Juniper Bends this Friday, Downtown Books and News

Both Julian Vorus and Lucy Tobin have now written me about Juniper Bends, a new reading series hosted at Downtown Books and News. As Julian writes:

Luckily, we have such a vibrant music scene here in Asheville, but we would like to see a parallel development of a solid underground writing scene as well. Diversity, as well as opportunity helps strengthen such objectives.

The series this week features six poets: Jaye Bartell, Jennifer Callahan, Ingrid Carson, Chall Gray, Lucy Tobin, and Julian himself. They're sharp, intelligent writers, so I'll certainly be headed over to check them out.

Downtown Books and News is at 67 North Lexington Avenue in downtown Asheville. The reading gets under way at 7:00 PM, and is free. Hope to cross paths there.

New Wordplay V shows on the archive

Apologies for the long wait, but I'm finally getting new Wordplay Season V shows uploaded to the ibiblio archive:

January 10, 2010 featured Lucy Tobin, who explores a middle ground between lyric and narrative in her very interesting work. Music by Allison Kraus, the Mountain Goats, and Heretic Pride.

January 3, 2010 celebrated the publication of Thomas Rain Crowe's Blue Rose of Venice. The archiving system dropped part of the show, but what survived is worth a listen. Caleb Beissert sat in, and shared his translations of Neruda. An earlier note on the show is below, here.

November 15, 2009 brought Tryon poet Cathy Smith Bowers, long-time Poet-in-Residence at Queens University in Charlotte, into the studio to celebrate her birthday. We listened to George Jones, Nina Simone, and Leonard Cohen, and she read from her most recent volume, The Candle I Hold Up to See You.

More soon.

&&

The kinks in the AshevilleFM archiving system now seem to have been worked out, and new shows upload automatically to the station stream server, and stay there for two weeks. Just go to the site's Programming page, and click on the link to the stream. This link should take you, for now, to Sunday's show with California poet Cecilia Woloch, which features music by Asheville's Janet Robbins. Enjoy!

News notes ...

I missed this when it first got posted, but on Thursday Ron Silliman reviewed Thomas Rain Crowe's new chapbook, The Blue Rose of Venice. What's more, he liked it, noting of it's short "Song of the Gondolier" -

Short bridges.
Narrow canals.
A single wooden paddle
from a black boat on dark water
the only sound
as
the gondolier begins to sing
eeoo, eeoo
into the evening
and the mouth of
a cellular phone.

that "it’s perfectly executed and I found myself reading it over & over, luxuriating in each moment."

Congratulations to Mr. Crowe!

(Other posts about Thomas and his work: here)

&&

Thomas joined me on Wordplay on January 3rd, and as soon as I get it edited (the station internet stream, which feeds the archiving system - or used to, now - dropped several times during the show, so it's incomplete and fragmentary), but I'll post it to the Wordplay Archive.

He read much of the Blue Rose, and friend and fellow poet Caleb Beissert, who joined us in the studio, read some translations of Neruda, and some of his own work as well .

&&

Speaking of Wordplay, thanks to the hard work of Greg Lyon, we've now gotten that archiving system actually, you know, archiving and uploading to the stream server, so each show will be available online for two weeks after its initial air date. I'll post it to the ibiblio archive after that.

Last week's show with poet Lucy Tobin is even now available from the Programming page, here, though it's in unedited form, which means you'll hear a few minutes of Diet Riot before Wordplay, and sundry other sonic artifacts that will disappear before it goes to ibiblio.

I'll be uploading this fall's and winter's shows to ibiblio anon.

&&

And the complete text of Robert Creeley's Collected Essays is now available online, as well, complete with index. Creeley's one of the indispensable guides to poetry in the late great 20th century, so it's wonderful to have his work available for free.
(a tip of the hat to Silliman's blog for the link)

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Photo: Thomas Rain Crowe and Caleb Beissert in the AshevilleFM studio for WordPlay.