News & Events

“ACTIVITY IS THE ONLY COMMUNITY.”

(“The Radical Nature of Experience,”
How Phenomena Appear to Unfold)

 

News


Events

Tuesday, November 8, 2016; 7:00pm-8:30pm

The Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in 21st Century Poetics at UC Berkeley: Nathaniel Mackey
Location: Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall; University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720
Free and open to the public.

Nathaniel Mackey will present the 2016 Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics on Thursday, March 3, at 7 pm in the Maude Fife Room of Wheeler Hall (Wheeler 315). The title of his lecture is “Breath and Precarity.” A reception will follow in the English Department Lounge. This event is free and open to the public.


Tuesday, April 22, 2014; 7:00 pm

Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics presents the 2016 Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics
On Discomfort and Creativity
with Dawn Lundy Martin

Location: Naropa University Performing Arts Center: 2130 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder, CO
Free and open to all

Naropa University is excited to host Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in Innovative Poetics with Dawn Lundy Martin, On Discomfort + Creativity as part of the 2016 Spring Symposium called “How To Grieve and Dream At The Same Time: Discuss” featuring three prominent cultural voices: Eunsong Kim, Ricardo Dominguez, and Sayra Pinto.

Poet, essayist and multimedia artist Dawn Lundy Martin is the author of three books of poetry, and three chapbooks. Of her latest collection, Life in a Box is a Pretty Life (Nightboat Books 2015), Fred Moten says, “Imagine Holiday singing a Blind alley, or Brooks pricing hardpack dandelion, and then we’re seized and thrown into the festival of detonation we hope we’ve been waiting for.” Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, Martin is a member of the three-person performance group, The Black Took Collective. She is also a member of the global artist collective, HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, the group that withdrew its work from the 2014 Whitney Biennial to protest the museum’s biased curatorial practices. Martin is currently working on a hybrid memoir, some of which appears as the essay, “The Long Road to Angela Davis’s Library,” published in the December 2014 New Yorker magazine. Martin was also, most recently, the editor of “On Race and Innovation,” a dossier featured in boundary2: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE.


Friday, December 4, 2015; 6:00pm
The Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in 21st Century Poetics at Pratt MFA: Erica Hunt
Location: Higgins Hall, 61 Saint James Pl, Brooklyn, New York 11238
Free and open to the public.

Erica Hunt is a poet, essayist, and author of Local History and Arcade, as well as three chapbooks, Piece Logic, Time Flies Right Before the Eyes, and A Day and Its Approximates. She has been writer in residence in the Contemporary Poetics/Creative Writing program at the University of Pennsylvania, writer in residence at Bard College’s MFA program, Northwestern University, and Long Island University, and a repeat faculty member for Cave Canem, a workshop for Black writers from 2004 to 2015.


Sunday, June 7, 2015; 5:00 pm
The Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in 21st Century Poetics at Small Press Traffic: Ronaldo Wilson
Location: Grad Writing Studio, CCA: 195 de Haro Street, San Francisco
Admission: $8-15 (Members Free)

Ronaldo V. Wilson is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man and Poems of the Black Object. His latest book Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other is forthcoming. He is an assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at U.C. Santa Cruz.


Friday, April 24, 2015; 7:00 pm
The Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics at U.C. Berkeley: Lisa Robertson
Location: Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall; U.C. Berkeley
Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.


Monday, November 17, 2014; 8:00 pm
The Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers will be presented to Khadijah Queen for Khadijah’s play, Non-Sequitur
Location: The New Ohio Theatre: 154 Christopher Street, New York, NY
Admission: free


Monday, October 6, 2014; 8:30pmsteiner_way_The_floating_series

Leslie Scalapino & Konrad Steiner Way
(Poetry and Film in Counterpoint)

San Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner took 12 years to complete a montage cycle set to the late Leslie Scalapino’s most celebrated poem, way—a sprawling book-length odyssey of shardlike urban impressions, fraught with obliquely felt social and sexual tensions. Based on the experimental writer’s own reading of the poem, recorded in 2000, Steiner created six stylistically distinctive films for each section of way, using sources ranging from Kodachrome footage of sun-kissed S.F. street scenes to internet clips of the Iraq war to a fragmented Fred Astaire dance number.

In person: Konrad Steiner

Location: REDCAT Theater: 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Admission: $6-11


Sunday, June 1, 2014; 5pmPetah_Coyne_Lecture_Poster
The Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in 21st Century Poetics at Small Press Traffic: Divya Victor & Simone White
Location: Timkin Hall at CCA, San Francisco, CA
Admission: $8-15 (Members Free)


2014-Scalapino-PosterTuesday, April 22, 2014; 7:00 pm

Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics presents the 2014 Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics
“Driven to Abstraction? Listening for ‘Late Style’ in Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry”
with Steve Evans

Location: Naropa University Performing Arts Center: 2130 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder, CO
Free and open to all

Join us for a lecture with Steve Evans, who will test the concept of “late style” against the recent work of poets roughly of Leslie Scalapino’s generation, all of whom have enjoyed unbroken (and interconnected) arcs of artistic activity since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their extraordinary achievements, considered individually and collectively, create a context for a radical revision of the idea of “late” or “mature” style. Examples will be drawn from the phonotextual, as well as the textual, archive, and the talk will be followed by a curated set of clips by the poets discussed.

Steve Evans, educated at UC San Diego (BA) and Brown (PhD), has served on the Poetry and Poetics faculty at the University of Maine, where he also co-directs the National Poetry Foundation, coordinates the New Writing Series, and tends the website thirdfactory.net. His criticism has appeared in numerous publications, and in 2001 he edited After Patriarchal Poetry: Feminism and the Contemporary Avant-Garde. He is presently working on a project tentatively titled “The Poetics of Phonotextuality: Timbre, Text, and Technology in Recorded Poetry.”


renee gladman - scalapino lectureThursday, March 20, 2014; 6:30 pm

The Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics at U.C. Berkeley:
Renee Gladman
The Sentence as Space for Living
Location: Maude Fife Room, Wheeler Hall; U.C. Berkeley


Thursday, February 27, 2014; 3pm

The Legacy of Leslie Scalapino
AWP Panel with Michael Cross (moderator), Alicia Cohen, Carla Harryman, Judith Goldman, and Maryrose Larkin

Leslie Scalapino is a literary inventor par excellence, creating essays, plays, poetry, and cross genre pieces as well as serving as a publisher and editor for more than 100 volumes. Her untimely death in 2010 left a set of acolytes as diverse as her manifest works. This panel gathers a range of responses to Scalapino’s oeuvre, honoring her literary work, her publishing, and her mentorship.

Location: Annual AWP Conference & Book Fair
Washington State Convention Center, Room 606
Seattle, WA


steiner_way_The_floating_series

Thursday, October 24, 2013; 7pm & 9pm

New York premiere of “way” by Konrad Steiner in collaboration with Leslie Scalapino

New York premiere with Konrad Steiner in present at screenings.

2000-2012. 68 min, color/stereo, 35mm film. The six part film follows the six sections of Leslie Scalapino’s book length poem, ‘way’ (1988). As the poet performs the complete text on the soundtrack, a montage of images responds to various levels and qualities of movement in the reading: the narratives, the ideas, the cadences and melodies, the poetic images themselves. The look of the film is drawn from a variety of sources including 16mm film and video footage of San Francisco streets and bars, internet clips of Hollywood, documentary, personal and erotic video, and computer generated animation.

Location: Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue New York, NY 10003
Admission: $10 general admission; $8 students, seniors, children; $6 AFA members


Wednesday, October 23, 2013; 8pm
At Once Yet Separate: Poet-Artist Collaboration And The Work Of Leslie Scalapino

Leslie Scalapino’s engagement with other artists via collaboration, exchange and performance provides the foundation for this evening’s panel presentation. Scalapino conceived of her own writing as physical phenomena existing in relation to and alongside other phenomena, including visual art, film, theater and dance. Yet rather than illustrating, setting or directing one another, these phenomenal gestures activate new meanings in each other. Discussion with visual artists Marina Adams and Petah Coyne, filmmaker Konrad Steiner, and poet/playwright Fiona Templeton will begin with an exploration of each artist’s particular work with Scalapino and open out to broader conversation around the nature of collaboration, process, and influence. Moderated by poet E. Tracy Grinnell.

Location: The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church
131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY 10003


Monday, October 14, 2013; 6:30pm
Reading: Winner of the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights

Dead Youth, or The Leak by Joyelle McSweeney is the winner of the first Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights. A reading of the play, directed by Fiona Templeton, will be presented with the award.

Location: The New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher Street, New York NY 10014


Thursday, October 3, 2013; 7:30pm
Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics at Naropa University

Artist Petah Coyne, referred to as “the queen of mixed media” by Artforum, will be giving a lecture as the 2013-2013 Leslie Scalapino Lecturer in Innovative Poetics at Naropa University: “Leslie Scalapino and Petah Coyne: How a Poet and a Sculptor Crossed Paths.”

Location: Naropa University Performing Arts Center
Arapahoe Campus, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, CO 80302
Admission: FREE and open the public.


steiner_way_The_floating_series

Thursday, September 26, 2013; 6pm & 8:30pm
Two screenings: “way” by Konrad Steiner in collaboration with Leslie Scalapino

With Konrad Steiner present at screenings.

2000-2012, 68 min, color/stereo, 35mm film. The six part film follows the six sections of Leslie Scalapino’s book length poem, ‘way’ (1988). As the poet performs the complete text on the soundtrack, a montage of images responds to various levels and qualities of movement in the reading: the narratives, the ideas, the cadences and melodies, the poetic images themselves. The look of the film is drawn from a variety of sources including 16mm film and video footage of San Francisco streets and bars, internet clips of Hollywood, documentary, personal and erotic video, and computer generated animation.

Location: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Admission: $10 general. $8 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts members, students, seniors and teachers.


Sunday, June 23, 2013; 5pmPetah_Coyne_Lecture_Poster
The Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in 21st Century Poetics at Small Press Traffic: Petah Coyne.
Location: Small Press Traffic
Timkin Hall at CCA: 1111 8th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107 Admission: $8-15 (Members Free)


Thursday, April 18, 2013; 7pmjudith_goldman_UCB
The Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics at U.C. Berkeley: Judith Goldman
Hosted by the Department of English at U.C. Berkeley.
Extinction Sinks & (Post)humanisms in Contemporary Poetry
Location: Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall; U.C. Berkeley


Tuesday, April 9, 2013; Time TBA
Screening of way (35 mm film): Konrad Steiner’s collaboration with Leslie Scalapino on a feature length poem-film in six parts.

Seminar hosted by Judith Goldman with presentations on Scalapino’s work by Joseph Conte, Ming Qian Ma, and Joao Paulo Guimaraes.
Location: SUNY Buffalo Center for the Arts Screening Room, North Campus


ScalapinoSunday, June 10, 2012; 5 pm
Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in Innovative Poetics by Jalal Toufic.
“I Have Something to Say (Silence-over) and I Am Saying It (Thanks to Music-over) and that Is Poetry”
Location: Timkin Hall at CCA: 1111 8th Street San Francisco, CA 94107
Admission: $8-15 (Members Free)


Joan Retallack

Thursday, April 5, 2012, 8:15 p.m.

Joan Retallack
Inaugural Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecturer in Innovative Poetics

The Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics is an annual lecture series with a focus on critical analysis of innovative poetry, essays, plays, and cross-genre work primarily by women poets. The Series invites contemporary writers to present their work in the spirit exemplified by Scalapino’s own critical writing and editorial vision as publisher of O Books.

Location: Naropa University: Shambhala Hall, Arapahoe Campus, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, CO 80302
Free


Scalapino Nu ShuSaturday, March 10, 2012; 7:30 pm

Sweet, A Play by Leslie Scalapino

featuring Sommer Browning, Serena Chopra, Erin Costello, HR Hegnauer, and Andrea Rexilius.
GASP: Girls Assembling Something Perpetual
Location: 1396 Josephine Street; Denver, CO 80206
Free


Scalapino Nu ShuFriday, September 23, 2011; 5:30 – 7:30 pm

Opening Reception: The Big Reveal
This exhibition highlights new acquisitions to the permanent collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. The focal point will be the major installation Untitled #1336 (Scalapino Nu Shu) (2009–10) by artist Petah Coyne. This massive work features an apple tree, taxidermied pheasants, as well as a variety of taxidermied peacocks, among the artist’s other nontraditional materials.

Location: Kemper Museum: 4420 Warwick Boulevard, Kansas City, MO
Free

Above, left: Petah Coyne, Untitled #1336 (Scalapino Nu Shu), 2009–10; apple tree, taxidermy Black Melinistic Pheasants, taxidermy Blue India Peacocks, taxidermy Black-Shouldered Peacocks, taxidermy Spaulding Peacocks, black sand from pig iron casting, Acrylex 234, black paint, cement, chicken wire fencing, wood, gravel, sisal, staging rope, cotton rope, insulated foam sealant, pipe, epoxy, threaded rod, wire, screws, jaw-to-jaw swivels, 158 x 262 x 288 inches; Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum purchase with funds provided by the W. T. Kemper Charitable Trust, UMB Bank, n.a., Trustee; Image © Petah Coyne, courtesy of Galerie Lelong, New York, photo: Elizabeth Bernstein


Wednesday, September 14, 2011; 8:30 – 9:30 pm

Fin de Siècle
Three plays by Leslie Scalapino, with music for five voices and small ensemble

Fin de Siècle is Sarah Dougher’s musical interpretation of a set of three experimental poem-plays by renowned American poet Leslie Scalapino. The poems form an abstract narrative of war, labor, and class struggle—a visionary manifestation of the poet’s passionate humanism. Structured as a set of emotive, melodic songs, Dougher’s piece weds video projection and vocal performance with an ensemble of piano, violin, cello, trumpet, trombone and percussion. The work embraces Scalapino’s challenging use of language through a richly textured score, and echoes Scalapino’s hybrid practice, inhabiting a musical space between art song and pop. Fin de Siècle is an ambitious synthesis of Dougher’s celebrated folk-rock solo music and choral compositions.

Commissioned by the estate of Leslie Scalapino.
Location: Washington High School: 531 SE 14th Ave; Portland, OR 97214

Oregon ArtsWatch review. September 14, 2011
James Yearly’s blog on Calendar of Catabolic Guilt. September 15, 2011


Friday, June 10, 2011; 6 pm

Litmus Press will celebrate its new books including How Phenomena Appear to Unfold by Leslie Scalapino.

Location: 443 PAS
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 604; New York NY 10016


Joan RetallackFriday, May 27, 2011; 7:30pm

New Series:
Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in Innovative Poetics: Joan Retallack

The Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in Innovative Poetics is an annual lecture series with a focus on critical analysis of innovative poetry, essays, plays and cross-genre work primarily by women poets. The series invites contemporary writers to present their work in the spirit exemplified by Scalapino’s own critical writing and editorial vision as publisher of O Books.

Location: Small Press Traffic
Timken Hall at CCA; 1111 8th Street; San Francisco, California 94107
Admission: $8-15 / Members free


Thursday, May 19, 2011; 5:45 – 8:00 pm

Litmus, United Artists, Ugly Duckling, Belladonna*, Future Poem, Talisman, Granary, Roof & The Figures invite you to a BOOK PARTY!

Litmus Press will celebrate its new books including How Phenomena Appear to Unfold by Leslie Scalapino. Refreshments will be served.

Location: ZieherSmith Gallery
516 West 20th Street; New York, NY


Saturday, February 12, 2011; 2 pm

Leslie Scalapino Memorial Reading, Reception & Exhibit

Readings by contemporary poets, Reed alumni & students. Presenters will include Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Allison Cobb, Alicia Cohen, Sarah Dougher, Judith Goldman, Endi Bogue Hartigan, Maryrose Larkin, Denise Newman, Standard Schaefer, James Sherry, Ellen Stauder, Konrad Steiner, and James Yeary.

Location: Reed College:
Eliot Hall Chapel, 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR 97202


FlowTuesday & Wednesday, December 21 & 22, 2010; 8 pm
Flow – Winged Crocodile / The Trains by Leslie Scalapino

Directed by Fiona Templeton
Performed by Molissa Fenley, Katie Brown, Stephanie Silver, and Julie Troost
Dance by Molissa Fenley
Music by Joan Jeanrenaud

Please join us for a special performance of Leslie Scalapino’s play, followed by an opening night reception.

Location: ODC Theater: 3153 17th Street @ Shotwell; San Francisco, CA


Saturday, December 4, 2010; 7:30 pm
PREMIER of Stone Marmalade
Kevin Killian presents a production of Stone Marmalade,
his collaborative play with Leslie Scalapino.
Directed by Kevin Killian
Designed by Wayne Smith
Performed by Lindsey Boldt, Karla Milosevich, Brent Cunningham, Taylor Brady, Laurie Reid, Erin Morrill, Tom Comitta, Craig Goodman, Jocelyn Saidenberg, David Brazil, & others
Location: Small Press Traffic
Timken Hall, California College of the Arts; 1111 8th Street; San Francisco, CA


Friday, December 3, 2010; 6:30 – 9:00 pm
Leslie Scalapino Memorial Reading

with Lyn Hejinian, Simone Fattal, Michael McClure, Norma Cole, Laura Moriarty, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Joanne Kyger, Konrad Steiner, E. Tracy Grinnell, Judith Goldman, Norman Fischer, Alicia Cohen, Rae Armantrout, Stephen Ratcliffe, Michael Cross, M. Mara-Ann, & Bob Grenier

Location: Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall; University of California, Berkeley


Tuesday, November 16, 2010; 7:30 pm
Flow – Winged Crocodile / The Trains by Leslie Scalapino
Directed by Fiona Templeton
Performed by Molissa Fenley, Katie Brown, Stephanie Silver, and Julie Troost
Dance by Molissa Fenley
Please join us for a special performance of poet Leslie Scalapino’s play:
Flow – Winged Crocodile.
Dixon Place: 161 Chrystie Street; New York, NY 10002


Monday, June 21, 2010; 8:00 pm
Leslie Scalapino Memorial Readings with local poets, artists & friends
Reception to follow.
The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church: 131 E. 10th Street; New York, NY 10001


Saturday, June 19, 2010; 7:00 pm & Sunday, June 20, 2010; 2:00 pm
Flow – Winged Crocodile / The Trains by Leslie Scalapino
Directed by Fiona Templeton
Performed by Molissa Fenley, Katie Brown, Stephanie Silver, and Julie Troost
Dance by Molissa Fenley
Please join us for a special performance of poet Leslie Scalapino’s play:
Flow – Winged Crocodile.
Poets House: 10 River Terrace; New York, NY 10282