GREETINGS READINGS 5/26 7PM
Dear Believers in This World:
Let us gather in the midst of May's slightly thawing spring as the month approaches her last hurrah & so indulge in the beautifully wrought wreckage of this world to hear the permutations of the word this Thursday, May 26th, 2022 at 7:00pm.
Unnameable has a slightly new location (615 Vanderbilt Ave , near the corner of St. Marks) and a new backyard. We'll join with the bushes, fencing, lights & concrete to continue making a go of our new home-space, in this new spring with these 3 terrific poets & the opening music of The Ghost Shepherds:
Anna Gurton-Wachter: Knows the child is now a child. The mother is now a mother. The poet is both King & Queen with a crown of words borne into the digisphere, the press, the mouth. A paper-mache pigeon coos as if it were a morning dove. The morning dove & the pigeon both become the muse as we listen.
Farnoosh Fahti: Holds the ritual dear. Each of us shall go round in our minds tonight with the words she utters & choose a line we feel is ripe & therein we’ll grow a small garden, imagining just the type of fruit we’ll like, just the kind of vegetable that will turn out to be the hero of our lives, while the villains run off with Monopoly money to dig their ditches with gold-tipped picks.
Yuko Otomo - Understands implicitly that things fall where they lie, whether they be downtown NY’s subterranean spirit or the port of Sasebo where art & life mingle like two long companions walking arm in arm down cobblestone street. What does painting give to poetry, what does poetry give to painting? It is no coincidence that both arts have the ability to move us to change our lives.
The Ghost Shepherds: guide us through the hills & dales past the wolves of our daily grind as we take a nap in the hay wagon as electro acoustic impulses throb into the intros of collaged grass patches.
This event is free. The meet n greet begins at 7:00 as the house band will be playing. We plan to commence the series at 7:30 o'clock sharp with a quick hello, followed by the introduction to the 1st poet/ performer.
There is limited seating in the new backyard (about 25 seats). There is no basement reading space - so if the weather turns to rain we will have to huddle inside - or cancel - more on that if it becomes a necessity; however the cast of the fore bodes well for nigh 50's to mid 60's so dress appropriately. As always we look forward to seeing old & new faces.
Listen for the bang of the drum.
X's to your O's,
Jeffrey Joe
Jed Shahar
"We buy and sell used and new books."
STEPHEN HOUSEWRIGHT / BLANK FORMS
WEDNESDAY 5/25 7pm
In celebration of Blank Forms Editions’s 2021 publication of Partners, a memoir by Stephen Housewright, please join Lawrence Kumpf and Tyler Maxin, curators of “Jerry Hunt: Transmissions from the Pleroma,” for a conversation with the author at Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn on Wednesday, May 25, at 7pm.
Partners concerns Housewright’s relationship with his widow, the Texas-born composer and artist Jerry Hunt. The couple met in the eighth grade and were together until Hunt took own life in 1993 following a battle with lung cancer. This intimate book, dubbed “a striking act of care” by the Brooklyn Rail, was originally self-published in a small edition in 1995 and distributed to the couple’s friends and family. A trove of information, it includes correspondence with and thrilling anecdotes about Hunt’s peers spanning new music and experimental video hubs across Texas, the US, and Europe. Here, it has been revised and given a new introduction by the artist Karen Finley, a friend of the couple who collaborated with Hunt toward the end of his life (together, they were subjects of a Republican-led “decency” campaign over National Endowment for the Arts funding in the ’80s). Partners is an essential introduction to Jerry Hunt, and one that only Housewright could share.
Stephen Housewright was born in Dallas in 1942. He studied liberal art at St. John’s College in Santa Fe and English and Greek at the University of Houston and in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin. After teaching for almost ten years at Cistercian Preparatory School in Irving, near Dallas, he earned a Master of Library Science and became a librarian in the humanities division of the Central Dallas Public Library. He and his husband Hal Bennett live in Texas and divide their time between Canton and Garland.
Dear Fellow Devotees of the Muse:
Let us gather in the midst of May's slightly thawing spring as the month approaches mid-stride to once more hear the permutations of the word this Thursday, May 19th, 2022 at 7:oopm.
Unnameable has a slightly new location (615 Vanderbilt Ave , near the corner of St. Marks) and a new backyard. We'll join with the bushes, fencing, lights & concrete to continue making a go of our new home-space, in this new spring with these 2terrific poets & the opening music of The Downtown Gurls:
Emily Simon: Quite truthfully, tends to gravitate to Sunken Meadow island, officially no longer it’s own island, but retaining a strong residue of the past, an island that goes to parties whenever it is asked, an island that no longer has a back or a front, but like a poem stands up when read, if only for a moment, learning in a sense by being spoken, the words articulated into persona for you dear to assimilate on your town terms
Tilghman Goldsborough: knows each of us at certain points in our lives is not much more than throbbing gristle. In the genesis of porridge a mass of meat quivers, a sponge of absorbed water emitting electrical impulses, trails crumbs the muse picks up on. T.G.’s verse signals to us across the bird bedazzled backyard. Orange-yellow lights twinkle in a constellated burst residing just across the tracks of Atlantic, Fulton into the beating heart of Bedstuy .
The Downtown Gurls: drop a load of musical love on your lap as they hitch our wagon to electro acoustic impulses throbbing into the intros of secret clouds
This event is free. The meet n greet begins at 7:00 as the house band will be playing. We plan to commence the series at 7:30 o'clock sharp with a quick hello, followed by the introduction to the 1st poet/ performer.
There is limited seating in the new backyard (about 25 seats). There is no basement reading space - so if the weather turns to rain we will have to huddle inside - or cancel - more on that if it becomes a necessity; however the cast of the fore bodes well for nigh 50's to mid 60's so dress appropriately. As always we look forward to seeing old & new faces.
Listen for the bang of the drum.
X's to your O's,
Jeffrey Joe
Jed Shahar
Eugene Ostashevsky and Genya Turovskaya 6pm
Poetry reading in the backyard
Genya Turovskaya was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and grew up in New York City. She is the author of The Breathing Body of This Thought (Black
Square Editions) as well as numerous chapbooks. She is also an award
winning translator of contemporary Russian poetry by Aleksandr Skidan, Elena Fanailova and Arkadii Dragomoshchenko.
Dear Believers in Words:
Let us gather in the midst of May's slightly thawing spring as the month approaches mid-stride to once more hear the permutations of the word this Thursday, May 12th, 2022 at 7:oopm.
Unnameable has a slightly new location (615 Vanderbilt Ave , near the corner of St. Marks) and a new backyard. We'll join with the bushes, fencing, lights & concrete to continue making a go of our new home-space, in this new spring with these 3terrific poets & the opening music of Other Arc Ensemble:
Harris Schiff: The ineluctable Harris Schiff has been dodging fame’s bullet ever since he escaped from the Bronx & headed to the Mesa to find the real meaning of the secret hand band – (was it really the special cotton or was it a sign from thee mysterious stranger?); a hungry tension flowed thru him & out came the poems, the muse like a river flowing over the broken rocks of desert landscape now long island, inland prophet of verse the long & the short with staples or without.
Anselm Berrigan: Known by many names An of the Selm keeps the trade winds at his back as he sails the waters ‘tween Manhattan, Brookyn & the nebulous forests of upstate where he may be secretly the scout for a clandestine Yankee’s farm team of poets turned knuckle ballers, switch-&-clutch hitters, ace relief pitchers & utility infielders. Yes, indeed his keen eye has recruited many a po-em for the pages of the railyard’s cultural dissection of much to do about art so have a nice day but be careful where you put that donut.
Claire Devoogd: Knows a good scrutinium device when she comes across one. This machine able to parse the restricted anatomy of language is like a mirror enclosing the world much like Claire’s poems which when fit to the eye with an ocular nostrum distort the contingencies of our reality just right, as if our semi-permeable membranes were being exposed to the language of the poet, drinking up the language of the muse as if from a silver cup & so do not worry about the hazards of unspeakability, as Claire is here to unwind the intangible rot from our brains.
This event is free. The meet n greet begins at 7:00 as the house band will be playing. We plan to commence the series at 7:30 o'clock sharp with a quick hello, followed by the introduction to the 1st poet/ performer.
There is limited seating in the new backyard (about 25 seats). There is no basement reading space - so if the weather turns to rain we will have to huddle inside - or cancel - more on that if it becomes a necessity; however the cast of the fore bodes well for nigh 50's to mid 60's so dress appropriately. As always we look forward to seeing old & new faces.
Listen for the bang of the drum.
X's to your O's,
Jeffrey Joe
Jed Shahar
MAY EVENTS
Thursday 5/12: Greetings Readings 7pm
Claire Devoogd, Anselm Berrigan, Harris Schiff with music by Easy Streets
Friday 5/13: Dennis Nurkse and Jessica Greenbaum 6pm
Sunday 5/15: Eugene Ostashevsky and Genya Turovskaya 6pm
Monday 5/16: Chelsea Abdullah 7pm
Thursday 5/19: Greetings Readings 7pm
Tilghman Goldsborough, Emily Simon with music by Other Arc Ensemble
Friday 5/20: Peach Kander and Nancy Huang 7pm
Saturday 5/21: Belladonna Reading 7pm
Krystal Languell, Chia-Lun Chang, Asiya Wadud
Thursday 5/26: Greetings Readings 7pm
Farnoosh Fathi, Anna Gurton-Wachter, Yuko Otomo with music by Ghost Shepards
Friday 5/27: Brandan Griffin, Alan Felsenthal, Farnoosh Fathi 7pm
Sunday 5/30: Conor Bracken, Yerra Sugarman, David Tomas Martinez 7pm --- CANCELLED TO BE RESCHEDULED LATER IN SUMMER