And here are photos of Tuesday night’s artwork for The Trees The Trees in the sunlight, before people.
APRIL Fest and Vignettes unite over a group exhibition inspired by the poetry and words of Heather Christle from The Trees The Trees.
March 26th
7-10pm
8pm Reading by Heather Christle
Featuring work by:Adam Boehmer
Amanda Manitach
Eroyn Franklin
Gala Bent
Jamey Braden
Maggie Carson Romano
Zack Bent
Zack Bent
Eroyn Franklin
Gala Bent
Adam Boehmer
Amanda Manitach
“Even in a time when a video chat can practically bring the sun-smacked dust of Cairo spilling into a downtown Seattle conference room, there’s glass between those worlds. Nothing can take that glass away and make those worlds one, except the lyricism and humor of a gifted poet, trying to explain with a self-conscious stammer exactly what he means.”
—And that poet is Maged Zaher. APRIL was so overwhelmingly lucky to have Maged at our happy hour reading yesterday.
Heather’s photos from Tuesday night’s art show for The Trees The Trees!
Last night, as part of the APRIL Fest, Vignettes (an occasional temporary gallery space in Seattle) showcased work by seven artists inspired by poems from The Trees The Trees. It was incredible! My photos don’t do it justice, but you can get a clearer view of things here.
Check out our samplers that were lovingly-sewn by Amber Nelson of Alice Blue Review & Books! Pick one up tonight!
Our final happy hour is curated by PageBoy Magazine, featuring work from Emily Beyer, Jennifer Burdette, Rachel Kessler and Greg Bem, and hosted by Pageboy editor Thomas Walton.
PageBoy Magazine publishes both literary and visual art. Paul Constant of The Stranger has said PageBoy demonstrates the most editorial control of any of Seattle’s lit magazines. He writes, “You’ll probably walk out of PageBoy not quite knowing what just happened.” Get disoriented with us tonight!
Vermillion Art Gallery and Bar (1508 11th Ave), 5:30 pm, free
Join us tonight for themed party favors and readings from three incredible poets! Richard Hugo House (1634 11th Ave), 8 pm, $7 cash at the door.
Readings from:
Matthew Rohrer is the author of Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books), A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse), Rise Up (Wave Books) and A Green Light (Verse Press), and others. He has appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and The Next Big Thing. His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994.
He is also teaching a class at Richard Hugo House on Saturday and you should go!
Heather Christle is joining us for her second reading with APRIL. She is the author of The Difficult Farm (Octopus Books); The Trees The Trees (Octopus Books), winner of the Believer Poetry Award; and What Is Amazing (Wesleyan University Press. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and The New Yorker and have been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2012 and others.
Rauan Klassnik was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. In his early teens he moved to Dallas, Texas, with his family. Much of his time is now spent in Mexico. He is the author of Holy Land (Black Ocean), The Moon’s Jaw (Black Ocean), and others.
Pre-game for our competitive storytelling event by joining us for a drink at The Comet with these great readers:
Maged Zaher’s first full length book of poetry, Portrait of the Poet As an Engineer, was published by Pressed Wafer in 2009. His translations of contemporary Egyptian poetry have appeared in Jacket magazine and Banipal. He has performed his work at Subtext, Bumbershoot, the Kootenay School of Writing, St. Marks Project, Evergreen State College, and American University in Cairo, among other places.
David Frederick Thomas has published fiction and criticism in, among other places, Storyglossia, PANK, Heavy Feather Review and The Iowa Review. He lives with his wife and three month old daughter in Seattle. He is six feet tall.
Calvin Pierce has no bio and writes sad poems.
Join us tonight for A POET, A PLAYWRIGHT A NOVELIST AND A DRAG QUEEN, our competitive story-telling event at the Sorrento Hotel at 8p.m. $7 cash at the door.
The story-tellers will battle it out for $100 in what City Arts has called “raunchy” and “the least kid-friendly event of [the festival] and most certainly the funniest.”
The performers:
THE POET: Elissa Ball is a poet, an activist, and an ordained minister. She reads tarot, burns sage, and channels energy with crystals. She is also the author of The Punks Are Writing Love Songs.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Neil Ferron is a member of the Satori Group, a local theatre group that puts on innovative events like January’s Hotel Party at Inscape. His plays Sweet the Breath and Fabulous Prizes and others have been performed in Seattle.
THE NOVELIST: Peter Mountford is the winner of the 2012 Washington Book Award for his novel A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism. His second novel, The Dismal Science, will be published in 2014 by Tin House Books.
THE DRAG QUEEN: Cherdonna of the “Cherdonna and Lou Show” has great makeup. The Stranger has described her performances with Lou as, “Combining modern dance, gender-bending camp, lunatic conceptual comedy, and shockingly ambitious hair and makeup.”
The first of our three happy hours starts today at the Quarter Lounge! See you at 5:30! Our first set of happy hour readers is going to help us live up to City Art’s assertion that APRIL is Seattle’s “most literate booze fest/booziest indie lit fest.”
Rich Smith is a poet whose work has appeared in Tin House, Guernica, and other places. He is the author the chapbook The Great Poem of Desire forthcoming from Poor Claudia.
Amber Nelson is the editor of Alice Blue Review, an online journal and print books publisher based in Seattle. She is the author of This Ride is in Double Exposure, an e-chapbook published by H_NG M_N.
Rebecca Bridge is a poet and musician. Her work has appeared in the Boston Review, Ink Node, and other places. She was the winner of the 2009 Indiana Review ½ K judged by Lydia Davis.
Today at 7! A special edition of Vignettes featuring visual art inspired by the poetry of Heather Christle. Christle will read at 8, we encourage everyone to come either before 8 or after 8:30 so not to disrupt the reading with buzzing the door.
About Christle’s poetry:
Heather Christle’s poems bubble with surprising images and startling tonal changes; she keeps you moving through a landscape as bright and inviting as an arcade game. “Brochures have a thousand pictures and a thousand uses,” and these poems too have their thousands, calling to mind the lapidary surfaces of Crane and Ashbery. The magnificence of these poems comes in a tiny car, and we all fit, like a compressed sandwich of rainbow-colored clowns. Christle’s America is a three-ring circus, with its thrills and awe and a house of mirrors: look, you’re taller than you ever thought.
—D A Powell
About the visual artists:
Adam Boehmer is an artist and musician. In 2009, he took a year-long road-trip in a refurbished camper trailer and wrote most of his EP Red Coat while on that journey.
Amanda Manitach is an artist and curator at Seattle University’s Hedreen Gallery. She works in large-scale drawings and video. Her work has appeared in various galleries and print journals including the Frye Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum.
Eroyn Franklin is a bookmaker and visual artist. She is also a co-founder of Short Run Small Press Festival in Seattle, which features zines, comics and chapbooks, among other things. Her work has shown at Gallery4Culture, The Vera Project, and other galleries.
Gala Bent is a painter, animator, and mother of three. Her work has shown in Gallery4Culture, Cullom Gallery, and others. Her animation has been screened in Greece and France.
Jamey Braden is a multimedia artists who paints, makes plush peace-signs, and occasionally dresses as David Byrne to cover ’80s hits. Her work has shown at the Vera Project, Crawl Space Gallery, and other places.
Maggie Carson Romano is an installation artist, sculptor, and photographer whose work has appeared in Soil Gallery, Nepo House, and other places. Recently, she helped design the store Totokaelo.
Zack Bent is a photographer whose work has appeared in Gallery4Culture, Seattle Art Museum Gallery, and other places.
The blog for Authors, Publishers and Readers of Independent Literature (APRIL). APRIL is a week-long literary festival dedicated entirely to independent and small press literature.
Our mission is to connect readers with independent literature and the authors and publishers of this relevant and vitalizing work.
