHON BENEFIT READING

Patti Smith will be among the many, many participants at the annual Poetry Project New Year's Day marathon (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Poetry Project
St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East Tenth St. at Second Ave.
Friday, January 1, $15-$18, 2:00
212-674-0910
www.poetryproject.org

The Poetry Project will be welcoming in the new year for the thirty-sixth year with a marathon poetry reading with some two hundred artistic figures from various walks of life sharing their pearls of wisdom. Among the many, many participants will be Penny Arcade, Steve Cannon, Mónica de la Torre, Steve Earle, Maggie Estep, John Giorno, Philip Glass, John S. Hall, Lenny Kaye, Judith Malina, Legs McNeil, Taylor Mead, Jonas Mekas, Dael Orlandersmith, Citizen Reno, Elliott Sharp, Patti Smith, and Edwin Torres for this all-day event.

NEW YEAR POETRY

brokenlight

BROKEN LIGHT: ALTERNATIVE NEW YEAR’S DAY SPOKEN WORD AND PERFORMANCE EXTRAVAGANZA
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery between Houston & Bleecker Sts.
Friday, January 1, free, 2:00 pm – 12 midnight
212-614-0505
www.bowerypoetry.com
www.spokenwordextravaganza.org

The Bowery Poetry Club is hosting its sixteenth annual New Year’s Day poetry reading, featuring more than 150 performers, as an alternative to other literary events being held at such nearby venues as the Poetry Project and the Cornelia Street Cafe. Participating readers include Hobo Bob, Steve Cannon, Steve Dalachinsky, Bingo Gazingo, Bob Holman, Eve Packer, Angelo Verga, Bruce Weber, and Zork, some of whom will be at the other readings as well. Although the event is free, attendees are encouraged to bring paperbacks for Books Through Bars, which supplies reading material to prisoners, and canned goods for Urban Pathways, which provides food and other services for the homeless. Of course, these three poetry events don’t really have to be an either/or proposition, as poetry lovers could easily schedule in visits to each one.