April 12, 2007 E-Fishwrapper, Bart Baxter

For Immediate Release
Contact: Paul E. Nelson
Global Voices Radio/SPLAB!
908 I St. N.E. #4
Slaughter, WA 98002 253.735.6328

Global Voices Radio / SPLAB! E-Fishwrapper

In this E-Fishwrapper, Bart Baxter Finals tonight, Organic Poetry, Frida Kahlo in Tacoma, Alexandra Oliver, Nico Vassilakis, Bill Ransom & African-American Film Festival.
1) Bart Baxter is alive and Hosting the Bart Baxter Performance Poetry Competition Finals tonight at Baxter Hall at 7 p.m.
The Washington Poets Association invites you to attend the Bart Baxter performance poetry competition tonight, Tuesday, April 10, at 7 pm in the Hugo House Cabaret, not Baxter Hall as previously suggested. We apologize for this error. Eight finalists will compete in head-to-head Taos-style poetry bouts with the overall champ getting $300. Finalists scheduled to perform are: Miryam Gordon, Jared Leising, Jack McCarthy, Rebecca Meredith, Jeremy Richards, Roy Seitz, M. Anne Sweet and D.D. Wigley
Admission is FREE, although donations will be accepted to help the WPA continue its programming and to keep the Board of Directors supplied with gin, beef jerky and mescaline.
Tuesday, April 10, at 7 pm, Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Avenue, Seattle, WA
2) Organic Poetry, Organismic Cosmology
Organic Poetry Workshop Series with Paul Nelson
Is the universe a machine with a dominant ethos of competition, or an organism based on interdependence, process and relationship? A stance-toward-poem-making based on the latter, Organic Poetry, allows the moment of composition to be an occasion of experience, or an experiment in consciousness. Workshops starts Thursday at 10A and you can still sign up.

This workshop for serious people of all levels of writing experience includes discussion of poets Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Anne Waldman, Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, sound from these poets discussing poetics and reading their poems, and writing exercises designed to help you allow the act of writing to be an exhilarating revelation of content.

Hugo House, 1634 11th, Seattle. Thursdays, April 12-May 17, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. $195 ($180 members) Some scholarships may be available. Five more days to sign up. Please tell someone who may want to take this. I will not be facilitating this class again until Fall.
3) Frida Kahlo Lives at T.A.M.
Frida Kahlo: Images of an Icon
February 3 – June 10, 2007


Images of an Icon offers a means of seeing Frida Kahlo’s world through the eyes of those who surrounded her. Modern masters of the camera such as Lucienne Bloch, Emmy Lou Packard, Florence Arquin, and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, as well as leading photojournalists such as Giselle Freund, Bernard Silberstein, and Fritz Henle captured her in their lenses. Kahlo’s relatives, lovers, and friends, including Guillermo Kahlo, Nickolas Muray, and Lola Alvarez Bravo were witness to a more intimate Frida. The images span Kahlo’s life and follow the artist from precocious child to famous artist. They permit a look into her bedroom, a seat at her table, a visit to her hospital room, a stroll through her garden, and a view into her collections. There is an ancillary component to the exhibition featuring the work of Northwest artists who have been inspired by Kahlo, the artist and icon. A Paul Nelson poem inspired by this exhibit.
4) Alexandra Oliver does not have an iconic unibrow, BUT makes up for it in wit and, unlike Frida, is Canadian and has a new book coming out. From Alexandra:
Hi Everyone,

As you may (or may not) know, I'll be launching my first book on May 11 in Vancouver. As I'm an old-fashioned sort, I'm sending out non-virtual invites. If you haven't sent me your snail mail address, please do so ASAP! For more information, check out http://vancouverevents.blogspot.com I look forward to seeing you. It's going to be a humdinger of an evening.

Alexandra
5) Write in the Woods 2007 Bill Ransom, keynoter.
Saturday, May 19, also Derek Sheffield, Tim McNulty, Elizabeth She, Allen Braden and others. Shelton, WA 8:30-4:30, gourmet lunch and only $49 bucks. Really. No website, but email WritingConference@oc.ctc.edu. At Olympic College Shelton.
6) "SPF07 Workshop 8: Sound Poetry - Christine Hume and Nico Vassilakis"

April 22nd, 12:00 to 1:00am, Hug-O-House

Workshop only $5
(Admission for the Seattle Poetry Festival is required in addition to your workshop ticket.)

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/10795
(for tix and/or more info)

Instructors Christine Hume and Nico Vassilakis introduce students to multiple ways of approaching the relationship between sound and poetry. We will listen to poetry as soundscapes, training our attention to acoustic and phonetic aspects of language and speech. We will indulge ourselves in the kinesthetic pleasures, the ecstatic spiraling repetition and rhyme, the alchemy of articulations and de-articulations in performed and concrete poetry. This workshop will consider how we might renovate the traditional poetry reading--and conventional notions of poetry itself--by making use of a broad range of media. The instructors will present a variety of listening experiences, followed by a sound poetry experiment.

Max Number of Participants: 15
7) Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival.

April 21-27.
The Langston Hughes African American Film Festival is just around the corner and this years festival marks the most ambitious collection of films yet!

This years festival provides a bountiful array of 45 (and counting) narratives, documentaries, shorts, animated films and a host of filmmaker talk-backs, special workshops and activities highlighting films by and about black folk from around the world and in our own backyard. Highlights include a 'revolutionary' Opening Night and a special family-friendly closing night featuring a Black Cowboy demonstration. Check out the schedule

8) Madeline DeFrees in Redmond.

SoulFood Poetry Night, Thursday April 19, 7 to 9 pm at SoulFood Books, 15748 Redmond Way, Redmond , WA. Featured readers this year’s Pulitzer Nominee Madeline DeFrees and her former student, Thomas Aslin. Open mic follows. Free. For directions, visit www.soulfoodbooks.com or call the store at 425-881-5309. For further info contact welchm@aol.com or moonlit.cloud@yahoo.com.

9) www.poetsencyclopedia.com

Charles Potts and Jeremy Gaulke are providing an exemplary service to the Poetry Community. Check out their handiwork and get your bio to them.

OK, I am off to Baxterland to introduce Bart, wish the finalists luck and answer any pre-event questions, make sure sacrificial poets Lyn Coffin (reigning champ) and Alexandra Oliver don't scratch each other's eyes out, have my daily 30 minute walk, perhaps around Cal Anderson Park and kick myself for forgetting some cool events which coulda been e-fishwrapped.

Ciao,

Paulo

Paul E. Nelson
www.GlobalVoicesRadio.org
www.SPLAB.org
Slaughter, WA 98002
253.735.6328 or 888.735.6328

Want off this email list? Just ask.