The Realness, The Foundation

OPEN ALTAR: Living Room Day of the Dead Open House

November 2nd 3pm — 8pm

Living room festival for Day of the Dead

We will open our space to celebrate their work and our LIVING FLAMES fed by it.

Come partake in Bibliomantic readings of the poetry and work of dear community such as ALICE NOTLEY, LYN HEJINIAN, RICHARD FORMAN, STEPHANE BOUQUET, FANNY HOWE, EDMUND WHITE, KENWARD ELMSLIE, COLE HEINOWITZ, MEL NICHOLS and anyone you know and love!

We celebrate life and love and the importance of art, music, books, creativity and play together as we celebrate with community musicians, priests and priestesses, Tony Torn, Lee Ann Brown, Beth Beth, Lucia Hinojosa Gaxiola, Diego Girard, Zoe Brezsny, Sarah Riggs, Lyndsay Turner, Ricardo Gallo of Los ALiENs, Franklin Bruno, Jennifer Scappettone, Paolo Javier, Drew Gardner, Hilma's Ghost and other surprise guests plus YOU!

To stoke the fires we will concurrently have a triple BOOK PARTY for these very special COMMUNITY COLLECTIONS!

JENNIFER SCAPPETTONE’s ten years in the making:

Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism (Columbia University Press, 2025) with new critical work on Etel Adnan, and Lyn Hejinian and others.

PAOLO JAVIER'S: new book NEAR YOUR MIRROR HOME (STAY ON) from (POETS OF QUEENS)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/near-your-mirror-home-paolo-javier/1146315514?ean=9798990473324

and DREW GARDNER'S anthology, INGENIOUS PLEASURES: An Anthology of Punk, Trash & Camp (University of New Mexico Press)

https://www.unmpress.com/9780826364944/ingenious-pleasures/

Thank you for community weaving

We can’t do this without you!

With gratitude, Lee Ann Brown (TenderButtonsPress.com) & Tony Torn (Torn Page.com)

Donations for operating expenses Greatly Appreciated:

PayPal to [email protected]

Questions:

I am honored & thrilled to be taking part in Craig Thompson’s East Coast launch of Ginseng Roots, his vital, prescient, illuminating, pioneering sequel to his groundbreaking comics memoir Blankets. Craig’s work occupies a special place in my comics- obsessed heart: I credit my encounter with the latter title in 2003, followed later that year by my heartstopping absorption of Goodbye, Chunky Rice, his debut graphic work published in 1999, for furthering my own foray into comics poetry & 2021’s O.B.B., published by Nightboat Books. I hope to properly credit CT tomorrow night by way of introducing his talk/presentation, then leading a conversation/moderation of Q&A with the audience. Maraming salamat to host Sukhdev Sandhu of The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture for making this launch possible.

WHERE: Einstein Auditorium, NYU Steinhardt, 34 Stuyvesant Street (between 2nd & 3rd Avenue)

WHEN: Tuesday 29 April 2025, 7pm

FREE, open to the public. Non-NYU guests rsvp to [email protected]

Co-sponsored by Forbidden Planet NYC, who will make copies of Ginseng Roots  available for purchase and signing 🙏🏽

Growing up in rural Wisconsin, Craig  Thompson and his younger brother weeded and harvested ginseng during the summers. Wisconsin might have been the world's leading producer of ginseng, exporting much of it to China where it was prized for its medicinal benefits, but the work was gruelling and poorly paid. A dollar an hour. But one dollar was also the price of the comic books Craig loved. He had a dream: maybe, just maybe, he might become the kind of person who drew comics for a living - and, in doing so, leave behind working-class Wisconsin.

GINSENG ROOTS digs deep into the 300-year history of the ginseng trade, the gains and losses in the shift to industrial farming, the complex legacies of empire. Deeply personal, it's a timely book that casts a compassionate eye at the struggles of working-class America and the travails of migrant labourers. Joe Sacco calls it "a sweeping story, gorgeously drawn and beautifully told - this is Craig Thompson's masterpiece." 

[image: Roy Kiyooka]

“into the clear blue plunkett day”: Poetry and Small-Press Publishing in Canada with Louis Cabri, Paolo Javier, Robert Manery, Nicole Markotić

Friday 21 March 2025, 6:30pm. Room 471, 20 Cooper Square

[East 5th & Bowery]

Free, open to public, wine.

RSVP: [email protected]

Into yesterday. Into tomorrow. This panel explores legacies, both known and unknowable, of independent publishing initiatives in Canada. hole magazine, disOrientation chapbooks, Wrinkle Press, Some magazine: all engines of poetic dialogue, innovation. 

Poets, editors and publishers Louis Cabri, Rob Manery and Nicole Markotić will discuss their efforts to torque into being poetic communities, to reimagine and varispeed the relationships between form, publishing and public discourse. They will not-forget the congeries of avant-garde poetries that shaped their dreams: the TISH group of Vancouver-based writers inspired by Black Mountain poetics and formed after the Vancouver Poetry Conference of 1963; the Toronto Research Project of bp nichol and Steve McCaffery which published small ephemera reports and essays that suggested new avenues for collaboration; the Kootenay School of Writing, a Vancouver-based writers collective whose aesthetics and ethos chimed with Language poetry communities in New York and San Francisco.

Please join filmmaker Lynne Sachs & I this Saturday at Millennium Film Workshop for The Poetic Lens, an anthology screening of cine-poems that will also include our film SWERVE, which we shot in Elmhurst at the height of the pandemic, & based on my book of comics poetry O.B.B. aka The Original Brown Boy (Nightboat Books 2021).

Here are a few links to articles covering SWERVE, with amazing photos of the shoot & insightful interviews with the filmmaker and cast members:

- Excellent profile of the film by Tammy Scileppi of QNS.COM

- Profile/review of the film by Filipino critic Harold Gambill that provides additional links, including to a podcast featuring Lynne and I discussing our collaboration

Tumblr Peeps—I invite you, your friends & loved ones to the launch of my new volume of poetry, Near Your Mirror Home (Stay On), out now from Poets of Queens. Ive long wanted to publish a book of dream poems, a genre Ive always written in but rarely published. This new volume debuts my ongoing experiment with the short, serial dream poem, and is paired with a long cri against anti AAPI hate, inspired by the poetry of Faye Chiang, Frances Chung, Amiri Baraka, & Jayne Cortez; Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman’; Christina Noll’s journalism; & the example of NY AG Tish James.

During the launch, I will be joined by Queens authors Pichchenda Bao & Emmy Catedral. As well, attendees will have the opportunity to sign up for and take part in a FREE self defense workshop facilitated by Deena Hadhoud of Malikah, an anti violence organization based in Queens. ✊🏽

Finally, there will be a mini fair after the readings with representatives from local non-profit organizations committed to art & action: Kimberly Powell (@asiansfightinginjustice), Sarinya Srisakul (@angryasianwomxn), Chong Gu (@redcanarysong), Ming Lin (@canal_street_research), & Natalie Bedon (@flushing_town_hall).

Thank you, Matvei Yankelevich, for sending me this stunning package of inaugural titles from Winter Editions. A reader of poetry can certainly get used to such a luxuriant spread. 🥳 Looking forward to wrapping up the summer with these books, including by ROBERT DESNOS (trans LEWIS WARSH), RICHARD HELL, EMILY SIMON, & GARTH GRAEPER. Each edition bears the stamp of Matvei’s meticulous editing & impeccable design. Find out more about these titles, & please consider subscribing to the series/season, at wintereditions.net 👍🏽