Friday, April 24, 2009

Two Great Readings Next Thursday, April 30


It's the first annual English 695 fiction and poetry reading, where undergraduate creative writing students read work from their thesis projects. This reading is hosted by the Madison Review.

* * * *

Also on April 30: you're invited to join distinguished poet Martin Espada -- a UW-Madison alum known as "the" Latino poet of his generation, and "the" Pablo Neruda of North America --
for a poetry performance you will find at once illuminating, humorous, moving, and interdisciplinary.

The main event takes place at Pyle Center, on Thursday, 30 April at 7pm:
POETRY OF THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION:
A READING BY MARTIN
ESPADA

There will also be two brownbag lectures by Espada: "The Redemption of Pablo Neruda," at noon on Thursday the 30th of April, and "Colonialism and the Poetry of Rebellion" in Puerto Rico, at noon on Friday the 1st of May. The brownbags will be in 5233 Mosse Humanities Bldng.

Espada's poetry breaks down conventional knowledge boundaries. It unites powerfully literature and history, political and social analysis, ethnic studies and area studies. It puts forth an "Americas" vision that encompasses New York and Puerto Rico, Wisconsin and Chile. It produces an experience that is at once edgy and humane, funny and dramatic. Espada's thirty honors include two Paterson Awards for Sustained Literary Achievement, citation as Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and most recently, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award.

These events are co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, the Office of MultiCultural Arts Initiatives, the Department of History, LACIS (Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies), the Harvey Goldberg Center for the Study of Contemporary History, the Comparative US Cultures Cluster, and Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Tonight @ Avol's Bookstore:

Jennifer Militello & Ryan Walsh
Thursday, April 23, 7:00pm @ Avol's Bookstore




JENNIFER MILITELLO's first collection of poetry, Flinch of Song, was awarded the Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Prize and will be published in Fall of 2009. She is the author of the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail (Finishing Line Press, 2006) and has had poems published in The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The North American Review, The Paris Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best New Poets 2008, among others. www.jennifermilitello.com

RYAN WALSH is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His poems have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Ecotone, FIELD, Green Mountains Review, and Solo. He co-edits the literary journal Rivendell and is the editor & publisher of Pocket Press.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Two Great Readings Next Thursday, April 30

It's the first annual English 695 fiction and poetry reading, where undergraduate creative writing students read work from their thesis projects. This reading is hosted by the Madison Review.

* * * *

Also on April 30: you're invited to join distinguished poet Martin Espada -- a UW-Madison alum known as "the" Latino poet of his generation, and "the" Pablo Neruda of North America --
for a poetry performance you will find at once illuminating, humorous, moving, and interdisciplinary.

The main event takes place at Pyle Center, on Thursday, 30 April at 7pm:
POETRY OF THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION:
A READING BY MARTIN
ESPADA

There will also be two brownbag lectures by Espada: "The Redemption of Pablo Neruda," at noon on Thursday the 30th of April, and "Colonialism and the Poetry of Rebellion" in Puerto Rico, at noon on Friday the 1st of May. The brownbags will be in 5233 Mosse Humanities Bldng.

Espada's poetry breaks down conventional knowledge boundaries. It unites powerfully literature and history, political and social analysis, ethnic studies and area studies. It puts forth an "Americas" vision that encompasses New York and Puerto Rico, Wisconsin and Chile. It produces an experience that is at once edgy and humane, funny and dramatic. Espada's thirty honors include two Paterson Awards for Sustained Literary Achievement, citation as Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and most recently, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award.

These events are co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, the Office of MultiCultural Arts Initiatives, the Department of History, LACIS (Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies), the Harvey Goldberg Center for the Study of Contemporary History, the Comparative US Cultures Cluster, and Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Flinch of Song: a Poetry Reading

Jennifer Militello & Ryan Walsh
Thursday, April 23, 7:00pm @ Avol's Bookstore




JENNIFER MILITELLO's first collection of poetry, Flinch of Song, was awarded the Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Prize and will be published in Fall of 2009. She is the author of the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail (Finishing Line Press, 2006) and has had poems published in The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The North American Review, The Paris Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best New Poets 2008, among others. www.jennifermilitello.com

RYAN WALSH is finishing his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His poems have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Ecotone, FIELD, Green Mountains Review, and Solo. He co-edits the literary journal Rivendell and is the editor & publisher of Pocket Press.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Poetry Tonight!

Please join us for a reading from two recent Crab Orchard Series in Poetry collections by

Jesse Lee Kercheval (Cinema Muto)
& Alison Townsend (
Persephone in America)
Thursday, April 16, 7:00 PM
6191 Helen C. White


“This miraculous work—each poem a transformation of script into story, silent film into loud life—is the one book you MUST read this year.”
— Hilda Raz

Jesse Lee Kercheval is the award-winning author of The Alice Stories and Space: a Memoir. She is the Sally Mead Hands Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

“Persephone in America is a magnificent book. Alison Townsend poignantly and sometimes shockingly blends reimagined myth with reinvented autobiography. Persephone, the abducted daughter of a goddess, is a would-be Barbie, a wild one, a flirt, an innocent, a rape victim, a cutter, a bulimic, a young poet, a girl who misses her mother, an artist’s model, a girl who loves to dance, a depressive, a married woman who has an abortion, and more. . . . This is what revisionist mythology is all about: the sacred and the demonic still alive in our time.”
—Alicia Ostriker

Alison Townsend is an associate professor of English and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She is the author of And Still the Music, What the Body Knows, and The Blue Dress: Poems and Prose Poems.

Friday, April 3, 2009

The Reversible Dog

The University of Wisconsin’s MFA Program in Creative Writing presents
The Reversible Dog



Thursday, April 9, 7:00pm
The Project Lodge
817 E. Johnson Street, Madison, WI
$3 at the door


Laurel Bastian
Alyssa Knickerbocker
Lisa Kundrat
Vanessa Merina
Kristen Muir
Jessica Nordell
Barrett Swanson


FICTION by POETS
POETRY by FICTION WRITERS

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April is the Poetriest Month




Our Cosmic Mother & Father of the Verse








We have a flood of poetry readings to report this April:

First, please join us for a reading by
Brittingham and Pollak Poetry Prize winning poets, Angela Sorby and Mark Kraushaar tomorrow: April 2 at 7:00pm in 6191 White. Their books-- and Bird Skin Coat and Falling Brick Kills Local Man--are the only poetry titles the UW Press will publish this year. Catch them while they're hot. Dessert reception to follow the reading.

April 9 (Thurs) get down to the Project Lodge (817 E. Johnson St.) to experience The Reversible Dog. There'll be a lot of fiction writers reading their own original poems, a couple poets reading short fiction & memoir. Some food & spirits will be provided. Good times in a great space. $3 cover.

April 16 (Thurs), Jesse Lee Kercheval and Alison Townsend promise to rock the house, reading from their new collections. 7:00pm at 6191 Helen C. White.
Jesse Lee will be reading from her latest collection Cinema Muto, and Alison will be reading from Persephone in America. Both are Crab Orchard Open Award Series winners and have just been published in the Crab Orchard Poetry Series by Southern Illinois University Press.

April 23 (Thurs), Jennifer Militello and Ryan Walsh read at 7:00pm at Avol's Bookstore. Jennifer's collection, Flinch of Song, won the 2009 Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Award and will be out in the fall. Ryan is happy to have a poem in the new issue of FIELD (#80 Spring). A limited run of documentary chapbooks and letter-pressed broadsides will be available from Pocket Press.


Calendar (Click on an event for details)