Rob Carney and Tom Holmes Poetry Reading (1-27-12)

Friday, January 27 at 7:30 p.m. –  Rob Carney (from Utah) and Tom Holmes at RIT Liberal Arts Faculty Commons (06-1251), right across from the Wallace Library.

That’s right I’ll be reading with Rob Carney. One of the three people to whom I dedicated Poems for an Church. So if you like my poetry, you’ll love his poetry even more. Plus, he’s an awesome reader. And if love mythic poems, this is a reading that shouldn’t be missed.

Rob Carney is the author of number of books, including Story Problems (Somondoco Press, 2011),  Weather Report (Somondoco P, 2006) and Boasts, Toasts, and Ghosts (Pinyon Press, 2003), winner of the Pinyon Press National Poetry Book Award — and two chapbooks, New Fables, Old Songs (Dream Horse Press, 2003) and This Is One Sexy Planet (Frank Cat Press, 2005). His work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Quarterly West, and dozens of other journals, as well as Flash Fiction Forward (W. W. Norton, 2006). He lives in Salt Lake City. To hear an interview with him, the Poet Laureate of Utah, Katharine Coles, and the editor at Sugar House Review, John Kippen, click here. He is also a former guest editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics.

Tom Holmes is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics (www.redactions.com). He is also author of: Poems for an Empty Church (Palettes & Quills Press, 2011), which was nominated for The Pulitzer Prize; The Oldest Stone in the World (Amsterdam Press, 1-1-11, 12:00:00 a.m (the first book released in 2011)); Henri, Sophie, & the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex (BlazeVOX Books, 2009); Pre-Dew Poems (FootHills Publishing, 2008); Negative Time (Pudding House, 2007); After Malagueña (FootHills Publishing, 2005), and Poetry Assignments: The Book (Sage Hill Press, forthcoming). And he has thrice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

This event is sponsored by RIT and Palettes & Quills.//

My June 14th Poetry Reading with Adam A. Wilcox

Happy 30th Anniversary, Writers & Books!!!

Put together a poet/foodie and a poet/oenophile, and what do you get?
A banquet of tastes, textures, and sensory delights for the literary palate.

The Genesee Reading Series, with impresario Wanda Schubmehl, continues to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Writers & Books with a program featuring Tom Holmes and Adam A. Wilcox.

Tom Holmes (that’s me) is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics. He is also author of After Malagueña (FootHills Publishing, 2005), Negative Time (Pudding House Publications, 2007), Pre-Dew Poems (FootHills Publishing, 2008), Henri, Sophie, & the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex (BlazeVOX Books, 2009), The Oldest Stone in the World (Amsterdam Press, 2011), and Poetry Assignments: The Book (Sage Hill Press, forthcoming). He has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared on Verse Daily and has also appeared in Blue Earth Review, Chiron Review, Crab Creek Review, The Delmarva Review, The G. W. Review, Mississippi Review, Mid-American Review, New Delta Review, New Zoo Poetry Review, Orange Coast Review, Rockhurst Review, San Pedro River Review, Santa Clara Review, South Carolina Review, Sugar House Review, Swarthmore Review, and many other journals that don’t have “Review” in their name. His current poetry book reviews and writing about wine and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break: https://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/, which is right here!

Adam A. Wilcox is President and founder of Writ Wilcox, an information design company. Before that, he was a radio producer, curriculum developer, manager of technical documentation, and instructional designer for e-learning, and also ran an entrepreneurial custom-courseware business.

His poetry has appeared in Poetry, The Colorado Review, Cairn, and Folio, among other journals. For eight years, he wrote the “Gut Instincts” food column for Rochester City Newspaper, and currently writes for and edits RochesterFoodNet.com.

He also plays bass for The Dan Eaton Band and leads the Saturday Service Band at First Unitarian Church of Rochester. He lives in Rochester, NY, with his choreographer wife, Anne Harris Wilcox, their three home-schooled children, and their Bernese mountain dog.

The Genesee Reading Series will be held at Writers & Books, located at 740 University Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607, on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, at 7:30 pm. Admission is $3 for members and $6 for the general public.

Download the PDF flier for more information: Holmes Wilcox Genesee Reading Series 6-14-11.

Mark it on you Facebook calendar here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=172684909454121.//

Footage from the Three Bad-Ass Poets Reading

The night started with a buzz, and then we got drunker.

Well, that’s not completely true, but there was definitely some drinking. It was actually one of the funnest readings I have ever been to. And it definitely was BAD-ASS.

The night of March 26th began as a party at A Different Path Gallery with the wonderful curator Katherine Weston. The party was then interrupted by some poetry for an hour and then party continued.

The poetry reading began with Charles Coté, author of Flying for the Window.

One of the first poems he read was called “April.”

During his reading, Charlie was caught texting.

Charlie then closed his read with the concluding poem from his book Flying for the Window, “After a Storm.”

Charlie was followed by Sarah Freligh, author of Sort of Gone.

Of course, before she read there was a brief intermission so everyone (about 20+ of us) could refill their wine glasses. One of the first poems Sarah read was “Birthday,” I think, or “Happy Birthday.”

A bit later she read “Halfway House.”

Then there was another intermission to fill more wine glasses. Then I (Tom Holmes) read. The first part of what I was read was from my recently released collection of poems, The Oldest Stone in the World (Amsterdam Press, 12:00:01, 1-1-11). I gave a brief introduction to the book.

Then I commenced with the first part of my reading. (In case you’re curious, we all read about 15-20 minutes.) I devoted the first part of my reading to the book, and the second part to some of new investigative poems of Paleolithic cave art. But first excerpts from The Oldest Stone in the World.

Then some of the new poems: “Paleolithic Person Discovers Fear,” “Paleolithic Possession,” “The First Painting,” “The Invention of the Ellipsis,” “Paleolithic Person Tells of the Invention of Harmony and Melody,” and “Paleolithic Person Learns to Sing.”

Then we returned to the party where the poets words, along with the audience’s words, slowly became more and more slurred. Luckily there was a limo to drive most people home, and the rest of us walked home.

It really was a bad-ass reading by poets and attendees. Thank you everyone for coming.//

Investigative Poetics

I had never heard of the phrase Investigative Poetry until about two weeks ago when Sean Thomas Dougherty used it to describe my poetry. When I read those words, it was immediately obvious that he was right. He didn’t define Investigative Poetry, but I knew what he meant, and he was right.

Ed Dorn

 

Investigative Poetry is, to me, studying and staring at one thing for a long time and writing poems about that thing. I learned this from Charles Olson and Edward Dorn. Olson once said to Dorn something like, “Ed, if you study something long enough and think about it long enough and write about it often enough, you will understand everything. Associations will be made through that one something that connects everything in the universe.” Ed Dorn responded by writing Gunslinger. An epic poem about the wild west. Dorn study the wild west and connected the universe. So that’s what I do.

The Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound

I first did this with an unpublishable book of poems called The Cosmology and Particle Physics of Love. That book certainly connected things in the universe. Then I wrote After Malagueña, which is really the study of one poem which leaps outward. But there are others, Negative Time (where I studied a universe that is similar to ours but where time moves in a contrary direction to ours), The Oldest Stone in the World (which was a long stare at the oldest stone in the world), Pre-Dew Poems (which is a long, never ending stare of my girlfriend), Henri, Sophie, & the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex (which looked into the lives of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Sophie Brzeska, Ezra Pound, a statue, and Vorticism and Vorticists). And now I’m investigating Paleolithic parietal (cave) art.

Each time I do this, I gain clarity.

But it’s this latter book, the book on Paleolithic parietal art, that is making Investigative Poetry make more sense to me.

The Man, The Bison, and the Bird of the Shaft (aka The Shaft of the Dead Man)

With this book, I stare back to understand today. I also understand our origins better. I study and imaginatively think and write. I’m making more connections with the universe than ever before. I’m discovering humanity. It happens because I’m investigating. I’m investigating humanity, and so far it’s not guilty.

My description of Investigative Poetry is not all the good.

A better description is in the review that just came out today on Gently Read Literature, “Khurshid Alam’s Investigative Poetry—An Interpretation on Subject, Treatment, and Technique.” This essay is wonderful. I love it. I love it because it describes very well what I am doing with my poetry. It’s got me nailed.

I never thought my poetry could be nailed down, because, until recently, I’m all over the place. But this, this Investigative Poetry nails me, and I like it.

Read this essay on Investigative Poetry and you will read me.

(I apologize if this post seems self-serving, but, damn, the review so excited me.)//

Three Bad-Ass Poets Reading

Poets shouldn’t jingle jangle jingle. They should be tough like cowboys.

No. Tougher than that.

They should be rough as sandpaper and tough as nails. They should be:

Who are these Bad-Ass Poets?

The Doc (Charles Coté) is the author of the chapbook Flying for the Window (Finishing Line Press, 2008) and is working on a full-length book of persona poems called Shrink, which is  about a man in search of himself amidst the patients he tries to help. Publication credits include: Upstreet, Salamander, The Cortland Review, Redactions, Free Lunch, Identity Theory, Blueline, Modern Haiku, Connecticut River Review, and HazMat Review. He is a psychotherapist in private practice and teaches poetry at Writers & Books in Rochester, NY.

The Babe (Sarah Freligh) is the author of Sort of Gone (WordTech Communications, 2008), a book of poems that follows the rise and fall of a fictional pitcher named Al Stepansky. Her work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and in the upcoming anthology Good Poems: American Places. Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. Sarah was born and raised in Michigan, and she currently teaches at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

The Wino (Tom Holmes) is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics (www.redactions.com). He is also author of After Malagueña (FootHills Publishing, 2005), Negative Time (Pudding House, 2007), Pre-Dew Poems (FootHills Publishing, 2008), Henri, Sophie, & the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex (BlazeVOX Books, 2009), The Oldest Stone in the World (Amsterdam Press, 2011), and Poetry Assignments: The Book (Sage Hill Press, forthcoming 2011). He has thrice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared on Verse Daily and has also appeared in Blue Earth Review, Chiron Review, Crab Creek Review, The Delmarva Review, The G. W. Review, Mississippi Review, Mid-American Review, New Delta Review, New Zoo Poetry Review, Orange Coast Review, Rockhurst Review, San Pedro River Review, Santa Clara Review, South Carolina Review, Sugar House Review, Swarthmore Review, and many other journals that don’t have “Review” in their name. He also maintains this blog and makes posters.

For more information about A Different Path Gallery and their other events, visit their website: http://www.differentpathgallery.com/.

To download the poster as a PDF, click Three Bad-Ass Poets Reading Poster PDF.//