Winter & Spring 2004
Small Press Traffic Events

January 16--February 6, 2004: POETS' THEATER JAMBOREE
February 20--May 14, 2004: SPRING READINGS
Please scroll on down for all the details!

Poets' Theater Jamboree:
Come on out for our annual showcase of poets as playwrights, directors, producers, actors - it's wild, it's lovely, it's
SPT's Poets' Theater Jamboree 2004.
All seats $10 to benefit Small Press Traffic. Reservations are recommended & will be taken beginning January 10 at 415-551-9278.

Friday, January 16, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.

kari edwards, "AN OPERA: GERTRUDE STEIN IN C*"
Danil Kharms, "Anecdotes from the Life of Pushkin," directed by Brent Cunningham
Rodney Koeneke, "Road to Inner Houston"
Dana Teen Lomax & Danna Lomax, "Pas de Dough"
John Wieners, "Asphodel in Hell's Despite," directed by Kevin Killian

Friday, January 23, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.

Laynie Browne, "Zoanthella and Zoanthina: Tribulations of the Larval Anemone Princesses," directed by Stefani J Barber
Kate Colby & Todd Shalom, "Feinstein on the Beach"
Joseph Lease play, directed by Taylor Brady
Tan Lin, "A Life Lived on Film," directed by Brent Cunningham
Frank O'Hara, "Two Eclogues," directed by Mac McGinnes
Camille Roy, "Lucy in the Sky"

Friday, January 30, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.

Drew Cushing, "Hamlet Variations"
Bill Luoma, "Radio Grasshopper"
Dawn Lundy Martin, "Killing Jemima Twice"
K. Silem Mohammad, "Who Is React?"
Erin Wilson & Jean Lieske, "Pink Stories"
Ronaldo V. Wilson, "Erase: A Play in Two Parts"

Friday, February 6, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.

Trevor Calvert & James Meetze, "The New Brutalists: A Hero's Welcome"
Maxine Chernoff, "Heavenly Bodies," directed by Mac McGinnes
Yedda Morrison, "Girl Scout Nation: A Diorama"
Deborah Richards, "Android Woman"
Michael Scharf, "Parti(Antigone)"
Tyrone Williams play, directed by Taylor Brady
Stephanie Young play, directed by David Hadbawnik

February 20--May 14, 2004 SPRING READINGS

Friday, February 20, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.
Joseph Lease & Chris Stroffolino

The Boston Book Review says Joseph Lease is a writer of "superbly crafted free verse whose powerful clarities and careful progress of articulation
measure up to the work of William Carlos Williams and Robert Creeley." Lease's books include Human Rights and The Room. He's a frequent reader on NPR and his essays on poetics are forthcoming in African-American Review and the anthology TransAmerican Poetries: Experiment and Identity in the Poetry of the Americas. He teaches at CCA.

Chris Stroffolino is the author of three collections of poetry, OOPS, Stealer's Wheel and his latest, Speculative Primitive, out this spring from
Oakland's own Tougher Disguises Press. Stroffolino is also the author of Spin Cycle, Selected Essays and Reviews: 1989-1999 and co-author of a Cliffnotes edition of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. He teaches at St. Mary's and performs with the band Continuous Peasant, which has just released its debut album, Exile in Babyville. Check them out at continuouspeasant.com.

Friday, March 5, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.
Devin Johnston & Susan Landers

Devin Johnston is the author of the poetry collections Telepathy and Aversions (new this spring from Richmond's own Omnidawn Press) as well as Precipitations: Contemporary American Poetry as Occult Practice (Wesleyan, 2002). Forrest Gander writes: "While his lexicon is rich and particular, Johnston's line is severe, unadorned, and keenly cut to measure out the subtle, counterpointed music which so strongly marks these poems." With Michael O'Leary, Johnston publishes Flood Editions, an independent press. He joins us from Chicago.

Susan Landers joins us from Brooklyn, NYC to celebrate the publication of her debut collection, 248 mgs., a panic picnic, by Oakland's own O Books. Kevin Killian says she "has turned Pan on his head to spell out NAP, a nap in which she sees and writes through the creepy children's modernism of Rossetti, Stein, Sandburg, Harryman, and Freud. This "panic picnic" is a fresh, engaging look at the anxiety of a restricted vocabulary --roll over, Esperanto, and tell Basic English the news."

Friday, March 19, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.
Charles Alexander & Beverly Dahlen

Charles Alexander joins us in celebration of the publication of his new collection, Near or Random Acts, by Singing Horse Press. Previous works
include Hopeful Buildings and Arc of Light / Dark Matter. He also edited Talking The Boundless Book: Art, Language, and the Book Arts. He lives in Tucson, where he guides Chax Press into various poetic and artistic publications and collaborations; he also collaborates frequently with Anne Bunker and Chuck Koesters of Tucson's Orts Theatre of Dance.

"the whole chorus of familiars...". San Francisco's own Beverly Dahlen joins us in celebration of her much anticipated new book A-Reading Spicer & 18 Sonnets, just out from Chax Press. Her legendary earlier works include A Reading 1-7 (Momo's Press, 1985); A Reading 8-10 (Chax Press, 1992); and A Reading (11-17) (Potes & Poets Press, 1989). From 18 Sonnets: "the dusty dove is said to coo its heart a trickling machine...".

Friday, April 9, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.
Rae Armantrout & Kaia Sand

Rae Armantrout joins us on the occasion of the publication of her latest collection, Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2004), of which Susan Howe writes: "The poems are edgy, idiosyncratic, tough and tender. Marianne Moore, in her wonderful essay 'Anna Pavlova,' speaks of the ballerina's high arches and 'toes of steel' as having made her 'pizzicati on tiptoe' and steadily held pauses possible. I can't think of a more perfect way to describe Up to Speed."

Kaia Sand's debut collection, Interval, has just appeared from Edge Books. Carolyn Forche calls her "a necessary poet, and bracingly new" and Heather Fuller urges us to "read this book for its evocation of the sublime in the face of the populace's raw complacency telescoped and interpreted." Born in Alaska and raised in Oregon, Sand currently lives outside of DC, curates the In Your Ear poetry series at the District of Columbia Arts Center and co-edits The Tangent.

Friday, April 23, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.
Taylor Brady & Jen Hofer

Taylor Brady is the author of Microclimates (Krupskaya, 2001), Production Notes for Occupation: Location Scouting (Duration e-book, 2003), and Is Placed/Leaves (Meow, 1996). A new book, Occupational Treatment, is forthcoming from Atelos. Recent poetry and critical work is forthcoming in Quid and the second Enough. A Bay Area resident since 1998, he has outlived the wax and wane of several cycles of fictive capital and is interested in suggestions for a public life that is more than the sum of their effects.

Jen Hofer is the author of as far as (a+bend, 1999), The 3:15 Experiment (with Lee Ann Brown, Danika Dinsmore and Bernadette Mayer, The Owl Press, 2001), and Slide Rule (subpress, 2002). She is also editor and translator of No Visible Doors / Sin puertas visibles, an anthology of contemporary poetry by Mexican women (University of Pittsburgh Press/Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2003), in celebration of which Small Press Traffic is cosponsoring several other events this weekend. Please click for further details.

Friday, May 14, 2004 at 7:30 p.m.
Lisa Jarnot & Cynthia Sailers

Lisa Jarnot's third collection, Black Dog Songs, is new from Flood Editions. Stan Brakhage writes: "However adrift in linguistic aesthetics, in sheer music-of-rhythmed-sounds, her words are never severed from the means that engendered them; and the consequent meanings are never detached from the meditative drama of each whole poem." Jarnot joins us from NYC; her previous works are Some Other Kind of Mission and Ring of Fire. Her critical biography of Robert Duncan will be published by UC Press next year.

Local heroine Cynthia Sailers joins us in celebration of her first full-length collection, Lake Systems, just out from Tougher Disguises. Sailers is a California native (San Diego, 1974) who now lives in Alameda and co-curates the New Brutalism Reading Series in Oakland. Her work has or
will appear in various journals, including Aufgabe, 14 Hills, LitVert.com, pompom, Small Tiger, Barn (v.), and Involuntary Vision: Poems after
Kurosawa's Dreams.

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