Poets For Peace

Our forthcoming San Diego events include: Valzhyna Mort,  Carol Frost, David Gewanter, fiction writers Katherine Towler and David Matlin and a translator Matvei Yankelevich.

 Valzhyna Mort

 David Gewanter

Carol Frost

Katherine Toweler

David Matlin

 

New York events include: Pierre Joris and Nicole Peyrafitte this spring

and Reading March 21st to observe the 7th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq  

Tim Peterson is a poet, critic and editor living in Brooklyn, NY. The author of Since I Moved In, recipient of the first Gil Ott Award from Chax Press, Peterson also edits EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts and curates the TENDENCIES: Poetics & Practice talks series at CUNY Graduate Center. A new chapbook, VIOLET SPEECH, is forthcoming from 2nd Avenue Poetry in Fall 2009. Other chapbooks include CUMULUS (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs) and Trinkets Mashed into a Blender (Faux Press/e).

Peterson's poetry and criticism have appeared in 2nd Avenue Poetry, Antennae, artsMEDIA, Aufgabe, Colorado Review, Critiphoria, CUE, EBR, EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts, Fascicle, Five Fingers Review, Harvard Review, OCHO, ON, Marsh Hawk Review, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Poker, RAIN TAXI, Sonora Review, and Transgender Tapestry.

Peterson is guest-editor of a special issue of MIT Press' journal Leonardo Electronic Almanac on "New Media Poetry and Poetics."

Other recent critical writing appears in the book NO GENDER: Reflections of the Life & Work of kari edwards, ed Brolaski, kaufman, and Grinnell (Litmus Press/Belladonna Books) and also in Burning Interiors: David Shapiro's Poetry and Poetics, ed. Fink and Lease (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).

Jean-Paul Pecqueur is a poet and writing instructor who has published poems, critical reviews, and essays in a number of national publications. He has taught creative writing, critical writing, and literature courses at The University of Washington and The University of Arizona’s Poetry Center. Jean-Paul has been teaching Introduction to Literary and Critical Studies courses at the Pratt Institute since 2006. His first book of poems, “The Case Against Happiness,” was the winner of Alice James Books’ Kinerth Gensler award in 2006.

Major Jackson is the author of two collections of poetry: Hoops (Norton: 2006) and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia: 2002), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Hoops was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literature - Poetry. His third volume of poetry Holding Company is forthcoming from W.W. Norton. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He served as a creative arts fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and as the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence at University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Major Jackson is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at University of Vermont and a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. He serves as the Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.

Eleni Sikelianos  has two new books out this fall: The California Poem, a book-length exploration of growing up in her home state, from Coffee House Press; and The Book of Jon, a media-rich meditation on the nature of drug addiction, daughterhood, and death, from City Lights. Eleni’s previous books are The Monster Lives of Boys & Girls, Earliest Worlds, The Book of Tendons, The Lover's Numbers, and To Speak While Dreaming. She is the recipient of a number of awards, including the National Poetry Series (for The Monster Lives), residencies at Princeton University as a Seeger Fellow and at Yaddo and the Maison des écrivains étrangers in Brittany, a Fulbright Writer's Fellowship in Greece, a New York Foundation for the Arts Award in Nonfiction Literature, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing, a New York Council for the Arts Translation Award, and the James D. Phelan Award for Blue Guide. Her work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including Grand Street, Sulfur, Chicago Review, and Fence.

Eleni has spent a fair amount of her life traveling by foot, thumb, train, boat and plane (including sixteen or so months hitchhiking across Europe and Africa: London to Istanbul, Cairo to Nairobi; trips to Mexico City, Oaxaca, the Yucatan, Borneo, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur; many trips to Greece; and a few years in France).

She currently lives in Colorado with her husband, the fiction writer Laird Hunt, and teaches in the MFA program at Naropa in Boulder, and in the Creative Ph.D. program at the University of Denver.

Pierre Joris left Luxembourg at eighteen & has since lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa & France. In 1992 he returned to the Mid-Hudson valley & teaches poetry & poetics at the State University of New York, Albany where he lives with performance artist and singer Nicole Peyrafitte and their son Miles. He has published over 20 books & chapbooks of poetry, among them, The Rothenberg Variations, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999, h.j.r. Winnetou Old, Turbulence, and Breccia, Selected Poems 1974. In 2003 he published a selection of essays under the title A Nomad Poetics.

He has also published a range of translations, both into English & into French, the most recent being Paul Celan : Selections 4x1: Translations of Tristan Tzara, Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey & Habib Tengour, and Habib Tengour's Empedokles's Sandal. He has also translated Paul Celan's 3 volumes Lightduress (for which he received the 2005 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Threadsuns and Breathturn, Abdelwahab Meddeb’s The Malady of Islam, Maurice Blanchot's The Unavowable Community & Edmond Jabès’s From the Desert to the Book.

With Jerome Rothenberg he has co-edited a two volume anthology of 20th Century Avant-Garde writings, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, the first volume of which received the 1996 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. Rothenberg’s & Joris’s previous collaboration pppppp: Selected Writings of Kurt Schwitters was awarded the 1994 PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Translation. Rothenberg & Joris recently co-edited & co-translated The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Writings of Pablo Picasso.
As reader & performance artist, work with performance artist / singer / painter Nicole Peyrafitte includes a range of collaborations such as "dePLACEments" (premiered at Cave Poésie, Toulouse, France); "Manifesto&a" (premiered in Luxembourg); "Riding The Lines," (New York City performance at the Here Inn); other performances include "Pierre's Words (Toward an Opera)," a collaboration with composer Joel Chadabe & the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company (Premiered at The Egg, Albany); "Frozen Shadows," a dance & reading performance based on Winnetou Old, choreographed by Ellen Sinopoli & danced by the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company (Union College, Schenectady, NY; "The Egg," Albany, NY); and "This Morning" (part of Music Juggle) a multimedia collaboration with composer Xavier Chabot.

Multimedia performance artist Nicole Peyrafitte was born in Luchon (French Pyrenees) into the 5th generation of a family of restaurateurs. She received her early cooking training from her grand father – a renowned chef  and later perfected her skills interning at several award winning restaurants in France.
She moved to the United States in 1987, settling first in Southern California where she was a private chef and started her work as a collage artist and painter. Since moving to Albany NY in 1992, she has dedicated herself to multimedia art work.
As an autodidact, she considers each step of her work an attempt to fulfill her compulsion to learn through a process of immersion that generates performances incorporating voice / paintings / videos / writing & often cooking.
Peyrafitte performs locally, nationally and in Europe. She also often collaborates with her partner, poet Pierre Joris. La Garbure Transcontinentale/The Bi-Continental Chowder was featured at the Estivada de Rodez 2006.
For details information visit her website at: www.nicolepeyrafitte.com

 Sabrina Chap

A classical pianist since the age of 5, Sabrina initially came to songwriting once she picked up her first guitar in college.  Her first album, Bedroom Sessions, is a collection of folk songs written exclusively on guitar and recorded in her bedroom using Garageband. 

After years of developing a strong folk following at places like the now defunct Burkhart Underground, Uncommon Ground and virtually every coffeehouse in Chicago, she moved to Milwaukee to try find a new sound.  It was during that time that she turned back to the piano, and learned Scott Joplin’s infamous ‘Maple Leaf Rag’, and began writing songs in the ragtime tradition.

Since moving to New York, she has performed at a variety of musical venues, such as Rockwood Music Hall, Bar 169, Vivaldi Café, Sidewalk Café and Bar 4. She has done a solo tour of England, Scotland and Germany, as well as completing a tour through Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium with Argentinian songwriter, Agustina Mancinelli.  Oompa her debut album, is a hilarious, yet heartbreaking romp featuring a variety of musical styles. 

15 FACTS ABOUT JOHN FUGELSANG

1. He interviewed Paul McCartney in London, and George Harrison in New York – in the same week. (This was before VH1 became the “Washed-Up-Celebrity-In-Hot-Tub” network.)

2. He appeared on “Politically Incorrect” more than 20 times and Bill Maher called him ‘one of my favorite comedians’.

3. He is Irish, Danish and German; which means he gets drunk, hides the Jews, and looks for them.

4. His mother is an ex-Nun and his father was a Franciscan Brother. His Drama-League Nominated Off-Broadway solo show “ALL THE WRONG REASONS” was based on their love story. He admires Jesus as any guy would admire mom’s first husband.

5. He grew up on Long Island, in the heart of the Guido Belt. Now he lives in both in Greenwich Village, NYC, and Hollywood CA. This makes him bi-coastal, although his parents maintain he’s ‘just confused.

6. He’s been featured on CNN, Fox News, Dennis Miller, Air America, CNBC, and been published on The Huffington Post and Daily Kos. Oh, he also co-hosted “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.”

7. “CSI” – Dead Drug Mule. “Becker” – Psycopath. “Providence” – Sleazy Lawyer. “Coyote Ugly” – Crooked Club Owner. “Somewhere in the City “- Sex scene with Sandra Bernhard.

8. British GQ & the New York Post call him “Hilarious;” The New Yorker says, “He has the soul of an iconoclast;” and former Klansman David Duke says, “This man hates himself.”

9. He’s appeared at Montreal’s ‘Just for Laughs’ Festival, HBO’s U.S Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, The Las Vegas Comedy Festival, and he closed last year’s South Beach Comedy Festival in Miami. Booed in Tampa in 2002 for doing Bush material.

10. He is Half-Southern and Half-Brooklyn, which means he legally grew up in a Bi-lingual Household. Mom called the kids ‘y’all’ and Dad called them ‘rat bastards.’

11. He co-hosted “America’s Funniest Videos” with Daisy Fuentes. And he did a series for PBS. Basically, same job.

12. Although his parents are both ex-clergy he’s come to view Jesus the way he views Elvis – loves the guy, but the fan clubs freak him out.

13. He’s co-hosted (first with ‘Mad TV’s’ Debra Wilson, then with Gorgeous Emmy winner Teresa Strasser) “Watercooler,” the only intentionally funny show on TV Guide Network.

14. He plays two roles in the upcoming romantic comedy ‘The Whole Truth’ starring Elisabeth Rohm and Eric Roberts, screening at NYC’s Friar’s Club Comedy Film Festival.

15. He believes in both the Zodiac and Chinese Astrology, which makes him a Virgin born in the year of the Cock.

Nicole Peyrafitte

Pierre Joris