wendy s. walters | h o m e t o w n

An Evening of Performance and Readings
The Dream-Life of Words
Saturday, May 18, 5PM-6:30PM
Free
Eyebeam Art+Technology Center
540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011

http://eyebeam.org/events/the-dream-life-of-words

What is the dream-life of digital words as they lay flat on a screen, quietly acquiescing? Can they be satisfied with the momentary puffs of arranged air or do they want something thicker, heavier?  Do words dream about becoming sheafs of blank paper or a screen marked only by a blinking cursor?  Or do they just want a body of their own?  Do they want your body? Join Wendy S. Walters, Joseph Whitt and Joon Oluchi Lee + Roddy Schrock for an evening of performance and readings exploring the dream-life of words and their electronic lives.

The Dream-Life of Words
Saturday, May 18, 5PM-6:30PM
Free
Eyebeam Art+Technology Center
540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011

My long-time collaborator, Derek Bermel, has a new album out with Alarm Will Sound and it is getting some much deserved attention.  The album features musical influences from around the world, with special attention given to traditions from the Americas.  I wrote the lyrics for three of the pieces in “Natural Selection,” sung by the inimitable and captivating Timothy Jones.

Jayson Greene reviews Derek Bermel’s newest album on emusic:

“Canzonas Americanas continues the new-music ensemble Alarm Will Sound’s long-running, fruitful relationship with the composer Derek Bermel, who has plied them with a series of ever-more-ambitious works testing both their boundaries and his. He is an omnivorous sort, the kind of composer who studies studied Thracian folk music, Brazilian caxixi, Ghanaian gyil and other far-reaching forms well outside the Western knowledge base, and the pieces collected on Canzonas feel, on one level, like a colorful and chaotic regurgitation of all the folk forms Bermel’s digested.”  Read the rest of the review here.

And there is a nice review by Andrew Clements in The Guardian: “there’s no doubt about the wit of the song cycle Natural Selection (with baritone Timothy Jones as soloist), with its ironic glances at human behaviour, and vocal writing that runs the full gamut from speech to gospel.” Check the rest of it here.

You can get the album here.

Thanks to editor Penina Roth, I have a few poems from my forthcoming book up on Everyday Genius.  The book, Troy, Michigan, was selected by Futurepoem during their 2012 open call and will be published in the fall of 2013.  To check out the poems, click here.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 7 pm
In Aporia: The Annual Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading
Readings by Nick Von Kleist, Krystal Languell,
Wendy S. Walters, and Eileen Myles
co-sponsored by Belladonna* Collaborative
Lang Café, Eugene Lang College, 65 W 11th Street

The Annual Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading at The New School honors the memory of Akilah Oliver, a radical poet, professor, feminist, and activist. This event is the second of the annual reading series. For more information, go here.

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Monday, September 24, 2012 at 8 pm
Readings by Eric Baus and Wendy S. Walters

The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church
131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY 10003
212-674-0910

For more information, go here.

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Thursday, September 27th at 8 pm
192 Celebrates Futurepoem’s
10th Anniversary
Readings by Ann Lauterbach, Alan Gilbert, and
Wendy S. Walters

Futurepoem books is an award-winning New York City small press that publishes innovative poetry, prose and cross-genre literature. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, this event brings together poet Ann Lauterbach, a member of Futurepoem’s advisory board, and two Futurepoem authors, Alan Gilbert and Wendy S. Walters.  For more information, go here.

We kick off our second season of the First Person Plural Reading Series with a line up of writers and performance artists who are sure to delight us with their original voices. Prepare to be inspired by the work of Paul La Farge, LoVid and Lynne Tillman.

Join us Monday, September 10 at 7pm Shrine for another singular event!

Venue:

Shrine World Music Venue
(in Black United Fun Plaza)
September 10, 2012 @ 7pm
2271 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.
http://www.shrinenyc.com/

I have a new story up on the current issue of The Iowa Review. Here’s a bit of it:

“When I and whoever else was left of Black America finally got out of there, we met up in Norway. The war had taken years off our memory of each other. We had not integrated enough technology into our rituals of self-absorption to say for certain when we completely lost sight of the future. We had no unnatural access to the past, and what little we knew about our home was found only in the library.”

To read the rest, click here.

The New York City Poetry Festival promises to be a great time with all kinds of writers reading and performing works for poetry audiences.  I’ll be reading at two events, one on Saturday and one on Sunday.  Join us if you can.

Saturday, July 21:
1:40pm: Futurepoem with Marcella Durand, Wendy S. Walters, & Ronaldo V. Wilson

Sunday, July 22:
2:30pm: Cave Canem & Kundiman at the New York City Poetry Festival:Cornelius Eady, Brian Francis, Wendy S. Walters, Ocean Vuong, & Angela Veronica

For more information on the two-day line up, go here:

The 2nd Annual New York City Poetry Festival
Saturday & Sunday, July 21st & 22nd, 11am-5pm
(Rain Date: Saturday, July 28th, 11am-5pm)
Governors Island, Colonel’s Row
Pre-sale tickets: $5 for both days
Day-of tickets: $5 per day

What should I bring to the festival?:

• A blanket to lounge on [there won't be chairs]
• Sunscreen!
• An appetite for food and books, and cash to remedy it [though there are ATM's on the island, and we will be accepting credit cards for all merchandise]
• Your own poetry to read at our open mic Ring of Daisies!

Location:

Governors Island has a rich military history, but is now home to festivals, art installations and bike riding throughout the summer among the trees, grass and rows of old colonial houses. Its free ferry leaves from both Manhattan [Battery Maritime Building] and Brooklyn [Brooklyn Bridge Park]! Below is a map from both landings in Manhattan and BK to Colonels Row, the area of the island where the festival is held.

I have a new review up on Hyperallergic this weekend:

“Siglio Press’s anthology of text-based art, It is Almost That, is a rare gem: a book of pivotal works that have received little critical attention. Because of its attention to the obscure, It is Almost That is essential for anyone interested in feminist art, performance studies, cross-genre writing or the graphic novel.

It is Almost That was conceived and edited by Siglio publisher Lisa Pearson, who envisioned the book to be the first of several editions that would document pieces in the fuzzy area between art and text, works that are “not-quite-this-and-not-quite-that.” In her afterword, Pearson emphasizes that “categories cannot contain” and that works that are “partly (almost) visible to one world [are] often entirely invisible to another.” The twenty-six pieces that comprise the volume are not arranged in chronological order, though they are loosely associated with works that precede and follow them. Through this manner of curation, Pearson poses the question of what it means to “read” a text that reveals itself primarily as image when it is not the only work of its kind.”  There is more.

I offer my take on the life and work of Adrienne Rich, which is part of VIDA’s collaborative elegy “21 Love Poems to Adrienne Rich.”  Here’s a clip:

“Adrienne Rich understood that being underestimated afforded one liberty to innovate.

She predicted that most of us would have to revise our perception of power in order to see the world clearly.  She implored us to stop regarding our injuries with disappointment and bless them out of respect for our endurance.

She practiced associative thinking with such dexterity that she made us take for granted how hard it is to employ metaphor without simplifying a subject.  How she maintained a sense of romance while writing a subjective, political poetry remains a mystery.”

For the rest of my piece and great insights by twenty other writers, go here.

We are holding our second FPP Harlem Reading at Shrine next Monday night 4/23 at 7pm featuring playwright Bathsheba Doran; former editor of The Believer and novelist Ed Park; and short story writer Tiphanie Yanique.

Writers will read from their body of work and new pieces exploring the plural voice.  Join us for this one-of-a-kind evening!

For more information on the series, see the links below:

Website
http://www.firstpersonpluralharlem.com/

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-First-Person-Plural-Reading-Series-Harlem/237006713050080

Venue:
Shrine World Music Venue
located at 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.
Harlem, NY
http://www.shrinenyc.com/