Intimate Performance & Discussion in Tucson

Hello world. I'm going to be participating in an interesting event tomorrow night in Tucson... it's not exactly a public performance, but if you're reading this website in time, consider yourself invited! Casa Libre is an amazing place, and the Salon helps keep it that way! I'm looking forward to it very much.

Dear artist,

Our next Wednesday Night Salon at Casa Libre is one week away! Join us on January 27, from 5:00 to 7:00, as poet Logan Phillips leads off the evening discussing performance as ink: how does a performer choose, in the creative moment, from the wealth of languages available to him? What if a poem is better written in video? Why does one poem come out in Spanish and another in English?

A committed spoken-word artist, collaborator, teacher, and mixer of sound from the border, Logan approaches these questions time and again through his performance practice. He has learned to trust uncertainty and embrace the realm of total possibility, where a poem might require voice, ink, paint, gesture, or dance in the context of a given moment. Logan is author of the chapbook Arroyo Ink, cofounder of multimedia performance collective Verbobala, and was cohost of the first national Mexican poetry slam in 2007. Find out more at his Web site: http://www.dirtyverbs.com/.

As always, our Wednesday Night Salon will be potluck. We have a lot to celebrate in our first Salon of the new year. 2010 marks Casa Libre's seventh year providing creative space and inspiration for writers and artists, local and national. Hats off to Casa Libre and all the hard-working, dedicated people who have kept it going! Let's raise a glass next Wednesday in thanks for this amazing oasis.

Bat Night in Tucson

Video from last September's Bat Night 2009 in Tucson, Arizona. The event, sponsored by the Rillito River Project, seeks to bring attention to the disappearing rivers of the southwestern United States. I was asked by spectacle experts Flam Chen to participate in their commission for the event, and I wrote a custom poem for the event, which I'll be posting soon. Check the video below. The poetry starts around 2:10:

Art exhibition in Tucson

I'm a little late in posting about this, but I wanted to get it out there anyway. For the very first time I am showing work in a juried art exhibition! The gallery is a great space called Raices Taller 222 run by a well-organized group of artists in Tucson's warehouse district. The name of the exhibition is "¡Chubasco!," an annual event they do on the monsoons. I'm showing some of the prints from Arroyo Ink (still for sale online!), many of which have to do with the cosmic grit of mi tierra:

The exhibition opening was last weekend, but the work will be up through September 12th, and there is another reception this coming weekend for the 1st Saturday Artwalk. I saw a bit of the other artists' work before I left Arizona, if you're in town it is very worth stopping by to see this! Check below for an email from the gallery.

Hello Monsoon Artists,

We want to thank you for participating in our monsoon exhibition "¡Chubasco!", which opened last night. Opening night was awesome, our unscientific manual head count at our most crowded was just about 200 visitors! We recieved lots of positive feedback from our regular patrons as well as from our new visitors. Lots of comments on the beautiful artwork and the great atmosphere they encountered at the gallery.

Contributing to the great atmosphere was the exciting drumming by local musicians Ashatari, Carlos, Donato, Bubba, Vitas & Darius, who treated us to drumming from Brazil, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Earlier in the day, we had contacted a couple of the drummers to see if a they were available to perform at the opening. They totally pulled it together by showing up with all 6 drummers! Thank you guys for a great performance!

If you missed the opening, you have another chance to attend another big event at the gallery next Saturday. Saturday August 1, 2009, is 1ST SATURDAY. This very well attended monthly event sponsored by CTGA (Central Tucson Gallery Association), of which we are founding members, gives us another chance to open our doors to the community, along with other galleries on 6th street and the surrounding downtown Tucson art district. Visit CTGA at www.ctgatucson.org for all the info. Bring friends & family and enjoy another great evening on Saturday, we will be open from 7 - 10 PM.

Once again, thank you all and we hope to see you on Saturday!

1st Saturday Sat. August 1, 2009 7:00 - 10:00 PM

"¡Chubasco!" exhibition dates: July 25 - September 12, 2009

Regular gallery hours: Friday and Saturday 1:00 - 5:00 PM or by appointment

Raices Taller 222 Art Gallery & Workshop 218 E. 6th Street (1/2 block east of 6th St. & 6th Ave.) Tucson, AZ 85705 (520) 881-5335

http://www.RaicesTaller222.org

Raices Taller 222 Art Gallery and Workshop is Tucson's only Latino based nonprofit cooperative contemporary art gallery located in the Downtown Historic Warehouse District

Arizona April!

I'll be back in Arizona in April for another string of eclectic shows, I hope you can make it out! Video, DJ and poetry galore! New poems, new songs, revelry in general. All dates and details subject to change, please check back as the events approach.

  • Mon. 4/13, evening, Buena High School, Sierra Vista. Hosting and spoken word feature with Jasmine Cuffee and Carlos Contreras at the student poetry slam at BHS.
     
  • Tues. 4/14, morning, Buena High School, Sierra Vista. Workshopping with students. Closed to public, sorry!
     
  • Wed. 4/15, morning, Southside Community School, Tucson. Bilingual storytelling & workshopping with elementary kids! Closed to public, sorry!
     
  • Thurs. 4/16, evening, Bisbee. Solo spoken word and videoart showcase! More info coming soon.
     
  • Sat. 4/18, 9pm, Monte Vista Hotel Lounge, Flagstaff DJing with Emtron: Sonidero Verbobala, all the best dance music you may've never heard! More info here.

    sonidero verbobala in flagstaff, arizona

  • Mon. 4/20, Flagstaff Performing vocal samples with the loops & drums duo CLOUDPEOPLE.
     
  • Thurs. 4/23, 4pm, Rocket Gallery Tucson Solo spoken word feature at the "ARTivison" art reception as part of Tucson Youth Week. Rocket Gallery (270 E. Congress). Free.

    ARTivism with logan phillips

     

  • Thurs. 4/24, 10pm, Green Room Flagstaff DJing with Emtron: Sonidero Verbobala with Sambátuque.
     

Here is what has been happening in Mexico City lately: sonideros, the original Mexican street DJ's:

Where Do Airplanes Build Their Nests?

Aero avión, build nest.

Nido airplane nave. Vuelo, cielo cielo.

Caught the aeronave from the Juarez war zone back home to the onda arizona. (Amazing trip. Saludos a Leon. More soon.) The flight from PHX to TUS takes 20 minutes. The metal iguana doesn't climb over 5,000 feet. The up. Then the down. Bottled water for sale. Sixteen ounces. Two dollars.

(I'm on tour schedule again, sleeping from five A.M. to one P.M.) (Last night I made this video.)

Arizona is the fastest growing state in the Union. Maricopa County, home to the capital, Phoenix, receives an average of 7.76" of rain per year.

Maricopa County has the highest number per capita of golf courses in the United States of America.

The aquifers can't last forever. The metal iguana flies on.

•

fotovideo LOGAN PHILLIPS

additional music LIARS

thanks ADAM COOPER-TERÁN MOISÉS REGLA LEÓN DE LA ROSA

tucson, arizona dirtyverbs.com 2008

PR for 26th Annual Tucson Poetry Festival

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SUBJECT:
Tucson Poetry Festival 26—Poetry and Voice

OVERVIEW:

The year 2008 marks the 26th Anniversary of Tucson Poetry Festival, the longest running event of its kind in Arizona!  Tucson Poetry Festival (TPF) was founded in 1981 with the mission to celebrate—and expand the audience for—contemporary poetry. TPF has provided people with the opportunity to hear over 150 superb visiting poets in this unique annual experience, including some of the most celebrated poets of our time, as well as talented local and emerging poets.

This year, poets from Tucson and beyond join us to celebrate all aspects of Voice in poetry, as a stylistic convention and a performance tool.  This festival showcases a broad and diverse range of poetic voices—written, spoken, and signed.

This year, we have partnered with The University of Arizona Disability Resource Center who, as co-sponsors of the Festival, will provide accessibility services including ASL translation for all Readings and the Panel Discussion. 

DATES:
Thursday, April 10, 2008—Sunday, April 13, 2008

TICKET INFORMATION:
All tickets are available at The Historic Y the day of the event; no advance tickets.
Individual readings—$10
With student ID—$5
Small group sessions—$10
Festival Pass good for all events—$50
20% off groups of 10 or more

SCHEDULE:

U of A Poetry Center, 1508 E Helen Ave

Thursday April 10th
7:30 pm            Performance by Ayisha Knight (free)

The Historic Y, 300 E University

Friday April 11th
7:30 pm            Readings by:  The Will Inman Award Winner, Benjamin Alire Saenz, Wanda Coleman; Book Signing to follow

Saturday April 12th
Small Group Sessions in the Historic Y Conference Room
10:00 am            Wanda Coleman
11:30 am            Benjamin Alire Saenz
1:00 pm            Rebecca Seiferle
2:30 pm            Sherwin Bitsui           

7:30 pm            Reading by Ayisha Knight, performance by Verbobala Spoken Video,
Book Signing to follow

Sunday April 13th
11:30 am            Breakfast & Panel Discussion on “Poetry and Voice” and “Other People’s Poetry” Reading: Moderated by Paul Fisher (free event w/ bagels & coffee)
2:00 pm            Verbobala Small Group Session
3:00 pm            High School Contest Reading w/ Contest Judge Rebecca Seiferle (free)
5:30 pm            Readings by:  the High School Contest Winner, Sherwin Bitsui, Rebecca Seiferle; Book Signing to follow
8:00pm            Community Poetry Slam hosted by Lindsay Miller ($5 suggested donation)

ARTISTS:

Ayisha Knight is the daughter of a white Jewish mother and a Black Cherokee father by birth, but was raised in a community of single mothers who raised her as their own.  Questions of her cultural and linguistic identity always evoke quizzical expressions, astonishment or resignation to the fact that she can't be described in one checked box on college applications.  As a Deaf woman whose primary language is ASL, her vision of the world is unique.  Her passions for art, storytelling, theater and education have been forming a tapestry for many years now.  Ayisha Knight is the only deaf poet who has ever appeared on Def Poetry Jam.

Poet and fiction writer Benjamin Alire Saenz, the son of a cement finisher and a cook, was born in his grandmother's house in Picacho, N.M. He studied at the University of Iowa and Stanford University as a Wallace E. Stegner fellow. His first collection of poetry, Calendar of Dust (1991), won the American Book Award. He is the author of a collection of short stories, Flowers for the Broken (1992), the novel Carry Me Like Water (1995), several children's books and a collection of poems, Elegies in Blue (Cinco Puntos Press, 2002). He teaches creative writing at the University of Texas, El Paso.

Wanda Coleman is the author of Bathwater Wine (Black Sparrow Press, 1998), winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. A former medical secretary, magazine editor, journalist and scriptwriter, Coleman has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation for her poetry. Her other books of poetry include Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Tremors (1996); Hand Dance (1993); African Sleeping Sickness (1990); A War of Eyes & Other Stories (1988); Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968-1986 (1988); Imagoes (1983); and Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001). She has also written Mambo Hips & Make Believe: A Novel, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1999.

Verbobala Spoken Video is a bi-national video performance group based in Cuernavaca, Mexico and Tucson, Arizona. Of diverse ethnic backgrounds, the members include video artist Moisés Regla, a Mexican of French and Spanish decent, acclaimed media designer, Adam Cooper-Terán, a Chicano of Russian and Yaqui decent, and Border poet Logan Phillips, an American of Irish and Slavic decent. This diversity is also reflected in their artistic backgrounds, as each comes to the project with experience in distinct areas including slam poetry, underground hip-hop, new media, experimental linguistics, electro-acoustic music, contemporary ritual and video installation.  Verbobala creates bilingual site-specific performance art that challenges the traditional concept of artistic genres. Like international borders, the separation between artistic forms and languages has become increasingly amorphous and irrelevant. Their pieces play with the limits between cinema and literature, performance and installation, orchestration and improvisation, English and Spanish, audience and artist. http://www.verbobala.com, http://www.myspace.com/verbobala

Rebecca Seiferle's poetry collection, Wild Tongue, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in Fall, 2007. She was awarded a Lannon Foundation Fellowship in poetry in 2004. Her third poetry collection, Bitters, won the Western States Book Award and a Pushcart Prize. She has also won the Hemley and Bogin Awards from the Poetry Society of America, the Poets & Writers Exchange Award, and has work included in Best American Poetry 2000. She is the Founding Editor of the online magazine The Drunken Boat (www.thedrunkenboat.com) and her poetry, translations, and essays have appeared in over twenty-five anthologies.

Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. Currently, he lives in Tucson, Arizona. He is Dine of the Todich'ii'nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl'izilani (Many Goats Clan). He is the recipient of the 2000-01 Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the 1999 Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Residency Fellowship and more recently, a 2006 Whiting Writers' Award. Sherwin has published his poems in American Poet, The Iowa Review, Frank (Paris), Lit Magazine, and elsewhere. Shapeshift is his first book.

Paul Fisher is a theatre education specialist, performing artist, and published poet. He is a regular performer with Monolog Cabin, Orts Theatre of Dance, and Sweatlodge. Paul is the Founder and was the Director of the nationally recognized Arts Education Program for the Tucson Pima Arts Council. He is a private consultant specializing in the use of creative thinking and performance as a tool. In 2003 he received the Buffalo Exchange Arts Award from the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona. He is currently working with the Development and Training, Staff Development and Human Resources Departments of the INTUIT Corporation.

CONTESTS:
For the past 13 years, the High School Contest has incorporated young writers into our program, encouraging them to express their experiences through poetry. The young writers submit three poems in English, Spanish, or Tribal Languages, which are judged by an acclaimed Spanish-speaking writer to be eligible for gift certificates from local bookstores and the chance to read at TPF.  This year’s High School Contest Judge is Rebecca Seiferle.

For 24 years, the Statewide Poetry Contest (Will Inman Award) has inspired adult writers to share their poetry with nationally known poets who select their poems for cash prizes, publication in our program and the opportunity to read at the Festival.  This year’s Statewide Poetry Contest Judge is Wanda Coleman.

For More Information:
Tucson Poetry Festival tucsonpoetryfestival.org

Verbobala Spoken Video in Tucson, Arizona

verbobala spoken video

So I haven't mentioned this here yet. But I have a new project, called VERBOBALA SPOKEN VIDEO that Moisés Regla and I founded earlier this year in Cuernavaca. We use live video, experimental audio, and new media to create site-specific performance art. It's poetry in the widest interpretation possible. Our first show was not long ago at the amazing Arcosanti Spoken Word Fesival, and since then we rocked our home show, the CuernaSlam de Poesía in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. While talking to people about the project in Flagstaff, they were calling Verbobala (say Ver-bo-ba-la) a band. You could call it that.

A week from today I'll be home from New York and Verbobala will be playing our largest show yet, at the Hotel Congress in downtown Tucson. We'll be in collaboration with heroes Flam Chen and Adam Cooper-Terán as part of a fundraiser to send Team Tucson to the National Poetry Slam for the first time ever. A worthy cause.

I swear this is going to be completely crazy. Hosted by my super cuate Aaron Johnson! Fundraiser for beloved Team Tucson! Poetry from Jewel Blackfeather! Bullhorns! Public disturbance! Music! Too good! Too good!

Hotel Congress. Do not miss this show. Tickets on sale here.

smells like tigers flyer

SMELLS LIKE TIGERS! A Fundraiser for the First Ever Tucson National Poetry Slam Team.

Talent from Arizona and beyond comes together to raise money for the first ever Tucson National Poetry Slam Team! Verbobala Spoken Video, featuring Logan Phillips, Flam Chen, Adam Cooper-Terán, and Moisés Regla, is a collaboration between a Border poet from Arizona and a video jockey from Mexico City. They create site-specific performance art that celebrates the forgotten past, the strange present, and a few possible futures. Verbobala causes a scene. This will be the largest Verbobala show to date, thanks to collaboration with Tucson's first-class spectacle spinners, Flam Chen. With performances by the Tucson National Slam Team--Lindsay Miller, Kelly Lewis, and Teresa Driver--as well as poet Jewel Blackfeather, local bands Crossing Sarnoffand One Eye Open, raffle for awesome prizes, and more! Hosted by Aaron Johnson.

DATE: Saturday, July 21st, 2007 – Doors at 6pm

LOCATION AND TICKET INFORMATION: Club Congress - 311 E. Congress All Ages $9 in advance www.hotelcongress.com $10 at the door

SCHEDULE: 6:00 pm - Doors Open 6:30 pm – Poetry by Jewel Blackfeather 7:00 pm – Music by One Eye Open 7:30 pm – Poetry by The First Ever Tucson National Slam Team: Lindsay Miller, Kelly Lewis, Teresa Dawn Driver 8:00 pm – Music by Crossing Sarnoff 8:30 pm – Raffle for awesome prizes 8:45 pm – Verbobala Spoken Video featuring Logan Phillips, Flam Chen, Adam Cooper-Terán, Moisés Regla

For More Information: Tucson Spoken Word Network at http://www.wordsonfire.org