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ČERVENÁ BARVA PRESS NEWSLETTER

Gloria Mindock, Editor   Issue No. 7   January, 2006

Poetry Readings: Scroll down or click below

EDITORIAL

Happy New Year! The winner of the 2005 Chapbook Poetry Prize is The Whole Enchilada by Ed Miller. His manuscript was just amazing. I am very excited about publishing it.

A huge thank you to every writer who entered the contest. I thought all the manuscripts were very well written and very unique. I would like to compliment you on this. I really enjoyed reading them all. The contest was judged blindly, and I spent tons of time with each manuscript. Thanks again for sharing your work with me and sending to the press. I do feel honored to have read such good work.

RANTS AND RAVES…

Raves…for the new Issue of The Drunken Boat. What a great issue featuring Latvian poets/writers. I thought this issue was just absolutely amazing. I loved the poetry. As many of you know, I love reading work from that part of the world. Please read this issue. It is great! http://www.thedrunkenboat.com

Raves for the movie Capote. Go see it. I would like to share my experience with Truman Capote with you. I met him in the 1970's at a private party in Bloomington, Illinois. It was a very small gathering. Truman sat in a big over-stuffed chair, and I sat on the floor to the right of him. He was extremely charming, witty and very funny. I remember thinking about what a high voice he had. I automatically liked him. He was an interesting character. Definitely full of life. The one thing I deeply regret is that I don't remember much of my conversation with him. It was so many years ago. If I did remember any, it would remain private. I think it would be terrible to have a nice conversation with someone and then read about it later. I'm glad I have high standards concerning this. In Cold Blood is being read again and discovered by new readers. This is a good thing.

THANK YOU

Thank you to Rebecca Seiferle, Editor of The Drunken Boat. She featured an article on Červená Barva Press in her newest issue. I have received many responses about it. Check it out.

WHAT'S NEW FOR 2006

Chapbooks by Richard Kostelanetz, Ed miller (winner of the chapbook poetry contest), Ian Randal Wilson are all forthcoming.

April is the ONE YEAR anniversary of the press. The newsletter will feature interviews by 4-5 writers/editors. This will be a very special newsletter because of that. There also will be a poetry reading scheduled at that time to celebrate in Somerville, MA.

National Writers Union-Boston will be celebrating books by authors published
in 2005 and January 2006.
Sunday, January 29th, 2:00-5:00 p.m. at the Cambridge YMCA
Jimmy Tingle will be the featured speaker.
Among the reader's Gloria Mindock will read from her new chapbook, Oh Angel.

Durrell Hall
Central Square YMCA
820 Mass. Ave.
Cambridge, MA

Hope to see all union members there!
Open to the public and admission is FREE.

INTERVIEW WITH BARRY CASSELMAN

Describe the room you write in.

I write my first drafts of poems in many rooms and spaces. These first drafts are often written in restaurants, or on trains. Sometimes they are written during concerts. Or outdoors. Music is very nurturing to me when I write. I usually write first drafts in longhand on pads of paper. In recent years, I do final drafts on my computer located in an office in my apartment. This office is filled with books and files, but has a large window which face the street. I can look out this window when I write.

What are you working on now?

I am trying to finish a novel I began many years ago. It is a saga something like those novels written in the 19th and early 20th century by European novelists who had many generations behind them who lived in one place. My novel takes place in Erie, Pennsylvania, where I was born and grew up. My family settled there in the late 1800s, but the place was also the home of a now extinct tribe of Native Americans called the Eries (after which the lake and the city were named). The remarkable, and probably unique, geography of Erie has much to do with the form of this book. In my generation, virtually everyone I knew left Erie, as I did, to live elsewhere. This broke the pattern of generations remaining in the place where they were born. So it is a fictional memoir and saga of a kind of American life that probably no longer exists.

You write political articles. How has this affected your poetry? How long have you been involved in writing about politics. Talk about it some.

I have not ever taken a course in journalism. I received my graduate degree from the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, and then took a job as an editor at Harcourt Brace in New York City. After a year, I moved to Minnesota, which I had visited to see my brother who lived there during the time I lived in Iowa. I planned to start a book publishing company, rented an office and bought an IBM typesetter. The problem was that I did not have enough capital. So, to pay my bills, I started a small newspaper in a Minneapolis new town suburb where I lived. Another new town development began soon afterwards in downtown Minneapolis, so I started another newspaper there. This grew and became successful, but after 12 years, I was worn out from selling ads, layout, editing and publishing it. It was a great experience, and in many ways, my truest education. Among other matters, I wrote about local, state and national politics for this newspaper. We had always talked politics at my family dinner table. My father was a physician, but he loved to talk about politics. As I wrote articles and editorials about politics, I realized my role as a journalist which, to me, is about fair and accurate reporting. I strongly disagree with those who say that journalism and journalists should be propagandistic and ideologically partisan. Like good poetry, the best journalism reveals truths, not imposes them. After closing down my newspaper, I became a freelance writer about national politics. Today, I write a regular op ed column, and frequent articles in various national publications on presidential politics, congressional races and international affairs. I am perhaps the only full-time American poet who makes his living as a journalist. I try to keep them separate, and I don¹t know that my journalism has affected my poetry. I do think it has affected my fiction in that my writing style, over the years, has become more economical. I suspect, however, that my poetry has affected my journalism style in that I write about politics now with perhaps more with a sense of the inherent drama of history and language.

Have you always lived in Minneapolis? What is the writing scene like there?

I have lived in the Twin Cities and environs or more than thirty years. I came here in my late 20s from Erie, PA via Philadelphia, New York, Iowa City, Madrid, Barcelona, London and Paris. It took me five years to learn to wear a hat in the winter. I kept getting bronchitis. It shows perhaps that being a doctor¹s son doesn¹t make you smart about your own health. I was drawn here from the first time I came here. When I began publishing my newspaper, I nicknamed the area the biomagnetic center. That was because there was so much innovation and culture and entrepreneurial spirit here in the 1970s that people were drawn here, even in spite of the notorious cold and isolation from the coasts. I have always traveled 2-4 months in most years for my work, and that would include Florida and California in the winter where I have family. Other cities have become biomagnetic centers now, and Minneapolis no longer has as much originality as it once had, but I have many friends here. Good friends, as you grow older, become very important. There is, and has been, a writing scene here, but I am not really part of it. I know many of the writers, but my work does not fit the predominant Minnesota style. Poets are also not necessarily good company, and I find that I have more friends who are chefs, musicians and actors.

What writers make you tick?

I feel sad that there are not more living or contemporary authors who make me want to read their work. The writers who I read and reread include Lady Murasaki, Rilke, Musil, Gertrude Stein, the authors of the Chasidic tales, Tomas Transtromer, the seven sages of the Bamboo Grove from 3rd century China, Rolf Jacobson, Kafka, Calvino, Buzzati, Turgenev, Octavio Paz, Hawthorne, Melville, Donald Barthelme, Ortega y Gasset and Abraham Lincoln. I can't imagine what ties that group together other than my odd brain.

Do you write poetry everyday?

I THINK about poetry every day. In recent years, I have been writing so much prose that I need to discipline myself to sit down and write poetry. But the same kind of phenomena which stir me and inspire me to poetry are always at work on me.

Talk about some of your publications.

My first published work was a short story that appeared in Portuguese in Brazil. A Brazilian writer, Sergio Sant'Anna, who I knew from the International Writers Workshop in Iowa City, had, without telling me in advance, translated the story and had it published in a major Brazilian literary review. Soon after that, it was published in English. My first book of poems, The Rippling Water Sleeve, was published in a very limited edition. Then my second book of poems, Equilibrium Fingers, was published by Kraken Press in 1978. The great experimental American composer Kenneth Gaburo was also fascinated by language, and after we met in the 1970s, he took an interest in my work. His Lingua Press published a small book on language that I wrote called Language, A Magical Enterprise, The Body. This was later translated into Bengali by the Indian troubador poet Deepak Majumdar. Gaburo then published a sequel Language Is Not Words and some of my poems. He was very supportive of my ideas and experiments, as he was of many other composers and writers. His passing was a huge loss. I began collaborating with the composer Randall Davidson in a performance work entitled Among Dreams, and my friend Mike Finley at Kraken Press brought that out as a book of short stories. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, my poems were published in magazines all over the United States, including American Poetry Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Boston Literary Review, Kansas Quarterly and many others. Some of my work was translated into Portuguese, French and Bengali and published abroad. I have a book of poems from that period called "The Boat of the Blue Rose" which is waiting for a publisher. I suppose I could have been published more often if my style fit into a neat category, but my work is very idiosyncratic and some editors perhaps have not been willing to publish my poems. Other editors have, however, and I am very grateful to them.

POETRY READINGS

MASSACHUSETTS READINGS:

THE NEW ENGLAND POETRY CLUB WINTER 2005 CALENDAR
founded in 1915 by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, Conrad Aiken
* Unless otherwise noted, all events are free and open to the public*
PLEASE NOTE! The LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI GOLDEN ROSE READING is postponed until April,2006

PREVIEW OF 2006

January: [no meeting]
February 6th: Readings by ANDREW SOFER, LEN KRISAK and other NEPC members
February 14th: Members reading LOVE POEMS
March 7th: JORIE GRAHAM
April: Golden Rose Award to, and reading by, LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

Thursday, January 12th, 2006 - 6:30 P.M. -FREE
A Tapestry of Voices
Hosted by Harris Gardner
With an OPEN MIC’ to follow
FEATURED POETS :
Marcia Karp, Ted Richer, Daniel Lynn Watt and Molly Lynn Watt

Borders Boston -Downtown Crossing
Corner of Washington and School Streets
Boston, Massachusetts
617-557-7188

Harris Gardner
Director of Tapestry of Voices
website: http://tapestryofvoices.com

Sunday, January 22, 2006 at 2:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading: Sophie Wadsworth
Forest Hills Cemetary
Boston, Massachusetts
Directions and info: http://www.foresthillstrust.org

WARWICK, RHODE ISLAND READINGS:

Saturday, January 21, 2006 at 7:00 p.m.
Mad Poets' Cafe:
January’s featured poets are Cathleen Calbert and James R. Whitley, with public open mike segment. Mad Poets is presented by the Warwick Museum of Art located in historic Apponaug Village
3259 Post Road
Warwick, Rhode Island
Visit www.warwickmuseum.org or call 401-737-0010 for further details.

The Mad Poets' Cafe features some of the area's best poets every month in the Museum's gallery space. Host Harris Gardner invites budding poets or writers wanting to debut new material to take part in the Mad Poets' open mike segment.

Sign-up begins at 7 p.m. and is open to all ages and skill levels.
Admission is $5.00 at the door and includes hors d'oeuvres and beverages.

For reservations or further details, please visit www.warwickmuseum.org
or call the Museum office at 401-737-0010.

Harris Gardner
Director of Tapestry of Voices
website: http://tapestryofvoices.com

NEW YORK READINGS:

Sunday Jan. 1, 2006, 2:00p.m.-12 midnight
Alternative New Year's Day Extravaganza
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 The Bowery.
Hosted by Bruce Weber, others, Free
Thaddeus Rutkowski reads between 2 and 4
www.bowerypoetry.com
http://home.mindspring.com/~jah48/codexsolaris

Jan. 8, Sunday, 6 p.m.,
Reading Thaddeus Rutkowski
Quetzal Quill reading
Cornelia Street Cafe,
29 Cornelia Street, Manhattan
With Paolo Javier, Sarah Gambito. Hosted by Rigoberto Gonzalez.
$6, includes drink.
Info: (212) 989-9319

Phoenix Reading: Saturday, January 14 @ 3p.m. (sharp)
THE PHOENIX READING SERIES AT SOCRATES
Readers: Susan Tepper, Charles Pierre, Sica, and Michael Graves (also hosting).
101 Hudson Street
(corner of Franklin Street)
NYC
212-219-2422
Nos. 1, 9 to Franklin Street
Sundays at 2 p.m. (sharp)

Feb. 12, Sunday, 5 p.m.
Hosted by Elise Miller
Reading Thaddeus Rutkowski
East Side Oral, The Living Room
154 Ludlow Street, (at Stanton Street)
Manhattan
Donation
www.eastsideoral.com or www.elisemiller.com

Thursday, February 23 at 7:30 p.m.
FilmAtMakor NY Premiere of MR.RIGHT - Makor (92nd Street Y) - NYC
Laurie Graff is featured in Mr. Right, director Dree Andrea's third documentary
about the search for sanity and a soulmate in New York City.
Cost: $15
More more info, please go to: www.makor.org/film

35 West 67th Street
NY, NY
212-601-1000

March 15, Wednesday, evening
Reading Thaddeus Rutkowski
World's End, across from 477 Main,
Beacon, NY
$3. Plus open reading

PHILADELPHIA & PENNSYLVANIA READINGS:

InterAct Theatre Company

Date: Monday, February 6
Time: 7p.m.
Place: Writing Aloud
InterAct Theatre Company

Susan Tepper's story "Deer" has been selected by InterAct Theatre Company for their "Writing Aloud" series. Along with 4 other short stories, to be performed onstage by professional actors.

For Tickets and more information:
InterAct Theatre Company
2030 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Phone: (215) 568-8077
Fax: (215) 568-8095
www.InterActTheatre.org (Writing Aloud)

MANAYUNK ART CENTER POETRY AND HUMANITIES SERIES 2005-2006

All Manayunk Art Center (MAC) literary events are on Sundays from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Requested donation fee is $4.00. Refreshments are provided. The MAC is in Philadelphia at 419 Green Lane (rear). Zip code is 19128. Peter Krok is Humanities/Poetry Director of the MAC. His email address is macpoet1@aol.com. MAC Web site address is www.manayunkartcenter.org. The MAC phone number is ( 215) 482-3363. The goal, as E. M. Forster wrote, is "Only Connect." Please contact the MAC if you have any program suggestions.

The Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts,
The Magazine of the Manayunk Art Center,
just published issue # 21, Fall 2005, $6.00
To order: Manayunk Art Center
419 Green Lane (rear)
Philadelphia, PA 19128
For submission guidelines: www.manayunkartcenter.org

INDIANA READINGS:

February 15, 2006 7:00PM
Poetry Reading by Rane Arroyo
Notre Dame Student Union
Notre Dame, Indiana

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY READINGS:

Dear friend of The Bardroom, (magyarul lejjebb) Happy New Year!

We'd like to invite you to our next event, which starts at 7.30 on Sunday, January 22, 2006. As usual, entry is free, and as usual, it will be in Nyitott Muhely, Ráth György utca 4, near Déli train station.

Scott Alexander Young - filmmaker (www.imdb.com/title/tt0487079/), witty raconteur, writer of British TV comedy - will present some of his "Space Cadets" dubbed cartoons. He will also announce some of his ongoing projects.

Andrew Singer will read more of his poetry, which has been warmly received on previous occasions. Based in Budapest since 1991, Andrew is also a cultural journalist, and has taught English verse and literary translation at Hungarian universities.

We continue our collaboration with Pilvax magazine (www.pilvaxmag.com) by presenting Mátyás Dunajcsik, reading his prose which was published in the latest issue.

Host Jeff Taylor will present another of his multimedia presentations - this time, exploring the topic of evolution and orthodoxy.

If you have a taste for Darwinism, sign up for a five-minute open mic slot to showcase some of your own material. Entertain the crowd, and you'll get a warm round of applause. Bore them, and they'll heckle you … or just start talking amongst themselves.

Jeff's co-host will be David Hill (www.lyriklife.com), who will read some of his corny poems. And as usual, Jeff and David will test the audience's minds with quiz questions and that ever-popular writing competition - with wonderful prizes for the winners.

A range of refreshments is available at the bar. Based on recent events, we recommend that you arrive early, to make sure you are already refreshed and seated by the time we begin.

See you there!
Kálmán, Jeff and David
The Bardroom
www.bardroom.com

Kedves Bardroom-barát! Boldog Új Évet!

Ezennel meghívunk következo estünkre, ami 7:30-kor kezdodik 2006 január 22-én, vasárnap. Mint mindig, a belépés ingyenes, a helyszín a Nyitott Muhely (Ráth György utca 4, a Délinél).

Scott Alexander Young – filmes (www.imdb.com/title/tt0487079/), anekdotamester, TV-komédiaíró – be fogja mutatni az általa „meghangosított" Urkadétok rajzfilmsorozatot; egyben beszélni fog jelenlegi projectjeirol is.

Andrew Singer, akit már korábban is hallhattunk a Bardroomban, verseibol fog felolvasni. Andrew 1991 óta lakik Budapesten, kulturális újságíró, illetve egyetemi költészet- és fordítástanár.

A Pilvax magazinnal (www.pilvaxmag.com) történo közremuködésünk jegyében fellép majd Dunajcsik Mátyás, aki a legutóbbi számban megjelent prózájából olvas majd fel.

Az est házigazdája, Jeff Taylor újabb multimédia-eloadással áll elo, ez alkalommal az evolúció és az ortodoxizmus témakörében.

Aki szeretne Jeff darwinizmusával osztozni a színpadon, az az eloadás elott iratkozzon fel a szervezoknél, és az est folyamán kap öt percet, amikor azt csinál a mikrofonállvány elott, amit csak akar.

Jeff társmusorvezetoje David Hill (www.lyriklife.com) lesz, aki sajátos költészetét fogja ajánlani a nagyérdemunek. És mint mindig, lesz szokásos kvízjáték, íróverseny és nyeremények özöne.

A bárban széles italválaszték. Javasoljuk, hogy aki tud, valamivel korábban jöjjön, hogy elkerülje a tolongást.

Reméljük, találkozunk!
Kálmán, Jeff és David
The Bardroom
www.bardroom.com

LONDON, ENGLAND READINGS:

Feb. 21, Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Poets for Oxfam
Reading Thaddeus Rutkowski
Oxfam Books & Music,
91 Marylebone High Street, London W1, England
Hosted by Todd Swift

Feb. 23, Thursday, doors 8:30 p.m.
Shortfuse series
Reading Thaddeus Rutkowski
The Camden Head pub, Camden Walk,
Islington, London N1, England
Hosted by Nathan Penlington.
www.20six.co.uk/shortfuse

COMING IN FEBRUARY

• Workshops and private classes will be posted on the website
• Short Story Chapbook Contest information will be posted on the website
• Judy Ray's chapbook, Fishing in Green Waters, will be available for sale
• More poetry readings
• An interview with Poet Flavia Cosma

SIGNUP FOR THE NEWSLETTER:

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