This is the first paid advertisement for Free Space Comix: The Blog. Of course, I’m not being paid for it; Matthew will just owe me. Virtual capital!

CREDIT by Mathew Timmons
Just Released from Blanc Press in Los Angeles!

CREDIT by Mathew Timmons
Hardcover, 800 pages, full color
Blanc Press, September 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-9814623-4-9
Dimensions: 11 × 8.5 × 1.75 inches
Price (w/o shipping): $199.99
Download price: $299.99

BUY CREDIT!

CREDIT is an 800 page, large format, full color, hardbound book, available for $199.99 from Blanc Press in Los Angeles–the longest, most expensive book publishable through the online service, lulu.com. Divided into two sections, Part A: Credit–26 parts (a-z) and Part 2: Debit–10 parts (1-10), CREDIT is a highly revealing and emotional work chronicling a personal tale of credit.

In late spring 2007 as an irrational exuberance and promise of financial fortune hung in the air, mailboxes were filled with generous and gracefully worded offers of credit. Just over two years later, in midsummer 2009, the shape of the financial environment changed radically and mailboxes still filled up with statements of credit. Something had to change, offer turned to obligation.

Retailing for $199.99, CREDIT is a book the author himself lacks the cash or credit to buy.

BUY CREDIT!

Mathew Timmons’ CREDIT has been roundly praised by a number of artists, writers, editors and critics, including:
Harold Abramowitz, Stan Apps, Marcus Civin, Brian Joseph Davis, Ryan Daley, Craig Dworkin, Brad Fliss, Lawrence Giffin, James Hoff, Maximus Kim, Matthew Klane, Janne Larsen, Matthias Merkel Hess, William Moor, Joseph Mosconi, Holly Myers, Sawako Nakayasu, Sianne Ngai, Ariel Pink, Vanessa Place, Dan Richert, Ronald Quinn Rudlong Jr., Ara Shirinyan, Danny Snelson, Erika Staiti, Brian Kim Stefans, Robert Summers, Rodrigo Toscano, Matias Viegener and Steven Zultanski.

Read Advance Praise for Mathew Timmons’ CREDIT.

View Images from Mathew Timmons’ CREDIT.

BUY CREDIT!

Read Advance Praise for Mathew Timmons’ CREDIT:
Let’s face it, only those who see the invisible can do the impossible. However, miraculously, and right on cue, just short of a decade into the 21st century, Mathew Timmons has given us a momentous, lucid, and gripping book that makes visible what used to be, exclusively, invisible, the wide terrain of credit. Buy “ CREDIT,” tell your friends to buy it, and take its lessons to heart: Credit is expensive!… Credit is not cheap… Credit is hard, not easy, to get…
—Harold Abramowitz

If you want to pay a penny for a thought Mathew Timmons has 19,999 of them, but like Master Card suggests, Timmons keeps it simple. CREDIT is a work ripped from both the headlines and the mailbox.
—Brian Joseph Davis

I will send a very special, one-of-a-kind, only-available-via-purchase-and-full-completion and proof-of-reading-of-this-book, to all who purchase and read this book. Offer not valid in Kentucky.
—Sawako Nakayasu

CREDIT by Mathew Timmons captures the entire postmodern economy under one cover. Like an avalanche of fine print, CREDIT reveals absolutely everything required to be disclosed by law. Timmons aestheticizes the angst of indebtedness into a colorful durational novel, complete with a lifetime supply of rate, fee, and grace period information, plus all the “__ _ !lI” •••••••• •••••••• & •• ‘.”~.’lf ’ CIa … “ of modern life. This is a book “that do_es lL all for you” and best of all “_.s:ard ~ith _no annu~lJee.”
—Stan Apps

Mathew Timmons’ CREDIT: Approved.
—Sianne Ngai

The output is a sprawling, modular form-letter with all the personal/financial affirmation cut down through razorbladed erasure-transcoding. CREDIT’s procedure traces an unfollowable map from the macrodistortion of mass-market advertising onslaught to a subjective microdistortion of noise stream granulation and reassembly. CREDIT is problematic in terms of numbers, transaction, hardware and software. The text’s operation is ravenously lossy, feeding on filtering byproducts and mistranslation; emphasis on information loss/breakage makes the text self-genotoxic and it sprouts mutant poetry from attractive shapes and corners. The text can be rotated. CREDIT is unreadable and CREDIT is a vibrant autobiography and CREDIT is a rainbow dream.
—Dan Richert

What kind of Art would Human this kind of Receipt?
What kind of Receipt would Art this kind of Human?
What kind of Human would Receipt this kind of Art?
What kind of Art would Receipt this kind of Human?
What kind of Receipt would Human this kind of Art?
Fuckers.
—Rodrigo Toscano

Quite possibly the oldest system of exchange, credit is almost inseparable from wealth. Credit is the laxative to the stubborn bulk of capital. Similarly, how easy can form be separated from content? Or is content itself a kind of para-form? Paraformaldehyde, even? Disinfectant indicating content’s historicity in its obliteration? Content is form not yet recognized as such. Content is form on credit. And it is to Timmons’ credit that he seems to be particularly susceptible to this confusion, bombarded as he seems to be with offers. And though credit and wealth may be interchangeable to the point of identity, still Timmons is all the more duped for believing so.
—Lawrence Giffin

Not since “The Tzanck Check” has a work so conscioned the infra-thin of capitalism—a tour de fort-da.
—Vanessa Place

This work could have easily been called “Labor”—like “Credit,” one of the least understood, least visible of our foundational abstractions. (“Milk” might be the other.) Mathew Timmons has managed to squeeze a Dummy’s Guide of both into a mere 800 pages. Sure, this is art in the age of digital reproduction, but you’re not getting anywhere near this thing.
—Brian Kim Stefans

It seems only natural that with this book I re-appropriate a blurb about another book (Fiona Banner’s The Nam):
“It has been described as unreadable.”
—James Hoff

Congratulations! You’ve been preselected to apply for a copy of the new book by Mathew Timmons at a low introductory rate of just 199.99 and no annual fee ever. Documenting the social and economic space defined by the writing that falls between bulk mailing and fine print (full color and some of it very fine indeed), CREDIT appropriates direct mail credit card solicitations and advertisements in order to explore the nature of disclosure in a series of plays between display and censorship, see-thru windows and security envelopes, financial promise and legal threat—or simply, in Guy Debord’s terms, between monologue and true communication.
Testing the limits of publishing—CREDIT is the largest and most expensive book publishable via Lulu—Timmons’ book is well beyond most readers’ means. But remember, you could always charge it and hope to juggle some good balance transfers down the road…. Respond Immediately and Request Your Copy Today.
—Craig Dworkin

Rarely has the mind-numbing banality of consumer capitalism’s fine-print underbelly been employed to such elegant effect. Mathew Timmons’ CREDIT is a timely epic in this crumbling age of debt.
—Holly Myers

You know Timmons is just saying what Patti Smith said thirty years ago, although he’s saying it even more: “And when we dream it, when we dream it, when we dream it, / Lets dream it, we’ll dream it for free, free money, / Free money, free money, free money, / Free money, free money, free money, / Free money, free money, free money, / Free money, free money, free money, / Free money, free money, free money, / Free money, free money, free money, / Free money, free money, free money, / Free money, free money, free money, free.”
—Matias Viegener

I’ll be in Minneapolis for the next three days. I’m doing a reading and presentation at the Walker Art Center with Oni Buchanan on Thursday:

http://calendar.walkerart.org/event.wac?id=5328&hp=link&poster=Lectures

Thursday, November 12, 2009
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: Cinema
Free tickets available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby

Like everything else in our world, poetry has gone digital, yielding fresh approaches and new insights (and even some controversy) to an ancient art form. Buchanan and Stefans present their latest hypermedia works on screen and in person, and take questions about the past, present, and future of digital poetry. Buchanan is the author of two poetry volumes, What Animal and Spring, and a conservatory-trained concert pianist who performs frequently around the country. Stefans founded arras.net, a website devoted to new media poetry and poetics, in 1998; he also teaches at UCLA and has written numerous books of poetry and essays.

This just in from the PRB…

We know it’s hard sometimes to get across the city in the evening, but if you are at all interested in the intersection of poetry and documentary, or literature and political practice, you shouldn’t miss a rare visit from Mark Nowak.

Mark is the founding editor of the journal XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, and will be reading from his new book, a transnational photo-documentary collaboration with UK/Chinese photojournalist Ian Teh. He’ll also be showing some video of his workshops with Ford autoworkers at plants in the US and South Africa.

***

The Poetic Research Bureau presents….

Mark Nowak

Thursday, November 5, 2009 @ 8:00pm

Doors open at 8:00pm
Reading starts at 8:30pm

$5 donation requested

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3706 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206

Mark Nowak is a poet, social critic, labor activist, and author of, among others, Coal Mountain Elementary and Shut Up Shut Down, a New York Times “Editor’s Choice.” His work has also been included in Goth: Undead Subculture and American Poets in the 21st Century: the New Poetics. Nowak is “regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature,” encouraging students to engage in all forms of poetry and expression, not just those found in mainstream literature and art. He is also the editor of the journal, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics.

I highly recommend this… and if you’re in Vancouver or Seattle, go to the launches later this month!

Announcing AREA SNEAKS #2

Benevolent area-sneaks get lost in the kitchens and are found to impede the circulation of the knife-cleaning machine.
– Charles Dickens

Area Sneaks is a Los Angeles-based journal edited by Joseph Mosconi & Rita Gonzalez that seeks to encourage dialogue between the worlds of visual art and poetry.

*interviews with VISUAL ARTISTS*
Edgar Arceneaux interviewed by Noellie Roussel
Analia Saban interviewed by Claire de Dobay Rifelj

*POETRY by*
Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney
Aaron Kunin
Doug Nufer
Franklin Bruno
Demosthenes Agrafiotis
Ara Shirinyan
Harold Abramowitz & Amanda Ackerman
Mathew Timmons
Will Alexander
Richard Kostelanetz

*portfolios of VISUAL ARTISTS*
Jody Zellen
Demosthenes Agrafiotis

*a VISUAL POETRY symposium featuring*
Robert Grenier
Johanna Drucker
Peter Ciccariello
Jessica Smith
William R. Howe
Derek Beaulieu
conducted by K. Lorraine Graham

*ARTIST-POET collaborations*
Kerry Tribe & Nick Moudry
Hillary Mushkin & Jen Hofer

$15
AVAILABLE ON-LINE via Paypal
or
email info@areasneaks.com for other arrangements

**
Upcoming Launch Events

Seattle: Friday, November 6, 7:30pm at Pilot Books, 219 Broadway E, Seattle, WA

Vancouver: Saturday, November 7, 8:00pm at Artspeak, 223 Carrall Street, V6B 2J2 Canada, Vancouver, BC…hosted by the Fillip Review

http://areasneaks.com

Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 4:00pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3706 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206

Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm

$5 donation requested

Kate Greenstreet‘s second book, The Last 4 Things, is new from Ahsahta Press and includes a DVD containing two short films based on the two sections of the book. Ahsahta published Greenstreet’s case sensitive in 2006. She is also the author of three chapbooks, most recently This is why I hurt you (Lame House Press, 2008). Find her poems in current or forthcoming issues of jubilat, VOLT, the Denver Quarterly, Fence, Court Green, and other journals. Visit her online at kickingwind.com.

Aaron Kunin is the author of a book of poems, Folding Ruler Star, and a novel, The Mandarin. Another collection, The Sore Throat and Other Poems, is forthcoming. He will be reading from a new chapbook, Cold Genius. He lives in Los Angeles.

Friday Oct 30, 7pm
@ 5941 Maccall St (@ 60th St)
North Oakland
near Ashby BART
please BYOB
costumes encouraged…

*Area Sneaks* is a Los Angeles-based journal edited by Joseph Mosconi and Rita Gonzalez which seeks to encourage dialogue between the worlds of visual art and poetry.

The Bay Area launch of Area Sneaks 2 will include:

A video presentation by artist Hillary Mushkin
A screening of Marie Jager’s short film *The Purple Cloud*
Readings by Therese Bachand, Mathew Timmons & Ara Shirinyan
Poetry by Demosthenes Agrafiotis read (and translated) by John Sakkis

…and possibly even more surprises!

The second issue features interviews with artists Edgar Arceneaux and Analia Saban; portfolios by artists Jody Zellen and Demosthenes Agrafiotis; a forum on Visual Poetry conducted by K. Lorraine Graham that includes contributions by Robert Grenier, Johanna Drucker, Peter Ciccariello, Jessica Smith, William R. Howe and Derek Beaulieu; poetry by Aaron Kunin, Elissa Gabbert, Kathleen Rooney, Will Alexander, Richard Kostelanetz, Ara Shirinyan, Mathew Timmons, Doug Nufer, Franklin Bruno, Harold Abramowitz and Amanda Ackerman; and artist-poet collaborations between Jen Hofer & Hillary Mushkin as well as Nick Moudry & Kerry Tribe.

http://www.areasneaks.com

I just bought my ticket to this… yes, it means I’ll be missing the PRB reading, which I was looking forward to, but this is a rare appearance in LA of the filmmaker, and I missed his show at Redcat earlier this week.

Thursday October 15 2009, 7:30PM
KEN JACOBS IN PERSON – New films!
UCLA Film & Television Archive
at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/public/calendar/calendar_f.html

“A stereo-photo of an ocean wave slowly turns and churns. The hidden forces of Cinema conspire with an instant of history to produce actions that never were or could be. 3D for everyone (one eye will do).”—Ken Jacobs

One of the key American media artists of the postwar era, Ken Jacobs (Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son; Star Spangled to Death) has crafted a unique, powerful and ever-evolving body of work over a career that has spanned five decades. Appropriating and reinterpreting existing media artifacts, and subverting conventional modes of presentation, Jacobs has applied his highly original techniques to both formal considerations and social and political topics with equal aplomb.

This program showcases some of Jacobs’ most recent work, much of which creates new forms of three-dimensional depth, and is presented as part of a week-long artist residency in Los Angeles, in cooperation with REDCAT, Los Angeles Filmforum, and CalArts Film/Video.

A SCORCHER IN ITALY (2009, DVcam, Color, silent, 7 min.)

WHAT HAPPENED ON 23RD STREET IN 1901 (2009, DVcam, silent, B/W, 14 min.)

JONAS MEKAS IN KODACHROME DAYS (2009, DVcam, silent, color, 3 min.)

BOB FLEISCHNER DYING (2009, DVcam, silent, color, 3 min.)

HOT DOGS AT THE MET (2009, DVcam, color, 10 min.)

EXCERPT FROM THE SKY SOCIALIST STRAIFIED (2009, DVcam, silent, color, 18 min.)

GRAVITY IS TOPS (2009, 10 min.)

BRAIN OPERATIONS (2009, DVcam, silent, B/W, 22 min.)

Thursday, October 15th at 8:00pm
C.J. Martin, Julia Drescher & Michelle Detorie

Doors open at 8:00pm
Reading starts at 8:30pm

This reading will be hosted by our special guest, Harold Abramowitz. C.J. and Julia are from the Lone Star State and edit Dos Press. Michelle is from Goleta and edits Hex Presse.

***

Sunday, October 18 at 3:00pm
“Things & Ideas”: Martha Ronk & Andrew Maxwell

Doors open at 3:00pm
Reading starts at 3:30pm

Martha Ronk and Andrew Maxwell play the old modernist saw and tip back that sweet Tennessean jar for a weekend reading on classic ontological themes. Hypostatizers unite as Martha reads from her new collection about things, and Andrew reads from a few new chapbooks about ideas. Ponge would be piqued!

***

C.J. Martin lives in Lockhart, TX, where he co-edits Dos Press with Julia Drescher. He’s also a contributing editor for Little Red Leaves (www.littleredleaves.com) & LRL e-editions. 3 chapbooks: _WIW?3: Hold me tight. Make me happy_ (Delete Press, 2009), _Lo, Bittern_ (Atticus/Finch, 2008) and _CITY_ (Vigilance Society, 2007). Work recent and forthcoming in Antennae, Broke (w/Julia Drescher), try! (w/Julia Drescher), Coconut, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, P-Queue, kadar koli, American Letters & Commentary, The Argotist Online, zafusy, the tiny, & Damn the Caesars.

Julia Drescher‘s poems may be found in Dusie, Broke, Try, The Colorado Review, P-Queue, goodfoot, & the tiny. A chapbook, Book of Hilda’s Hunting, was recently published as part of the Dusie Kollectiv. She co-edits Dos Press (with C.J. Martin) & the online poetry journal Little Red Leaves.

Michelle Detorie lives in Goleta, CA where she edits WOMB and Hex Presse. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Daphnomancy, Bellum Letters, A Coincidence of Wants, and Ode to Industry, the picture-poem series Psychedelic Domestic and Die*o*rama, and the pamphlet How Hate got Hand. She is currently working on a series of synesthetically coded visual poems that investigate the question of women and animals and whether or not they are real.

Martha Ronk is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Vertigo, a National Poetry Series selection published by Coffee House 2008, and In a landscape of having to repeat, a PEN USA best poetry book winner 2005, Omnidawn Press. Her fiction, Glass Grapes and other stories was published by BOA Editions 2008. She is a 2007 NEA recipient and has had residencies at both Djerassi and MacDowell. She teaches both creative writing and Renaissance literature at Occidental College, Los Angeles.

Andrew Maxwell is co-director of the Poetic Research Bureau. He edited the occasional poetry journal The Germ, directed the Poetic Research reading series out of Dawson’s Bookstore in central LA, and was a founding member of the online French-American translation collective Double Change. His aphorisms, poems, essays and translations have appeared in several American and French magazines including Jubilat, Fence, Triple Canopy, The Hat, Area Sneaks, Arsenal and Poésie.

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3706 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206

$5 donation requested

ATTENTION!

THE PRB STOREFRONT HAS MOVED!

Same building, we’ve just moved our operations and bookshelves next door to the Luna Playhouse. Readings still take place in the same theater in which they’ve always taken place.

This just came in…

Join us tonight (Wednesday Oct 7th) at 8pm for Eileen Myles reading the entire text of her essay “Iceland” from her new book (also called Iceland). The performance is expected to last about 90 minutes. Eileen informs us that the audience is not compelled to stay for the whole reading, although you are welcome to if you like. We will have some large green beanbags around if you want to settle in for the duration.

http://machineproject.com/events/2009/10/07/eileen-myles-reading/

A launch party for the new poetry collection by Will Alexander:

The Sri Lankan Loxodrome (New Directions Publishing)

Sunday, October 11, 5:00pm

at Skylight Books

FREE

1818 N. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Tel: (323) 660-1175

Will Alexander is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and visual artist who lives in Los Angeles, the city where he was born in 1948. He was the recipient of a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry in 2001 and a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002. Over the years he has worked several jobs (including the LA Lakers box office), has taught at various institutions, and has been associated with the nonprofit organization Theatre of Hearts/Youth First, working with underserved, at-risk youth.

The Sri Lankan Loxodrome (Paperback)

By Alexander, Will

$14.95

ISBN-13: 9780811218290
Published: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 09/01/2009

[Not to be missed… here’s the invite I got in the email this morning…]

A Thursday night three-fer for those of you who are mid-week and short of breath.

No shallows here. We’re carting the iron lung into the round, and the machine will speak! From the farflung haunts of London, Mexico City and the village by the Bay, it’s positive pressure units all around. Our cabin is your utopeapod.

Sounding it out: Tom Raworth, Kevin Killian & Gabriela Jauregui.

Thursday, September 24 2009 at 8:00pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206

Doors open at 8:00pm
Reading starts at 8:30pm

$5 donation requested

Tom Raworth has been writing to amuse himself for half-a-century: the random threads from this hedonism have led him this year to China and the North Eastern Tibetan plateau, now to L.A., and to Mexico in November. In Italy two years ago he was awarded the Antonio Delfini Prize for “lifetime career achievement” though he is not yet dead. His Collected Poems was published in 2003 by Carcanet, who will publish a book of poems since that collection in 2010. His Collected Prose appeared from SALT this year. He has occasionally taught in the UK , the USA and South Africa; and has read his work in more than 20 countries. His graphic work has been exhibited in Europe, the USA and South Africa, and he has collaborated with musicians, painters and other poets. His children, grandchildren and a few friends keep him awake.

Kevin Killian has written two novels, Shy (1989) and Arctic Summer (1997), a book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows (1990), two books of stories, Little Men (1996) and I Cry Like a Baby (2001) and two books of poetry, Argento Series (2001), and Action Kylie (2008). With Lew Ellingham, Killian has written often on the life and work of the American poet Jack Spicer [1925-65] and with Peter Gizzi has edited My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (2008) for Wesleyan University Press. For the San Francisco Poets Theater Killian has written thirty plays, including Stone Marmalade (1996, with Leslie Scalapino), The American Objectivists (2001, with Brian Kim Stefans), and Often (also 2001, with Barbara Guest). New projects include Screen Tests, an edition of Killian’s film writing, and Impossible Princess, a new fiction collection forthcoming from City Lights Books in November. A new novel Spreadeagle will appear in the spring.

Gabriela Jauregui (b. Mexico City, 1979) is the author of Controlled Decay (Akashic Books/Black Goat Press, 2008). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside and an MA in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine. Her critical, creative and collaborative work has been published in journals and anthologies in the US, Mexico, and Europe, including, most recently in New American Writing, Eje Central, and forthcoming in Mandorla. She is a member of the sur+ publishing collective in Mexico. Gabriela is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at USC and a Soros Fellow. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Mexico City.

Well, this already happened, but for the record, there was a nice poster made for my reading at La Bota, which is the same place where the famous paella party happened in my Facebook photo album (no pics of the reading up yet). Thanks to all who attended!

I hope David doesn’t mind that I’m posting this to my blog. These are nice events in his backyard, and I don’t expect a torrent of interest from my very few blog readers!

***

Please welcome a good friend and fine poet from Ireland, Maurice Scully, who is visiting California for the first time this month.

Maurice Scully and Brian Kim Stefans will read in the back yard of my home in Silver Lake (address below) at 5.00 pm, Sunday, September 20, 2009. Light foods and drinks, alcoholic and not, will be served.

Maurice Scully was born in Dublin in 1952 and spent his childhood between Clare, the Irish-speaking Ring Gaeltacht and Dublin. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, after which he spent some restless decades between Ireland, Italy, Greece and Africa. In a writing career that began in the early ‘70s he has published over a dozen volumes of poetry and taken part in conferences and festivals in the UK & US where his readings are prized as key interpretations of his complex, engaging work. The selection in this volume, made by the poet himself, draws on the extensive ‘Things That Happen’ project (1981—2006), as well as three new books, Several Dances, Humming and Work. A sample of Maurice’s work is at Wild Honey Press: http://www.wildhoneypress.com/BOOKS/livelihood.htm and http://www.wildhoneypress.com/Audio/AUDIOLIST.html

Brian Kim Stefans has published several books of poetry including Free Space Comix (Roof Books, 1998), Gulf (Object Editions, 1998, downloadable at ubu.com) and Angry Penguins (Harry Tankoos, 2000), along with several chapbooks, most recently “What Does It Matter?” (Barque Press). Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics, a collection of essays, poetry and interviews, appeared in 2003 from Atelos. His newest books are What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers (Factory School, 2006), collecting over six years of poetry, and Before Starting Over: Selected Writings and Interviews 1994-2005 (Salt, 2006). He is the editor of the /ubu (”slash ubu”) series of e-books at www.ubu.com/ubu and the creator of arras.net, devoted to new media poetry and poetics, where most of his work, including his own series of Arras e-books, can be found.

3020 Effie Street
Los Angeles
CA 90026

I’m teaching this graduate seminar at UCLA this coming quarter and decided to post the description to my blog since graduate students from other schools in (and outside of, I think) the UC system can take the course if they’d like. I haven’t put together a website yet but the book list is set.

We already have students from a wide variety of backgrounds, and I’m encouraging students to pursue lines of research peculiar to their concentration. We might have guest visits from a few of the artists we will be covering, and I’m hoping the class can form a basis for more cross-departmental collaborations with Design/Media Arts and Information Systems (where Johanna Drucker has recently been hired), as well as with people working in the poetry and arts community at large in Los Angeles (and next, the world… after Berlin, of course).

Drop me an email if you have any questions.

English 257 Poetry in the Age of New Media

“Poetry,” for the purposes of this course, stands for two things: the “poems” themselves, and the social environment of poets, critics, readers, editors, publishers and academics that make up the world of “poetry” today.

Much of the course focuses on the array of new forms and practices that have arisen since the rise of the internet as a cultural force: visual and interactive poetry that utilizes technologies such as Flash and Java; constraint-based poetry that, in the tradition of the French group the Oulipo, executes bizarrely complicated literary forms; “conceptual” poetry that, in the tradition of Duchamp and Warhol, dramatically re-situates language in relationship to “originality” and the author function; poetry in a late-Romantic tradition that seeks to marry lyrical subjectivity with a poetics of process; and an array of poetry forms that work with the content of the internet itself, such as the playful collage poetry of Flarf. Specific artists and writers to be covered include the Canadian poet Christian Bok, the Korean artist collective Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, the conceptual writer Kenneth Goldsmith, the “elliptical” lyricist Susan Wheeler, and the otherwise popular non-fiction science writer William Poundstone.

However, not all of the focus will be on the avant-garde tradition; in fact, much of the “experiment” of poetry in the age of new media has been in the work of critics and publishers who are otherwise not interested in formal poetic experiment. To this end, we will look at online archives – audio, visual, bibliographical – of earlier poetries, poetry blogs that regularly feature criticism (such as “Silliman’s Blog”), the migration of bastions of the poetry world (such as Poetry Chicago) to the web, sites from other countries that have made an impact on American poetry culture (such as Jacket, published out of Sydney), and other evidence of the transformation of how poets are situated in relation to the world at large, and to each other, as a result of digital communications. A side narrative will involve the recent resurgence of the tradition of fine book making by poetry publishers (such as Ugly Duckling Presse) that can be seen as a reaction to digitally-based publishing such as print-on-demand.

This course, while tightly structured thematically in terms of assigned reading, will be quite free-ranging, driven by the students’ interests. Students will be expected, early in the quarter, to decide upon a strand of research they wish to pursue and to create a blog (or other sort of website) on which they will organize their research in the form of links and short blog entries. They will be expected to provide updates to the class periodically. Students can then either decide to write a final term paper or to revise their blog into something that could be “published” as a useful as a resource to researchers in the future.

Two friends of mine from the Philly days dropping in to keep it real. They have a few readings up in SF around this time as well, but I don’t have that info.

Sunday, September 13 2009 at 4:00pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206

Doors open at 4:00pm
Reading starts at 4:30pm

$5 donation requested

CAConrad is the recipient of THE GIL OTT BOOK AWARD for The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009). He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a forthcoming collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Books, 2010). CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He invites you to visit him online at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com and also with his friends at http://PhillySound.blogspot.com.

Frank Sherlock is the author of Over Here (Factory School 2009) and the co-author of Ready-To-Eat Individual (Lavender Ink 2008) with Brett Evans. A collaboration with CAConrad entitled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems is forthcoming from Factory School in January 2010.

I’ve recently redesigned Arras.net, the first redesign in seven years. The site’s no longer pretending to be a portal into the world of electronic literature — several other sites, such as the Electronic Literature Organization, do that much better — though I do hope to create a links page of some sort.

It is now pretty much a portfolio and launching pad for my own work in poetry, digital art, publishing, video, and whatever else I’m working on (poster art, software design, etc). The old site wasn’t very effective in terms of launching and promoting new work, and most people who visited didn’t know what work was mine and what by others (I sort of did that on purpose, hence the Reptillian Neolettrist Graphics moniker).

Still a lot of work to be done on the redesign; mostly just been shoveling stuff in there without editing text, resizing images, putting things in chronological order, etc. I’m particularly proud of the web design gallery, as I haven’t done too much freelance web design but a handful of the more recent sites I think are pretty cool.

BTW, Google has taken me off of their search engine temporarily as one of my other blogs (a very old one) got hacked, and Google started treating it (and hence all of Arras) as some sort of two-bit promoter of free logos, pharmaceuticals, and something else, I can’t remember. Oh yeah, hacked Microsoft software. In any case, I’ve reapplied for admission — Google really does own the web.

[Announcement for a talk I’m giving at a new art gallery right around the block from me called the Eighth Veil, a great new addition to the handful of interesting galleries here in Hollywood/West Hollywood. The name of the gallery actually derives from the name of the go go bar that sits right next to it, Seventh Veil. I don’t know Gregory’s work but his talk sounds really great.]

AN EVENING OF TALKS WITH POET AND SCHOLAR BRIAN KIM STEFANS & ARTIST GREGORY WIEBER

Thursday, July 16th
(One night only)
8PM

EIGHTH VEIL
7174 Sunset Blvd. (@ Formosa)
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Asked by current exhibition curator Jibade-Khalil Huffman, to speak on the subject of writing and/or language in its relation to image (and vice-versa), Kim Stefans and Wieber will address, among other things, the very nature of images and image-making (be it text-based work or otherwise) in our current climate.

Brian Kim Stefans will present, “The Lure of the Scrawl,” a talk about the possibilities of animated handwritten script in digital text art.

Stefans is a poet and digital artist whose recent books include Kluge: A Meditation, and other works (Roof, 2007), What is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers (Factory School, 2006), and Before Starting Over: Essays and Interviews (Salt Publishing, 2007). His digital works such as “The Dreamlife of Letters” and “Star Wars, One Letter at a Time” have been shown in gallery settings worldwide; his most recent project, “Scriptor,” recently opened in Los Angeles. many of these can be found at his website, www.arras.net. He is an Assistant Professor of English at UCLA, specializing in poetry and electronic writing.

Gregory Wieber will present, “Complexity out of Chaos,” a talk about markets, societies, online social networks, and life itself as complex phenomena which often arise out of chaos. How much of what we assume to be random is actually pre-determined? This talk will look at examples of chaos and complexity in a variety of situations.

Wieber is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Los Angeles. An alumni of Bard College, Greg left New York for California in 2004. In addition to his personal artistic endeavors in music, art, and photography, he works in the field of interaction design — most recently for Electronic Arts (EA).

Eighth Veil is a new contemporary art exhibition and publishing house located in Hollywood, California. Eighth Veil provides artists with studio space on the premises in which they can conceptualize printed matter and closely oversee its production. This opportunity is extended to artists exhibiting with Eighth Veil as well as individuals chosen by the gallery, commissioning works on a per project basis. Eighth Veil aims to develop close relationships with artists and provide more visibility to their process, allowing creativity beyond their normal medium and into print.

For more information please contact Nicole Katz: nicole@eighthveil.org or 323 645 6639

For press inquiries please contact Jessica Trent: pr.avantgarde@gmail.com or 310 968 9373

eighthveil.org

Janice invited you to “Mommy, Mommy! (#5): DADDY, DADDY!” on Saturday, July 11 at 7:30pm.

Event: Mommy, Mommy! (#5): DADDY, DADDY!
“Where Have All The Daddies Gone?”
What: Performance
Host: Teresa Carmody, Janice Lee, Anna Joy Springer
Start Time: Saturday, July 11 at 7:30pm
End Time: Saturday, July 11 at 10:30pm
Where: compactspace (www.compactspace.com)

[On the second night of the Ups & Downs thing noted below, I’ll also be doing this…]

BRIAN KIM STEFANS, BRANDON DOWNING & STAN APPS

Saturday, June 6 2009 at 4pm

@ The Poetic Research Bureau
3702 San Fernando Blvd
Glendale, CA 91206

Doors open at 3:00pm
Reading starts at 4pm

$5 donation requested

Wine and snacks served before the reading

Brian Kim Stefans‘ recent books include Kluge: A Meditation, and other works (Roof, 2007), What is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers (Factory School, 2006), and Before Starting Over: Essays and Interviews (Salt Publishing, 2007). His digital works such as “The Dreamlife of Letters” and “Star Wars, One Letter at a Time” have been shown in gallery settings worldwide; many of these can be found at his website, www.arras.net. He is an Assistant Professor of English at UCLA, specializing in poetry and electronic writing.

Brandon Downing is a videomaker, visual artist, and writer originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry collections include The Shirt Weapon (Germ, 2002), and Dark Brandon (Faux, 2005). An online gallery featuring his photographic work can be seen online at http://brandondowning.org. A feature-length DVD collection of recent video works, Dark Brandon // Eternal Classics, was released in 2007, and a monograph of his literary collages, Lake Antiquity, will be published by Fence Books this fall.

Stan Apps writes poems and essays. His books include: God’s Livestock Policy (Les Figues, 2008), Handbook of Poetic Language (eohippus labs, 2008), Grover Fuel (Scantily Clad e-book, 2009) and Info Ration (Make Now, 2007). A chapbook of Sonnets is forthcoming soon from Peachpit Press, and his essays will be collected as The World As Phone Bill (Combo Books) late this year. Stan’s poetry emphasizes direct statement, obviousness, economics, and the phatic nature of the self-explanatory.

The Ups & Downs
Scriptor 1.0 by Brian Kim Stefans
Friday June 5 & Saturday June 6 from 7-10 pm
with a short artist’s talk each night at 8pm
a General Project at workspace

Google Map

The Ups & Downs is an installation series. The show goes up, the show goes down. Opening party on Friday night and closing party the next night, on Saturday. No time for exhibitions. Low impact, ephemeral and immersive art. People with lots of People. The market. It’s a party. Time for the underground. It’s a ball. It’s for The People. This has been made for you. You look familiar? The show must go on. Installed and De-installed. Up. Down. Now what? Now then…

artist’s statement:
The Scriptor series is meant to bring free form doodling into the digital world. For the project, I created my own letterform creation program that, purposefully, lacks many of the elements of professional graphics programs such as Illustrator and Flash that encourage symmetry, cut-and-paste, and the mathematically precise placement of objects that we associate with digital design, not to mention much digital art. These letterforms and doodles are all “by hand,” and “by eye” – they are a version of penmanship for the screen, but one in which each line or stroke of the letterform can be animated algorithmically (something you can’t do with digital fonts). The words themselves are parsed from news articles – interesting phrases are randomly picked out, given randomly generated sizes, placements and trajectories, as well as a “crazy level” (that’s the name of the variable in the program) that determines their legibility. This “crazy level” can grow or shrink – once the “crazy level” reaches a certain pitch, the letter explodes, but in some instances letters can be brought back from the brink of disaster to reach a stable state again.

Scriptor teases the eye into a game of determining when a form is merely a scrawl and/or when it makes that invisible transition into an icon, a “letter” – or, inkblot-test style, into something else. These are not films – nothing you see on the screen will ever happen again (or, for that matter, ever happened).

Watch a version of Scriptor in action.

contact curator Mathew Timmons anathemata@sbcglobal.net for more information about this exhibition.