September 2001 -- Back to School with Small Press Traffic!

Friday, September 7, 2001
6 p.m. : Reception celebrating our Archive
7:30 p.m.: Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge & Chris Tysh

Welcome to fall 2001 at Small Press Traffic! We begin tonight with a gala evening. At 6 we host a reception celebrating our Archive’s new home at Simpson Library, CCAC. At 7:30, a reading by luminous poets Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge & Chris Tysh. Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing and grew up in Massachusetts. Her books include The Heat Bird (Burning Deck, winner of an American Book Award), Empathy (Station Hill), and Four Year Old Girl (Kelsey Street). Her collaborations include artists books with Richard Tuttle and Kiki Smith, and theatre works with Frank Chin, Blondell Cummings, Tan Dun, Shi Zhen Chen and Alvin Lucier. She has been a contributing editor of Conjunctions magazine since 1978, and has taught at Brown University and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Once an associate of Georgia O'Keefe, she is active in both Native and Asian American cultural movements, and recently read at the UN. Chris Tysh is currently working on a film script based on the works of Bataille; her new book is Continuity Girl. Previous works include Porne, Secrets of Elegance, and Coat of Arms, the last of which includes prose poems investigating the semi-ancient arts of heraldry and femininity. Lyn Hejinian says of Coat of Arms: "The very fact that we call heraldic symbols ‘devices’ makes them vulnerable to another realm -- the poetic -- where prerogatives can be rethought and ultimately dispersed. Tysh's writing doesn’t say we shouldn't be somewhere, but it acts out a being there in a different (gorgeous and unpunishing) way."

Friday, September 14, 2001 at 7:30 p.m.
Lauren Gudath & David Larsen
EVENT POSTPONED UNTIL DECEMBER 14

Born in Tampa, Florida in the late middle of the twentieth century, poet Lauren Gudath now lives and works in San Francisco. She is currently working on a series of poems exploring infatuations, as well as a novel. Her two most recent chapbooks are The Television Documentary (Second Story, 1999) and This Kind of Interpretation Brings Luck (Lucinda, 2000), for which her coreader David Larsen provided imagery; Read a Poem About California is forthcoming from Melodeon Poetry Systems. Oakland resident David Larsen is a performer, artist, scholar, and poet -- a mover, shaker and maker the Bay Area is lucky to call its own. His poetry has appeared in Cello Entry, Mirage #4/Period(ical), Explosive, and other magazines, as well as the chapbooks To The Fremont Station, Sepia #1-7, and Swath. He presented "Scarcely Otherwise: Kevin Killian’s Pulp Mimesis" at the Queer/Popular/Culture conference in Santa Cruz last March. With Beth Murray he edited the much-missed San Jose Manual of Style. His artworks have graced many small press books and journals, and new cartoon work is due out in Chain.
(Note: Fred Moten has rescheduled; he will read next May at SPT.)

Sunday, September 23, 2001, 4-6 p.m.
nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts release party
(held at Diesel Books, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland; 510-653-9965; 2 blocks south of Rockridge BART)

Small Press Traffic is proud to cosponsor the release party for nocturnes, an important new literary magazine, edited by SPT board member giovanni singleton. As singleton writes in her introduction to the premiere issue: "nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts was born out of a sincere aspiration to have fun while also attempting to illuminate the vast range of creative voices that exists throughout the African Diaspora and other contested spaces. in this regard, nocturnes is dedicated to the exploration of spirit through innovative (i.e. experimental/avant-garde) critical and creative literary art. the journal serves as a forum for examining and celebrating the natural connections between diverse artistic mediums as expressed through visual and written language." Join singleton and nocturnes contributors for this afternoon reading and celebration.

contributors scheduled to appear include:
Chris Daniels
Aja Couchois Duncan
Brenda Hillman
Arnold J. Kemp
Kevin Killian
David Meltzer
Douglas "D. Scot" Miller
Amarnath Ravva

Friday, September 28, 2001 at 7:30 p.m.
Crosstown Traffic

The season opener of our multimedia series, featuring text, music, and visual art -- sure to be a gala event and to get you set for more multimedia explorations throughout the year. Painter Victoria Brill will present and discuss her work, and the musical group Positive Knowledge will perform. Positive Knowledge is Oluyemi Thomas, reed instruments, and Ijeoma Thomas, poetic vocals, plus special guests. Their CDs include Invocation #9, recorded at Yoshi’s, and last year's At the Center of the Threshold, the recording debut of their East Coast incarnation. Crosstown Traffic is curated by the writers and SPT board members Taylor Brady and Yedda Morrison.

All events are $5-10, sliding scale, and begin at 7:30, unless otherwise noted. Our events are free to SPT members, and CCAC faculty, staff, and students.
Unless otherwise noted, our events are presented in
Timken Lecture Hall
California College of Arts and Crafts
1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco (just off the intersection of 16th & Wisconsin)