WINTER & SPRING 2003
EVENTS AT SMALL PRESS TRAFFIC

January 24 - February 7, 2003
Poets’ Theater Festival
$10; reservations recommended.
for details click here


February 15, 2003 at 3:30 PM
New Experiments:
Jim Behrle Forgets His Heroes
please click for more information on our New Experiments series


February 21, 2003 at 7:30 PM
Etel Adnan & Brenda Iijima
It was a rare pleasure to have Etel Adnan read at SPT last year on International Women's Day, at the release party for our anthology Technologies of Measure: A Celebration of Bay Area Women Writers. We are so pleased to have her back for a full reading now. Adnan was born in Beirut in 1925 and is the author of numerous books, including Paris When It's Naked, Of Cities and Women, and Sitt Marie Rose, which has been translated into over ten languages and is considered a classic of Middle Eastern Literature. Adnan currently divides her time between Lebanon, Paris, and the Bay Area. Like Adnan, Brenda Iijima is a visual artist as well as a writer. She hails from New York City where she creates gorgeous handmade books. She is the author of several chapbooks of poetry including, In a Glass Box (Pressed Wafer, 2002) and Person(a) (Portable Press, 1998). "I see /you staunchly." For a preview of Iijima's work, both textual and visual, check out theeastvillage.com.


Friday, March 7, 2003 at 7:30 PM
Cedar Sigo & Edwin Torres
Cedar Sigo's first book of poetry, Goodnight Nurse, was published in 2001 by Angry Dog Press. He is the editor of Old Gold magazine and his most recent work appears in the anthology Evidence of the Paranormal (Owl Press, 2002). Raised on the Suquamish Reservation near Seattle, he studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, moved to San Francisco in 1999, and recently starred in the video "Kevin and Cedar." "Trouble in mind, Lord I'm blue/sworn to this league of poets/as most beloved weakling." Edwin Torres "is the inventor...the most optimistic, agile poet around," writes Brenda Coultas. Torres' latest publication is PLEASE, a CD collection of new texts, audio poems, soundscapes, and video, recently issued by Faux Press. Born in the Bronx, Torres' earlier works include the CD Holy Kid (Kill Rock Stars, 1998) -- which was included in the exhibition The American Century Part II at the Whitney -- and the book Fractured Humorous (Subpress, 1999). Check him out online at brainlingo.com. "we were strangers in the same sentence/I was alien."


March 15, 2003 at 3:30 PM
New Experiments:
Carol Mirakove on Anxieties of Information
please click for more information on our New Experiments series


March 21, 2003 at 7:30 PM
David Bromige & Robert Grenier
David Bromige is the author of over thirty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and song published since 1965. In 1988 his selected poems, Desire (Black Sparrow Press) won the Western States Book Award. Other books include Tiny Courts in a world without scales (Brick Books, 1991), The Harbormaster of Hong Kong (Sun & Moon, 1993) and A Cast of Tens (Avec, 1994). He is currently Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, where he has lived for 30 years. Bromige's most recent book is As in T As in Tether, issued last year by Chax Press. "A serious poet, after all these years of seeming fun!" -- Robert Grenier.
Robert Grenier’s eleven books of poetry include Oakland (Tuumba Press, 1980), A Day at the Beach (Roof, 1984), Phantom Anthems (O Books, 1986), and OWL/ON/BOU/GH (Post-Apollo Press, 1997). Grenier’s recent "books" have been folios of haiku-like inscriptions or transcriptions. Examples of his current holograph poems can be seen at thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm. As Grenier puts it, "that materiality’s ‘relation to’/invocation of/’invention’ and attempted embodiment /’clarification’ of ‘other matters’." Join us as he reads and shows slides of his recent poems.


April 5, 2003 at 3:30 PM
New Experiments:
Camille Martin on Poetry & Cognitive Science
please click for more information on our New Experiments series


Thursday, April 10, 2003 at 4:30 PM (please note this time is correct; it's incorrect on our flyer.)
Release Party for Across the Line/Al otro lado: the Poetry of Baja California
Cosponsored with and held at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway, San Francisco
Join us as we celebrate the release of this new Junction Press anthology, edited by Harry Polkinhorn & Mark Weiss. "...the poets are always interesting, and sometimes astounding. Like many Mexican poets of the 20th/21st centuries, they owe a deep debt to Neruda and Mistral. But the rigors of Paz and the sly dryness of Jose Emilio Pacheco are also greatly in evidence. These aren't rustic slouches – these are poets engaged in the art, wrestling with structuralism, postmodernism, minimalism, surrealism. One wonders where Juan Reynas, Esali, Jose Javier Villarreal, Julieta Irigoyen, to name a few, have been all these years.... My dear Baja is waiting to take its proper place as the center of the literary map." -- Luis Alberto Urrea, San Diego Union Tribune

Friday, April 18, 2003 at 7:30 PM
Cassie Lewis & Brydie McPherson
Join us as we listen to two of our most ardent, sassy younger (prose) poets. Cassie Lewis is the author of High Country (Little Esther, 2001) and Winter District (Potes and Poets, 2002). Originally from Melbourne, Australia, she moved to the Bay Area in 2000. Her poetry has been widely published in Australia, as well as in England, New Zealand and the U.S. -- most recently in Tinfish, Overland, Shampoo, Famous Reporter, Jacket and Southerly. Brydie McPherson is the author of Abandon's Garden (EtherDome, 2000). McPherson is a local -- a graduate of the MFA program at San Francisco State, her work has appeared in Inscape, lyric&, Fourteen Hills, Outlet and New American Writing. "Crossed over into spaciousness this nourishment neglects me: being company of others in vicinity... A plan left me unbending in its binding."

All events are $5-10, sliding scale, and begin at 7:30, unless otherwise noted.
Unless otherwise noted, our events are free to SPT members, youth under 18, 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)