Ben Abercrombie features @ Dallas Poetry Slam
What: Ben ABercrombie features @ Dallas Poetry Slam
When: Friday, November 2, 8 pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave
“I’m 21, and I’ve got a dream or two.” Ben Abercrombie
VERB features @ Dallas Poetry Slam
What: Divine Reflections features @ Dallas Poetry Slam
When: Friday, October 19, 8 pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave, Dallas, TX
VERB formerly known as Divine Reflection was born and raised in Chicago, IL. She had been performing and entertaining since the age of 6. She is a motivational speaker, host, event planner, promoter, poet, dancer, actor and CEO of Verb Kulture Entertainment. She has competed and won numerous poetry slams and has obtained the title of Inkwell Poetry Slam Champion, For colored girls poetry slam champ, Lioness on the rise slam champ, and placed in the top 3 of multiple slams. She enjoys community outreach in which she has donated much of her time to make a difference in the lives of others. She currently heads Verb Kulture and is continuously hosting events to encourage networking, artist creativity, and outreach. She enjoys speaking to children and encouraging them to dream big and think big. She is currently working on her 1st cd project entitled “Rhythm, Rhymes and Revolution” hoping that upon completion it will touch the spirits and lives of many. She has performed for and inspired thousands of people and is committed to making a difference in her surrounding community.
Deonte Osayande features @ Dallas Poetry Slam
What: Deonte Osayande features @ Dallas Poetry Slam
When: Friday, September 21, 8 pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Avenue
Deonte Osayande is a young supernova of poetry and potential coming out of Detroit, Mi. Born in Huntsville, Al, he has called Detroit home since the age of three months. He comes from a family of teachers and his parents were both poets and activists during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60’s. At twenty years old he was exposed to creative writing for the first time at an entry level class at the University of Detroit Mercy. Just month’s later he attended his first poetry open mic at the university. Professors would say, though raw at the time, his work showed an ability that was unbelievable for someone who had never really written for most of his life. Now only three years later he has been a successful youth activist, teacher, host, and member of the Detroit National Poetry Slam Team. Within Detroit’s poetry and arts scene he is viewed as a growing beacon of light. Being respected both in the literary world and within the slam/open mic circuit. Deonte has been invited to perform across the Midwest, and within multiple area universities.
Pull My Daisy and Conversations In Vermont: VideoFest
What: Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy and Conversations in Vermont
When: September 29, 12 pm,
Where: DALLAS VIDEO FESTIVAL: Horchow Theater, Dallas Museum of Art
Admission: $6 Individual tickets, Special prices for festival passes, day passes, and other discounted tickets can be found at http://videofest.org/tickets/. FULL SCHEDULE : 9/27-9/30
In conjunction and partnership with the 25th Annual Dallas Video Festival, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts Curator of Film and Video, Marian Luntz, Wordspace is greatly honored to sponsor screenings of Robert Frank‘s films Pull My Daisy, and Conversations in Vermont.
Pull My Daisy is a classic look at the soul of the beat generation, made with writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso Peter Orlovsky and painters Alfred Leslie, Larry Rivers, and Alice Neel. It was written and narrated by Kerouac, based on his unproduced play The Beat Generation. It tells the story of a bishop (Richard Bellamy) and his mother (Alice Neel) who pay a visit to Milo, a railroad worker. At the same time his poet friends, Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso, hang around quizzing the bishop about the meaning of life and its everyday relationship to art and poetry. Pull My Daisy is recognized as one of the most important works of avant-garde cinema.
Conversations in Vermont is about Robert Frank’s relationship with his children Pablo and Andrea. Photographed by Ralph Gibson, it is his first overtly autobiographical film. He follows his children to school in Vermont and interviews them about their feelings, their upbringing and what it was like to grow up in a bohemian world with artists as parents. In searching for answers about his children’s lives, Frank is questioning his own world.
Glorious Luminaries: Jerry Kelley and William Blake
What: Salon on Blake, presented by Jerry Kelley
When: Thursday, November 29, 7 pm
Where: WordSpace, 415 North Tyler St.
Admission: Members FREE Non-Members $10
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.
Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work.
Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Bohme and Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake’s work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar, William Rossetti, characterised Blake as a “glorious luminary,” and as “a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors”.
Jeremiah Kelley is an original member of WordSpace Board of Directors, published writer, and world traveler. From Harvard in the 60s to the Canadian Bush in the 70s, he now lives in Dallas with his wife, poet Patty Turner. His work has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Southwest Review. Jerry presented Blake as a multi-media performance at the WordSpace’s Texas Unbound Festival.
Around the World in 80 Minutes: a Live International Webcam Reading Event
FEATURING:
Munich-Dean Pasch, London-Abol Froushan and Alexandra Ryan, Manilla-Edwin Cordevilla, Monterrey- Adru Lemon & Roy Pizano, Seoul-Tae-Joo Na, New Delhi-Saksham Khosla, Beijing-Anna Simone M, and from the US of A: excerpts from Dial a Poet Television and North Texas selections from Between Covers: An Exhibition for Smart Phones.
When: Saturday, July 28, 11 am
Where: WordSpace 415 North Tyler St.
Admission: Free to Members, $5 Non Members
More Info: 214-838-3554, wordspace@wordspace.us
Produced and Hosted by: Karen X, Jessica Tolbert, Cliff Martinez, and Charles Dee Mitchell
[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157630791010642″]
Dean Pasch is a poet and artist – born in England. He has lived in Munich, Germany since 1990. 10 years in London included a 4 years Bachelor of Arts studies in Fine Art – focusing on film and video making.In the last 30 years – his life has revolved around paying the bills – and at the same time pursuing life as art, in whatever ways are possible, writing, drawing, creating palimpsests and making films. He is passionate about the arts and culture – and while confessing a love hate relationship with words – due to a real love and obsession with silence – he accepts the likelihood of spending the rest of his artistic life writing. When asked which of his mediums of expression – writing or visual non-word picture creation – he felt closest to … the answer was immediate and clear: the latter. In that space he is free of words and enjoys that. His poetry has featured in Mannequin Envy, Niederngasse, Tiferet and Quill & Parchment.
Abol Froushan is a Persian poet, translator and critic, currently living and working in London. He studied at the Imperial College of London, and is currently the Iran Editor of Poetry International Web, and chair of Exiled Writers Ink, UK. Abol Froushan writes poetry of phenomenal presence and fresh vision, recording the sudden and re-examining archetypes and universals in microscopic detail. Two selections of Abol’s poetry have been published: “A Language Against Language” (English) 2008 by EWI and the bilingual volume, “I need your desert for my sneeze” (in Persian & English) in 2009 by PoetryPub. He has recently published his English translations of Ali Abdolrezaei: “No one says yes twice”, (2012) by London Skool, in addition to two other volumes of his English translations of Ali Abdolrezaei: “In Riskdom where I lived” (2008) by EWI and “Sixology” (April 2010) by PoetryPub. Other published translations of Abol include Parham Shahrjerdi’s “Risk of Poetry”, by Poetry Pub. Abol has been published in the anthology Silver Throat of the Moon Ed. J Langer and the Exiled Ink magazine, Turbulence Issue 6 and Sententia Issue 2, as well as Poetry International Web, www.photoinsight.org.uk and www.poetrymag.info (see Bibliography). Here’s a link to the latest book on Amazon.
Alexandra Ryan: It is quite possible Alexandra Ryan is half girl, half blade of grass. But really, Alexandra is just a girl. With a pen. She writes her poems with a cold feet and a cold hands and a hot head, with her mind in the gutter of backyards and sidewalks that wither and whence anywhere but here. She is trying to return to grassroots writings, that come out in outcome covered in a muddy immediate.
She was born in Oxford, and grew up inhaling America through the back seat of a
car window. She was fed on a diet of chocolate milk, corndogs and abstract
expressionism until fat with nostalgia and dada. Alexandra now exists. Truly,
madly, deeply. She exists. For her next life, Alexandra would like to come back
a sweet potato. She enjoys music, colors and squirty cream.
Edwin Cordevilla is a poet based in the Philipines. His works include “Phoenix and Other Poems”, “The Occasions of Air Fire Water Earth” and “Ten Thousand Lines Project for World Peace”. Cordevilla is also a public relations professional, an award winning journalist. He describes his poetry as a communion with the universal soul and the common man. “Poetry appreciation is a blessing from the heavens above that should not be confined to the elite, but should be relished by, as much as possible, by everyone”.
Andru Lemon & Roy Pizanoare a hot mess of Beat devotees living in Monterrey. Andru Lemon was born in Dallas, Texas, where one day in the Half Price Books bargain bin, he found a manuscript of Ginsberg’s Howl, changing his life forever. A course at Richland College on the Beats brought him into contact with the Dallas Poetry scene, with whom he ran around for a time before running off to live his own Kerouacian fantasy in the Third World, where he does his best to live a First World lifestyle, making him even more of a Third Worlder.He is currently teaching English, or some semblance of it, to spoiled upper-middle class kids at the Universidad Regiomontana in Monterrey
Roy Pizaña is a young volunteer fireman who is studying to be helicopter pilot and plays authentic Irish folk music. He speaks with a mix of Irish and Mexican accents. He isn´t strictly a poet, but he is a songwriter. He and Andru composed a song together about the San Patricio Battalion, a group of Irish who were conscripted into the US Army to fight in the US-Mexican war, who decided they would rather defend their fellow Catholics and defected to the Mexican side. Roy himself is a breathing poem.
Tae-Joo Na is a nationally renowned poet of South Korea with 32 poetry books, several Zen poetry books, 10 prose books, and 1 children’s book.He has been a prolific writer, receiving many prestigious awards such as The Literature of Earth Award (given by the President of Korea), Chungnam Cultural Award, Contemporary Buddhism Literature Award, Park Yong-Rae Literature Award, Poetry and Poetics Award, Pyun Woon Literature Award, The Association of Korean Poets Award. Besides gaining recognition from the literary scene, he also has a broad range of public fans who frequently quote his poetry in many settings. His most recent book is “Rapture” (2012). One dominant thread of his poetry is nature and humanism, and it has evolved into three stages, changing the focus from individual love to social love and recently to spirituality. According to critics, his poetry is “naturalist poetry that showcases the beauty of Korean language rhythmically” and he is “a poet who discovers the clues to enlightenment from small things.” Besides being a busy poet, he was a dedicated educator for 43 years, retiring as principal of a public school. Currently he is the Director of Kongju Cultural Center. The four things he is proud of in his life are being a poet, living as a country man, having worked as an elementary school teacher, and using public transportation without a car. He calls himself as “car-less beggar”. His work will be translated onsite by Young Eui Choi, professor at Richland College where she has taught Composition, Literature, and ESOL.
Saksham Khosla is a writer and student at Oberlin College. His writing is witty and informed by his studies in economics and history. He lives in New Delhi.
Anna Simone M is a writer at the Red Gate Artists in Residency Colony in Beijing. A multi-disciplinary artist, she graduated from the College of Santa Fe with a Self-Designed major and co-created the highly acclaimed IPI (Interactive/PerformanceArt/Installation) Festivals, and collectively installed Meow Woof Arts Collective, in Santa. She lives in Brooklyn, teaches photography at the International Center of Photography, has shown in numerous galleries, read in numerous venues and is a regular contributor to The End of Being.
WordSpace was among the first to use webcam technology to present artists skyped in from around the world for public large screen view. Skype readings by individual writers has been a regular feature of WordSpace programming since 2009. Last Fall, Charles Dee Mitchell created an experimental project at the MAC, entitled Between Covers: An Exhibition for Smart Phones, archiving north Texas writers videotaped readings, wall mounted them in large QR code that, when accessed with a smart phone app, linked the viewer to a website that played the readings over the phone.
Karen X’s Dial a Poet Television project, sponsored in the mid-80s-through the early 90s, by Paris Records, was part of a weekly Arts Live night curated and executive produced by James Chefchis at Dallas Cable Access TV. featuring live broadcast experimental television shows. Producers of the regular time slots included Bart Weiss, Susan Teegarden, Paul Quigg, Dave Dennard and others. On Dial a Poet Television, writers phoned in across the country and around the world, reading live to ambient video artists, curated and art directed by Dave Hynds from his his and Susie Riddle‘s collection as video programmers for the Starck Club. Among those who participated were Gregory Corso, Ira Cohen, Andrei Voznesensky, William Burroughs, Jim Carroll, Allen Ginsberg, Andrei Codrescu, Jello Biafra, Robert Creeley, and hundreds of other well known and emerging artists around the U.S., the world, and Dallas. The St. Mark’s Poetry Project, directed by Richard Hell, were regular contributors.
Jessica Tolbert is a creative writing student at Oberlin College and WordSpace Intern Program Coordinator, 2012.
Charles Dee Mitchell is immediate past president of WordSpace and co-chair, Programs
Karen X Minzer is director of WordSpace and co-chair, Programs
Cliff Martinez is a cyber sultan.
Videotaped by Steve Paul Productions
Kevin Curran: “Killer Shakespeare”
What: Kevin Curran:”Killer Shakespeare”
When: November 1, Thursday, 7 pm
Where: RSVP, 214-838-3554
Admission: FREE to Members, $10 Non-Members
On television and in video games, we seem to approach murder recreationally. At the same time, it’s a topic of first-order ethical importance for us and connects to our most fundamental beliefs about the value and nature of life.
Killing, in Shakespeare, helps us map out interesting aspects of Shakespeare’s world (both intellectual and theatrical), and also offers us compelling ways to explore our own. At what point and under what conditions does the taking of life becomes “murder”? Where do we draw the line between murder, revenge, political assassination, and the
events of war?
A few key scenes will be posted online and available at the Salon.
Dr. Curran specializes in Renaissance literature and theater with particular interests in Shakespeare, law, philosophy and critical theory, performance, and the culture of the court. His first book, “Marriage, Performance, and Politics at the Jacobean Court” (Ashgate, 2009), looks at how political, religious, and sexual understandings of “union” came to bear on the formation of a uniquely Jacobean political imagination. Curran is also preparing an edition of Samuel Daniel’s play, “The Tragedy of Philotas”, which will be published by Manchester University Press as part of the “Revels Plays” series. He is currently working on a new book called “Law and Selfhood in Shakespeare”, and he recently co-edited a special issue of the journal Criticism on “Shakespeare and Phenomenology”. Curran has received grants and fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the Bibliographical Society of America, and the Harry Ransom Research Center, among others. He is the editor of a new book series called “Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance,” published by Edinburgh University Press. At UNT, he is founder and convener of the Medieval and Renaissance Colloquium. In 2012, Dr. Curran won the Kesterson Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching and the Professor of the Year Award from the Graduate Students of English Association.
Story Time with Suzie every week
Children’s Story Time every week @ Lucky Dog Books with Suzie Riddle:
Story Times:
10:30 Tuesdays 10801 Garland Rd.
10:30 Saturdays at 633 W. Davis
All Children must be accompanied by parent or designated caregiver.
For more information: 214-827-4860 (Lochwood) or 214-941-2665 (Oak Cliff)
Roger Reeves and Caroline McCulloch of Greenhill School
What: Roger Reeves with Special Guest, Caroline McCulloch of Greenhill School
When: September 28, Friday, 7 pm
Where: RSVP 214-838-3554 or wordspace@wordspace.us
Admission: Members Free Non Members $10
Roger Reeves poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, American Literary Review, Tin House, and the Indiana Review, among others. Kim Addonizio selected “Kletic of Walt Whitman” for the Best New Poets 2009 anthology. He was awarded a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. He earned his MFA from the University of Texas and his Ph.D.in the English Department at UT. Roger is on the faculty at the UIC as an assistant professor of poetry.
Reeves’s first book *King Me* will be published by Copper Canyon Press in October of 2013
WordSpace is pleased to present selected area student writers in Salon alongside our selected working writers. Poet, former WS board member and Greenhill instructor Farid Matuk has selected Caroline McCulloch to read a short selection of her work.
Wordspace and Deep Ellum Market present Dallas Poetry Slam
Who: Dallas Poetry Slam Featured Performers!
When: Saturday, December 15, 12pm
Where: Stage, Deep Ellum: Indiana and Malcom X
From noon-3, every hour on the hour, poets from the Dallas Poetry Slam pump up the jam Deep Ellum Outdoor Market with a 15 minute performance between music sets.
