MAY 3-4 :: CHAPBOOK FESTIVAL and PRINT! DOCUMENT SERIES 1 READING at MELLOW PAGES
Poetry month has come to a close, but the poetry is still flowing all around us. This weekend will be packed full of amazing events. Exit Strata will be tabling at CUNY’s 5th annual Chapbook Festival. The two day event will have readings, workshops, and a book fair representing 60 organizations and publishers. In addition, Chapfest is putting out their first collaborative chapbook showcasing the work of all the people involved in this year’s festival. They describe the ambition and the process: “this book is meant to be democratic and community-driven, yet tied to the local, the particular. We invited each publisher to fill one page of the chapbook however they wanted. The result is a place where aesthetics and voices collide and echo and create a collective music—not unlike that of the city itself.” Of course, we gladly lent our voice to the chorus and are excited to see the artifact that results from this collaboration.
Here are the details for the bookfair: Friday, May 3rd 12-6:30pm, and Saturday May 4th 12-5pm at the Proshansky Auditorium, C-Level. 365 Fifth Ave between 34th and 35th street. More details available at: chapbookfestival.org
After the bookfair, Exit Strata will be co-hosting a reading showcasing the wildly successful limited edition run of our PRINT! DOCUMENT SERIES of Chapbooks, featuring poets Lancelot Runge and John Kropa (TALK ABOUT MAN PROOF), Alexis Quinlan (an admission as a warning against the value of our conclusions), Tony Hoffman (The Sword of Things), and Bill Considine (Strange Coherence). The chapbooks feature original woodblock cover art from Kevin William Reed, and will be available at the event. The reading will run from 7 to 9 at the amazing Mellow Pages Library (56 Bogart St. 1S in Brooklyn).
Here is a little about each of the readers:
Lancelot Runge is a young lion. The type of overwhelming young poetic mind that leaves you slightly breathless, who tells you in the same sentence that he hand designed and published a dozen or more chapbooks in the past few years and that he’s simply not doing enough. He graduated last year from the writing program at Pratt, and is already making his way around the circuit, as others stand up and take notice of his unique style and energy.
John Kropa has collaborated with Lancelot on many powerful pieces. He has an engaging, open-ended relationship with poetry that shows through his work. Check out his recent piece on Clark Coolidge from this year’s 30/30/30.
Alexis Quinlan has been tearing up poetry month, even getting a shout-out from NaPoWriMo. Definitely, spend a little while getting lost in her wonderful world of words.
Tony Hoffman lives in Queens and is a longtime denizen of Poetry Project workshops. He is the author of two self-published chapbooks, Heliopolis and Dilapidated Epiphany.
William (Bill) Considine is a poet and a playwright who has been active on the New York City poetry circuit since the 1970′s — a long history which consistently has included interdisciplinary exploration, performance, and multimedia collaborations. Recently, he has been deeply engaged in the Poetry Project workshop community, out of which a number of recent video and sound collaboration projects have grown — you can listen to Gowanus, a collaboration with Cosmo D, produced and Mixed by Ambrose Bye, (and featured on the CD, New Festivals of Rhizomes and Wraiths) on the Exit Strata site.
There are so many important conversations to be had this weekend. We hope you can come share in these community events.
