Readings by Three Poets

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Steve Benson has large groups of works in written form accessible in The Blue Book (The Figures/Roof, 1998) and Open Clothes (Atelos, 2005). Other talks and performances—including "Return," a talk on "Careers in the Arts," and a collaboration with Jackson Mac Low—are available in sound files online. The Ball—a recent text indicative of Benson's unique approach to writing as performance—can be accessed at ubu.com.

j.s. makkos in one sense can be defined as an experimental composer of visual and audible design-poetics. While his educational background makes him a writer, his aesthetic is in forward moving art. He currently resides in Cleveland, OH, where he operates a nexus space called The Language Foundry, which is dedicated to hybrid performance arts and music, as well as a book press, that is centered around design & poetics. He is currently assembling a large volume of his own work entitled Vagaries that will contain original works in the territories of text and type, ranging from constellated language to concrete/representational/visual pieces. In late 2007 He released a sound/ language collaborative album entitled computer is a room that explores the internal range of a fragmented, yet carefully distilled lexicon, and addresses the concept of transplanting the ego from the self into a virtual and weightless landscape. He has performed in numerous venues around the country, and is due to be published in a variety of formats and publications this century.

Mathew Timmons is guest editor of Trepan, co-edits Insert Press, co-hosts LA-Lit, and co-curates Betalevel's Late Night Snack. He has performed the sound poetry of Hugo Ball, Kurt Schwitters, and Christian Bok, as well as his own compositions in at least four different states. His writings appear in Manufactured Inspirato, Greetings, Disaster, Sleepingfish, P-Queue, Holy Beep!, Flim Forum, The Physical Poets Vol. 2, and PSBooks. He is Program Coordinator of CalArts MFA Writing Program, and teaches interdisciplinary arts and media writing workshops for CalArts School of Critical Studies.

In support of the revolutionary potential of poetry, Just Buffalo sponsors this reading of selections from We Begin Here, (Interlink, 2007) featuring several Buffalo-based artists and peace activists, including Alexis De Veaux, Jimmie Gilliam, Paul Hogan, Liz Mariani, Gary Earl Ross, and Pat Shelly, as well as co-editor of the anthology, Kathy Engel. The next day, Saturday Feb. 9 at 5:00 P.M., Tru-Teas (810 Elmwood Ave.) will host a poetry reading by Engel from her own recent collection of poetry, Ruth's Skirts, accompanied by Heather Bidell on saxophone. Both readings are free and open to the public.

"As our nation hovers at the precipice of change, anticipating our imminent political evolution, we ask ourselves what personal reincarnations should accompany this moment. Kathy Engel and Kamal Boullata—editors of We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon—engage this very notion in their powerful anthology. Spanning over a quarter century of conflict in the Middle East, and forwarding the voices of sixty poets from multiple nations, this collection offers an intricate understanding of what it means to resist, to give birth to change, and to create meaning out of astonishing political chaos and violence.

"In her introduction Engel writes 'We begin here. In the space between words. Our multilingual sounds affirm presence, conscience, memory.'

"It is this collective mission—the transformation of silence into sound—which positions these writers as disciples of language, testifying to the ability of stories to save lives.

"What began as an act of poetic resistance to the 1982 military invasion of Lebanon grew into this full-length collaboration twenty-five years later, after the second Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 2006. Featuring the poetry of such renowned writers as June Jordan, Denise Levertov, Jane Creighton, John Berger, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alexis De Veaux, Joy Harjo, Dennis Brutus, Adrienne Rich, Ariel Dorfman, Ammiel Alcalay, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, W.S. Merwin, and dozens of others, this collection explores the notion of writing as revolutionary activism. The editors' statement—'We are beyond asking. Now we must learn to invent'—illustrates the anthology's deep investment in the agency of language. This collection configures artistic and political speech as the true weapon against terrorism, using the conflict in the Middle East as a metaphor for the health of our planet. According to these poets, in order to visualize peace, we have to create, to communicate, to imagine—we can no longer passively request but rather, through the language of our art and ideas, we must demand. The tenor of each poetic statement is raw and blinding, illustrating the ardency of speech. Their images and evocations turn your face towards the heart of violence, war and terror, and force you to find within that chasm, art, poetry, and life.

"Thus, as we search to make meaning of this current political moment, how to navigate a country at war and deeply invested in acts of violence, I believe the answer in part can be found if we look to the poets, the artists, the seers—if we listen to their voices of resistance, if we find a way to add our own.

"On the ability of poetry to enact social change Kathy Engel says, 'poems are made of love and human utterance. Frailty and unfathomable tenacity. They can't bring back the dead but they keep us alive, and they live because they manifest and extend our selves, our souls, our faith. They enter the world and stay like molecules floating through the air. Made from thought, daring, complex and historic love, everyday life, a desire for truth and the will to remember, these poems are necessary.'" (Heather Bidell).

Kathy Engel, editor, is a poet, teacher, producer, and consultant for social justice and peace organizations. Her first book of poems, Banish the Tentative, was published in 1989. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications. She is the founder of MADRE, an international women's human rights organization, the former President and co-founder of Riptide Communications, and co-founder of East End Women in Black and KickAss Artists. Her new book of poems and personal prose, Ruth's Skirts, is forthcoming from IKON. She traveled to Palestine in 1990.

Read your own if you’re 50 or older. If you are under 50, read a poem by your favorite poet born more than 50 years ago, including great gray poets and other late, great poets (even if they died young).




Continuing publication of Earth's Daughters magazine is made possible by a Decentralization grant from the Arts Council in Buffalo & Erie County, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. The Gray Hair Series is co-sponsored by Hallwalls, Just Buffalo Literary Center, & Talking Leaves...Books.

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Cris Mazza is the author of over a dozen books of fiction, most recently Waterbaby. Her other fiction titles include the critically notable Is It Sexual Harassment Yet? and the PEN Nelson Algren Award-winning How to Leave a Country. She also has a collection of personal essays, Indigenous: Growing Up Californian. Mazza has had a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and three Illinois Arts Council literary awards. A native of Southern California, Mazza grew up in San Diego County. Currently she lives 50 miles west of Chicago and is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Cris Mazza first (and maybe last) read here in 1994 on a bill with Mark Amerika, the late Ron Sukenick, and others as part of a Hallwalls/UB co-sponsored Festival of New Fiction.