ArtSpeak: Dennis Gonzalez The Doctrine of Heiromancy & YELLS AT EEL
When: October 24
What: ArtSpeak
Where: 409 A, N. Tyler St, Oak Cliff
FREE!
Wordspace and Mighty Fine Arts present “The Doctrine of Heiromancy-Works on Paper” a one night only pop up show featuring new work by Dennis Gonzalez and a performance by Yells at Eels
Everyman’s Poet: Martha Heimberg on Ted Kooser
When: Thursday, April 14, 7 pm
Salon: Private Residence, RSVP wordspace@wordspace.us
What: Everyman’s Poet: Ted Kooser’s Down-to-Earth Poems, Essays and Surprising Musical Verse
Bonus: Lisa Huffaker performs
Refreshments made possible by Ben E. Keith
Critic and everyday painter Martha Heimberg and poet, mezzo soprano, guitarist and joyful artist Lisa Huffaker lead an evening of reading and exploring the work of poet and essayist Ted Kooser, Nebraska-born Pulitzer Prize Winner (Shadows and Delights) and 2004 US Poet Laureate.
Kooser’s diction, drawn from everyday speech, never makes an allusion that a smart, unbookish reader won’t grasp. Many of his short poems are about perception itself, the signs of human habitation, and the uncertainty of human knowledge.
An insurance executive at Lincoln Benefit Life Company for 30 years, Kooser lives on acreage outside Lincoln, and now teaches classes in “Poetry Repair” at the University of Nebraska. He wakes at 4:30 a.m. and begins to write. When he’s not writing and teaching, he paints. At 76, he has won every American prize in poetry and non-fiction. The poems are short, sweet and wow!
Kooser received a Grammy as a librettist in 2015. Nine poems from his book Winter Morning Walks were set to music by Maria Schneider and sung by Dawn Upshaw. The CD swept the awards in contemporary classical music.
7:00 p.m. Wine and bread
7:30-7:50 p.m. Martha talks about Ted’s Winter Morning Walks
7:50-8:15 p.m. Lisa plays guitar and sings some melodies she made up to match Ted’s poems from Shadows and Delights
8:15 p.m. More singing in the wilderness of old East Dallas until 9:00 p.m.
New Transcendentalism: Martha Heimberg on H is for Hawk
When: Thursday, December 3
Salon: Private Residence, RSVP: wordspace@wordspace
Refreshments made possible by Ben E. Keith and Spiral Diner!
Blood Sport: Helen McDonald’s H is for Hawk
Critic Martha Heimberg places Helen Walker’s H is For Hawk in the feral and vivid tradition of literary nature writing, from Thoreau and Emerson in America’s great Romantic tradition to the Scottish naturalist John Muir’s passionate environmentalism and Barbara Kingsolver’s nature-rich fiction.
H is For Hawk is a brilliant and fierce memoir by Cambridge lecturer, poet and naturalist. It won every major science and essay-writing award in Britain and America in 2014. As the New Yorker critic wrote: “Had there been an award for the best new book that defies every genre, I imagine it would have won that, too.”
When McDonald’s beloved father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer, she’d never before been tempted to train a goshawk, the most belligerent and vicious flying predator of them all. Then she did. She purchased and raised a goshawk, because, in her wild grief, she equated the creature’s feral and fierce temperament to her own.
Part myth, part memoir, part lit-crit and falconry history, the work is innovative, invigorating and “so good it draws blood,” says Dwight Garner in the New York Times.
Is there a falconer in the house?
Tim Seibles @ South Dallas Cultural Center
When: Thursday, March 3, 7:30 pm
What: African Diaspora: New Dialogues
Where: South Dallas Cultural Center
Tim Seibles
Tim Seibles is an Old Dominion University professor, and nationally acclaimed poet. He’s also an 80s Dallas Poetry Scene OG! We’re delighted to welcome Tim back home.
His most recent collection of poems, “Fast Animal,” was a 2012 National Book Critics Award finalist.
Seibles is the author of several collections of poetry, including “Hurdy-Gurdy,” “Hammerlock” and “Buffalo Head Solos.” An associate professor of English and creative writing at ODU, he has been on the university faculty for the past 17 years. Seibles is also a visiting faculty member for the Stonecoast Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine.
A National Endowment for the Arts fellow, Seibles has also been a writing fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His poetry is featured in several anthologies, including: “Rainbow Darkness,” “The Manthology,” “Autumn House Contemporary American Poetry,” “Black Nature,” “Evensong,” “Villanelles” and “Sunken Garden Poetry.” His poem “Allison Wolff” was included in “The Best American Poetry 2010.”
Seibles is a native of Philadelphia. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Southern Methodist University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Vermont College of Fine Arts and honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Misericordia University.
About South Dallas Cultural Center and Vicki Meek: The South Dallas Cultural Center is a community center with a wide variety of programs inspired by the vibrancy and diversity of the African Diaspora. The SDCC seeks to educate and inspire through the visual, media, literary and performing arts. Vickie Meek is the award winning director of SDCC. She is a curator, artist and activist. Her decades of service to promote art and racial equity have profoundly impacted the cultural life of Dallas and development of a whole new generation of African American artists. In 2016, Ms. Meek will retire from her office at SDCC to co-develop The Institute for Creative Research in Puerta Viejo, Costa Rica.
Chris Abani @ South Dallas Cultural Center
Thursday, January 28, 7 pm
African Diaspora: New Dialogues
Chris Abani
Photo: David Shankbone
Chris Abani is an acclaimed novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. Born in Nigeria to an Igbo father and English mother, he grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria, received a BA in English from Imo State University, Nigeria, an MA in English, Gender, and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He is the author of a dozen books and winner of major literary prizes.
About South Dallas Cultural Center and Vicki Meek: The South Dallas Cultural Center is a community center with a wide variety of programs inspired by the vibrancy and diversity of the African Diaspora. The SDCC seeks to educate and inspire through the visual, media, literary and performing arts. Vicki Meek is the award winning director of SDCC. She is a curator, artist and activist. Her decades of service to promote art and racial equity have profoundly impacted the cultural life of Dallas and development of a whole new generation of African American artists. In 2016, Ms. Meek will retire from her office at SDCC to co-develop The Institute for Creative Research in Puerta Viejo, Costa Rica.
Marilyn Clark, Shilyh Warren, Janelle Ellis: African American Women Film Directors
Marilyn Clark, Shilyh Warren and Janelle Ellis team up for a conversation and film clips of African American Women Film Directors. RSVP NOW!
When: November 4, 7 pm
Where: RSVP for address, WordSpace@WordSpace.Us
Refreshments made possible by Spiral Diner and Ben E. Keith!
MARILYN CLARK, is the Education and Outreach Coordinator of the South Dallas Cultural Center with 30 years of A long time South Dallas resident and one of its most outspoken advocates, Ms. Clark brings years of experience to this position as both an activist and educator. From her years with Sesame Street to her time at Cable Access along with her stints as political organizer for Rep. Jim Mattox, Ms. Clark’s experience is invaluable.
SHILYH WARREN (Assistant Professor of Film Studies, UT Dallas) will present the early history of black women’s filmmaking, beginning with Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic films of the late 1920s. Though Hurston is most well known for her literary production, she was also an early pioneer of anthropological filmmaking and the first black woman filmmaker. Black women’s documentary filmmaking would not resurface until the late 1960s with Madeline Anderson’s civil rights films, Integration Report and I Am Somebody. We’ll watch some of these together and discuss the lasting impact of Hurston’s focus on women, spirituality, and the body.
 JANELLE ELLIS teaches English Lit at El Centro College. She and Marilyn Clark have worked for decades in support of women in the arts, co-coordinating and curating numerous festivals and film projects, particularly highlighting the voice and art of African Americans. Currently, they are participating in the Fair Park Film Forum. featuring the work of women in film as a global dialogue. |
BLACK CINEMATEQUE/ FAIR PARK FILM FORUM
Julie Dash and Ava DuVernay with Cheryl Dunye, Tanya Hamilton, Kasi Lemons, Michelle Parkerson, Gina Prince-Blythewood, Dee Rees, and Oprah Winfrey
Friday: all day
Screenings at All Projection Facilities around Fair Park:
National Honorees + Local Filmmakers
Friday night: 7pm
Hall of State Auditorium (downstairs)
Premiere of Julie Dash’s new DOC on Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor “Culinary Griot”: TRAVEL NOTES OF A GEECHEE GIRL
Introduced with Docs by Cinematic Foremothers Zora Neale Hurston and Eloyce King Patrick Gist
Saturday noon: 11am to 1pm
Luncheon (Gullah Cuisine) in Galleries of African-American Museum with TRIBUTE to JULIE DASH: Great Director
Saturday afternoon: 2 to 4pm
Panel Discussion Filmed by C-Span in Auditorium
Moderated by Jacqueline Bobo (Audience by Invitation)
Saturday evening: 5 to 8pm
Gala Reception at Hall of State + seated dinner for Honored Filmmakers with Local Filmmakers
IndieGoGo fundraiser for Black Women Directors
Saturday late night: 9 to 12am
Concert at the Fair Park Band Shell Featuring Erykah Badu
Dawn Lundy Martin
When: Thursday April 21, 7:30 pm
What: African Diaspora: New Dialogues
Where: South Dallas Cultural Center, 3400 S Fitzhugh Ave, Dallas, TX 75210
(214) 939-2787
Refreshments provided by Buttons Jazz Restaurant and Ben E. Keith–Thank You!
DAWN LUNDY MARTIN
Photo by Max Freeman
Dawn Lundy Martin is author of three books of poetry, and three chapbooks. Of her latest collection, Life in a Box is a Pretty Life (Nightboat Books 2015), Fred Moten says, “Imagine Holiday singing a Blind alley, or Brooks pricing hardpack dandelion, and then we’re seized and thrown into the festival of detonation we hope we’ve been waiting for.” Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, Martin is a member of the three-person performance group, The Black Took Collective. She is also a member of the global artist collective, HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, the group that withdrew its work from the 2014 Whitney Biennial to protest the museum’s biased curatorial practices. Martin is currently working on a hybrid memoir, a tiny bit of which appears as the essay, “The Long Road to Angela Davis’s Library,” published in the December 2014 New Yorker magazine.
About South Dallas Cultural Center and Vicki Meek: The South Dallas Cultural Center is a community center with a wide variety of programs inspired by the vibrancy and diversity of the African Diaspora. The SDCC seeks to educate and inspire through the visual, media, literary and performing arts. Vickie Meek is the award winning director of SDCC. She is a curator, artist and activist. Her decades of service to promote art and racial equity have profoundly impacted the cultural life of Dallas and development of a whole new generation of African American artists. In 2016, Ms. Meek will retire from her office at SDCC to co-develop The Institute for Creative Research in Puerta Viejo, Costa Rica.
Karen Finley @ The Kessler Theater
Karen Finley: The Jackie Look
Tickets Now Available
Friday, April 1 @ The Kessler Theater
Karen Finley is an American performance artist who for three decades has enacted the traumas and psychological complexities of our times before worldwide audiences. In her Reality Shows she takes on the personas of such diverse cultural figures as Liza Minnelli, Terry Schiavo, and Laura Bush. In Dallas she will perform The Jackie Look at the Kessler Theater.
ArtSpeak: Savage Impressions: Dirty Printmakers and Art Pirates Mash Up
Where: MFA Gallery, 409 N. Tyler Street in the Art Alley and Parking Lot
John Slate: Confessions and Revelations of a Teen Punk Fanzine Editor
What: Salon with John Slate
When: February 11, 7 pm
Where: Private Residence, RSVP for Location: Wordspace@WordSpace.Us
John Slate presents an entertaining evening of powerpoint, handouts and reconteurship relating to his years in Austin as a teen punk zine editor. John has presented other Salon topics such as “Outlaw Poetics” featuring the work of Bonnie Parker, Candy Barr and others.
John H. Slate is the archivist for the City of Dallas, where he is responsible for historic city government records in the Dallas Municipal Archives. Slate is the author of “Lost Austin,” a recently published book in the “Images of America” series. “Lost Austin” records some of the city’s rich and unique history and most of the images depicted in the book are of seminal Austin places and institutions that no longer exist but that played an important role in shaping Austin’s special character. He is also the author of “Historic Dallas Parks” and “Dealey Plaza.”
