This weekend's poetry & beyond from LPG

[Lisa Gill]

Hello everyone,

Last year Local Poets Guild programmed 110 events with more than 70 different poets and posted over 150 blog entries which had 30,000 hits. This year, again, already, is looking stellar. This week in particular we offer a line of projects very close to my heart: a special edition of OUTspoken May 10th as well as (L)INK: The Write Disability May 11th and 12th. Writers are coming in from Toronto, San Francisco, Washington DC, as well as Santa Fe to help explore issues related to disability culture and experience. From visible disabilities like Cerebral Palsy, amputation, congenital birth defects, to invisible disabilities like MS (which I have), PTSD, dystonia and environmental sensitivities, as well as sight and hearing impairment, we're going to celebrate the way writing can build connections between people and how language is a great tool for developing a greater awareness and understanding of diversity of experiences. 

PLEASE JOIN US FOR ANY OR ALL OF THESE SPECIAL EVENTS... (and come read Saturday afternoon!)

7:00 PM Thursday night May 10th at the Cell Theater (700-First Street Just south of Lomas) $5 suggested donation. All welcome.

A special bonus crossover edition of OUTspoken curated by Erin Northern and Patricia Gillikin will offer the fabulous Queer Poetry slam and open mic plus three extraodinary features David Andrew Talamantes reading fiction, plus works by two poets who are also participating in (L)INK and grapple with disabilities: Kenny Fries and Aaron Ambrose.

7:30 PM Friday Night May 11th  (L)INK The Write Disability kicks off at the Outpost Performance Space (210 Yale SE) $15/10

Beauty is a Verb: Poetry and Prose by Disabled Writers. I'm proud to host this event with Kenny Fries of Toronto who has been lauded by the United Nations, San Francisco poet Denise Leto who is a multimedia artist and senior editor at Berkley, premiere slam poet and organizer of first national queer slam Natalie Illum of DC, plus special guest memoirist Emily Rapp who was the literal "poster child" for March of Dimes when she was six, as well as cameos by deaf philosopher Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Santa Fe poets Mary McGinnis and Aaron Ambrose. (I'll share some of my work too.)

Saturday Morning May 12th at  Tricklock's New Performance Laboratory Downtown (110 Gold SW, enter through the Box's Lobby) Free

A. 9:00-10:15 Writing to heal and writing for joy with Lisa Gill, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, and Mary McGinnis 

B. 10:30-12:00 Performance Strategies, From Slam and Multimedia, the Bar and the United Nations with Denise Leto, Kenny Fries, and Natalie Illum

Saturday Afternoon May 12th at the Main Library Downtown (5th and Copper) Free (street parking or 2 hrs free at garage for library)

A. 2:00-3:30 pm Keynote Speakers Kenny Fries, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke in American Sign Language (with voice interpreter) and Mary McGinnis

B. 4:00-5:45 pm Round Table Discussion with all Link Participants followed by a Community Open Mic hosted by Rich Boucher

PHEW!!!

Then our regular programming resumes May 13th at noon with SUNDAY Readings which is an ongoing poetics reading group that takes place at 100 Silver Ave SW. We read essays outloud and discuss them from 12-2 on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month. RSVP to nearartexperience @ yahoo.com This week we'll look at Gluck, Hugo as well as essays from the book Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability.

East of Edith also continues every Monday night at 7 pm at the Projects (3614 High Street NE) with an open mic and feature. 5/14 we offer a special thanks to prize winning poet and our Spring Program Coordinator Tanaya Winder, 5/21 the fine words of Erin Daughtrey, 5/28 a special La Palabra group feature, 6/4 is zinester extraordinare Marya Errin Jones and 6/11 we get to hear from Sirena Rayes whose precision and wordplay is shattering.

And we'll be coordinating a special "FUZZY SLAM"  (which is something I've wanted to try for over a decade) to help this year's slam team raise money. That will take place May 26th at the Projects and include the opportunity to earn a poetry score by throwing giant fuzzy dice plus you'll get a featured set by the real team and more...

GENERAL NEWS

There's lots of info on the blog and web pages at http://localpoetsguild.wordpress.com As you may know we've been doing some restructuring and brought in co-artistic director Don McIver who has also taken over coordinating Sunday Chatter, formerly Church of Beethoven. We're building a reading room and archive at the Projects (adding more shelves before we can open). We also developed seasonal program coordinator positions who each do four bonus events. Tanaya Winder was our first and coordinated a Triptych, (P)EAR, Verso Quatro, plus taught a workshop for the Indiginous Book Fair. Next up for summer programming is Mitch Rayes and the Fall line-up will be overseen by Damien Flores. Next year's positions are still open. One per year will be offered to a graduate student at the UNM MFA creative writing program. (We're also developing a separate for-credit internship position for Fall.) And I'm looking into a web redesign.

Looking ahead: Sari Krosinsky will be coordinating a special LPG sponsored event for 516 ARTS for the International Symposium of Electronic Art which will include a call for submissions; Yasmeen Najmi is helping to coordinate an event for Globalquerque; the residency may be used by a poet we're trying to bring from the Netherlands who won our E-Poetry Project; Don McIver will be offering some performance classes; and we're in talks with Burque Bioneers again this year. And we're hoping to do another collaboration next year with the Guild Cinema for a Poets and Writers Film Fest.

THANKS

We're blessed once again to have support from the McCune Charitable Foundation for all of our general programming and this year we also received funding from the New Mexico Humanities Council and National Endowment for the Arts to help support (L)INK: The Write Disability. Special thanks also go to Rich Boucher, our tireless webmaster; Aaron Greenwood for much support including a recent fundraising poetry-hike; Tom Guralnick and the Outpost Performance Space; Carol Boss of KUNM (who is also a board member for LPG); Bryan Konefsky of Basement Films; Dodie, Kevin, Elsa and everyone at Tricklock THeater; Dennis Gromelski of Fusion Theater Company and the Cell; Ramona King; Sari Krosinsky; Erin Northern; Mitch Rayes; all our hosts and features and volunteers and collaborators and especially, thanks to our audience members.

Hope to see you around!

Lisa Gill

Founder/Co-Artistic Director

Local Poets Guild

http://localpoetsguild.wordpress.com