BAS News
Please help fund the projection of New York’s poems onto buildings around town using a high-powered 10,000-lumen digital projector. By imagining the sides of buildings as blank pages for the dramatic presentation of the poet’s work we engage our community in a creative and innovative act of reading, we reinforce the value of those poems and provide a dramatic backdrop for their words.
Check out the project at KickStarter
Attending the first ever Bowery Arts and Science, board retreat, held at the wonderful Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida were: (Right to left in the photo) Board Chair, Vincent Katz, Michael Warr, Chris Lamal, Treasurer Alison Meyers, James Siena, Artistic/Executive Director, Bob Holman, and Managing Director Gary Glazner. Board member Warr who is the principal for Warr Consulting and a Projects Director at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services did a fantastic job of planning and leading the session. The board is hard at work on developing a strategic plan and honing the BAS mission statement. The big news and a major topic of the retreat is the fact that BAS has taken over the task of producing the more than 1,200 events that take place annually at the Bowery Poetry Club. Here is a photo of the crew enjoying the beach
after a long day of meetings. Check back for more info on the outcome of the retreat.
Dear Poetry Family,
Great News! Kiki Smith and Anne Waldman have collaborated on a poetry carry-all bag — or maybe it’s an art work suitable for framing if you realize there are only 200 of them.
In either case, if you contribute $100 to Bowery Arts & Science you’ll receive the satisfaction of helping the Club in a time of need (our direct mail campaign has raised only half of what we needed),
AND AN ORIGINAL KIKI SMITH/ANNE WALDMAN!
Click here to see a PDF for the artwork!
Just Click to contribute $100 (or more if you can! or less, and receive free admission to a Club event)!
“breaking poems” by Suheir Hammad has been selected as a winner of the 30th annual Before Columbus Foundation/AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS for 2009. This book is published by Cypher Books one of the Bowery Arts and Science fiscal projects and we could not be more proud to be associated with this fine press and their poets.
More info at:
www.cypherbooks.org
Bowery Poetry Club, Papa Susso, and Youth Poets from the Summer Institute of Social Justice and Applied Poetics at New Museum Block Party!
3pm Papa Susso Performs- Susso’s performance is sponsored by New York State Council on the Arts- Folk Arts
Alhaji Papa Susso (Suntu), master kora player, traditional musician, oral historian, virtuoso and director of the Koriya Musa Center for Research in Oral Tradition, was born in the village of Sotuma Sere in the Upper River Division of The Republic of Gambia, West Africa. Susso hails from a long line of Griots (traditional oral historians). His father taught him to play the kora when he was five years old.
Bowery Poetry Club poets write poems with kids and families all day long.
Youth Poets perform through out the day!
The New Museum Block Party is free and open to the public. Participants receive a complementary guest pass to visit the New Museum on the day of the event. At Sara D. Roosevelt Park- Entrance near Chrystie and Grand streets.
Please stop by the Bowery Poetry Club booth and say hello!
Diana Manister’s stellar review of Janet Hamill’s new book of poetry titled Body of Water is now online at Big City Lit. Check it out here:
Here is a choice quote from the review, “Fellini and Hamill are both artists on an Orphic journey to the mind’s crepuscular underworld, from which they bring back characters, situations and images that baffle the intellect.” We love any review that has the word crepuscular!
Bowery Arts and Science is thrilled to announce that Suheir Hammad’s book “breaking poems,” has been selected for 2009 Arab American Book Award for first prize in poetry. The book was published by Cypher Books one of our fiscal projects. Congratulations also to Cypher Books Co-Publisher’s Willie Perdomo and Lisa Simmons! Hammad is in good company with Naomi Shihab Nye winning for children’s poetry.
You may read more about the awards and find out how to purchase the book at:
Bowery Books is proud to announce the release of BODY OF WATER
by Janet Hamill. On Sunday, Nov. 2nd at 6pm EST you can watch a live WebCast of the book release party.
Body of Water
Janet Hamill
Standing by a body of water. Moving or standing still
in the dark green depths my soul finds its own level
Lost in a mirror of infinite margins. Ever sounding
on and on. Perpetual arms pull me under light’s
silver sheets tossed with wind and waves
where a coiled muscle gives up a perfect word
I come with only a fever to offer. Far from the dried
carnations in summer’s throat and certain birds
that pierce the air with an agonizing cry. I come
to wash and be clean. To drown in my immensity
Baptized by a spray of distant sky. In sympathetic
Response the surface repeats the hypnotic patterns
of my longing. Again and again. Swimming out
to the breaking pages before me with only
a parched fountain to offer. Far from the sun’s
entrenched lullaby of insect music and the worried
sleep that parts with a film of dust and fear. I come
to be carried away through the charitable doors
that open on the shore
Standing by a body of water. Moving or standing still
In the dark green depths my soul finds its own level
Suheir Hammad is in conversation with Gloria Steinem in the latest issue of New York magazine.
Please join us for the book party/ fundraiser for Hammad’s new book,
Thursday, Oct. 30th 6pm, at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery,
(between Bleecker and Houston) 212-614-0505 for more info.
Founded in 2003, Cypher Books, a New York City-based, independent publisher is proud to present breaking poems, a new collection of poetry from Tony award-winning poet, Suheir Hammad. Consistent with Cypher’s mission to publish innovative and necessary poetry, Hammad departs from her previous books with a bold and explosive style to do what the best poets have always done: create a new language. Using “break” as a trigger for every poem, Hammad destructs, constructs, and reconstructs the English language for us to hear the sound of a breath, a woman’s body, a land, a culture, falling apart, broken, and put back together again.
Suheir Hammad’s break introduces English to an Arabic vernacular that startles into being an altogether new language, bridging the archipelago of a Palestine under siege to the diaspora and beyond, breaking through convention, breaking open locks on mind and heart, breaking into a music inspired by the Coltranes, Sun Ra and free jazz, Lee Scratch Perry and Ravi Shankar, a music that is at once a joyous celebration of survival and a poignant cri de Coeur that cannot be ignored and that Mahmoud Darwish should have lived to see. This is a poetry written for people who have endured the winds of hurricanes and invasions What wisdom, energy, joy and poignancy Hammad brings to the page-for all of this, and for teaching me a new speaking, I give her my thanks. – Carolyn Forché
Cypher Books has recently transitioned from being an imprint of Rattapallax Press to a full-fledged press under the sponsorship of Bowery Arts & Sciences. This celebration will also serve as a fundraiser to benefit future publications and programming. We hope to see you there!