Afterwords // “Make it as intimate as possible”—Solmaz Sharif at Seattle Arts & Lectures
In conversation with Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
All posts filed under: Afterwords
Event reviews from around the region
Afterword // The Being Beyond Terror: Alice Notley for Seattle Arts & Lectures
by Jay Aquinas Thompson | Associate Editor
Afterwords // Nine Things Kevin Young Wants You to Know About Voice
By Jack Chelgren | Associate Editor
Afterwords // Mary Szybist and Robert Wrigley for Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Jack Chelgren | Associate Editor | In two quite distinct idioms, Szybist and Wrigley delivered poems threaded with tradition yet attuned to the contemporary.
Afterwords // Patricia Lockwood: The Hour of Bewilderment
By Elizabeth Cooperman and Matthew Kelsey On July 10, 2014, Patricia Lockwood read at Seattle’s Elliot Bay Book Company from her most recent book of poems, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals. The room–a book-lined basement annex with a small raised stage and podium–was full. Over the next few months, editors Elizabeth Cooperman and Matthew Kelsey exchanged a series of emails, sharing their thoughts about the event. This conversation results from that exchange. 1: Meme-Numbed MK: First impressions first: that reading was absolutely feral. The energy that Lockwood exuded seemed barely containable by the typical reading format. This was apparent from the get-go, when the woman introducing Tricia struggled to stay composed or even objective. She was effusive, probably to a fault. But between that anterior energy and the tone of Lockwood’s poems (and that voice!—those are hard poems to read aloud, I think, and she did herself a service), it’s hard to believe we were all seated, quiet and well-mannered, in the basement of Elliott Bay Bookstore, no? I know we’ll have to discuss how Lockwood became …
Afterwords // Kay Ryan: All Your Flamingos
By Jack Chelgren | Special Projects Intern When Tree Swenson, the executive director of Hugo House, introduced Kay Ryan for a lecture on rhyme last week, she noted the delightful sense of “hidden treasure” lurking in Ryan’s work. That treasure, Swenson said, was rhyme: glowing little ingots of resonance between words. It’s an apt observation. Take these lines from “All Your Horses,” published recently in Poetry: Say when rain cannot make you more wet or a certain thought can’t deepen and yet you think it again: you have lost count. A larger amount is no longer a larger amount.
Afterwords // Anne Carson for Seattle Arts & Lectures
Two takes on Carson & Friends’ performance Tuesday, May 13 at Town Hall by Jack Chelgren & Cali Kopzcick. Two takes because how many eyeballs did you wish you had that night? The Maximalist: Anne Carson at Seattle Arts & Lectures by Jack Chelgren, Special Projects Intern During the Q&A after Anne Carson’s performance at Seattle Arts & Lectures last week, someone in the crowd asked Carson if she’d ever considered translating the New Testament. Carson cooed wistfully, thought for a moment, then replied, “No—the New Testament’s too minimalist for me.” A warm chuckle rose from the crowd, filling the dim, vaulted ceiling of Town Hall. But for all the ironical self-parody of her answer, it’s conceivable that Carson wasn’t really joking. She is an artist and intellectual whose work consistently shatters our rote expectations of poetry, smashing divisions of ancient and modern, lyric and academic, fictional and historical, personal and mythical with the zeal of Hektor chopping down the Achaian ranks in Homer’s Iliad.
Afterwords // Achoo! Local Feminist Readings Combine Poetry and Activism
by Jack Chelgren and Cali Kopczick, Contributing Writers
allergic.jpg
Last Wednesday night, a small crowd settled onto the red velvet couches of the Rendezvous for Allergic to Cats, a feminist reading series combining poetry and activism. This installment featured poets Elaina Ellis and Jade Sylvan (both with books out from Write Bloody Publishing), and a presentation by Ane Mathieson and Easton Branam, local advocates for prostitutes and prostitution survivors.
Afterwords: AWP 2014 // Superlatives
by Rich Smith, Contributing Writer For all the general debauchery, hedonism, hooliganism, missed drinks, missed sleep, frowns above triple digit bar tabs, poetrybomb readings, skipped panels, hangovers, retroactive hangovers, I still managed to read, hear, and talk about a whole lot of exciting contemporary poetry and prose. Here’s a roundup of the best moments from the best AWP I’ve ever been to. Best Quote About Seattle: I’m torn between “You mean there’s more than one pie place?” and “That’s the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen—no, that one is!”
Afterwords: AWP 2014 // Beaker Full of Sarah Shotwell
by Sarah Shotwell, Contributing Writer On Sunday afternoon at SeaTac Airport, I stood in line to board a rickety little plane half-full of writers bound for Los Angeles. It was all too easy to spot them: they had purple-stamped canvas bags slung over their shoulders. They were slowly thumbing expired editions of Tin House and trying to cram conference materials into over-stuffed carry-ons. They were silent and pallid and greasy. Earbuds were stuck in their ears. They shared the countenance of a bunch of introverts, well over capacity. The 2014 Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, hosted by the University of Washington Creative Writing Program, drew more than 10,000 outsiders to Seattle last weekend. Since 1972, AWP has pulled its unwieldy community of writers, publishers, teachers and readers together under one roof for a long weekend of paneling, browsing, networking, reading, and partying. The conference also is the host to the largest book fair in North America, where MFA programs attempt to draw applicants, and where publishers and foundations come to hawk subscriptions, promote …