Sometimes Out Back – A Poem by Aaron Ambrose – (L)INK: The Write Disability

And today we get a message from poet Aaron Ambrose!

“Hey Albuquerque, I’m super excited to head on down the highway in my 87′ corolla with a stack of poems, a fresh haircut and whole lotta love for the most righteous and brilliant poetry community there is. I’m also thrilled that I get to be part of this series of disability centered events helping to connect poetry to the larger disability justice movement. This is my favorite piece right now.”

Sometimes out back

a host of sparrows explodes from the tree top outward in all directions
i can feel the lift of it
the stirring air and for that brilliant skyward moment
it all lifts with them
the heavy growl of traffic
the dangerous hum of humans
all the well lodged voices in my head that condemn me
trash
waste
sick
crazy
useless
its all your fault echoes
of my own voice falling in the heat from the bed
toward the dirty carpet
when will this
be over
the sounds they all lift
with the birds
exploding stirring up ghosts and history
and a sense of tomorrow
when there’s a chance of change
as good as a rest
i want to take off toward
and outward
take off lost and happy
take off yearsof lonely
keep this feeling well lodged inside
my chest
my chest brimming with sudden hope sparrows.

—

About Aaron:

Aaron Ambrose was raised working class in Rochester, NY and has called New Mexico home since 95′. Aaron is not only as queer as the day is long but also a step-parent, farmer, weaver, handyman and resale queen. A life navigating chronic illness/disability, addiction, homelessness, love, loss and so much more delivered her into the arms of poetry. With a natural flare for drama, the written word quickly progressed to spoken word many years ago. Aarons’ writing comes from the desire to not just survive but to connect, find joy, kick some ass and do something about the mess of the world.

You can hear Aaron as one of three features in a special edition of OUTspoken at the Cell Theater 7 pm Thursday May 10th (700 first street NW just south of Lomas… suggested $5 donation…

Or you can hear her along with Denise Leto of San Francisco, Kenny Fries of Toronto, Mary McGinnis of Santa Fe, Lisa Gill of Albuquerque, and Natalie E. Illum of Washington, DC on Friday, May 11 at 7:30 pm @ the Outpost Performance Space $15/10 members and students
And she’s also participating in our 4 pm panel discussion with other Link participants (WHICH PRECEDES A COMMUNITY OPEN MIC) at the downtown Library on May 12th.

For details on the full schedule, see http://localpoetsguild.wordpress.com/about-link-the-write-disability/

Much obliged,
Rich Boucher

Love Note to New Mexico – A Poem by Natalie Illum – (L)INK: The Write Disability

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love note to New Mexico

I met you at a New Year’s Eve Party in Taos.

I fell in love with the desert texture of your skin.

I came back for a wedding in Santa Fe, held

rose quartz and silinite to open my heart, burned

every break up letter in the Valley of Fires.

I believe in aliens and whiskey, so it makes sense

that I came back for him.  I am easy

as a bottomless lake.  I dreamed

of moving to Truth or Consequences once.

I still might, if only for the mineral water.

If only to trade skyscrapers for horizon.

I forget how gorgeous an O’Keefe is

once you leave the museum. Remember

how sunset is mystery, how lava

is thirsty. How I could find a red lotus

in a minefield of cattle bones. And now

Albuquerque, full of the rattle of poems.

I am coming for your borderline,

for the taste of ink and dust,

to talk into your arid,

and come up full.

Soon,

nei

***

Activist, poet and federal employee Natalie E. Illum is a founding board member of Mothertongue, a spoken word and creative writing non-profit for women and young girls for since 1998. She has an MFA in creative writing from American University and teaches poetry workshops in a variety of academic and community venues.

Her writing is included in Growing Up Girl (GirlChild Press) and Word
Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken Word Revolution, an anthology
edited by Alix Olson (Seal Press) as well as other publications.  Her
poems were featured in in Feminist Studies, a scholarly journal edited
by Minnie Bruce Pratt, Natalie has collaborated with LAVA, an
acrobatic troupe in Brooklyn, perfecting her skills at performing
poetry upside down during the show Tides (www.lavalove.org). She has
self-published 2 chapbooks: Ground Lover and On Writers Block and
Acrobats.

Natalie has represented DC at the Women of the Worlds and Individual
World Poetry Slam competitions since 2008. She is the Executive
Producer of Capturing Fire, the first-ever National Queer Slam, which
premiered in Washington DC in March 2010. Her memoir, Spastic, is
being adapted into a solo show by Spoken Word legend Regie Cabico.  An
excerpt of the show will be featured on NPR’s Snap Judgment.

She was a featured poet in the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival of
Provocation and Witness (www.splitthisrock.org), and is honored to be
one of the poets included in the Full Moon On K Street, an anthology
that features poems about Washington DC from 1950 to the present
(Manic D. Press).

Natalie has performed with many nationally-recognized performers,
including Bitch, Michelle Tea, Alix Olson, Eileen Myles, Buddy
Wakefield and Andrea Gibson.  For more information, visit
www.natalieillum.net.

You can hear Natalie (along with Denise Leto of San Francisco,  Kenny Fries of Toronto, Mary McGinnis of Santa Fe, Lisa Gill of Albuquerque,  and Aaron Ambrose of Santa Fe on Friday, May 11 at  7:30 pm @ the Outpost Performance Space $15/10 members and students

For details on the full schedule, see http://localpoetsguild.wordpress.com/about-link-the-write-disability/

***

Much obliged,

Rich Boucher

Manuel Gonzalez Features at East of Edith on Monday, May 7th!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s time for some more good poetry news! This coming Monday, May 7th, at 7:00 pm, at the Projects 3614 High Street NE is our open mic night known as East of Edith. This week you’ll get a chance to hear feature poet Manuel Gonzalez  share his work!

A refresher for you or if you’re new, about the East of Edith Open Mic at the Projects: all poets on the open mic are invited to share two poems, four minute limit (the poets can opt to either read their own work or works by other poets). The East of Edith Open Mic night has been very busy being awesome – have you been yet? You haven’t? How come? What’s up? Oh, really? That’s ok – you should still come to this and check it out. You should totally (for reals) come and listen or read or do BOTH. Please come early to get a cup of juice or coffee and some snacks and then enjoy on all the things happening at the microphone…and all for whatever you can offer for the hat pass. Which is to say, pay what you can if you can. Come, enjoy the poetry. So much good poetry, every Monday night, at East of Edith.

So. Here’s a little bit about Manuel:

Manuel is a performance poet who began his career in the poetry slam. He has represented Albuquerque many times on a national level as a member of the Albuquerque poetry slam team. Manuel has appeared on the PBS show, Colores, in “my word is my power.” He was one of the founding members of the poetry troupe The Angry Brown Poets. Manuel teaches workshops on self expression and poetry in high schools and youth detention centers. He also works with an art therapist to help incarcerated young men express themselves. He is one of the coaches and mentors for the Santa Fe High Poetry Slam team. Manuel is from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother’s family is from Barelas. His father’s family is from a small town in Northern New Mexico called Anton Chico, and his father was the lead singer of the band Manny and the Casanovas. He identifies himself as being Chicano.The history, culture, and spirituality of his people are among his inspirations. “I’m proud to be from New Mexico, and to me it’s more than just green chile and desert. It’s seeing the value of famila and respect. It’s the Rio Grande valley and Santuario de Chimayo. It is feasts, dance, poetry and prayer.” His connection to his culture helps him connect to his students. Manuel teaches poetry as a means for self expression. Looking within oneself and examining ones roots is the essence of the type of poetry he works with. Emotions, feelings, experiences, and prose as an historical and cultural context is the goal of his workshops. Self esteem, finding something to say, figuring out how to say it eloquently, and letting your voice be heard are just some of the benchmarks in Manuel’s workshop.

***

The East of Edith Poetry Open Mic takes place every Monday night (yes, every Monday night!) at the Projects, 3614 High Street NE. Sign-up to read between 6:30 and 6:50 pm.

Hope to see you all on Monday night!

-Rich Boucher

Hello Albuquerque! – A Message, Some Questions, and a Poem by Denise Leto – (L)INK: The Write Disability

Hello Albuquerque!

Ideas I hope to explore, in conversation with you, during the (L)ink events:

How does disability and embodiment affect your work? What can poetry in an off-page environment offer? Is poetry always performative? What are the poetics of collaboration? How can poets best collaborate with other artists working in different media and forms? How can “voice”—poetic, spoken, sung, spliced, printed, broken, imagined, signed, drawn, painted, recorded—be a cipher of the poets relationship to language and to the larger community?

A Poem by Denise Leto:

Crane of Angles

The earth crept, lurched upward, and took sudden hold of her shoulders.

Plagued them stratospherically forward. The ground became her neck.

Down the avenue the ringmaster. Though there were many tiny acrobats

twisting the length of her legs making them whinny. Her proprioceptive

tap dance drew spontaneous crowds, cagey looks. Flush with a string of lights

beginning in the lowest quadrant of her brain, where it becomes the body.

A toy helix in off beam hands careening the sidewalk. Everything that isn’t

Daphne. Cycles in her rapidly blinking eyes. The torque of feet and to think

this is what. Closer to the movement of planets.

Denise Leto (San Francisco) is an experimental poet, writer, and Senior Editor at UC Berkeley. She is the co-author of Waveform,  and a contributor to: Beauty is a Verb; Wordgathering; Aufgabe; Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multi-Cultural Poetry; MELUS: The Journal for the Society of Multi-Ethnic Literature in the US; and more. She was guest editor for  Sinister Wisdom and co-founder of Three Guineas Press. She has been a Fellow at Djerassi Resident Artist Program as well as a Fellow for the University of Michigan’s Research and Practice Symposium on Movement, Somatics and Writing.  She is working on amulti-media docu-book, Day Jobs: What Poets, Writers, Artists, and Dancers Do for Living. She moves through the world with dystonia.

Catch Denise Friday May 11th for a featured performance 7:30 pm at the Outpost Performance Space (210 Yale SE).

And join us again when she gives a presentation Saturday Morning on performance strategies and multimedia work 10:30 am at Tricklock’s new performance Laboratory (110 Gold SW).  And you can also hear her Saturday afternoon in the 4 pm panel discussion at the main library downtown which is followed by a community open mic.

For full schedule of (L)INK: The Write Disability see — http://localpoetsguild.wordpress.com/about-link-the-write-disability/

 

Much Obliged,

Rich Boucher

Sunday Readings and Speaker This Week

On the second and fourth sundays of the month from noon to two, a small group of us get together and read essays about poetry. We usually get through about three essays, sharing the reading out loud one paragraph at a time, and then discussing each article and examining our own beliefs about writing and process.

I host this session at a community room in Silver Gardens apartments at 100 Silver Ave SW between 1st and 2nd streets by the train station. RSVP to me and I’ll send the articles in advance as PDFs so you can print them and have them ready to read from on Sunday. I will also send you my phone number so you can call if you are late. (Building has security and I have to let you in.)

This Sunday the 11th, we’ll read two articles, one hugo and one gluck, and then around 1 pm we’ll have a guest speaker. John Amen who is visiting will talk about poetry and we’ll continue the discussion.

Let me know if you want to come, nearartexperience at yahoo dot com.

Thanks,

lisa gill

FYI: March 18 Event–Deviant Moons

Hi so Zach Kluckman has this news:

“Good evening folks~

Exciting news to share with you all! Mark your calendars for Sunday March 18th because this one is beyond comprehension!

Deviant Moons: A PeaceLuck Gathering with Houston’s Premiere Spoken Word Artist, Seth Walker

The third in our new PeaceLuck Gathering art series is going to be the biggest, most irrepressible phenomenon yet!

Featuring the notorious poet Seth Walker, who is Houston’s premiere spoken word artist. His magnetic personality and electric humanism crackle in every performance, providing audiences with an incomparably exhilarating and uplifting poetic experience. For these reasons, he has become of the nation’s top touring acts!
is one of the top national acts

Joining Seth will be two of Albuquerque’s brightest musical lights, Reviva! and Bat Wings for Lab Rats. Undisputedly two of the most uplifting live acts you’ll ever see.

Also joining in the line-up are poetry icons Jessica Helen Lopez, Albuquerque’s 2012 Women of the World Poetry Slam champ and local favorite Ben Bormann.

We’ll be having a limited open mic as well as a potluck community dinner to round out the evening, so please join us in celebrating community, change and the power of music and poetry to move the soul (and the booty)~

Admission is a suggested donation of $10 (student and bulk discounts available) and because this is a benefit event, a portion of the proceeds go to support the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, as well as the artists.”

Sunday, March 18
5 – 9 pm
Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice
202 Harvard SE
$10 admission

beva sanchez-padilla Features at East of Edith on Monday, November 14th!

Good tidings to all!

It’s time for some more good poetry news! This coming Monday, November 14th, at 7:00 pm, at the Projects 3614 High Street NE is our open mic night known as  East of Edith. This week you’ll get a chance to hear feature poet
beva sanchez-padilla share her work!

A refresher for you or if you’re new, about the East of Edith Open Mic at the Projects: all poets on the open mic are invited to share two poems, four minute limit (the poets can opt to either read their own work or works by other poets).  The East of Edith Open Mic night has been very busy being awesome – have you been yet? You should come to this. You should totally (for reals) come and listen or read or do BOTH. Please come early to get a cup of juice or coffee and some snacks and then dig on all the things happening at the microphone…and all for whatever you can offer for the hat pass. Which is to say,  pay what you can if you can. Come, enjoy the poetry. So much good poetry, every Monday night, at East of Edith.

A little bit about beva:

beva sanchez-padilla is a native new mexican, trained in film, a published poet and a produced playwright.  her film and theater work includes: el corrido de emma tenayuca, letty y su mama, la guadalupe que camina,  mali and maya: another story of malinche and de mujer a mujer.   she has worked as a producer, reporter,  videographer for six television stations, was an artist in residence for the san antonio independent district for seven years and now manages the gutierrez hubbell house history museum in the south valley of ‘burque.

***

The East of Edith Poetry Open Mic takes place every Monday night at the Projects, 3614 High Street NE. Sign-up to read between 6:30 and 6:50 pm.

Hope to see you all on Monday night!

-Rich Boucher

Tanaya Winder Features at East of Edith Monday, October 17!

Let’s all hear it for tomorrow night! Tomorrow night is Monday night, which means it’s time for the East of Edith Open Mic at the Projects again1 Each person on the open mic is invited to share two poems, four minute limit (the poets can opt to either read their own work or works by other poets).  The East of Edith Open Mic night has been gaining momentum and speed and I am happy to say that it’s just amazing, how this reading has been progressing along. Please come early to get coffee and snacks, read, listen, catch an outstanding feature…  and all for whatever you can put into the hat. Meaning: pay what you can if you can. Come, enjoy poetry.

***

The East of Edith Open Mic Feature Poet for Monday, October 17th is Tanaya Winder. Here’s a little bit about Tanaya:

Tanaya Winder is from the Southern Ute and Duckwater Shoshone Nations. She graduated from Stanford University in 2008 with a BA in English. Tanaya was a finalist in the 2009 Joy Harjo Poetry Competition and a winner of the A Room Of Her Own Foundation’s Spring 2010 Orlando prize in poetry. Her poems have appeared in Cutthroat magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, Adobe Walls, and Superstition Review, amongst others and are forthcoming in Drunken Boat magazine. She teaches composition and introduction to creative writing at the University of New Mexico where she is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry. She is currently the Assistant Director for the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Upward Bound Program – a college prep program for over 85 Native American high school students from different reservations all across the country. In her free time she enjoys coffee, karaoke, and teaching a monthly writer’s workshop at the local library in her hometown, Ignacio, CO

The East of Edith Poetry Open Mic takes place every Monday night at the Projects, 3614 High Street NE. Sign-up to read between 6:30 and 6:50 pm.

Hope to see you all on Monday night!

-Rich Boucher

Hand-To-Tongue: Reed, Tanaya, Teresa

This Saturday at 1 pm in the Wells Fargo Theater at the National Hispanic Culture Center, Local Poets Guild presents Hand-to-Tongue: A Celebration of Threatened Languages with Reed Adair Bobroff, Tanaya Winder, and Teresa Blankmeyer Burke. This showcase is our collaboration with the amazing world music festival Globalquerque, takes place during the free daytime programming of the Global Fiesta, and is going to be powerful: a look at the loss of Native languages, the work of preservation of Navajo, the joy and intimacy of American Sign Language—with sign language and vocal interpreters on site to make everything accessible. Poet Sari Krosinsky has written a nice article for UNM today which gives a bit more background and information.

Reed, at 17, has already been featured on HBO as part of their look at Brave New Voices, the national Youth Slam. Tanaya, still in progress with her MFA at UNM, has been winning prestigious awards left and right for poems, including one from AROHO. Teresa might well be the first deaf woman in this country to earn her PhD in Philosophy. Me, I’ll be the proud host, eager to take in everything they have to say–or sign!

Please join us. And remember, the Global Fiesta runs from 10:30 to 4:oo with all kinds of amazing events and languages. See this link for the schedule.

And you won’t want to miss all the world music festivities of Friday and Saturday night either, so check out the schedule and affordable pricing here at this link.

Big weekend. More posts forthcoming.

–LG

Solo Show with Don McIver at East Of Edith

This coming Monday, September 12th, at 7:00 pm, at the Projects 3614 High Street NE is once again our open mic called East of Edith. This week you will have the opportunity to hear Don McIver perform his one-man show that premiered at Solofest. I’m thrilled he’s bringing it out again and encourage everyone to attend this event. One thing you need to know is that this show is ABOUT being a writer. Wow, do we all have some self-exploration to do on that subject… and now we have Don to help guide us to some real thought. Check out what Don McIver says about his piece titled “On Being a Writer”:

As an artist, I believe in the power of words to solve problems:   personal, societal, public, private, etc.   I believe that words, and finding the right combination of them, is a transformative experience, a chance at tapping into a larger creative force that shapes us all.   While I acknowledge that I create something, I am merely a vehicle for its birth into the world. And thus, the highest compliment I can pay to that creative force is to honor the work by trying to be as authentic and as selfless as possible.  This piece demonstrates that belief by asking what it means to be an artist.

“On Being A Writer” is a meditation on the decision the author made in high school to become a writer and what that means some 28 years later.   Incorporating poems, the piece is a discussion about the frustration, challenges, and rewards of choosing writing, particularly creative writing, as a career.

A must-see show! And don’t forget, this work simply kicks off an always stellar open mic. A rotating cast of hosts is being organized by the ever-kind Rich Boucher, so I’m not sure who’s up next—but let me say: Surprise is good.

Open mic has a two-poem under four minutes limit, and people often read one of their own and a favorite classic or contemporary poet. Grand fun. Come out, enjoy, eat some lovely snacks, and all we ask is that you toss a couple bucks into the hat if you can.
Thanks,

–LG