Kate Durbin & Susy Bielak at Agitprop, Saturday, December 4, 7pm

We hope you can join us on Saturday, December 4 at 7pm for a reading by Kate Durbin and an art opening celebrating a new website by Susy Bielak.

Kate Durbin

Kate Durbin is a writer and performance artist. She is the author of the poetry collections The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books, 2009) and, with Amaranth Borsuk, Excess Exhibit, forthcoming from ZG Press. She has written several chapbooks including Fragments Found in a 1937 Aviator's Boot (Dancing Girl Press, 2009), FASHIONWHORE (Legacy Pictures, 2010), and Kept Women, forthcoming from Insert Press. She is founding editor of the journal Gaga Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art About Lady Gaga. Her fashion / text project, Prices Upon Request, can be viewed at ZG Press. She writes about celebrity style at Hollywood.com.

 

Susy Bielak's work combines fine craft with social question. Inspired by the interplay of identity and space, she uses drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, and installation to envision ideas about personal and social relationships. Bielak employs gesture, the emotion of color, and sensory detail to choreograph each work. Her projects often incorporate nontraditional materials and processes in order to best render an idea (e.g., applying sketchbook text and drawings onto bus doors to reference the personal and public; drawing with water on opaque plastic to reference subtleties of memory; employing a seismic testing device to speak to the rapport between interior life and natural disaster). Experience in the social sciences, particularly anthropology and ethnography, influences her immersive and research-based approach to projects.

Agitprop readings are free, but wine and donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward!

Agitprop Gallery
Saturday, December 4, Reading 7pm, Art Opening at 8pm
2837 University Avenue in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn's Market)
San Diego, CA 92104 * 619.384.7989 

Farah Field, Jared White and Joe Yorty at Agitprop, October 9, 7pm

We hope you can join us on Saturday, October 9 at 7pm for a reading featuring Farrah Field and Jared White, and an art opening featuring Joe Yorty.

Farrah Field

Farrah Field’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many publications including the Mississippi Review, Typo, Harp & Altar, La Petite Zine, Ploughshares, Mantis and Cannibal. Rising, her first book of poems, won Four Way Books’ 2007 Levis Prize. She lives in Brooklyn where she co-hosts a reading series called Yardmeter Editions. She blogs at http://adultish.blogspot.com.

Jared White

Jared White’s poems and essays have appeared in journals such as Action Yes, Barrow Street, Cannibal, Coconut, Fulcrum, Harp & Altar, Laurel Review and Open Letters. A chapbook, Yellowcake, was part of the hand-sewn anthology, Narwhal, from Cannibal Books. He lives in DUMBO, Brooklyn, where he co-hosts arts and poetry events at Yardmeter Editions and sometimes blogs at http://jaredswhite.blogspot.com/.

Joe Yorty was raised in the southwest corner of the state of Utah and spent his high school years in Escondido, California. Much of the time between then and now is filled with almost 11 years of military service in which he served onboard ships that carried him to many distant lands. Along with being gainfully employed by the Department of Art at University of San Diego as their head technician Joe is currently in his second year as an MFA candidate in the Visual Arts department at UCSD where he is engaged in the search for an art-making practice that incorporates his obsession with second-hand shopping.

Agitprop readings are free, but wine and donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward!

Agitprop Gallery
Saturday, October 9, Reading 7pm, Art Opening at 8pm
2837 University Avenue in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn's Market)
San Diego, CA 92104 * 619.384.7989

Jennifer Karmin & John Pluecker at Agitprop, September 25, 7pm

 We hope you can join us on Saturday, September 25 at 7pm for our first event of the season featuring Jennifer Karmin and John Plueker.

Jennifer Karmin’s text-sound epic, Aaaaaaaaaaalice, was published by Flim Forum Press in 2010. 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 across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. 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.  In Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools.

John Pluecker is a writer, interpreter and translator. His work has been published by journals and magazines in the U.S. and Mexico, including the Rio Grande Review, Picnic, Third Text and Literal. He has published five books in translation from the Spanish, including essays by a leading Mexican feminist, short stories from Ciudad Juárez and a police detective novel. A limited-run artist book, Routes into Texas, was published in early 2010.

Agitprop readings are free, but wine and donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward!

Agitprop Gallery
Saturday, September 25, 7pm
2837 University Avenue in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn's Market)
San Diego, CA 92104 * 619.384.7989

SDMA Summer Salon Series: Rae Armantrout 8/19, 6:15PM

Photo Credit: Kevin Walsh

We hope you can join us for an Agitprop reading at the San Diego Museum of Art on THURSDAY, AUGUST 19 at 6:15 PM, with Rae Armantrout.

In conjunction with Agitprop Gallery, the Agitprop Reading Series is collaborating with the San Diego Museum of Art to present Thursday Summer Salons featuring contemporary artists and writers from Southern California. Museum admission is $12 for adults, $8 for students with college ID, and open to... the public. The reading will take place in the "Asian Court" room.

Wesleyan will publish Rae Armantrout's next collection, Money Shot, in spring of 2011. Armantrout's most recent book, Versed (Wesleyan, 2009), received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was a finalist for the National Book Award. Next Life (Wesleyan, 2007), was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2007 by The New York Times. Other recent books include Collected Prose (Singing Horse, 2007), Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2004), The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001), and Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). Her poems have been included in anthologies such as American Hybrid (Norton, 2009), Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1993), American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Language Meets the Lyric Tradition, (Wesleyan, 2002), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford, 2006) and The Best American Poetry of 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2008.. Armantrout received an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. She is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, San Diego. Writing in Poetry magazine, Ange Mlinko has said, “I would trade the bulk of contemporary anecdotal free verse for more incisive, chilling poetry like Armantrout's. "

Geoffrey Cunningham will be doing a performance/installation in the lower rotunda all evening, and Joshua White will offer a jazz concert upstairs at 7pm. We hope that you can join us for Rae Armantrout's reading as well as these other events.

San Diego Museum of Art
"Asian Court" Room
Thursday, August 19, 6:15 PM

Directions and parking information are available on the SDMA
website: http://www.sdmart.org/visit/travel-information

For more information about the Summer Salon Series, please
visit: http://sdma.balboaparkonline.org/programs-events/summer-salon-
series

Facebook Event Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120863121295170&index=1

Jeanine Webb, Cati Porter & Louis M. Schmidt at Agitprop August 7

We hope you can join us this, Saturday, August at 7 p.m. for a reading by JEANINE WEBB and CATI PORTER. An opening reception for LOUIS M. SCHMIDT's "We're All in This Together for Ourselves," on display at the gallery, will follow the reading.



Photo Credit: Lily Rogers

 Jeanine Webb's work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Antioch Review, Louis Liard Magazine, the San Diego Writers' 2010 anthology A Year in Ink and online in the Summer 2010 issues of The Latent Print and WTF PWM. She holds a M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, where she taught workshops in making poems. Her manuscript Flash Paper was a finalist for the 2008 Cider Press Review Book Award. Her work concerns images of apocalypse in relation to late capitalism, sci-fi, connectivity, surf culture, historical realities as shaped by technologies, modern mythography, media spin and pop culture. Jeanine lives in San Diego. Look for the literary magazine she'll be editing, Greater Than Or Equal To, which should exist at http://www.greaterthanzine.com/ sometime late this summer or in early fall.

Cati Porter

Cati Porter is the author of a collection of poems, Seven Floors Up (Mayapple Press, 2008), as well as the chapbooks small fruit songs: prose poems (Pudding House Publications, 2008), (al)most delicious, an ekphrastic series after Modigliani's nudes (forthcoming in 2010 from Dancing Girl Press), and what Desire makes of us, a series written during NaPoWriMo 2009 (forthcoming from Ahadada books as an e-book with illustrations by her sister, Amy Joy Payne). She is founder & editor of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry . In June 2010 she will receive her MFA in Poetry from Antioch University, Los Angeles.

Louis M. Schmidt is an artist currently based in San Diego, CA. His work addresses personal and societal unhappiness, the many failures of history and myths of progress and upward mobility. Schmidt's most recent body of work, "We're All in This Together For Ourselves," is an immersive, mixed-media wall drawing that presents itself as a cyclic fragment, a frozen section of negative feedback loop that evinces a dark pool of truths about humans, about Americans, about the now to which our ideologies have delivered us.

Please share this information with friends and any interested parties.

Agitprop readings are free, but donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward!

AGITPROP POETRY SERIES
Saturday, August 7, 7 p.m. reading (8 p.m. Art Opening)
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Ave in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn’s
Market).
San Diego, CA * 92104 * 619.384.7989

SDMA Summer Salon Series & Agitprop: James Meetze, 7/22 Options

We hope you can join us for an Agitprop reading at the San Diego Museum of Art this Thursday, July 22, 7pm, with James Meetze.

In conjunction with Agitprop Gallery, the Agitprop Reading Series is collaborating with the San Diego Museum of Art to present Thursday Summer Salons featuring contemporary artists and writers from Southern California. Museum admission is $12 for adults, $8 for students with college ID, and open to the public. The reading will take place in the room with the "Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece" Exhibition.

James Meetze's book Dayglo was selected by Terrance Hayes as winner of the 2010 Sawtooth Poetry Prize from Ahsahta Press. He is also the author of I Have Designed This For You (2007), and editor, with Simon
Pettet, of Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010). The recipient of the 2001 Poet Laureate Award from the University of California, he has taught poetry and creative writing at the University of California, San Diego, California State University, San Marcos, and in the MFA Program at National University. He lives in San Diego with his soon-to-be wife Lorelei, his son Brighton, and their cats.

During your visit will be able to explore the works of living artists and writers, participate in hands-on art making activities, enjoy a cocktail, and view the Museum's current exhibitions and collections. We invite the public to join some of the most exciting artists working in Southern California and immerse themselves in what’s happening right now in our local art scene.

Artist Presentations will be occurring in the museum before and after the reading: Known also as the one man band Author and Punisher, Tristan Shone will haul his drone machines inside the Museum to play some songs from his latest album, and Bombshell! Boom Boom will conduct both an instrument making workshop and marching band procession for all.

San Diego Museum of Art
"Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece" Exhibition Room
Thursday, July 22, 7PM

Directions and parking information are available on the SDMA website.
For more information about the Summer Salon Series, please visit the Summer Salon Series Calendar.

SDMA Summer Salon Series & Agitprop: Wallace & Graham, 6/24 Options

We hope you can join us for an Agitprop reading at the San Diego Museum of Art this Thursday, June 24, 7pm, with Mark Wallace and K. Lorraine Graham

In conjunction with Agitprop Gallery, the Agitprop Reading Series is collaborating with the San Diego Museum of Art to present Thursday Summer Salons featuring contemporary artists and writers from Southern California. Museum admission is $12 for adults, $8 for students with college ID, and open to the public. The reading will take place in the room with the "Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece"
Exhibition.

Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a short story collection, Walking Dreams (2007), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). Forthcoming in early 2011 is his second novel, The Quarry and The Lot.

K. Lorraine Graham is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Terminal Humming (Edge Books, 2009) and several chapbooks, including Large Waves to Large Obstacles, forthcoming from Take-Home Project.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Traffic, Area Sneaks, Foursquare and elsewhere. She currently lives in San Diego with her partner, Mark Wallace, and Lester Young, a pacific parrotlet.
During your visit will be able to explore the works of living artists and writers, participate in hands-on art making activities, enjoy a cocktail, and view the Museum's current exhibitions and collections. We invite the public to join some of the most exciting artists working in Southern California and immerse themselves in what’s happening right now in our local art scene

Artist Presentations will be occurring in the museum before and after the reading.

Judith Pedroza will recreate the block where she grew up in Mexico City in scale model with her work Marina Nacional 80. Visitors will be invited to help her expand the work throughout the evening by adding additional buildings and roads.

Michael Trigilio will present one of his video works. Michael is a founding member of the independent radio project Neighborhood Public Radio, which was featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

San Diego Museum of Art
"Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece" Exhibition Room
Thursday, June 24, 7PM

Directions and parking information are available on the SDMA website:
http://www.sdmart.org/visit/travel-information

For more information about the Summer Salon Series, please visit:
http://sdma.balboaparkonline.org/programs-events/summer-salon-series

Lester Robles O'Connor, Ryan Luz, and Joseph T. Thomas: Pastoral Poetry, FRIDAY, 6/4, 7pm Options

We hope you can join us this FRIDAY, JUNE 4 at 7pm for a pastoral poetry reading featuring LESTER ROBLES O'CONNOR, RYAN LUZ, and JOSEPH T. THOMAS.

We are excited to host this reading in conjunction with There Goes the Neighborhood!--a four day event that not only hopes to shed light on issues of art and its relationship to a specific community, but to also re-examine, through artistic interventions, some aspects of the neighborhood that are sometimes overlooked: http://www.theregoes.org/

LESTER O'CONNOR writes in several genres and makes video work and street propaganda. He was co-editor of the Pacific Review and reviewed films for a defunct alt-weekly.

RYAN LUZ's work is interdisciplinary--combining prose, poetry and visual element. His poems often focuses on the tiny, quotidian, and overlooked.

A libertine of unimpeachable taste, JOSEPH T. THOMAS, JR., is an assistant professor of English at San Diego State University’s National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature. He is the author of two books, Poetry’s Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children’s Poetry (Wayne State UP, 2007) and Strong Measures (Make Now Press, 2007). Poetry’s Playground was named a 2009 honor
book by the Children’s Literature Association.

Please share this information with friends and any interested parties.

Agitprop readings are free, but donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward!

AGITPROP POETRY SERIES
FRIDAY, June 4, 7pm
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Ave in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn’s
Market)
San Diego, CA * 92104 * 619.384.7989

Rozalie Hirs at Agitprop: Saturday, May 8, 7pm

From the Netherlands, ROZALIE HIRS is a prolific interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates music, text and video. Her work has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and we’re very happy to be hosting her at Agitprop. Her three books of poetry are Locus (1998), Logos (2002) and Speling (2005, all Querido Publications). She also wrote the libretto for the opera The Cricket Recovers by Richard Ayres. Rozalie Hirs' recent composition "Roseherte," (2008) for full orchestra and electro-acoustic sounds was premiered by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and selected for the Toonzetters prize in 2009. Her electro-acoustic composition “Pulsars” (2006, 2007 rev.), commissioned by Café Sonore, VPRO Radio, Netherlands, received the distinction “Recommended work” at the 11th International Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music (IREM) in 2007. A CD, Pulsars, with electroacoustic music and text pieces by Rozalie Hirs will appear in 2010 as a co-production of Attacca records and Muziekcentrum Nederland. You can learn more about Rozalie Hirs’ work online at http://www.rozalie.com/.

Please share this information with friends and any interested parties. Agitprop readings are free, but donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities afterward!

AGITPROP POETRY SERIES
Saturday, May 8, 7pm
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Ave in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn’s Market)
San Diego, CA * 92104 * 619.384.7989

Jane Sprague & Diane Ward 2/6 @ 7pm

We hope you can join us this Saturday, February 6 at 7:00 pm for the next event in the Agitprop Reading Series featuring Jane Sprague and Diane Ward.

Jane Sprague is the author of The Port of Los Angeles (Chax, 2009), *Belladonna Elders Series No. 8 (with Tina Darragh and Diane Ward; Belladonna, 2009) and numerous chapbooks including Apache Roadkill (Dusie, 2009) and Sacking the Henwife (Dusie, 2008). She teaches at CSULB and for Bard College's Institute for Language and Thinking. She lives in Long Beach, CA where she edits and publishes Palm Press. Her current projects include editing the collection Imaginary Syllabi, a utopian and practical investigation into various writing pedagogies in higher education as well as researching a project on generational poverty and histories of race and genocide in upstate New York, where she's from.

Diane Ward was born in 1956 in Washington, DC and currently lives in Santa Monica, California. She has published ten books of poetry including, most recently, *Belladonna Elders Series No. 8 (with Tina Darragh and Diane Ward; Belladonna, 2009) No List (No List), Seeing Eye Books, 2008, Flim-Yoked Scrim, Factory School, 2006, among others. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, among them: MOVING BORDERS: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women, edited by Mary Margaret Sloan (New Jersey: Talisman House, Publishers, 1998) and OUT OF EVERYWHERE: linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America & the UK, edited by Maggie O’Sullivan (London: Reality Street Editions, 1996).
.
Please share this information with friends and any interested parties. Agitprop readings are free, but donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities afterward!

AGITPROP POETRY SERIES
Saturday, November 7, 7:00pm
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Ave in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn’s
Market) * San Diego, CA * 92104 * 619.384.7989