AMONG GENRES EVENT at Unnameable Books

Belladonna* Collaborative presents: Among Genres
featuring Amanda Davidson, Stephanie Gray, and Jess Arndt

3 writers; 3 chaplets; 1 night

Join us at Unnameable Books (600 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, NY) on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at 7 PM

Check out the Facebook event here 

My Summer at Belladonna* by Liat the Intern

Hi everyone! My name is Liat Kaplan, and I've been interning behind the scenes at Belladonna* this summer. I'm a sophomore at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and I'm originally from St. Paul, Minnesota.

As a dual literature and gender/women's studies major, Belladonna* was an ideal place for me to have a summer internship. I had the opportunity to learn some of the ins and outs of the independent publishing world while immersed in an intersectional feminist environment. I also got to read a lot of poetry, which is a pretty great job perk.

In addition to helping with Belladonna's regular daily work, I spent much of my time here converting some of the older out-of-print chaplets into PDFs to make them  available (for free!) on the website. I hope everyone will check it out and enjoy reading them as much as I did.

Thank you to the Belladonna* crew for teaching me so much this summer. And thank you to all the readers and supporters who make Belladonna* possible!

Signing off,

Liat

introduction for Rachel Levitsky by Krystal Languell

May 18, 2014 at Berl's Bookstore
at Lesley Flint Presents, hosted by Joseph Bradshaw

Rachel Levitsky is a visionary.

When I met Rachel, I persuaded her to let me turn Belladonna into a nonprofit.

“Our strategy was later revealed as naïve, but not completely naïve.”

She has written a novel against the arrogant notion that we can act without context,  arguing instead that when we inevitably spill over out of ourselves we are world-building.

“We could not keep all the particulars of it, our suffering, within the confines of our chest”

If we must risk death when we act (and we must),

“there is no outcome other than my death”

then our actions must have purpose in order to validate to our survival.

The book is dedicated to dissent and to the future and its mothers.

If it is not for our food water and shelter or the food water and shelter of others,

Alice Notley writes, “We the men have caused a crisis of money food and shelter, the primal goods, and we the men will fix it. You can’t help because it’s urgent. Only we the men know how to fix the things we broke.”

then it must be FOR AN IDEA with high stakes, with skin in the game, as a sports commentator or financial guru or NY Times columnist would argue—

“…might not we attempt to contribute a future less poisonous, atomized, wasting and ruined for the world into which surely others will find themselves awakening like us, shouldering unknown traits and ways.”

an idea about the future—though this “skin game” idiom, the origin of which is disputed, usually connotes a financial stake, a wager or an investment depending on your tack, while Levitsky’s novel calls for political skin; she asks whether we are willing to stake our freedom from violence—a risk more immediate than what money is capable of.

Can we be activist in our nonprofit management, in our university employment, in our personal lives? Can we be interventionist in our editing and our event curation?

Levitsky answers yes. It may not always be fun or cute or charming to do so, but it is powerful and it means in a higher stakes way, that is, this activism in daily life and circled round in this challenging novel, than most of the text being created and published today. Not just poetics of what are you doing, but a poetics of what are you doing about.

And in terms of collaboration, who are you doing about and with.

LaTasha Diggs at the Walker Center

Not in Minnesota this past month?

See LaTasha Diggs' performance at the Walker Center in MN here!

introduction to Jamie Townsend, 5/17/2013

Below is Krystal Languell's introduction to Jamie Townsend at the Center for Book Arts on May 17, 2013.

Jamie Townsend's poems give us back our starlets. I feel a particular kinship with his work because he has a poem called "Always be my Baby" and I  have a poem called "Touch my Body," both after Mariah Carey poems.

But what Jamie does for/to/through Mariah/Mimi is to oppose the "Stars! They're just like us!" narrative and offer in its place "Stars! They're from outer space."

Did Mariah Carey invent the selfie? My computer autocorrected to say "Did Mariah Carey invent the self."

Jamie's work enters the mythology of recent-past, even present-moment, stardom by repackaging what we've just started to forget and reminding us of its value. Remember Mariah Carey's falsetto? Now you do. Jamie's work is expansive rather than contained. Other poets are writing about pop culture right now, but Jamie is doing so in a true epic way--Mariah Carey, Barbara Walters, Antony, Mimi from the band LOW, rolling through five or seven pages of fragment and aside--and this is not your MTA Poetry in Motion commodity, this is that rare hot body sitting next to you on the train so that you can't even stare, they are too close, but maybe they are doing an erasure of the Wall Street Journal. You recognize. And Jamie's work gives you back that moment.


Jamie Townsend is the managing editor for Aufgabe, as well as the
co-founder of con/crescent, a periodic hub of creative mumbo-jumbo. He
is author of the chapbooks STRAP/HALO (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs;
2011), Matryoshka (LRL Textile Editions; 2011), and THE DOME (Ixnay
Press; 2011). In 2012 he was selected to be a Millay Colony fellow.

LaTasha Diggs in Spring 2014

You can catch Belladonna* author LaTasha Diggs performing and/or curating at these events in the weeks to come!

April 3, 2014, 7pm
The Department of Performance Studies
New York University / Tisch
721 Broadway, 6th Floor, Room 612

April 5, 2 pm
Tribute to Amiri Baraka
The Poetry Project, Saint Marks Church

April 7, 7pm
The Contemporary Literature Series

In the Undergraduate English Program at NYU

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Urayoan Noel

April 16
La Casa Azul Bookstore

El Barrio, Harlem 

April 17 & 18
Bentley Theater  
Darmouth College 
New Hampshire

April 22, 7pm 
Belladonna* presents Betsy Fagin, LaTasha Diggs,
Uljana Wolf
Brooklyn Public Library

RSVP on Facebook

April 25, 6pm

Center for Books Arts Broadside Series
featuring Zohra Saed and Mendi + Keith Obadike
Curated by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

April 26, 6pm

Mr. Hip Presents Readings Series
UFORGE Gallery
767 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

Get your hands on a copy of TwERK if you haven't yet! Ordering direct from Belladonna* ensures your cash goes straight to the press!

Upcoming Events!

Poetry Month is sure to be a whirlwind with all of these Belladonna* readings and co-sponsored events.

March 27, 6:15pm

The Annual Women's History Month Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading featuring R. Erica Doyle 

Pratt Institute, DeKalb 208 

200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY

April 3, 10am to 8pm

CUNY Chapbook Fest book fair, C-level CUNY Grad Ctr

April 4-5: Poetics @ Pratt:April 4, 11am to 3pm: Poetics book fair at Pratt Institute, outdoor lawn
(includes Belladonna*, Litmus Press, Ugly Duckling Presse, more!)

April 5, 1-6pm, 8-10pm: Pratt faculty poets marathon reading, Alumni Reading Room (includes Rachel Levitsky, Krystal Languell, Laura Elrick, Anna Moschovakis, more!)
RSVP on Facebook

  

April 9, 12:30pm

Judy Grahn

Pratt Institute, Higgins Hall

200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY

  

April 9, 8pm

Judy Grahn and Jack Waters

The Poetry Project

131 E. 10th St, NYC

  

April 16, 7pm

Belladonna* presents Brenda Hillman & Evelyn Reilly 

Berl's Poetry Bookshop, 126A Front St, Brooklyn, NY

April 19 7pm 

Barbara Henning reading 

UDP:D, Salt & Cedar in Detroit, MI

April 22, 7pm

Belladonna* presents Betsy Fagin, LaTasha Diggs, Uljana Wolf 

Brooklyn Public Library

 RSVP on Facebook 

Belladonna* 2014 Subscription Drive: ongoing!

http://belladonnaseries.org/subscriptions.html

Belladonna news!

Belladonna* Collaborative member Barbara Henning has a new book out, A Swift Passage, and a lot of buzz to share about it!

• featured on the podcast Write The Book with Shelagh Shapiro. Listen here.
• reviewed at Be You.  
• reviewed by Paul Klinger at HTML GIANT.
• Barbara shares her research notes at Necessary Fiction.
• interviewed by John Curley at The Conversant.

You can buy the book from SPD here!

While you're there, check out all of Belladonna's titles, too!