An Actual Kansas

Spring Fictions: Mary Miller & Louise Krug

2011-02-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

Please join us:

Saturday, March 5, 5pm
Wonder Fair Gallery / Shoppe / Studio
(803 1/2 Massachusetts Street)
FREE (donations, make them)

Mary Miller's story collection, Big World, is in its second printing. Her fiction has recently appeared inMcSweeney's Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ninth Letter, and Fiction, among others. She is a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas.

The Rumpus just posted an interview with Mary.

Louise Krug is a Creative PhD candidate at the University of Kansas. She has had short stories published in elimae, Everyday Genius, and Glossolalia. Her first book, a memoir, will be released by Black Balloon Publishing.

Here is a recent piece by Louise on Metazen.

November 2: Novemberween

2010-11-13T12:08:00.000-08:00

Jam-packed ass-kicking November continues for
An Actual Kansas Reading Series

as we welcome poets

Corrine Fitzpatrick & Adam Robinson

@ Wonder Fair Art Gallery
(803 1/2 Massachusetts Street)
Friday, November 19, 7PM
$0 but you can make donations for the poets' travels, thank you.

Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he runs Publishing Genius Press and plays guitar in Sweatpants, a rock band. His two books, Adam Robison and Other Poems and Say, Poem both came out this year. He is a contributor to HTMLGIANT, and other recent work appears in Lit and Small Doggies and in Triple Quick Fiction, a Featherproof iPhone app.

Corrine Fitzpatrick is the author of two chapbooks (On Melody Dispatch and Zamboangueña, both 2007) and has more recent writing in various print and online places. She is the former Program Coordinator of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in NYC, and recently finished the MFA program at Bard College in upstate New York. She lives in Brooklyn.

To download a copy of The Equalizer 1.5, which features poems by Corrine, click here, or click here to view in Google Docs.

What's Up, November?

2010-10-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

Two dudes, that's what.

PHIL ESTES & JUSTIN RUNGE
will read from their faces into a room that should include your faces, too.
@ WONDER FAIR
803.5 MASSACHUSETTS STREET, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
Friday, November 5, 7pm

Justin Runge currently lives in Lawrence, where he works as a graphic designer and edits Blue Hour Press. His own poetry can be found at DIAGRAM, Linebreak, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere.

All things Justin Runge can be found via his website.

Phil Estes is the author of the chapbooks Gem City/Fountain City (Rabbit Catastrophe, 2009) and the forthcoming Tommy Glorious and the Girls of Wichita (Mitzvah). His poems have appeared in Harpur Palate, Hayden's Ferry Review, Jellyfish, Lamination Colony, NOO Journal, Willow Springs, and others. He lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Here's Phil in PANK. Here's him in The Lifted Brow.

It's Actually October, Kansas

2010-10-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

PLEASE, WE WANT YOU TO COME SHORTLY, SHORTIES:
DANA WARD & STEPHANIE YOUNG
WONDER FAIR GALLERY / SHOPPE / STUDIO
(803 1/2 MASSACHUSETTS STREET, LAWRENCE, KS)
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 7PM
POETS READING FROM BUNNIES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HAIR EXTENSIONS

Dana Ward is the author of Typing 'Wild Speech' from Summer BF Press, as well as several other short books that have come out over the past few years. He lives in Cincinnati where he edits books and hosts readings under the Cy Press banner, and works as an advocate for adult literacy at the Over the Rhine Learning Center.

Here is a gif I made of Dana morphing into a different Dana, possibly his "spirit dana."

These are poems by Dana in Shampoo.

Buy his chapbook with famous photo of Ian Curtis on the cover here.

Dana reading at many venues, from many texts (PennSound).

Stephanie Young lives and works in Oakland, California. She's written some books of poetry, of which Picture Palace is the most recently published. Editorial projects include Bay Poetics, Deep Oakland, and the forthcoming A Megaphone, which collects responses about feminism, writing and working conditions from writers around the globe, along with essays and enactments she and Spahr performed together between 2005-07.

Here is the interactive website for the Deep Oakland project that Stephanie co-edits. (It is pretty fucking intense, baffling, so generous, beautiful, fun, my adjectives don't mean anything, just look at it, every-city-needs-Stephanie-Young-and-her-co-editors-is-she-for-hire-for-your-town-?).

Buy Bay Poetics from Faux Press.

"Older poems" by Stephanie, also in Shampoo.

Stephanie and Dana are friends, OMG they have so much in common, here is Stephanie reading at many venues, from many texts (PennSound).

An Actual April Reading @ The Raven

2010-04-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

DIANE GLANCY is professor emeritus at Macalester College. She was the 2008-09 Visiting Richard Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College. Her most recent books are The Reasons for Crows, A Novel of Kateri Tekakwitha (SUNY) and Pushing the Bear: After the Trail of Tears (University of Oklahoma Press). Forthcoming books are The Dream of a Broken Field, essays (University of Nebraska Press), and Stories of the Driven World (Mammoth Press, Lawrence, KS). She currently is working on an independent film, The Dome of Heaven, with Through a Glass, also in Lawrence. More information about the film is on her website, www.dianeglancy.com. She lives in Prairie Village, Kansas.

Karl Gartung was born in Liberal, Kansas. In 1976 he was hired to run a small press bookstore (Boox, Inc.) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He says this was the beginning of his serious apprenticeship to contemporary literature. In 1979 he co-founded Woodland Pattern Book Center with Karl Young and Anne Kingsbury. At Woodland Pattern, where he retains the title of Artistic Director, he has been involved in the planning and presentation of hundreds of poetry readings, music performances, and art and book exhibits. He has always felt that such activities are as centrally artistic as writing or publishing could have be. These events were (and are) his education. In order to provide the income necessary to see the Book Center through inevitable funding droughts, he took a day job as a truck driver at what has become UPS Cartage Services. He calls this his deal with the devil. After several layoffs, Gartung helped organize his workplace into the Teamsters Union in 1993, and has served as a union steward from the ratification of the first contract to the present. Representing others on the job became a new and satisfying field of work, leading inevitably to more material for writing. He is a reader and writer with deep ethical commitment, vision, and a particular enthusiasm for poetry and visual work in outside traditions. His own work was changed irretrievably by Paul Metcalf, Dick Higgins, Karl Young, and Jerome Rothenberg. Karl’s work has appeared in 26, Five Fingers Review, Convergence, Croton Bug, Convoy Dispatch, and was featured along with Karl Young and Morgan Gibson in a special issue of Gam: Roots of Experimental Writing in Milwaukee. His first full length book of poetry, Now That Memory Has Become So Important, was published in 2008 by Midwestern Writers Publishing House.

COME FOR A LITERATURE READING ON FRIDAY MARCH 26 7 PM

2010-03-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

Please come to what promises to be an exciting reading by two of our favorite younger writers Kari Freitag and Alex Savage on Friday, March 26, at 7 PM at LOVE GARDEN RECORDS ~~the Wonder Fair Gallery 803 1/2,~~ Massachusetts Street, Lawrence.

You can find Kari Freitag sitting on her windowsill overlooking Division Ave. in Chicago. She draws pictures and writes poems. She also sings songs to her cat, Squirrel. Instead of creating a new song she inserts his name into Peter Frampton's 1974 hit song, Baby, I love Your Way. Then it sounds like, "Ooh Squirrel I love your way, everyday." She has been working on a collection of writings and drawings titled, If I Leave You Alone, Will You Still Be Mad at Me? She will trade almost anything for almost anything and loves almost everyone.

Alex Savage grew up as a baby in Tennessee and was close to the Smoky Mountains and drove an old car around sometimes when he was legally certified to drive a vehicle (Class D? C?). He currently has written his first book, and it is called THE FLESH IS LIKE A KIND OF MUPPET CAPER and that will be out on Hey Tiger! 2010, and if it isn't out for the reading it will be out very soon. Alex is a practicing visual artist and writer. His visual work includes text and pikachus (think about if Joe Brainard lived now and had a lot of screens to look at). He also maintains an internet presence in his work and life, as he is involved with various internet gangs (please visit his website at http://focus.butanpressfight.com and click links to see his work). Alex's recent endeavors include
making MIDI Mixes of songs for his performances as DJ BASKETBALL.

* please note this reading will be at the venerable LOVE GARDEN RECORDS, not wonderfair as usual. PLEASE NOTE.

ROD SMITH & MEL NICHOLS bring Kansas a STRAWBERRY SURPRISE!

2010-02-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone!

We are very happy to bring Rod Smith and Mel Nichols to read to Lawrence & environs. A

The time is 7pm on Friday 2/26. It will be at the same location, essentially, as our other readings, something like 803 Massachusetts Street, Wonder Fair above/below the old Casbah (the above part is a minor variation).

Rod Smith is the author of Deed, Music or Honesty, Poèmes de l'araignée (France), The Good House, Protective Immediacy, and In Memory of My Theories. A CD of his readings, Fear the Sky, came out
from Narrow House Recordings in 2005. Smith's work has appeared in a whole bunch of magazines and anthologies including American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry, Anthology of New (American) Poets, TheBaffler, Critical Quarterly, The Gertrude Stein Awards, Java, New American Writing, Open City, Poésie, Poetics Journal, Shenandoah, and The Washington Review.

He is editor and publisher of Edge Books, which has established an international reputation for publishing the finest in innovative writing.

Smith is also editing, with Peter Baker and Kaplan Harris, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley, for the University of California Press. Smith is currently a Visiting Professor in Poetry at The Iowa Writers' Workshop.

I really like this article Joshua Clover wrote about Rod Smith in The Nation.

I am very much a fan, also, of these two works: Ted's Head and Moist Feelings.

Mel Nichols wrote this poem for Poetry Magazine, I Google Myself.

Mel’s most recent books are Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon (Edge Books, 2009) and Bicycle Day (Slack Buddha, 2008). She teaches at George Mason University.

You can listen to this poem: "You Should be Nice to Call Center Workers."

And you should join us! Rod & Mel are awesome! It will be a good time!

your humble hosts,
Anne & Robert

THIS FRIDAY / SOME LITERARY FUN!

2010-01-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

AT WONDER FAIR

on Mass Street

under the Casbah

at 7 p.m.,

some FICTION & POETRY from:

Joseph P. Wood who is the author of the forthcoming collection of poems, I & We (CW Books), and of five chapbooks, including the forthcoming Gutter Catholic Love Song (Mitzvah Chaps), Urgency (Cannibal Books) and A Severing (Cinematheque Press). New poems can be found in BOMB, Boston Review, Cannibal, Hotel Amerika, Poetry London, Sycamore Review, Verse, among others. He teaches at the University of Alabama, co-edits Slash Pine Press, and coordinates the Slash Pine Poetry Festival.

& Clancy Martin, in a raincheck performance. He is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His first novel, How to Sell, was released in May from Firrar, 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.

Mathews Timmons in An Actual Kansas November 2009

2009-11-15T20:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-09-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-31T15:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-03-06T15:27:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-02-18T21:43:00.000-08:00

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.

This Sunday! December 7! 7 O'clock!

2008-12-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

Please come to our An Actual Kansas Poetry Reading and Christmas Cookie Eating Party on Sunday Night at 7 p.m. at the lovely Gallery 6. This Actual Kansas features two tireless poets who have found their ways near Kansas, and who we are excited to bring to you.

Matthew Henriksen edits Typo & Cannibal Books. Recent poems appear in The Cultural Society, Third Coast, Handsome Journal, and Poemeleon. He recently moved back to Fayetteville, Arkansas, from Brooklyn, but like many good poets, he is a native of Wisconsin and an avid baseball fan.

Jordan Stempleman is the author of Their Fields (Moria, 2005), What’s the Matter (Otoliths, 2007), Facings (Otoliths, 2007), The Travels (Otoliths, 2008), and String Parade (BlazeVOX, 2008). Individual poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Big Bell, Court Green, The Hat, Jacket, and New American Writing. He lives in Prairie Village, Kansas, teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute, and is the Associate Editor of The Continental Review.

Moria: http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html

Otoliths: http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young

BlazeVOX: http://www.blazevox.org/catalog.htm

The Continental Review: http://www.thecontinentalreview.com/

Actual Kansas Pictures

2008-11-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

Much thanks to Elaine Litzau for her impromptu intro of me at Mike, Karl, and Jim's reading, and for these pictures of said reading:

Mike Hauser, reading from Psychic Headset.

Jim "McCracken" McCrary.

K. Kenneth Saffran.

Farts.

"Buddies."

Friday Night Reading!

2008-11-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Friday / November 7, 2008 / 7pm

6 Gallery

(716.5 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KS)

Katy Lederer is the author of the poetry collection, Winter Sex (Verse Press, 2002) and the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Crown, 2003), which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and Esquire Magazine named one of its eight Best Books of the Year. Her second poetry book, The Heaven-Sent Leaf was recently released by BOA Editions, and will be available at the reading.

Katy's poems and prose have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Harvard Review, GQ, and elsewhere. She has been anthologized in Body Electric (Norton), From Poe to the Present: Great American Prose Poems (Scribner), and State of the Union (Wave Books), among other compilations. She serves as a Poetry Editor of Fence Magazine.

Katy is keeping a blog about her current book tour.

Given An Actual Kansas' obsession with tha skrilla/tha cheddah/cash money, this blurb on Katy's new book is appropriate to include here:

. . . Lederer charts her speakers' interior landscapes according to the [New York C]ity's highly monetized geography, viewing life in the big city through the lens of expenditure— not just of money, but of all that money signifies. In poems that are both heartfelt and ruthlessly critical of our current financial milieu, in which the fates of individuals are packaged, priced out, and then bundled for sale on the open market, Lederer proves Robert Graves's famous observation wrong: though there may be no money in poetry, there is indeed poetry in money.

Katy works at "a hedge fund in midtown Manhattan."

Kazim Ali is is the author of two books of poetry, The Far Mosque (Alice James Books), winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award, and The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions 2008). He is also the author of the novel Quinn’s Passage (blazeVox books), named one of Chronogram magazine's Best Books of 2005.

He is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine. His work has been featured in many national journals such as Best American Poetry 2007, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Barrow Street, jubilat, and Massachusetts Review. He is one of the founding editors of Nightboat Books.

For excerpts and audio, to order books, and for other things Kazim Ali, visit his website.

2008-10-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

McCrary, Hauser, Saffran to read at 6 Gallery.

2008-10-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

Karl Saffran (b. 1981) works as Bookstore Guru at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. He recently read his "dead wrestler sonnets" at an event involving live wrestlers. He is the only other person I know who is in horrible debt but doesn't change his spending habits. He is also the only person that can bring me to tears with personal criticism. He co-curates Salacious Banter Reading Series with Mike Hauser, who has said Karl looks like a bearded Peter Lorre.

Mike Hauser (b. 1978) is the author of several chapbooks of poetry, most recently Psychic Headset (Mitzvah Chaps, 2008) and Close Gauge Petcock (Dodo, 2007). His blog, The Last Billowy Shirt, provides absurd respite to all who visit. He co-curates the Salacious Banter Reading Series in Milwaukee with Karl Saffran, who has said Mike resembles a young Wilhelm Reich. Here are some poems by Mike in Dusie #5.

Jim McCrary (b. ????) is a Lawrence dood whose collected chapbooks are forthcoming (2008) by ManyPenny Press. His list of “poetic friends” includes or has included Paul Blackburn, Tom Beckett, David Ignatow, Kenneth Irby, John Moritz, and countless others. He probably now hates me for "name-dropping". But he is generous, and will probably get over it. Here are poems by Jim in Locus Point.

When: 26 October 2008, 7pm

Where: 6 Gallery (716 1/2 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KS)

How much: Free (but you can buy books and donate monies for traveling poets)

An Actual September 12: Brandon Brown and Judith Roitman

2008-09-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

Brandon Brown is a poet and translator from Kansas City, Missouri. His poems have appeared or are about to appear in Abraham Lincoln, Aufgabe, Dusie, Small Town, and Work (alphabetically). Cy Press published a chapbook Memoirs of My Nervous Illness and Transmission Press published another one, 908-1078, both in 2006. TAXT Press in Oakland will publish Camels! in 2008; Mitzvah Chaps will Publish Wondrous Things I Have Seen in 2009. He currently co-curates The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand Gallery with Alli Warren and publishes small press books under the imprint OMG!

Here is a short blog post where Brandon talks about himself and also links to several places where he has been published on-line.

Judith Roitman is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Kansas where she is, this semester, teaching "abstract algebra." Her poetry (and I'm just copying and pasting this from Judy's KU site now) "has appeared in First Intensity, Spectaculum, Black Spring, Bird Dog, Locus Point, and 31 (an unbound chapbook anthology). A chapbook, The stress of meaning: variations on a line of Susan Howe, was published in 1997 by Standing Stones Press, a second chapbook, Diamond Notebooks, was published in 1998 by nominative press collective, and a third chapbook, Slippage, was published in 1999 by Potes and Poets Press. A book No Face: Selected and New was published in 2008 by First Intensity Press. A chapbook (actually, a bunch of unbound cards) Ku: a thumb book is forthcoming from Crane's Bill Books."

An Actual Kansas Chapbook Release Reading, Feat. Chuck Stebelton and Anne Boyer

2008-06-20T13:49:00.001-07:00

This is a special edition of An Actual Kansas Reading Series. Both readers have chapbooks (the first two) on the newly minted Mitzvah Chaps.

Chuck Stebelton is Literary Program Manager at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, WI, and a friend of mine. Before that, he spent some time in Chicago curating the Myopic Poetry Series. His first full-length book of poetry, Circulation Flowers, was released by Tougher Disguises in 2005. Other chapbooks include Flags and Banners (Bronze Skull Press) and Precious (Answer Tag Home Press). Chuck enjoys good beer, please bring some to the reading to share with him.

Here is something from Tim Yu discussing Chuck's work and the 'controversial' Prairie School of Poetry.

Here is a video of Chuck reading poems:

And another one of him eating penne with a fake moustache for 'unknown' reasons:

Untitled from Chuck Stebelton on Vimeo.

Anne Boyer lives in a suburban Kansas hellscape with a charming cat, an artist prodigy daughter, and a lot of books. She is also a friend of mine, in my top 10 favorite 'writers', and my co-curator of An Actual Kansas Readings Series. Her first full length poetry book, The Romance of Happy Workers, was released this year by Coffee House Press. Other chapbooks include Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse (Effing Press) and Selected Dreams (Abraham Lincoln).

Here is a review of The Romance of Happy Workers.

Here is a video Anne made that is funny:

Sunday, June 29, 2008, 7pm

6 Gallery, Lawrence, KS (716 1/2 Massachusetts Street)

Free but you can spend money on books.

'Substantial' 'snacks' will be 'provided'.

For to order the new chapbooks ahead of time, or anytime thereafter, visit mitzvahchaps.blogspot.com. If you live in Lawrence, I will 'hand deliver' them. If you live other places and plan to come to the reading, you 'might as well' wait, because they won't arrive in time. You can buy both chapbooks at the reading for 'only' $10, which is a 'deal'.

An Actual Kansas Special Edition: Rachel Sherman

2008-04-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

Rachel Sherman was born in 1975. She holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in McSweeney's, Open City, Post Road, Conjunctions, n+1, and Story Quarterly, among other publications, and in the book Full Frontal Fiction: The Best of Nerve Anthology . Her book of short stories, The First Hurt (Open City Books) was short listed for The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and was named one of the 25 Books to Remember from 2006 by the New York Public Library.

Rachel will read:

Friday, May 2, 2008 @ 7pm

6 Gallery (716.5 Massachusetts St., Lawrence, KS)

Free (but please put something in the "passed hat" if you can -- it will help cover the cost of Rachel's movement from where she lives in NYC to the airport, which is some insane amount that people in Kansas can't comprehend.)

An Actual Kansas Reading Series is teaming up with the University of Kansas English Department to welcome Rachel. Deb Olin Unferth asked us if we would consider making Rachel's visit part of the series so that she didn't have to read in some unfriendly university room in Wescoe Hall and instead read at the very friendly and cozy 6 Gallery that houses AAKRS and lots of art that you should buy. We jumped at the opportunity to take part in the event, so did Sally (of 6 Gallery). It should be fun.

DON'T MISS THIS, kansans: AN ACTUAL KANSAS #5

2008-03-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

The legendary Jennifer "el" Knox, Danielle Pafunda, and Shanna Compton

7 pm, Saturday, April 5, 2008
6 Gallery (716 1/2 Massachusetts St., downtown Lawrence)

there will be wine and chicken buckets

Jennifer L. Knox was born in Lancaster, California—where absolutely anything can be made into a bong. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies The Best American Poetry (1997, 2003 and 2006), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to Present, Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books, and The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present. She has taught poetry writing at New York University and Hunter College, and is available for children’s parties, séances, and tradeshow booth demonstrations. For even more specious information, see www.jenniferlknox.com.

Danielle Pafunda is the author of Pretty Young Thing (Soft Skull, 2005), and the chapbook A Primer for Cyborgs: The Corpse (Whole Coconut Chapbook Series, forthcoming). Her poems have been chosen three times for Best American Poetry (2004, 2006, and 2007). Other poems and reviews have appeared in such publications as American Letters & Commentary, Conjunctions, the Georgia Review, and TriQuarterly. She is coeditor of the online journal La Petite Zine, a doctoral candidate in the University of Georgia's creative writing program, and Spring 2008 Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College Chicago. See daniellepafunda.blogspot.com for more information.

Shanna Compton is the author of For Girls (& Others), Down Spooky, and several chapbooks, as well as the editor of GAMERS: Artists, Writers & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels. Her poems and essays have appeared widely in magazines such as No Tell Motel, MiPoesias, Verse, the tiny, McSweeney's, Absent, Coconut, Spork, and Court Green, and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2005, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, Bowery Women, Digerati, and Exchange Values Vol. 2. She lives in New Jersey. For more information, see shannacompton.com.

Donations lovingly pried from your hands!

"the best reading series ever"

2008-02-25T06:45:00.000-08:00

deb olin unferth reads "sickos" from her McSweeney's threeway

tao lin explores the emotional lives of the child stars

this photo does not do service to the appreciators piled up to the door

More photos are in a flickr set.

More on AAKRS #4

2008-01-21T13:26:00.001-08:00

Tao Lin's second poetry collection, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, will be published by Melville House in May, 2008. He lives in Brooklyn.

Tao's main blog about literature is called Reader of Depressing Books.

He also posts his visual art on Underwater Hamster.

Here are two little e-books by Tao Lin on Bear Parade:

this emotion was a little e-book

Today The Sky is Blue and White with
Bright Blue Spots and a Small Pale
Moon and I Will Destroy Our
Relationship Today

Tao Lin interviewed Deb Olin Unferth for Bookslut.

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the story collection Minor Robberies (McSweeney's). Her first novel is forthcoming, also from McSweeney's.

Frank Tankard at lawrence.com interviewed Deb.

AGNI has something Deb.

YouTube has something Deb, too:

An Actual Kansas #4

2008-01-21T10:45:00.001-08:00

An Actual Kansas No. 2

2007-12-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

An Actual Kansas No. 2 warmed the chilly end of November and over fifty people spilled over the chairs and onto the floors of Lawrence's 6 Gallery to listen to the work of Cyrus Console and Scott Pierce.

We had boxed wine and cold food and canned beer but people came for poetry. There is a palpable attentiveness around here, and as was commented later people are well-dressed and mild-mannered, they do not drink all the wine and they leave some crackers and cheese on the plate. The dress shop upstairs, named something about eccentrics, played canned and terrifying Christmas music all night and it leaked through the floors.

Ken Irby gave a lovely introduction for Cyrus, and though I had written a very honest introduction for Scott, about how he was the first poet in Texas to write of the moon, and how he was born in the year of the Chupacabra, and how he was the love child of H.D. and H.D., and also how he finally escaped his youth-life of petty crime to find a life of more major crime of art, standing at the podium my notes were suddenly abstract marks (unreadable!) and I spoke instead of dove's defeathered breasts (said to resemble hearts) and Austin and love.

Cyrus and Scott were gentle and intense, the work of each fortuitously corresponded with the other's: there is Cyrus who is gentle and intense of the head, and there is Scott who is gentle and intense of the body. Both have written poems about Emus. Scott read his quick poems, and what is one of my favorites -- the poem from Moss Ranch. Scott said the word "Jackshit" (as in, "I don't know Jackshit about emus") and later told me the first word he ever wrote was "Hogrot." Cyrus read from his new book from Burning Deck, Brief Under Water, which I hope you will buy, and he read some new work for those who love epics.

Dennis Etzel wrote something about our Thursday night in Kansas: here. I've taken some pictures & made a flickr set: here.

Please join us for our holiday reading -- legends Kenneth Irby and K. Silem Mohammad will read on Friday, December 14 at 7 p.m., also at 6 Gallery.

Actual Kansas No. 2

2007-11-07T03:21:00.001-08:00

Join us Thursday, November 29, at Lawrence's 6 Gallery for a reading by Austin's Scott Pierce and Lawrence's own Cyrus Console.

Scott Pierce is a poet, printer, and publisher living in Austin, TX. He is founder and publisher of Effing Press and also works as a coordinator for Skanky Possum Press and as coeditor and designer of the skanky journal O POSS. Some of his poems have been bound under such titles as The TV Poems, Elms and Other Arteries, Exploder, and Some Bridges Migrate, the later of which is still in print from Small Fires Press. A recent project, Whisper in My Ear / You Are My Pamphleter: a book of poems about making books of poems is forthcoming as an Effing chapbook.

Some poems online can be found at

Blazevox: http://www.geoffreygatza.com/ebook/s_pierce.pdf

Fascicle: http://www.fascicle.com/issue02/poems/pierce1.htm

horse less review: http://www.horselesspress.com/revspring05/pierce.html

*
Cyrus Console lives in Lawrence, Kansas. His first book, Brief under Water, is forthcoming from Burning Deck, January 2008.

Elvis was in a better place.

The style of the dog was naturally beautiful

The habit of travelers in service of God

The cowgirls’ under the stars, the students’

Caught as catch could, rushed, anonymous

Ever wakeful, bright, obedient

Lightweight, manually retractable

They spent weeks in this attitude.

For a time they were like floating. Drunk

Persons staggered through the gloaming

No home to them despite the many ways

They sought shelter there as if it were

Perhaps I will go. I am tired

Of what sets us apart from animals

How everyone can clearly see a music

Of her own invention in the shelter

Of Petrushki station, slowly sipping

Aftershave all afternoon.

an Actual Kansas 1 at 6 Gallery

2007-11-01T12:00:00.001-07:00

Robert J. Baumann and Ken Rumble stand behind a curtain at 6 Gallery.

Ken Rumble and Jim McCrary both gave delightful, entertaining readings, and the crowd was also very satisfying. Check out what Dennis Etzel has to say about it.

Next up is Austin's Scott Pierce with a local poet, t.b.a., on thursday, November 29. Also Megan Kaminski and I will be reading in at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Thursday, November 8, 2007, 7 p.m., Nunemaker Center.

Jim McCrary and Ken Rumble at 6 Gallery

2007-10-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

North Carolina classic Ken Rumble & local favorite Jim McCrary kick off An Actual Kansas Reading Series on Sunday, October 28 @ 7 p.m.

6 Gallery
716 1/2 Massachusetts St.
Lawrence, KS 66044

Donations alway accepted! No poetry lovers will be turned away for lack of donations!

Questions?

email Anne Boyer at anneboyer at gmail dot com
or Robert J. Baumann at baumann dot baumann at gmail dot com
or email us both at actualkansas at gmail dot com.

***

Ken Rumble is the author of Key Bridge (Carolina Wren Press, March 2007.) His poems have appeared in Cutbank, the tiny, Octopus, Typo, Coconut, Parakeet, the Carolina Quarterly, and others. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

from St. Apples

The war is always there. The war is ongoing. The war is always there. There are people in the war and some of the people are women and some of the people are men and some of the people are girls and some of the people are boys and you and I are not some of the people. The little boys in the war. The amount of people changes but the war is always there. Some people argue that there aren’t enough people. Some people argue that there should be more people. The war is about an argument but the arguments about the amount of people did not start a new war. The new old war. There are lots of little wars or one big war. The war is always there. People here want to keep there there. The size of the war can change and the number of people can change. People here don’t want to go there. The size of the war is always there. People argue about a change in the mood of the people and the war is always there. You and I argue and the war is over there. The old new war. The war is always there and girls are in the war. Some of the girls are little and some of the girls are big and the big and little girls are in the war. The big and little war. Some people in the war are not part of the war. The war is always there and always in the parts of the war and in the place where the parts are even if some people don’t want to take part in the war. You and I do not have parts in the war because the war is always there. The little girls in the war. The war is always there but the war is for us in part. We take no part in the war but we are part of the war though the war is always there. Our part in the war and the parts the people that are there have in the war are different parts. If our parts were in the war. The war is always there and we do not go to it.

& check out these reviews:

Ron Silliman:
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-know-ken-rumble-originally-from-his.html

Kevin Killian:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0932112544/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_top/002-7537401-5750437?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books#customerReviews

Mathias Svalina:
http://mathiassvalina.blogspot.com/2007/03/key-bridge.html

Adam Sobsey, Independent Weekly:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A156564

***

Jim McCrary first came to Lawrence in brutal winter of '65 but stuck around for Summer of Love and more. Lived in NYC, San Fran, NorCal as well. Latest publications are allDIY published in Lawrence, including: Hotter Than and Now, Holbox, Dive She Said, Mayaland (with John Moritz), My Book, and most recently Being Frida Kahlo. An interview conducted by Tom Beckett in 2006 is available on line and will be included in a volume II of collected interviews from Exchange Values. He has new work coming out in next issue of Abraham Lincoln edited by A. Boyer and K. Mohammed. He works full time at the non-profit org Independence, Inc. in Lawrence.

A poem by Jim McCrary:

Being led astray – Ekbalam, Yucatan

Precise is a way of moving

and in a place like this

an advantage.

So one should very well

think before.

What one misses while considering

what one finds overwhelming.

Certainly one hears where to look.

To contemplate the advantage

of movement over an obstacle.

As instance

one who has gone to the top.

How could that be? And why?

What were they thinking?

Would we have done something different.

Then again perhaps there is something
in the word pyramid.

Ronald Johnson

2007-09-08T17:33:00.001-07:00

But are these landscapes to be imagined
or an actual
Kansas -- the central, earthy, prosaic core of us?

Or is the seen always winged, an eidolon only to us -- &
never
the uncertain capture
of great, golden unembroidered
slabs?

All is Oz.
The dusty cottonwoods, by the creek,
rustle and Emerald City.

And the mystic, immemorial ciy

is rooted in earth.

All is Oz & inextricable,

bound up in the unquenchable flames of double suns.