The Inspired Word presents the first of what will be a regular feature of its weekly Thursday night series: Big Apple BAP: NYC's Best American Poetry Poets.
It is a night celebrating this city's finest poets, whose poems over the years have been honored with inclusion in the highly respected annual anthology.
http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/
The debut lineup includes a dazzling array of poets: Katha Pollitt, Mark Bibbins, Jennifer Michael Hecht, David Shapiro, R. Erica Doyle, Jerome Sala, Elaine Equi, Michael Cirelli, Stacey Harwood, George Green, Carly Sachs, Matthew Yeager, Amy Holman, and David Lehman (who will also host the event).
Each poet will read the poem or poems appearing in BAP, as well as something new.
Please join us for what promises to be an amazing night of poetry.
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Produced by: Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word
When: Thursday, June 16, 2011
Where: One and One Bar & Restaurant (downstairs Nexus Lounge)
76 East 1st Street (corner of 1st Avenue)
Manhattan, NYC
Phone: (212) 598-9126
Time: 6:30pm
Cover Charge: $15
Must be 21 years of age or older. Please make sure to bring ID.
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BIOS (in alphabetical order):
Mark Bibbins is the author of The Dance of No Hard Feelings and the Lambda Award-winning Sky Lounge. He teaches at The New School and Columbia University, and edits the poetry section of The Awl. His poems were included in the 2004, 2009, and 2010 editions of Best American Poetry.
Michael Cirelli was born in Providence, RI in 1975. His newest collection, Everyone Loves The Situation (Penmanship Books, 2011), deconstructs MTV’s hit reality show, Jersey Shore, flipping the cultural zeitgeist on its (gelled and sprayed) head. He is also the author of Vacations on the Black Star Line (Hanging Loose Press, 2010), which was named in About.com’s Poetry Picks “Best Books of 2010,” and Lobster with Ol’ Dirty Bastard (Hanging Loose Press, 2008), which was a NY Times bestseller from an independent press and was featured in the “Debut Poets” issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. His work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Hanging Loose, Texas Review, World Literature Today and King Magazine, among others. He is the Executive Director of one of the nation’s largest youth literary arts organization, Urban Word NYC, and has authored two poetry curricula, Poetry Jam (Recorded Books, 2010) and Hip-Hop Poetry & the Classics (Milk Mug, 2004). He has also appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and Brave New Voices. He appears in the 2011 Best American Poetry.
R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn to Trinidadian immigrant parents, and has lived in Washington, DC, Farmington, Connecticut and La Marsa, Tunisia. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Best American Poetry (2001), Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, Callaloo, Ploughshares, Best Black Women's Erotica, Bum Rush the Page, Bloom, and from the Fishouse, among others. She has received grants and awards from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and was a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow. She is also a fellow of Cave Canem, and her manuscript, proxy, was a finalist for the 2007 Cave Cavem Poetry Prize, selected by Claudia Rankine. Excerpts from proxy were also published as a Belladonna* chapbook. She received her MFA in Poetry from the New School, and lives in New York City, where she teaches in the NYC public schools and facilitates Tongues Afire: A Creative Writing Workshop for queer women and trans and gender non-conforming people of color.
Elaine Equi is the author of many books including Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems and most recently, Click and Clone, from Coffee House Press. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and several editions of Best American Poetry (1989, 1995, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2010) She teaches at New York University and in the MFA programs at The New School and City College.
George Green received an MFA in poetry from The New School and currently teaches poetry courses at Lehman College, CUNY, in the Bronx. His poems have appeared in various journals and in the anthologies Poetry 180; 180 More Poems; The Best American Poetry 2005; The Best American Poetry 2006; Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds; and The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets. In 2011 a selection of his poems will be included in an anthology of six American poets published by the Anvil Press in Great Britain.
Stacey Harwood's essays, poetry, and journalism have appeared or are forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Lit, Women's Studies Quarterly, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, Saveur, Time Out New York, the Los Angeles Times, Poets.org and elsewhere. She is the managing editor of the Best American Poetry blog and appeared in the 2005 Best American Poetry.
Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of award-winning books of philosophy, history, and poetry. She has appeared in two editions of Best American Poetry, 1999 and 2005. Her Doubt: A History (HarperOne, 2003) demonstrates a long, strong history of religious doubt from the origins of written history to the present day, all over the world. Hecht's The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism and Anthropology (Columbia University, 2003), won the Phi Beta Kappa Society's 2004 prestigious Ralph Waldo Emerson Award “for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity.” She earned her Ph.D. in the History of Science and European Cultural History from Columbia University in 1995 and now teaches at The New School University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband John, and their two children.
Amy Holman's poem "Man Script" was published on the cover of Literal Latte flanking a photo of a naked woman with henna tattooes and spotted by Robert Bly when he was lunching in The Noho Star. He added it to the 1999 Best American Poetry anthology. Jennifer Michael Hecht posted "1,500 Parakeets Rescued From 2-Room Apartment" ten years later on the Best American Poetry Blog. Other than that, she has a collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window, published in 2010 with Somondoco Press, and a chapbook, Wait For Me, I'm Gone, which won the 2004 Dream Horse Press annual prize. Her poetry has been in Archaeoogy Magazine, American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Failbetter, Gargoyle, The Potomac Review, and in the anthology Token Entry: NYC Subway Poems. She writes, fiction and nonfiction, and is a literary consultant.
David Lehman is a poet, writer, editor, and teacher. He launched The Best American Poetry in 1988 and continues as the series editor of the acclaimed annual anthology. His own books of poetry include When a Woman Loves a Man (2005) and Yeshiva Boys (2009). The most recent of his seven nonfiction books, A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, won the 2010 Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP. Lehman has edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry. He teaches in the graduate writing program at the New School in New York City.
Katha Pollitt, who appeared in the 1991 edition of Best American Poetry, is well known for her wit and her keen sense of both the ridiculous and the sublime. Her "Subject to Debate" column, which debuted in 1995 and which the Washington Post called "the best place to go for original thinking on the left," appears every other week in The Nation; it is frequently reprinted in newspapers across the country. In 2003, "Subject to Debate" won the National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary. For her poetry, Pollitt has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her 1982 book Antarctic Traveller won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poems have been published in many magazines and are reprinted in many anthologies, most recently The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006). Her second collection, The Mind-Body Problem, came out from Random House in 2009. Born in New York City, she has taught poetry at Princeton, Barnard and the 92nd Street Y, and women's studies at the New School University.
Carly Sachs is the author of the steam sequence, winner of the 2006 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Book Prize, and The Why and Later (Deep Cleveland Press, 2007), an anthology of female authored poems about rape and assault. Sachs was awarded an Arts Fellowship at the Drisha Institute in 2007, and her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2004, Alimentum, Another Chicago Magazine, PMS, Court Green, and on National Public Radio. She currently lives in New York City and teaches writing and yoga workshops to help victims of trauma. When not writing or teaching yoga, you can find her making everything from martinis to homemade granola.
Jerome Sala’s books of poetry include Spaz Attack, I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent, The Trip, Raw Deal and most recently Look Slimmer Instantly (Soft Skull Press). His poetry and criticism have appeared The Best American Poetry 2005, Pleiades, Conjunctions, Rolling Stone and many others. He has a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University. His blog is:
http://www.espressobongo.typepad.com/
David Shapiro is an American poet, literary critic, and art historian. He has written some twenty volumes of poetry, literary, and art criticism. He was first published at the age of 13, his first book was published when he was just 18, and he was a finalist for the National Book Award at 24. Shapiro is one of the most prolific and important figures of the second generation of the New York School and has appeared in six editions of Best American Poetry.
Matthew Yeager's poems have appeared in Best American Poetry (2005 and 2010), Bat City Review, NY Quarterly, Gulf Coast, and others. His short film "A Big Ball of Foil in a Small NY Apartment," was an official selection at eleven film festivals in 2009-2010, picking up two awards. Other recent accolades include the Barthelme Prize in short prose. He is the co-founder of Chicken Truck Productions and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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Mike Geffner
Founder/Producer
Brigitte Viellieu-Davis
Artistic Director/Associate Producer
Marvin Mendlinger
Assistant Director
David Lehman
Host/MC
