TONIGHT! A Very Special Poetically Charged Reading

great weather for MEDIA presents a sizzling evening of poetry and prose by Aimee Herman, Jane Ormerod, and Chavisa Woods at Bluestockings Bookstore located at 172 Allen Street in NYC @ 7pm.

There will be books for sale and words slung at you in all directions!

This is a FREE event!

Aimee Herman is a Brooklyn-based poet looking to disembowel the architecture of gender and what it means to queer the body. Find Aimee’s poems in The Outrider Review, nin journal, Wild Gender, Nerve Lantern, Lavender Review, EDUCE, Sous Les Paves, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books), in the full-length collection, to go without blinking (BlazeVOX books), the recent chapbook, rooted, (Dancing Girl Press), and the recent full-length book of poems, meant to wake up feeling (great weather for MEDIA). Aimee is an adjunct professor at Bronx Community College as well as a faculty member with Poetry Teachers NYC, creating affordable creative writing workshops for those in search of a space to imagine. In addition, Aimee has been featured at Dixon Place’s Hot! Festival, The Fresh Fruit Festival, HOWL fest, and the Dumbo Arts Festival.

Jane Ormerod is the author of the full-length poetry collections, Welcome to the Museum of Cattle(Three Rooms Press, 2012), Recreational Vehicles on Fire (Three Rooms Press, 2009), the chapbook 11 Films (Modern Metrics/EXOT Books, 2008), and the spoken word CD Nashville Invades Manhattan. Jane’s work also appears in numerous US and international anthologies and journals including Have a Nice NYC (Three Rooms Press, 2012), Maintenant, Marsh Hawk Press Review, The Nervous Breakdown, Ambush Review, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, AND / OR, and Waymark. She is a founding editor at great weather for MEDIA.

Chavisa Woods is the author of two books of fiction, The Albino Album (Seven Stories Press, distributed by Random House, 2013) and Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind (Fly by Night Press, 2009). Chavisa was the recipient of the 2013 Cobalt Prize for fiction and was a finalist (second nomination) for the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for fiction. She has appeared as a featured author at such notable venues as The Whitney Museum of American Art, City Lights Bookstore, Town Hall Seattle, The Brecht Forum, The Cervantes Institute, and St. Mark’s Poetry Project. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The Evergreen Review, New York Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail, Cleaver Magazine, and Jadaliyya. Chavisa was the recipient of the 2009 Jerome Foundation award for emerging authors, and is currently completing her third work of full-length fiction. great weather for MEDIA thanks Chavisa for her hard work as our 2015 guest prose editor.

Hope to see you there!

blue.stockings

When I moved to Brooklyn the first time, I went to an open mic at a bookstore that seemed mythical to me. It was full of more queer studies books I’ve ever seen in one place. They had an erotica section that spanned more than just a shelf! They had a place for people to sell their homemade zines and an extremely well-stocked poetry section. Bluestockings will always be my favorite bookshop to visit. It is quite impossible for me to enter without leaving with at least one book.

In their mission statement, they call themselves a radical bookstore, creating a space that empowers all people. They “actively support movements that challenge hierarchy and all systems of oppression, including but not limited to patriarchy, heterosexism, the gender binary, white supremacy, racism, ableism and classism, within society as well as our own movements.” It is powerful to walk inside a public space and feel heard.

Within the past few years, I have been extremely lucky to have performed at this space several times. But what I have always wanted is to feature for this open mic, which lead me there for the first time. Hosted by Vittoria Repetto since 1999, the Women’s / Trans’ Poetry Jam & Open Mic encourages people to perform (up to) 8 minutes of poetry, prose, songs, and spoken word. I am deeply excited to be featured this month with Ilka Scobie.

Women’s & Trans’ Poetry Jam & Open Mike

Tuesday Feb 25th 7pm – 9pm

Feature Writers: Aimee Herman & Ilka Scobie

Aimee Herman’s poetics deconstruct the architecture of gender and bodies. Aimee experiments with the language of bones, crack them open, count the syllables stuffed inside, and smear what translates onto the page.

Ilka Scobie’s poems are written through the filter of being a feminist, native New Yorker, traveller and teacher.”A passionate song to the city in all its stripped down, scaffolded, merciless and brave beauty.” Janine Pommy Vega

$5 suggested donation

Bluestockings Bookstore     172 Allen St. NYC   (between Staton & Rivington)

BANNED.

My dream (or one of the many that I swim in each day) is to write a banned book or poem. There is no intention of offending when I write, but when I disrobe my syllables, I do aim for some form of stun to occur. Basically, I want humans to feel things.

Tonight, I read alongside some fabulous contemporary poets such as:  Matvei Yankelevich, Timothy Donnelly, Deborah Landau, Alex Dimitrov, Ana Bozicevic among others. We will each be reading some of the best censored and banned poems by Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, Frank O’Hara, Sappho, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and more.

Head on over to Housing Works Bookstore in NYC at 7pm on Monday, September 30th.  Join PEN American Center and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression for readings in celebration of Banned Books Month and the poets whose work have been banned throughout history.

Beer and wine will be served. Free drinks to the first 100 attendees and drink specials after that. Seating begins at 6:30 and readings will begin promptly at 7:00.

Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby St.
FREE