Mathews Timmons in An Actual Kansas November 2009

An Actual Kansas Reading series is pleased to welcome "California-based poet and writer" Mathew Timmons . . .

on Sunday, November 22, 2009 @ 4pm
reading at Wonder Fair Art Gallery (803 Massachusetts St., downstairs from the Casbah Market).


Mathew Timmons is a writer, editor, curator and critic in Los Angeles. He is General Director of General Projects and he co-edits/curates Insert Press (w/ Stan Apps), LA-Lit (w/ Stephanie Rioux) and Late Night Snack (w/ Harold Abramowitz). A chapbook, Lip Service, was recently published by Slack Buddha Press. His first full-length book, The New Poetics (Les Figues Press), his micro-book collaboration with Marcus Civin, a particular vocabulary (P S Books), and an 800 page full color, large-format, hardbound book, CREDIT (Blanc Press), are forthcoming. His work may be found in various journals, including: Sleepingfish, P-Queue, Holy Beep!, Flim Forum, The Physical Poets, NōD, PRECIPICe, Or, Moonlit, aslongasittakes, eohippus labs, Try, Area Sneaks, Artweek, Artillery, The Magazine, X-TRA, and The Encyclopedia Project. He teaches interdisciplinary arts and writing workshops for CalArts School of Critical Studies.

Mathew's blog is here.

A poem by Mathew in Del Ray Cross's Shampoo.

Video by Mathew at Da Benshi Code.

Here you can buy up his massive CREDIT.


I am also reading. I am Robert J. Baumann and I think I will be reading from a chapbook called Robert J. Baumann's A Man About Town. Anne Boyer is putting it together. It has become a custom to use the person's name as a possessive adjective referring to the title but also as part of the title, so I did that. It felt clever at first but that has worn off. My favorite thing that I have done on the internets was with other people on this blog called "Willow Ufgood". I have some poems on-line, too. This "bio" felt less shameful to write in first person, but I still had serious "second thoughts" about putting my name in bold in that first line.

Kate Greenstreet and Chloé Cooper Jones at Wonder Fair on Saturday, October 3rd

What: An Actual Kansas Reading

Who: Kate Greenstreet reading poetry, Chloé Cooper Jones reading fiction, and a bunch of people listening to both while drinking wine and enjoying art and local, organic food.

Where: Wonder Fair Art Gallery and How (downstairs from Casbah Market, 803 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KS)

When: Saturday, October 3rd, 2009, 7pm



Kate Greenstreet's second book, The Last 4 Things, is new from Ahsahta Press and includes a DVD containing two short films based on the two sections of the book. Ahsahta published Greenstreet's case sensitive in 2006. She is also the author of three chapbooks, most recently This is why I hurt you (Lame House Press, 2008). Find her poems in current or forthcoming issues of jubilat, VOLT, the Denver Quarterly, Fence, Court Green, and other journals. Visit her online at kickingwind.com.








Chloé Cooper Jones is a PhD candidate at the University of Kansas, where she also received her MFA and teaches writing. She also teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress is forthcoming from Black Warrior Review. Jones can often be seen around Lawrence, KS surrounded by a supporting cast of virile and attractive young men to whom she lovingly refers as "The Wolfpack."

Szymaszek & Kaminski!

Szymaszek & Kaminski.

Reading Poetry.

September 18 (that's a Friday) 7pm.
At the Wonder Fair (which is under Casbah Market at the corner of 8th and Mass.)
Lawrence Kansas.
Don't Miss.

Stacy Szymaszek is the author of the books Emptied of All Ships (Litmus Press, 2005) and Hyperglossia (Litmus Press, 2009), as well as numerous chapbooks, including Orizaba: A Voyage with Hart Crane (Faux Press, 2008), Stacy S.: Autoportraits (OMG, 2008), Pasolini Poems (Cy Press, 2005), and Mutual Aid (g o n g press, 2004). From 1999 to 2005, she worked at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood where she co-edited Traverse and founded and still edits, Gam. In 2005 she moved to New York City where she is the current Artistic Director of the the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church.

Megan Kaminski is the author of the chapbook Across Soft Ruins (Scantily Clad Press 2009). Her poetry has been published in Coconut, Denver Quarterly, Phoebe, 6x6, Third Coast, and other fine journals. She lives in Lawrence, KS, with her husband and cat and teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Kansas.

April Actual Kansas: Clancy Martin and Christie Hodgen @ Wonderfair

Who: Clancy Martin and Christie Hodgen
What: read fiction
Where: Wonder Fair* (lower level of Casbah Market, 803 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KS)
When: Friday, April 24, 2009, 7pm



Christie Hodgen is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is the author of the novel Hello, I Must Be Going, and the short story collection A Jeweler's Eye for Flaw, which won the 2001 AWP Award for Short Fiction and was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. She is a pushcart prize winner. Her fiction appears in Ploughshares Magazine, amongst other places.





Clancy Martin is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His first novel, How to Sell, is set for release in May from Firar, Straus, & Giroux, and will be translated into five languages. His fiction also has appeared in journals such as NOON, 5_Trope, and Parakeet. He has authored, translated, edited several books on 'existential' philosophy. He lives somewhere near Kansas City with his wife, three daughters, and 4 toy poodles.

Here is a video of Clancy discussing the existence of god.





*Big thanks to Eric Dobbins at Wonder Fair for being willing to host this installment of An Actual Kansas on short notice. If you've never been to Wonderfair, we know you'll dig the digs.

See you there!

What would you say about CAConrad?

Nate Barbarick said, "I have never read any of his work or anything."

Karl Saffran says CA's bio is "pretty funny."

John Coletti says CA's "a pal."

Ron Silliman says CA’s the one poet who knows everyone.

Dustin Williamson said, "He's one of those poets that lulls you, then hits you with some real chops."

Jack Kimball says, "Another non-tragedian, C. A. Conrad."

I could not find anything that said or someone to say something about how his cum tastes.

Anne Boyer said, "You know how Allen Ginsberg lead a group of hippies to try to levitate the Pentagon in the '60s? I think CAConrad is the poet today most likely to do that, except they will try to levitate ___________." I was supposed to fill in the blank. If there is a very large pile of glitter somewhere, maybe CA could levitate that. And then drop it on the economy. Poems would be currency, but you couldn't but anything with them--you could just make people feel good. Making people feel good would be currency.

Tom Devaney says CA's survival is deviance, or he deviates to survive, or that he devives to surviate, or divides surrogates, or something. I had food poisoning when i read that one.

Jordan Davis says CA argues that the country at large mostly finds loving menacing.

Jess Mynes would say CA's one of the most enthusiastic supporters of other people's work and one of the most passionate champions of poetry in general.

Clay Banes said, "I would say I am for." Meaning, for CAConrad.

Frank Sherlock says check out Deviant Propulsion. You'll feel better about Conrad's poems, about yourself, and about the future of poetry.

CAConrad says, perhaps to us all, "One day my dear you will be a fairy princess."

Zurawski, Kunin, Conrad to hit "Kansas City" on Midwest Tour.

An Actual Kansas Reading Series, which actually happens in Lawrence, Kansas and not Kansas City, Missouri, will host three fabulous cross-_______ writers on

Friday, March 6, 2009 @ 7pm


in the


6 Gallery (716.5 Massachusetts Street, downtown Lawrence).

The three writers are:


Magdalena Zurawski is a Minor American writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Her novel, The Bruise, was published by FC2 in 2008. Visit her blog for links to things like interviews (like this one at X Poetics) and to keep up.








Aaron Kunin grew up in Minneapolis, was educated at Brown, John Hopkins and Duke, and is an Assistant Professor of 18th-Century English Literature at Pomona College in Claremont, California. His work has appeared in Boston Review, FENCE, The Germ, No: A Journal of the Arts, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Poker, UbuWeb, and elsewhere. His poetry collection Folding Ruler Star and his novel The Mandarin were both published by FENCE Books.

CA Conrad's childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia the first chance he got where he lives and writes today with The PhillySound poets. Soft Skull Press published his book Deviant Propulsion in 2006. Jack Kimball's FAUX Press recently published his new series of poems (Soma)tic Midge (samples from this new work can be seen in listenlight and MiPOesias and Sawbuck and COCONUT#9). The Book of Frank is forthcoming in fall of 2008 from CHAX Press. A selection of The Book of Frank was translated into German by Berlin poet Holger, and a bilingual chapbook is now available from Carrie Hunter's YPOLITA Press. His book advanced ELVIS course will be coming out in spring of 2009. A collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems, will be coming out in fall of 2009 from Factory School Press.