Saturday, May 01, 2010

reading experiment in progress } tour



four readings led by jennifer karmin in support of aaaaaaaaaaalice:

THURSDAY, MAY 6th @ 7 PM
Amina Cain & Jennifer Karmin
at Franklin Pierce University
40 University Drive
Rindge, NH

FRIDAY, MAY 7th @ 6 PM
Amina Cain, Jennifer Karmin & Anne Shaw
at Symposium Books
240 Westminster Street
Providence, RI

SATURDAY, MAY 8th @ 3 PM
Amina Cain, Jennifer Karmin & Anne Shaw
at Small Animal Project
Outpost 186
186 1/2 Hampshire Street
Cambridge, MA

&

MONDAY, MAY 10th @ 7:30 PM
Andrea Henchey, Adam Golaski & Jennifer Karmin
at La Paloma Sabanera
405 Capitol Avenue
Hartford, CT

aaaaaaaaaaalice is lovely to hold and brilliant to read but as a multi-vocal epic, it's meant to be performed, too--don't miss this east coast opportunity.

[photos: jennifer conducting mad science with the mysterious jessica leigh, disappeared since denver, and with poet / avant-translator adam roberts.]

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Jennifer Karmin's aaaaaaaaaaalice



ISBN 978-0-9790888-3-4
112 pages, 7x9
$16 (+$4 shipping & handling)






or:

Send a check for $20 to:

Flim Forum Press
418 Brown Street, #17
Iowa City, IA 52245

Query: klane at flimforum dot com
flim forum press

___


"This book, a score, is full of information both literal and (im)possible. Do dip in; see what you come out with."

—Bernadette Mayer


"Jennifer Karmin brings an openness and generosity to these poems of public address and private insistence. Aaaaaaaaaaalice's buoyant charm calls out for new listeners."

—Charles Bernstein


"I like tightly proposed structures in which anything can happen & does because the more tightly controlled the structures, the more explosively the language will implode, disseminate, fold in or out or whatever it is it needs to do to loosen up or reverse direction & meaning. And that’s the fun of Aaaaaaaaaaalice, lithe row of straight a’s followed by biting animal commentary."

—Pierre Joris


"Alice and anime, Asia and uncertainty, we do so want our sounds to make sense, our textual travels to have a guide, even if that guide is the white rabbit that will hide. Aaaaaaaaaaalice is the sound and sight of the disappearing rabbit, the one with a hat, the one who pops up with regular unpredictability whenever we go somewhere not here, and while words will swivel around us like our very own heads, making the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar, making no sense but nonsense and non-sense sense, like in this very text, what’s moreover curious, as Karmin rightly notes, is that 'yesterday a man was walking.' "

—Vanessa Place


___


Jennifer Karmin has published, performed, exhibited, taught, and experimented with language across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets, including Betalevel (CA), Links Hall (IL), the French Broad Institute of Time and the River (NC), the Poetry Project (NY), the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (MI), and Woodland Pattern Book Center (WI).

A proud member of the Dusie Kollektiv, she is the author of the Dusie chapbook Evacuated: Disembodying Katrina. Walking Poem, a collaborative street project, is featured online at How2. Her poems are widely published in anthologies and journals, like A Sing Economy (Flim Forum Press), Come Together: Imagine Peace (Bottom Dog Press), Not A Muse (Haven Books), The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books), Bird Dog, Cannot Exist, Delirious Hem, MoonLit, Otoliths, and Womb. She is the Community Aesthetician for Les Figues Press at Give A Fig.

In Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools. She earned her BA in the Poetics Program at the University of Buffalo and MFA in the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Past grants and residencies were funded by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Djerassi Program, the Joseph Kellman Family Foundation, the Poetry Center of Chicago, Poets & Writers, Rochester Community Savings Bank, Summer Literary Seminars, and the Synapses Foundation.


___


Read some early reviews of Aaaaaaaaaaalice selections here, and of Aaaaaaaaaaalice in performance here and here.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

spare as space



Here's a new review of The Alps from The University of Arizona Poetry Center e-newsletter, written by Bonnie Jean Michalski.


Also, there's this from the print world:

"Shimoda uses the full page, bumping up against left and right margins, sometimes both in the same poem. Punctuation is as spare as space is plentiful, which makes the poems feel all the more delicately orchestrated, as if the words were set down deliberately one letter at a time to resonate with both sound and sense, within and beyond the page's margins. The double columns create movement within an established field, and because the poems vibrate with war references, the columns suggest tension and opposing forces. The formal play might say that one manner of managing something unmanageable, chaotic, or wretched--like war--is to break it down into parts (bombs and butter and blue flowers and tongues), float it sideways from its context, and peer at it closely. The line folded into the first poem, "I wish the arrangement would formally buckle," feels epigrammatic and expressive of intention as much as desire."

--Jacqueline Lyons in the Colorado Review, summer '09


Wednesday, January 13, 2010

under the small lights } awp denver




announced officially by the university of miami press, john cotter's short novel under the small lights will be published this may.

under the small lights will be of especial interest to those familiar with poet charles jodoin, whose work you likely read in the kate schapira edited leopard print chapbook anthology, as he makes an appearance in the novel as a character named... charles jodoin. (jodoin also makes a brief, lecherous appearance in adam golaski's historical essay "the dairy barn.")

john will embark on a national book tour, beginning at the university in ohio; flim forum will post dates so you may begin work on your cotter tour tee, which will be retro cool when your children start college.

on a far less interesting note, flim forum press will share a table with open letters monthly at the upcoming awp conference in denver this april. flim will debut its new title, soon to be officially announced; brandon shimoda's book and both flim anthologies will be available, along with a plethora of side projects, including new genre. open letters monthly will have on hand a print anthology that brings together twelve of their best essays.

Monday, January 04, 2010

The Alps



Read new reviews of Brandon Shimoda's The Alps by Ching-In Chen (white space, inevitable), Brandon Downing (cautious as a groom), Stephen Hong Sohn (such brutality, such violence), Jared White (staring upward, wide-eyed), and Craig Santos Perez (behold the blank)...

More on The Alps






or:

Send a check for $16 to:

Flim Forum Press
418 Brown Street, #17
Iowa City, IA 52245

Query: klane at flimforum dot com




Monday, August 31, 2009

trenchant } trenchart



trenchart: maneuvers, is the fifth annual trenchart series, "with aesthetics written by participating series writers and visual artists. maneuvers explores the possibilities of re-ordered time and content framed with the understanding that one cannot separate content from time, and that to shift the form or the order is to shift the subjectivies of a text." flim poets harold abramowitz and matthew timmons, along with paul hoover, lily hoang, and vincent dachy are this year's participants in the series.

trenchart : material caught my eye way back--a damn fine set of books----

and remember, when you hear the theremin outside y'r window, the invasion has begun: "watch the skies, everywhere! keep looking. keep watching the skies!"