The So and So Series

The So and So Series Reading No. 30
The final reading to be held in Boston. At the Distillery in South Boston, MA on Saturday, October 11, 2008

This month's poets are Dorothea Lasky, Dara Weir, and James Tate!

Due to technical difficulties, only portions of the recordings were captured. Part Two features the words and poems of James Tate.

The final installment of the this series of broadsides is also here. This month's artist is Robert daVies. For more information on the Manila Broadsides and our collaboration with this small press, visit: http://rope-a-dope-press.blogspot.com/
All rights reserved.

Look for our readings come 2009 in North Carolina.

About the Poets:
Dorothea Lasky was born in St. Louis in 1978. She is the author of the full-length collection of poems, AWE (Wave Books, 2007), as well as the chapbooks Alphabets and Portraits and The Hatmaker’s Wife. She has attended Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She currently lives in Philadelphia, where she co-edits the Katalanché Press chapbook series and is pursuing her doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dara Wier is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently Remnants of Hannah and Reverse Rapture (Wave Books, 2006 and 2005, respectively). She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA and The American Poetry Review. She directs the MFA program for poets and writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-directs the University of Massachusetts' Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action.

James Tate is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, most recently The Ghost Soldier (Ecco, 2008). His Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award in 1991. His other honors include a National Book Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

The So and So Series Reading No. 30
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on Saturday, October 11, 2008

This month's poets are Dorothea Lasky, Dara Weir, and James Tate!

Due to technical difficulties, only portions of the recordings were captured. Part one includes some of the works of Dorothy Lasky.

The final installment of the this series of broadsides is also here. For more information on the Manila Broadsides, visit: http://rope-a-dope-press.blogspot.com/
All rights reserved.

About the Poets:
Dorothea Lasky was born in St. Louis in 1978. She is the author of the full-length collection of poems, AWE (Wave Books, 2007), as well as the chapbooks Alphabets and Portraits and The Hatmaker’s Wife. She has attended Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She currently lives in Philadelphia, where she co-edits the Katalanché Press chapbook series and is pursuing her doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dara Wier is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently Remnants of Hannah and Reverse Rapture (Wave Books, 2006 and 2005, respectively). She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA and The American Poetry Review. She directs the MFA program for poets and writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-directs the University of Massachusetts' Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action.

James Tate is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, most recently The Ghost Soldier (Ecco, 2008). His Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award in 1991. His other honors include a National Book Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

The So and So Series Reading No. 29
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on Saturday, Septemeber 20, 2008

This month's poets are Rauan Klassnik, Justin Marks, and Lisa Olstein.

Tricia Gray was this months artist for our September Manila Broadside, the collaboration with Rope-a-Dope press that puts our poets on paper--awesomely. For more information on the Manila Broadsides, visit: http://rope-a-dope-press.blogspot.com/
All rights reserved.

About the Poets:
Rauan Klassnik was born a long time ago. Rauan Klassnik is not dead, though he often sure-damned feels like it. Rauan's primary goal in life is to live forever. Perhaps this explains why he has such a bad attitude. Rauan Klassnik does, though, believe in singing. Like Emily Dickinson on the charnel steps. His poems have appeared many places and his first book, Holy Land, released April 1st (no joke) from Black Ocean.

Justin Marks is the author of A Million in Prizes (New Issues Press, forthcoming 2009). His latest chapbook is [Summer insular] (Horse Less Press, 2007). He is the founder and Editor of Kitchen Press Chapbooks and lives in New York City.

Lisa Olstein is the author of RADIO CRACKLING, RADIO GONE, winner of the 2005 Hayden Carruth Award, and LOST ALPHABET, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Centrum Foundation. She is the Associate Director of the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass Amherst.

The So and So Series Reading No. 28
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on Saturday, August 23, 2008

This month's poets are Sommmer Browning, Hazel McClure, and Aaron Tieger

Don't forget to oggle over this month's Manila Broadsides, our collaboration with Rope-a-Dope press that puts our poets on paper--awesomely. Especially since Mary Walker Graham of Rope-a-Dope had to pinch hit and host for Chris Tonelli who was busy with car trouble in NC.

For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com Silkscreen by this month's featured artist, Carrie Siegel.
All rights reserved.

About the Poets:
Sommer Browning lives in Brooklyn. Her chapbook, Vale Tudo, is out
with horse less press. She curates the poetry readings at Pete's Candy
Store, is almost a librarian, and draws vulgar comix. Visit her here: http://www.asthmachronicles.blogspot.com.

Hazel McClure wrote Nothing Moving, a chapbook from Lame House press. Her work has been published in Mirage #4/ Period(ical), the tiny, Coconut and Can We Have Our Ball Back. She lives and writes in Buffalo.

Aaron Tieger's most recent books are Anxiety Chant (Skysill Press) and The Collected Typos of Aaron Tieger (Editions Louis Wain). Formerly the editor of CARVE Poems, he now publishes Petrichord Books in Cambridge, MA.

The So and So Series Reading No. 27
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on Saturday, July 26, 2008

This month's poets are Elizabeth Bradfield, Kevin Gallagher, and Jon Thompson

Don't forget to ogle over this month's Manila Broadsides, our collaboration with Rope-a-Dope press that puts our poets on paper--awesomely. For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com/
All rights reserved.

About the Poets:
Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Interpretive Work (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2008) and editor of Broadsided (www.broadsidedpress.org), a virtual, grassroots press that harnesses the tradition of the broadside to put words on the streets. Her poems have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, in anthologies, and are forthcoming in Ploughshares and Orion. Her second book, Ice-Blink, will be published in late 2009. A recent transplant from Alaska, she lives in North Truro. When not writing, she works as a naturalist.

Kevin Gallagher is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Isolate Flecks (Cervena Barva), and Looking for Lake Texcoco (Cy Gist, forthcoming, August 2008). His poetry and reviews have appeared in such publications as The Boston Review, Emergency Almanac, Green Mountains Review, Harvard Review, Jacket, Peacework, the Partisan Review, and elsewhere. In 2004 he edited a feature on Kenneth Rexroth for Jacket, and a chapbook titled Nevertheless: Some Gloucester Writers and Artists. From 1992 to 2002 he was a publisher and editor of compost magazine. A retrospective anthology of compost, co-edited with Margaret Bezucha, is titled There’s No Place on Earth Like the World (Zephyr, 2006). He is now guest editing a feature on Denise Levertov for Jacket. He lives with his wife Kelly, and son Theo, in Newton, Massachusetts.

Jon Thompson teaches at North Carolina State University, where he edits Free Verse: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry & Poetics and Free Verse Editions, a new poetry series. His first volume of poems, The Book of the Floating World, was reissued in a new expanded edition in 2007. He recently finished a new collection of poems called Strange Country.

The So and So Series Reading No. 26
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on June 7th, 2008

This month's poets are Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Zachary Schomburg, and Janaka Stucky

If you haven't seen the Manila Broadsides, our collaboration with Rope-a-Dope press that puts our poets on paper--awesomely, you're missing out. For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com/
All rights reserved.

About the Poets:
Paige Ackerson-Kiely is the author of a collection of poetry, In No One's Land, winner of the Sawtooth Prize and published by Ahsahta Press. She lives with her family in rural Vermont and works as a clerk.

Zachary Schomburg is the author of a book of poems, The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007), the co-editor of an online poetry magazine, Octopus, and the co-editor of a small poetry press, Octopus Books. Poems from his new manuscript, Scary, No Scary, are in Denver Quarterly and Born, among others. His collaborations with Emily Kendal Frey are in Diode, Sir!, and Pilot. His translations of the Russian poet Andrei Sen-Senkov are forthcoming in Circumference and Mantis. He is a PhD student at the University of Nebraska.

Janaka Stucky is the founder and managing editor of Black Ocean, and publishes the magazine Handsome. Since receiving his BFA from Emerson and an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College in 2003, he remains rooted in Boston—spending his life traveling, writing, and caring for the dead. Some of his poems have appeared in: Denver Quarterly, No Tell Motel, North American Review, Redivider, and VOLT.

The So and So Series Reading No. 25
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on May 17, 2008

If you haven't seen the Manila Broadsides, our collaboration with Rope-a-Dope press that puts our poets on paper--awesomely, you're missing out. Scott Chasse's redunkulous broadside was like looking at an old school version of Britney, Paris, and Lindsay on it. Jealous much?
All rights reserved.

For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com/

This month's poets are Jennifer Firestone, and Sarah Rosenthal. Dorothea Lasky was unable to attend due to an allergic reaction.

About the Poets:
Jennifer Firestone is the co-editor of Letters To Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics, and Community, forthcoming in October from Saturnalia Books. She is the author of Holiday (published by Shearsman Books), Waves (published by Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and From Flashes and snapshot (both published by Sona Books). Her work has appeared in HOW2, LUNGFULL!, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Fourteen Hills, MIPOesias Magazine, Dusie, 580 Split, Saint Elizabeth Street and others. She is the Poet in Residence at Eugene Lang College (The New School For Liberal Arts), and she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their infant twins.

Sarah Rosenthal is the author of How I Wrote This Story (Margin to Margin, 2001), sitings (a+bend, 2000), not-chicago (Melodeon, 1998), and Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil, forthcoming). Her poetry, fiction, reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous journals including How(2), Bird Dog, Fence, Lungfull, Denver Quarterly, and Boston Review. Her poetry has been anthologized in Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006), The Other Side of the Postcard (City Lights, 2005), and hinge (Crack Press, 2002). Sarah has created a commissioned, multimedia installation based on her poetry for the San Francisco Exploratorium Museum. She is the recipient of the Leo Litwak Fiction Award, the Primavera Fiction Prize, and a grant-supported writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Her collection of interviews, A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Avant-Garde Writers of the Bay Area, is currently being considered by several publishers. She writes curricula on writing and reading for the Developmental Studies Center, a nonprofit publishing house, and teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University.

April 12 2008 05:49 PM PST

The So and So Series Celebrates its 2nd Birthday
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on

The second series of Manila Broadsides has begun! This time around, they are going to be perforated triptychs. Sweet.

This month features the poets Lily Brown, Betsy Wheeler, and Mark Yakich, and the artist Mike Dacey. All rights reserved.

For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com/

About the Poets:
Lily Brown was born and raised in Massachusetts and currently lives in San Francisco. She is the author of the chapbook The Renaissance Sheet, published by Octopus Books in 2007, and her second chapbook, Old with You, is forthcoming from Kitchen Press in 2008. Poems have appeared or will appear in Typo, Octopus, Handsome, Coconut, Fence, Pleiades and 26.

Originally from the Upper Mississippi River Valley, Betsy Wheeler studied poetry and the art of the book at the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse where she was a Maple House Fellow for Sutton Hoo Press. She received her MFA in poetry from The Ohio State University in 2005, then lived, worked, and wrote as the Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University's Stadler Center for Poetry from 2005-2007. Her poems have recently appeared in The Journal, Bat City Review, MiPoesias, Pebble Lake Review, Forklift Ohio, Ping Pong, and Absent. Her chapbook, Start Here, is available from Small Anchor Press. Co-editor of Pilot and Pilot Books, she lives in Northampton, Massachusetts where she works for Wondertime magazine.

Mark Yakich's new poetry collection is The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine (Penguin 2008). He lives in New Orleans. His website is markyakich.com.

Part four from our reading field trip to AWP in Hotlanta.

On Friday March 2nd, 2007 we were at the Apache Cafe, 64 3rd St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30308-1035.

Thanks to these journals and presses we had a totally kick-ass line-up:
Absent, Drunken Boat, Fringe, Kitchen Press, LIT, RealPoetik, Redivider, Rose Metal Press.

Thanks for these readers for sharing their skills with us that night:
Rusty Barnes, Dan Boehl, Chip Cheek, Julia Cohen, Leigh Anne Couch, Elisa Gabbert, Kate Greenstreet, Amy King, Sawako Nakayasu, Deborah Poe, Kathleen Rooney, Ravi Shankar, Mathias Svalina, Sampson Starkweather, Cam Terwilliger, Jen Tynes, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Kevin Wilson, Terri Witek, Allyssa Wolf, and Matvei Yankelevich.
Visit our podcast, "The So and So South, Pt 1" for writer bios.

Part Three from our reading field trip to AWP in Hotlanta.

On Friday March 2nd, 2007 we were at the Apache Cafe, 64 3rd St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30308-1035.

Thanks to these journals and presses we had a totally kick-ass line-up:
Absent, Drunken Boat, Fringe, Kitchen Press, LIT, RealPoetik, Redivider, Rose Metal Press.

Thanks for these readers for sharing their skills with us that night:
Rusty Barnes, Dan Boehl, Chip Cheek, Julia Cohen, Leigh Anne Couch, Elisa Gabbert, Kate Greenstreet, Amy King, Sawako Nakayasu, Deborah Poe, Kathleen Rooney, Ravi Shankar, Mathias Svalina, Sampson Starkweather, Cam Terwilliger, Jen Tynes, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Kevin Wilson, Terri Witek, Allyssa Wolf, and Matvei Yankelevich.
Visit our podcast, "The So and So South, Pt 1" for writer bios.

Part Two from our reading field trip down south to play with the other poets at AWP in Hotlanta.

On Friday March 2nd, 2007 we were at the Apache Cafe, 64 3rd St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30308-1035.

Thanks to these journals and presses we had a totally kick-ass line-up:
Absent, Drunken Boat, Fringe, Kitchen Press, LIT, RealPoetik, Redivider, Rose Metal Press.

Thanks for these readers for sharing their skills with us that night:
Rusty Barnes, Dan Boehl, Chip Cheek, Julia Cohen, Leigh Anne Couch, Elisa Gabbert, Kate Greenstreet, Amy King, Sawako Nakayasu, Deborah Poe, Kathleen Rooney, Ravi Shankar, Mathias Svalina, Sampson Starkweather, Cam Terwilliger, Jen Tynes, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Kevin Wilson, Terri Witek, Allyssa Wolf, and Matvei Yankelevich.
Visit our podcast, "The So and So South, Pt 1" for writer bios.

So and So packed its blanky and wrote its name on the tags of its undies and headed to Atlanta for the AWP conference.

On Friday March 2nd, 2007 we were at the Apache Cafe, 64 3rd St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30308-1035.

And thanks to these journals and presses we had a totally kick-ass line-up:

Absent, Drunken Boat, Fringe, Kitchen Press, LIT, RealPoetik, Redivider, Rose Metal Press.

Rusty Barnes is a co-founder and editor of the literary journal Night
Train. His work--fiction, interviews, poetry--has appeared in many
journals, among them Memorious, Pindeldyboz, Red Rock Review and
SmokeLong Quarterly.

Dan Boehl was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1977. He has since lived in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Texas. His chapbook Work won the 2006-07 Pavement Saw Chapbook Award. His current projects include a collaboration of pirate poems/paintings entitled Kings of the F**king Sea, the Laser Show Project,which can be seen at www.thelasershowproject.blogspot.com or in the Okay Mountain Reader, and a post-petroleum children's novel entitled Naomi and the Horse Flavored T-Shirt. He works for the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas.

Chip Cheek will earn his MFA at Emerson College in May 2007. He is the editor-in-chief of Redivider and a fiction reader for Ploughshares, and for his day job works in textbook publishing. His short shorts have appeared in Fringe, Quick Fiction, and Brevity and Echo.

Julia Cohen is Managing Editor of Nightboat Books and an editorial assistant at Palgrave Macmillan. Her chapbook, If Fire, Arrival. is out with horse less press. Her poems have been published in the Mississippi Review online, Octopus, H_NGM_N, Aught, the Adirondack Review, Word for/ Word, Hanging Loose, and GutCult among others and are forthcoming in Cannibal and Spinning Jenny.

Leigh Anne Couch lives in Tennessee and is the managing editor of the Sewanee Review. Her poems have appeared in the Western Humanities Review , Shenandoah, 32 Poems, Blackbird, Carolina Quarterly, and other journals. Her chapbook, Green and Helpless will be published by Finishing Line Press this spring. Her book Houses Fly Away won the Zone 3 Press First Book Award and will be published in the fall.

Elisa Gabbert holds degrees from Rice University and Emerson College. She is a reader for Ploughshares and an editor of Absent. Recent work appears or will appear in journals including Pleiades, LIT, Foursquare, No Tell Motel, Kulture Vulture, RealPoetik, H_NGM_N, and Redivider, as well as the forthcoming anthologies The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel – Second Floor and Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. Her collaborations with Kathleen Rooney have appeared or will in MiPOesias, Past Simple, Dusie and others. A chapbook, Thanks for Sending the Engine, was released by Kitchen Press in 2007.

Kate Greenstreet's first book, case sensitive, is just out from Ahsahta Press. Visit her online at kickingwind.com.

Amy King lives in Brooklyn, NY and is the author of the poetry collections, Antidotes for an Alibi (2005) and I’m the Man Who Loves You (forthcoming, 2007). She teaches Creative Writing and English at SUNY Nassau Community College and is the managing editor for the literary arts journal, MiPOesias. Please visit www.amyking.org for more.

Sawako Nakayasu is the author of many poems about insects (mostly ants), two full length books of poetry, and various translations of contemporary and modern Japanese poetry, including poems by the great, underrecognized modernist Sagawa Chika. This semester she is teaching a class at Bard College on Japanese literature and experimental translation.

Deborah Poe has worked as environmental activist in Austin, hostel clerk and bartender in Paris, a waitress in Taos, engineering assistant at Oregon Steel Mill in Portland, as editor and international program manager in Seattle, and as educator in Washington state and New York. She is working on publishing her first collection of poetry, Our Parenthetical Ontology, and on a forthcoming book entitled Elements. Her poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes the last two years and have appeared in journals such as Drunken Boat, Anemone Sidecar, Sugar Mule, and Snow Monkey and in the anthology Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS From the Black Diaspora.

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press. Her first book is Reading With Oprah (2005), and her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Small Spiral Notebook, Harvard Review, and RealPoetik, as well as the anthologies Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets and The Book of Irish American Poetry: from the 18th Century to the Present. Her essay "Live Nude Girl" appears in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (Random House, 2006).

Ravi Shankar, founding editor of the international journal of the arts Drunken Boat and poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State, has published a book of poems, Instrumentality (Cherry Grove), named a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards. He has appeared as a commentator on NPR, written poems, reviews and essays for such publications as The Paris Review, Fulcrum and Poets & Writers, and read his work in many places, including the Asia Society and the National Arts Club. Along with Reb Livingston, he is the co-author of the collaborative chapbook Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books, 2006) and with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he is currently editing an anthology of contemporary Arab and Asian poetry, due out with W. W. Norton & Co. in Spring 2008.

Mathias Svalina lives in Lincoln, Nebraska where he co-curates The Clean Part Reading Series & co-edits Octopus Magazine & Books. His poetry has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Lungfull!, Typo & jubilat, among other journals. His first chapbook, Why I Am White is forthcoming from Kitchen Press.

Sampson Starkweather was born in Pittsboro, North Carolina. He works as an editor of science textbooks. Some of his poems are recently published or forthcoming from: jubilat; LIT; Poetry Daily; Absent; New York Quarterly; Gargoyle; Redivider; Asheville Poetry Review; Sink Review; Lumina; and were nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize. He lives in the woods.

Cam Terwilliger is a writing instructor at Emerson College and the current poetry editor of Redivider, Emerson's grad student run literary magazine. In Spring 2007, he'll graduate from the college's MFA program after completing his book of short stories, The Zoo in Winter. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in 5 AM, The Strange Fruit, The GSU Review, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, and others.

Jen Tynes lives in Providence, Rhode Island. With Erika Howsare, she edits Horse Less Press. She is the author of one book, The End Of Rude Handles (Red Morning Press 2006) and two chapbooks: The Ohio System (a collaboration with Erika Howsare) (Octopus Books 2007) and See Also Electric Light (Dancing Girl Press 2007).

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author four books: Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned Rooms, Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk, Figures for a Darkroom Voice (with Noah Eli Gordon), and The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth. His first film, Made a Machine by Describing the Landscape, is due out later this year.

Kevin Wilson was born, raised, and still lives in Tennessee. His stories have appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Greensboro Review, New Stories from the South 2005, and elsewhere.

Terri Witek is the author of Carnal World (2006), Fools and Crows(2003) and Robert Lowell and Life Studies: Revising the Self(1993). She teaches at Stetson University in DeLand Florida, where she holds the Art and Melissa Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing.

Allyssa Wolf is the author of Vaudeville (Seismicity Editions/Otis Books) and recipient of a 2006 PIP Gertrude Stein Award. New poetry is forthcoming from Soft Targets, LIT, and Green Integer Review.

Matvei Yankelevich is the editor of the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling Presse, and co-edits 6x6, a poetry periodical. His translations of Daniil Kharms have appeared in many literary journals and are forthcoming in a book from Overlook Press. Matvei is the author of The Present Work (Palm Press, 2006) and his poetry has appeared in various journals including Bombay Gin, Carve, Court Green, Fence, Fulcrum, LIT, Rattapallax, Open City, Toilet Paper, Torch and Weigh Station. He is the co-translator, with Eugene Ostashevsky, of OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (Northwestern University Press, 2006). He teaches at Hunter College in New York City while pursuing a graduate degree in Comparative Literature.

The So and So Reading Series Number 19! Held at The Distillery in South Boston, MA on November 3rd, 2007

This Month's Poets: Douglas Hahn, Dan Magers, and Maya Pindyck

This Month's Broadsides by Robert daVies, all rights reserved.

For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com/

About the poets:
Douglas S Hahn is the founder and editor of the Sink Review. He received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2007, and is relocating to San Francisco this winter for his career in copy writing.

Dan Magers has had poems published in the tiny and Red China Magazine. His chapbook Exploitation Poems was published in September 2007. He is a co-editor of the online literary magazine Sink Review, and works as an editorial assistant at John Wiley & Sons. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Maya Pindyck is the author of the chapbook, Locket, Master, which won a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship in 2006. Her poems have recently appeared in Bellingham Review, elimae, Mississippi Review, RealPoetik, and Sycamore Review. She holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn, where she is a New York City Teaching Fellow.

The So and So Series Reading No. 18
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on October 13, 2007

If you haven't seen the Manila Broadsides, our collaboration with Rope-a-Dope press that puts our poets on paper--awesomely, you're missing out. Artwork this month by Sadie Bliss. Artwork posted is of a poem by Hazel McClure, who was sick, with art by Sadie Bliss. All rights reserved.

Order of Events:
00:00 Intro of the evening by host and curator Chris Tonelli
02:23 Phil Cordelli
21:07 Keith Newton

For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com/

About the Poets:
Phil Cordelli lives in New York City where he has been making piles of
dirt, raking leaves into trashbags and tending to other people's
backyards. He is also an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse. His poetry
can be found in Cannibal, CutBank and Eucalyptus, among other places.

Hazel McClure lives in Buffalo. She’s the author of Nothing Moving (Lame House Press, 2006). Her poems have appeared in can we have our ball back, the tiny, and Coconut.

Keith Newton edits the online magazine Harp & Altar. His poems and
translations have appeared in Typo, Nebraska Review, and
Circumference, and are forthcoming in Harvard Review and Cannibal. A
chapbook of his work will be published in the spring by Cannibal
Books. He lives in Brooklyn.

The So and So Series Reading No. 17
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on September 2007

The So and So Series is now at the Distillery in South Boston, and we've joined forces with Rope-A-Dope Press the Manila Broadsides. Poets this month are Michael Carr, C.S. Carrier and Lori Shine.

Broadside artwork is by Cat Bourassa-Hebert, all rights reserved.

For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com/

For more information on Rope-A-Dope Press, our great collaborators, visit: http://rope-a-dope-press.blogspot.com/

This Month's Poets:
Michael Carr is the author of Softer White, published earlier this year by House Press, and Platinum Blonde , a chapbook of poems and collages (Fewer & Further Press, 2006). He has edited a manuscript journal of John Wieners' called A book of PROPHECIES, which was published this summer by Bootstrap Productions. With Dorothea Lasky he co-edits Katalanché Press, co-curates the Plough & Stars Reading Series with John Mulrooney, and lives in Cambridge, Mass.

C. S. Carrier was born in Dayton, Ohio and grew up in Waynesville, North Carolina. He holds degrees from Western Carolina University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His work has appeared in many journals, including 6x6, American Letters and Commentary, Coconut, LIT, Pleiades, Verse, and Word For/Word. He’s the author of The 16s (Katalanche Press, 2007), Lyric (horse less press, 2007), and After Dayton (Four Way Books, forthcoming 2008). He teaches at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Lori Shine's chapbook Coming Down in White was recently published by Pilot Books. Her poems have appeared (or shortly will) in 6x6, APR, Boston Review, Conduit, H_NGM_N, New American Writing, and other magazines, and in the anthology Isn't It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets. She is Managing Editor of Wave Books and lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

The So and So Series Reading No. 15
The Distillery Era Begins
Held at the Distillery in South Boston, MA on July 21, 2007

The So and So Series has moved to the Distillery, and with it we've joined forces with Rope-A-Dope Press the Manilla Broadsides. Poets this month are Shafer Hall, Cecily Parks, and Ravi Shankar!

Order of Events:
00:00 Intro of Poets and Rope-A-Dope collaboration on by host and curator Chris Tonelli
02:11 Shafer Hall
19:45 Cecily Parks
32:36 Ravi Shankar

For more information on the Manila Broadsides, a project that combines visual art and poetry, visit: http://manilabroadsides.blogspot.com/

For more information on Rope-A-Dope Press, our great collaborators, visit: http://rope-a-dope-press.blogspot.com/

This Month's Poets:
Shafer Hall is a senior poetry editor for Painted Bride Quarterly, a poetry curator and host for the Frequency Reading Series, and a poetry bartender for poets in New York, but mostly he's a poetry writer from Texas who loves to write poetry. His poems and collaborations have appeared in the Indiana Review, Eyeshot.net, Unpleasant Event Schedule, and many other journals. He is currently working on "NoTell Ro*Tel," an epic poem detailing his devotion to Reb Livingston and to canned tomatoes.

Cecily Parks's first collection of poems, Field Folly Snow, will be published by the University of Georgia Press in 2008. Her chapbook, Cold Work, was selected by Li-Young Lee for the 2005 Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship. She has received fellowships and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Bronx Writers' Center, The MacDowell Colony, and the Ucross Foundation. She is currently a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

Ravi Shankar is Associate Professor and Poet-in-Residence at Central Connecticut State University and the founding editor of the international online journal of the arts, Drunken Boat. He has published a book of poems, Instrumentality (Cherry Grove), named a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards and co-authored a chapbook with Reb Livingston, Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books). His creative and critical work has previously appeared in such publications as The Paris Review, Poets & Writers, Time Out New York, The Massachusetts Review, Fulcrum, McSweeney's and the AWP Writer’s Chronicle, among many others. He has taught at Queens College, University of New Haven, and Columbia University, where he received his MFA in Poetry. He has appeared as a commentator on NPR and Wesleyan Radio and read his work in many places, including the Asia Society, St. Mark's Poetry Project and the National Arts Club. He currently serves on the Advisory Council for the Connecticut Center for the Book and along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, is co-editing an anthology of contemporary South Asian, East Asian Poetry, due out with W.W. Norton & Co. in Spring 2008.

The So and So Reading Series, No. 14
The Last at the Lily
Held at The Lily Pad on June 30, 2007

Order of Events:
00:00 Intro by Host and Curator Chris Tonelli
01:18 Kaveh Bassiri
18:00 Malachi Black
33:40 Laura Cronk

Kaveh Bassiri was born in Iran and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in his early teens. He has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he was the Editor of the 2006 issue of its graduate literary journal, Lumina. He is also the co-curator of the poetry series, Reading Between A and B, in the East Village.

Malachi Black is Literary Editor of The New York Quarterly. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Pleiades, The New Formalist, and others. He lives in New York City.

Laura Cronk has published poems in Barrow Street, Conduit, LIT, Lyric, McSweeney's, No Tell Motel, and other journals. Her work has been anthologized in The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel and Best American Poetry 2006. She lives in Jersey City, NJ.

Image by Leo Reynolds on Flickr. Used with permission.

The So and So Reading Series, No. 14
The Last at the Lily
Held at The Lily Pad on June 30, 2007

Order of Events:
00:13 Julia Cohen
12:28 Mathais Svalina
29:00 Intermission
30:45 Bronwen Tate
46:43 Gabriella Torres

About the Poets:
Julia Cohen is the co-editor of the new print journal Saltgrass. Her chapbook, If Fire, Arrival is out with horse less press and her second chapbook, Ruby's Bell, is coming out with H_NGM_NB__KS early this summer. Her work is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly and Spinning Jenny. She lives in Brooklyn.

Mathias Svalina lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he co-edits Octopus Magazine & Books. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in such journals as Typo, jubilat, Fence, Denver Quarterly & American Letters & Commentary. His chapbook, Why I Am White, is forthcoming from Kitchen Press.

Bronwen Tate enjoys living in Brooklyn, NY but will soon be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area because she can't seem to get enough of school. Warmer weather will also be a plus. Some recent poems have appeared in Typo, How2 Journal, No Tell Motel, and Word For/Word. Her chapbook Souvenirs is available in person or on her blog (http://breadnjamforfrances.blogspot.com) as part of the Dusie Chapbook Kollectiv. She really likes guillotine paper cutters and other large metal devices for making books.

Gabriella Torres currently lives in Brooklyn where she co-edits the tiny with Gina Myers. Her works have recently appeared in Sink Review,Cannibal and Past Simple.

The So and So Series Reading No. 12
Held at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, MA on April 7, 2007

The So and So Series celebrated its first birthday with readings by poets Ellen Kennedy, Tao Lin, Heather Madden, and Julia Story!

Order of Events:
00:14 Ellen Kennedy
07:05 Tao Lin
19:45 Heather Madden
31:34 Julia Story

Ellen Kennedy lives in Northeast Pennsylvania. She has an e-book with a very long title of poetry and prose and a book with Tao Lin called Hikikomori, both published by Bear Parade. She is a poetry editor for 3am Magazine and writes and designs books with Tao Lin for their website Ass hi Books.

Tao Lin is the author of a poetry collection, YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM (Action Books), a novel, EEEEE EEE EEEE (Melville House), and a story-collection, BED (Melville House). The novel and story-collection will be published simultaneously on May 1st. Tao's blog is called READER OF DEPRESSING BOOKS. He lives in New York City.

Heather Madden grew up in Pennsylvania. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University and an MFA in Poetry from Indiana University. Her poems have appeared in Good Foot and The Tiny.

Julia Story's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in journals such as Octopus, La Petite Zine, The Iowa Review, Quick Fiction, Verse, and Ploughshares. She has two book manuscripts—a completed one called Pretend Morning and one in progress called Post Moxie. She grew up in Indiana and received an MFA from Indiana University. She now lives in Somerville, MA.

Intro Music: One Big Holiday by My Morning Jacket, used with permission. Found in Wired CD on http://ccmixter.org

The So and So Series Reading No. 11
Held at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, MA on March 17, 2007
Featuring Jon Woodward, Oni Buchanan, and Benjamin Paloff

We've tried something new, and each reader for March 2007 is a single podcast. This podcast features Benjamin Paloff.

Benjamin Paloff is a poetry editor for Boston Review and is finishing a Ph.D. at Harvard, where he teaches in the Department of History and Literature. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, The Literary Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and elsewhere. He has an MFA from the University of Michigan, where he taught creative writing workshops and received two Hopwood Awards, and recently held a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship in Russia and Poland. He has also translated several works from Eastern and Central European literatures, most recently Dorota Masłowska’s Snow White and Russian Red (Grove Press, 2005) and Marek Bieńczyk’s Tworki (Northwestern University Press, 2007). Starting this fall, he will be Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a postdoctoral fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows.

The So and So Series Reading No. 11
Held at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, MA on March 17, 2007
Featuring Jon Woodward, Oni Buchanan, and Benjamin Paloff

We've tried something new, and each reader for March 2007 is a single podcast. This podcast features Oni Buchanan.

Oni Buchanan is the author of What Animal, published in October 2003 as the winner of the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series competition. Her poems currently appear or are forthcoming in Conduit, Seneca Review, dragonfire, Forklift: Ohio, and elsewhere, including the anthologies The Best American Poetry 2004 and Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. She holds a B.A. in English and music from the University of Virginia, an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a Master’s degree in piano performance from the New England Conservatory of Music. As a concert pianist, she has released three solo piano CD’s, and actively performs across the U.S. She is on the piano faculty at the New School of Music in Cambridge, maintains a private teaching studio, and serves as an online poetry mentor for the Anna Akhmatova Foundation.

The So and So Series Reading No. 11
Held at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, MA on March 17, 2007
Featuring Jon Woodward, Oni Buchanan, and Benjamin Paloff

We've tried something new, and each reader for March 2007 is a single podcast. This podcast features Jon Woodward.

Jon Woodward currently lives in Brighton and works at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. His second book, Rain, was published by Wave Books in 2006.

The So and So Series Reading No. 10
Held at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, MA on Feb 10, 2007

Order of Events:
0:00 Intro by Reading Curator Chris Tonelli
02:18 Shanna Compton
25:00 Katie Degentesh
43:00 Sampson Starkweather
1:03:30 Jen Tynes

Shanna Compton is the author of Down Spooky (Winnow, 2005) and the editor of Gamers (Soft Skull, 2004). Other recent poems can be found (or are forthcoming) in Dusie, Ping-Pong, Pebble Lake Review, and Abraham Lincoln. She's currently working on a new book called For Girls, which she plans to publish DIY-style in 2007. Visit her online at http://www.shannacompton.com.

Katie Degentesh lives in New York City. Her poems and writings have appeared in Shiny, Fence, the Poetry Project Newsletter and numerous other venues. Her first book, The Anger Scale, was recently published by Combo Books. Each poem in the book is titled with a question from the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) and constructed with the help of Internet search engines.

Sampson Starkweather was born in Pittsboro, North Carolina. He works as an editor of science textbooks. Some of his poems are recently published or forthcoming from: LIT; jubilat; Poetry Daily; Absent; New York Quarterly; Sink Review; Gargoyle; Redivider; Asheville Poetry Review; Lumina; and were nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize. He lives in the woods alone.

Jen Tynes edits Horse Less Press and is the author of The End of Rude Handles(Red Morning Press 2006), See Also Electric Light (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming Feb 2007) and, with Erika Howsare, The Ohio System (Octopus Books 2007). Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Lit, Denver Quarterly, Typo, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel: Second Floor.

The So and So Reading Series, No. 9
Featuring poets from Flim Forum Press.
For more information visit http://flimforum.com
Held at Porter Square Books in Cambridge MA held January 2007

Order of Events:
00:00 Introduction by Chris Tonelli
04:00 Adam Golaski
24:15 John Cotter
40:00 Jeff Paris

Unfortunately the final reader of that evening, Matthew Klane, was not recorded due to technical difficulties. Our sincere apologies.

Adam Golaski, co-editor at Flim Forum Press and Horror Fiction Editor of New Genre, is known to a small—but devoted—group of fans as the lead singer of Outlet (1991 – 96), a two-man punk outfit formed in Woodland, Maine. Their best known recording, Letter to Mars, was distributed exclusively fan-to-fan on cassette—the original 4-track recordings, made in an Amherst College basement, were stolen. Outlet stepped into the studio once more in 2000 and recorded the raw stuff for a new album, as-of-yet unreleased. Two tracks from those sessions, “Why Worry Rosary” and “I’m Bored Airports,” became minor hits for Golaski, as he performed them at Boston area clubs. The other half of Outlet, Jeremy Withers, still works with Golaski in the capacity of graphic designer. Aside from the beautiful Oh One Arrow, Withers is also responsible for the look of New Genre #4.

John Cotter has published work in 3rd Bed, Goodfoot, Hanging Loose, failbetter, Pebble Lake, Coconut Poetry, The Columbian Journal of American Studies, and others. He lives in Cambridge where he's working on a novel. In 2007 his work will appear in Volt, Unpleasant Event Schedule, word for/word, and Oh One Arrow.

Jeff Paris lives in New York City. It just kind of happened. Or keeps happening. His job is getting groups of small children to sing and dance. No, really—that's his job. Check out New Genre, the journal he co-edits. His chapbook of prose poems is called “The Mothskull Windchime."

The So and So Reading Series No. 5
Held at the Lily Pad, September 2006

The fifth installment of the series features Boston area high school teachers: Rob MacDonald, Michael Levine, and Chad Reynolds.

Order of Events:
00:00 Introduction by host and curator Chris Tonelli
2:04 Rob MacDonald
24:02 Michael Levine
44:27 Chad Reynolds

Although Rob MacDonald graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in Mathematics, he spent most of his time there writing poetry. In 1997, he was named Connecticut State Student Poet, which encouraged him to later pursue an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College. He's been teaching high school math and English for the past nine years, and is currently the head of the math department at Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill.

Michael Levine has poems appearing and/or forthcoming in Natural Bridge, North American Review, Poet Lore, and 236. He currently teaches English at Gann Academy in Waltham, MA and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where he taught creative writing and won an Academy of American Poets Prize, and an MFA in Writing from Washington University, where he taught composition and poetry writing. Among other odd jobs: writing thank you letters for Washington University's chancellor, selling women's & men's shoes, working in the Illinois Department of Transportation Motor Pool, bagging groceries, & detassling corn. For what it's worth.

Chad Reynolds's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Swink, RealPoetik, Redivider, Washington Square, Meridian, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. He teaches English at Gann Academy in Waltham and lives in Somerville with his wife.

The So and So Reading Series No. 2
Held at the Lily Pad, June 2006

The second installment of the series features the staff of Ploughshares: David Daniel, Rob Arnold, Simeon Berry, and Elisa Gabbert.

Order of Events:
00:00 Introduction by host and curator Chris Tonelli
01:46 Rob Arnold (sorry, sound quality on this one is rather poor)
07:39 Elisa Gabbert
23:44 Simeon Berry
44:40 David Daniel

Rob Arnold is the Managing Editor of Ploughshares and Editor of the on-line literary journal Memorious.

Elisa Gabbert is also a Reader for Ploughshares and her NaPoWriMo poems can be found at The Steinach Operation.

Simeon Berry is a Reader for Ploughshares and his NaPoWriMo poems can be found at The Coriolis Question.

David Daniel is the Poetry Editor of Ploughshares and author of Seven-Star Bird (Graywolf Press).