I’m excited that Rae Armantrout is coming to LA on May 12th not only to read and talk to my undergraduate class in “American Poetry Since 1945” but also to give a reading and Q & A to all who are interested just minutes after the class. A real trooper!
If you are interested to coming to this and need help negotiating the wilds of UCLA parking or need information about public transportation and how to get to Humanities 193, please let me know!
One of my favorite poets in the Auden tradition, the “Irish” poet Paul Muldoon. I haven’t been up on his work for a long time but I’m sure he’s up to something clever and interesting.
Beckman Institute Auditorium
A writer of dazzling invention and resourceful wit, Paul Muldoon has been called by The Times Literary Supplement “the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War.”
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the European Prize for Poetry, and the Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, he is currently poetry editor of the New Yorker and Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.
This event is free and open to the public.
Beckman Institute Auditorium is located on Michigan Avenue south of Del Mar Boulevard.
I wrote a little “newsletter” for UCLA concerning M/ELT related events and announcements. Thought I’d share it here:
1. Jeremy Schmidt recently won one of Boston Review’s “Discovery Poetry Prizes” for which he will receive a cash prize, publication in the Boston Review and a reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
http://bostonreview.net/blog/daniel-evans-pritchard-2014-discovery-poetry-prize-winners-announced
2. Tara Fickle, Jacquelyn Ardam and myself have essays in the new “Poetry Games” issue of Comparative Literature Review, a UCLA hat trick!
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/comparative_literature_studies/toc/cls.51.1.html
3. As some of you know, Tara Fickle was recently hired by the University of Oregon to teach Asian American Literature and Digital Humanities but even more exciting (to me, because I just discovered it) she has a really nice website! We’ll certainly miss her!
http://ficklet.wordpress.com/
4. I’m honored to have been asked to give the keynote lecture for the UCSB Conference “Composition: Making Meaning through Design.” May 15-16 (my talk is at 1:45 on the 15th). It’s hosted by their History of Books & Material Texts group. My talk is titled “Establishing and Dispelling Ground in Print and Screen Design” and I’m eager to find out what I mean by that. I’ve attached the draft brochure.
http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/meaning-through-design/
5. I’ll also be giving a talk on my research and art at the Digital Humanities Working Group on May 28th at 4pm in the YRL Research Commons. The talk will center around my book project “Comedies of Separation” which outlines a theory of text/algorithm interaction as it relates to literature, politics and philosophy.
http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu/about/news.html
6. In addition to UCLA students Lisa Mendelman and Renee Hudson, M/ELT has two outside scholars coming in to talk about their research, Arne DeBoever of CalArts regarding “Creatures of Panic: On Robert Harris’ The Fear Index,” and Jessica Lewis Luck of CSUSB on “Experimental Sound Poetry and the Catchiness of the Avant-Garde.” Here’s the detailed schedule. Please write to me if you’d like to receive the papers.
http://www.arras.net/wordpress-melt/category/melt-schedule/
7. And as a reminder, M/ELT is sponsoring a reading by poet and Pulitzer-winner Rae Armantrout on May 12th, 4pm, in Humanities 193. The reading will be followed by a Q&A.
http://www.arras.net/fscIII/?p=2407
8. Not to get all me on you again, but for those of you interested in my research (since I’m sure it’s a bit mystifying) a few other essays of mine have been published recently and are available online:
“Against Desire: Excess, Disgust and the Sign in Electronic Literature”
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/disgust
“Conceptual Writing: The L.A. Brand”
http://poeticresearch.tumblr.com/post/75590878009/area-sneaks-sheets-1-2014-download-purchase
9. Other M/ELT-related student publications include Jacquelyn Ardam’s essay “”Too Old for Children and Too Young for Grown-ups”: Gertrude Stein’s To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays” in Modernism/modernity (this was the first essay we workshopped, actually):
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modernism-modernity/summary/v018/18.3.ardam.html
Jay Jin’s “The Physics of Voice in Joyce’s ‘Ithaca’” appeared last year in the Joyce Studies Annual:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/joyce_studies_annual/summary/v2013/2013.jin.html
Tara Fickle’s essay on Amy Tan is forthcoming in MELUS (39.3 Fall 2014). This obviously isn’t online yet but here’s an abstract:
http://ficklet.wordpress.com/publications/
10. And lastly, Jacquelyn Ardam, Sarah Nance, Jay Jin and Jeremy Schmidt will be partaking in a roundtable at this year’s Southland Conference called “Reading Matters” at UCLA on May 29-30. This isn’t a M/ELT panel but I think “melt’ and “material” will appear in the title once they choose one.
http://www.english.ucla.edu/news-a-events-/southland
No real information on the Poetic Research Bureau website (and I’m too busy to collect it myself) but this looks like a great reading and meeting of the coasts (and countries). These three are all old friends of mine so this will be especially fun, kind of a reunion of “post-Language” poets from the 90s.
Jeff Derksen was early associated with the Kootenay School in Vancouver and is now an achieved scholar of globalization (and poetics) up at Simon Fraser with several great books of poems under his belt. Rachel Levitsky is also very accomplished and the editor of the Belladonna publishing series. And of course David Buuck is just a nut who often attacks podiums when performing – most of you in L.A. who regularly attend poetry readings have probably seen him standing on his head.
I’m being flip, more real information later…
I’ve been wanting for years to see a play by Alice Tuan and now she has a world premiere right here in LA!
May 15 – June 8
By Alice Tuan
Directed by Laurel Ollstein
Produced by The Los Angeles Theatre Center
In a play that could only be set in L.A., with a plot that feels ripped out of recent Hollywood headlines, Kim and Mark meet as the result of an ill-fated collision on the freeway (of course). A string of sex, excess, love triangles and Zankou Chicken soon follows in Alice Tuan’s Hit. It’s a psychosexual romp, originally commissioned by the Public Theater, from the CalArts educator and playwright behind Ajax (por nobody), Last of the Suns and Coastline.
Previews May 15, 16 | Opens May 17
Thursday – Saturday 8pm | Sunday 3pm
General Admission | $40
Students, Seniors, Veterans, Groups 10+ | $20
$10 Thursdays (Limited number available)
Previews | $20
LATC Members | $20
This promises to be really exciting, the entirety of Susan Simpson’s “Concrete Folk Variations” trilogy done at one go!
When a prominent society maven and philanthropist who secretly slums at lesbian dives is murdered, L.A.P.D. beat cop, Loretta Salt, turns reluctant investigator and steps into an infested swamp of corruption, brutality and subterfuge.
A soulful, gripping noir, Concrete Folk Variations is told through Simpson’s intricately crafted puppets, projections and a minimalist mid-century Los Angles cityscape. This cultural excavation of the moment just before the rise of the modern gay movement unearths secret codes, clandestine homosexual societies, flamboyant transgressions and soul crushing silence. Concrete Folk Variations is a hypnotic tale of the formidable times.
Performed by
Dan Rae Wilson, Moira MacDonald, Zachary Schwartz, Jonathon Williams
Voices by
Hilario Saavedra, Mark Simon, Kendra Ware, Anne Yatco
Live Musical Score: Eric Potter
Video Design: Dustin Neiderman
MAY 2-11
8pm Thursday-Sunday, 3pm Saturday and Sunday
Tickets:
$18 General Admission
$15 Members/Students/Seniors
Seating is Limited; Advance Reservations Suggested.
PURCHASE TICKETS
*** For those familiar with Concrete Folk from past iterations you might like to know that this performance will contain all three episodes collected into one evening.****
Read reviews and see pictures from from past Concrete Folk Productions
HERE
A Fusion of Senses: Poetry, Music, Dance and Visual Arts in Paris (1880-1914)
Co-presented with the UCLA Department of French and Francophone Studies and the UCLA Department of Music
Organized by Sonnets & Sonatas, a UCLA series of lectures, this evening of readings, screenings, and musical performances is meant to evoke a period of time when artists, musicians, and poets were merging different art forms. This program includes the works of Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Satie, and Boulanger; popular waltzes by Chaminade or Jaëll; and songs of Paris cabarets of the Belle Époque. Lecture by Laure Murat, professor in the UCLA Department of French and Francophone Studies. Musical direction by Guillaume Sutre, professor of violin and head of chamber music in the UCLA Department of Music.
In conjunction with Tea and Morphine: Women in Paris, 1880 to 1914.
Public Programs are free. Tickets for assigned seating in the Billy Wilder Theater are required and available at the Box Office one hour before each program. Early arrival is recommended. Tickets are available one per person on a first come, first served basis.
As a benefit for their support, members enjoy priority ticketing and seat selection, subject to availability.
Parking is available under the museum for a flat fee of $3 after 6PM.
Event Detail – Hammer Museum.
In celebration of the exhibition Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible (March 30–June 29, 2014), Meredith Monk, named the 2012 Composer of the Year by Musical America, presents a special duo concert. She is joined by vocalist Kate Geissinger in a program that covers 40+ years of music from Monk’s award-winning career. Monk’s groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, and as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies, and memories for which there are no words.
Presented as part of Art & Music, first-place winner of the ASCAP and Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. Check out the full schedule of upcoming concerts.
LACMA, Bing Theater
LACMA member & seniors 62+: $18 | Students with ID: $5 | General guest: $25
Tickets: 323 857-6010 or purchase online
Schindler House
835 N Kings Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069
April 9, 2014
6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Artist walkthrough: 6:30 pm
Opening reception: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Exhibition runs April 10 – June 1, 2014
Andrea Fraser’s work engages the institution of art and art institutions. Vanessa Place’s work interrogates notions of criminality and poetry. Language and sound figure into both of their practices as key investigative tools. Working from the disciplines of art and writing respectively, both employ existing tracts of text and reposition them in the context of art and performance. This exhibition presents new work by each artist in two sound installations in the Schindler House.
For AV, Fraser will attempt to activate some of the structural relations between museums and prisons as the bookend institutions of polarized neoliberal social space. Place debuts her installation, Last Words, about which she writes: “Death is a sentence. Silently handed to each of us, spoken aloud to others.” Both works prompt the viewer—or in this case, the listener—to ask questions about the notions of absence, presence, power, individuality, freedom, and subjectification. Curated by Kimberli Meyer.
Andrea Fraser
Major projects by Andrea Fraser include installations, performances, and surveys for an array of international museums, including the Kunstverein Munich; the Venice Biennale (Austrian Pavilion); the Whitney Biennial; the Generali Foundation, Vienna; the Kunsthalle Bern; the Bienal de São Paulo; Tate Modern; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia; the Kunstverein Hamburg; the Carpenter Center, Harvard University; and the Ludwig Museum, Cologne. Her books include Andrea Fraser: Works 1984-2003, Dumont, 2003; Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, MIT Press, 2005; and Texts, Scripts, Transcripts, Museum Ludwig, 2013. Fraser is a professor of New Genres at University of California, Los Angeles.
Vanessa Place
The Boston Review called Vanessa Place “the spokesperson for the new cynical avant-garde,” the Huffington Post characterized her work as “ethically odious,” while philosopher and critic Avital Ronell said she is “a leading voice in contemporary thought.” Vanessa Place was the first poet to perform as part of the Whitney Biennial; a content advisory was posted. Place also works as a critic and criminal defense attorney, and CEO of VanessaPlace Inc, the world’s first poetry corporation.
Photograph by Sandra Peters
I know Anne LaBaron’s work primarily through her collaborations with poets Douglas Kearney and Charles Bernstein. This looks like a great set of shows and nice way to catch up on her work.
“Always changing, and always captivating.”
—Los Angeles Times“She inhabits her massive instrument as if it were a continent.”
—The New York City Jazz Record
Widely recognized as one of the most intriguing talents in American postmodern composition, Anne LeBaron has used her music to explore a range of fanciful subjects and stories—from the mysterious Singing Dune of Kazakhstan to figures such as the apocryphal cross-dressing Pope Joan and Voodoo queen Marie Laveau. Surveying four decades of adventurous musicmaking—honored with the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, as well as Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, among other prizes—two different programs feature selections from LeBaron’s operas, concert theater pieces, and instrumental compositions augmented by electronics and video. Also in the mix: a sneak preview of the composer’s seventh opera, Psyche & Delia, which probes the cultural resonances of LSD; and compositions by LeBaron’s former students. Guest artists include soprano Lucy Shelton, flutist Camilla Hoitenga, shakuhachi player Ralph Samuelson, and the Formalist Quartet.
On April 12, compositions by Anne LeBaron include Creación de las Aves; a selection from Silent Steppe Cantata; Way of Light; Doggone Catact; and Breathtails, with additional compositions by Daniel Corral and James Klopfleisch. Special guests: Richard Valitutto, Timur Bekbosunov, Daniel Rosenboom, Ralph Samuelson, and the Formalist Quartet.
On April 13, LeBaron compositions will be The Good Man (from her opera, Crescent City); Transfiguration; Sachamama; and Julie’s Garden of Earthly Delights, with additional works by Andrew Tholl, James Klopfleisch, Andrew McIntosh, Chris Schunk, and Kwan-fai Lam. Special Guests: Cedric Berry, Vicki Ray, Lucy Shelton, Camilla Hoitenga, Justin DeHart, Alison Bjorkedal, Julie Feves, and Jon Stehney.
