The Flow Chart Foundation has partnered with Kitty’s (60 South Front Street, Hudson, NY) to offer a series of free and fabulous poetry (and some music, too) events—curated by the incomparable Brandon Downing—in Kitty’s Garden.
Have a glass of something and tickle your ears. No registration needed!
Friday, June 9th, 5:30–7pm—Edwin Torres & NewBorn Trio (Katie Down, Miguel Frasconi, Jeffrey Lependorf)
Edwin Torres is a NYC native, and editor of The Body In Language: An Anthology (Counterpath Press). His current book Quanundrum: i will be your many angled thing (Roof Books) received a 2022 American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation. Other books include: Xoeteox: the collected word object (Wave Books), The Animal's Perception of Earth (DoubleCross Press), and Ameriscopia (University of Arizona Press). Multi-disciplinary collaborations with a wide range of cultural nomads have contributed to the development of his bodylingo poetics. He has received fellowships from NYFA, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and The DIA Foundation, among others. Anthologies include: New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archives, The Difference Is Spreading: 50 Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems, and Poets In The 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement.
NewBorn Trio (Katie Down, Miguel Frasconi, and Jeffrey Lependorf) formed specifically to perform for Kosovo’s first national day of independence—NewBorn Day. This unique ensemble combines handmade and found glass instruments, traditional Asian flutes, plucked strings, and odd sound-making objects to evoke unimaginable musical textures.
Katie Down is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound designer and music therapist. Her soundscores have been heard at BAM, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theatre, La MaMa, and many other venues in the US and abroad. Katie lives and works in Brooklyn and in the Hudson Valley.
Miguel Frasconi is a composer and improviser whose instrumentarium includes glass objects, electronics, and instruments of his own design. He has composed numerous operas, chamber works, dance scores, and has worked closely with composers John Cage, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, James Tenney and Jon Hassell.
Jeffrey Lependorf is a composer and visual artist. He is also Executive Director of The Flow Chart Foundation and directs the Art Omi: Music international musicians residency program. A master player of the shakuhachi (traditional Japanese bamboo flute), he also performs with a variety of other Asian flutes and various objects.
Friday, June 23rd, 5:30–7pm—Todd Colby & Bianca Stone
Toddy Colby is a poet and visual artist. He has published five collections of poetry, including Tremble and Shine (Soft Skull Press, 2004), Riot in the Charm Factory: New and Selected Poems (Soft Skull Press, 2003), Flushing Meadows (Scary Topiary Press, 2013) and SPLASH STATE (The Song Cave, 2014). Earlier this spring, Spiral Editions published the chapbook It's Okay to See Ghosts Now. His writing and art have recently appeared in The Believer, Bomb Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Poetry Magazine. His art is shown regularly at The Picture Room in Brooklyn, NY.
Bianca Stone is the author of the poetry collections What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022), The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014) and collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Antigonick (New Directions, 2012). Her work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Nation. She teaches classes on poetry and poetic study at the Ruth Stone House (501c3) where she is editor-at-large for Iterant magazine and host of Ode & Psyche Podcast.
Friday, June 30th, 5:30–7pm—Megan Fernandes & Christian Schlegal
Megan Fernandez is a writer living in NYC. She was born in Canada and raised in the Philadelphia area. Her family are East African Goans. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. Her book Good Boys was a finalist for the Kundiman Book Prize, the Saturnalia Book Prize, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and was published with Tin House Books in February 2020. Her newest book, I Do Everything I’m Told, is coming out from Tin House this June. Fernandes is an Associate Professor of English and the Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College, where she teaches courses on poetry, creative nonfiction, and critical theory. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in poetry from Boston University.
Christian Schlegal is a poet and teacher. He has written two books of poetry: Honest James (The Song Cave, 2015) and Ryman (Ricochet, 2022) and his work has been published in The Volta, Lana Turner, West Branch Wired, Harvard Review Online, and elsewhere. His ongoing project, a researched-then-improvised series of talk poems, derives from the methods of David Antin; recent talks have taken up artistic "maintenance" and the problem of reality in art, along with a single line from a Shakespeare sonnet. His talk today will begin with the career of the artist Lee Lozano. He lives in New Haven and teaches grades 2, 7, 9, and 11 at Pierrepont School.
Friday, July 7, 5:30–7pm—Paolo Javier & Wayne Koestenbaum & Adriana Tampasis Trio ft. Meghan Mercier & Justin Geyer
The former Queens Borough Poet Laureate (2010-2014), Paolo Javier has produced three albums of sound poetry with Listening Center (David Mason), including the limited edition pamphlet+cassette Ur’lyeh/ Aklopolis (Texte Und Tone) and the booklet+cassette Maybe the Sweet Honey Pours (Nion Editions/Temporary Tapes), currently streaming on Bandcamp, Spotify, and iTunes. The recipient of grants from the Rauschenberg Foundation, NYFA, Queens Council on the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts, Javier was a featured artist in Greater New York 2015, and in Queens International 2018: Volumes. The author of O.B.B. (Nightboat Books, 2021) and a recent book of paraliterary and hybrid poems, True Account of Talking to the 7 in Sunnyside (Roof Books, 2022), he lives with his family in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, novelist, artist, performer—has published nineteen books, including Camp Marmalade, Notes on Glaze, The Pink Trance Notebooks, My 1980s & Other Essays, Hotel Theory, Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films, Andy Warhol, Humiliation, and Jackie Under My Skin. The Queen’s Throat, praised by Susan Sontag as “a brilliant book,” was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and appeared this year in French translation. His novel, Circus, was reissued in July 2019 with an introduction by Rachel Kushner. His essays and poems have been widely published in periodicals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, The Best American Essays, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, London Review of Books, The Believer, The Iowa Review, Cabinet, and Artforum. Koestenbaum has exhibited his own paintings in solo shows. His first piano/vocal record, Lounge Act, was released by Ugly Duckling Presse Records in 2017, and he has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, and the Renaissance Society. He won a Whiting Writers Award, and was a co-winner of the Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prize. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.
Justin Geyer is a pianist, keyboardist, composer and educator active in the jazz and experimental scenes as well as working with various rock groups. An aspiring music therapist, Justin is passionate about sharing music in ways that are healing and uplifting. He believes that music can be a catalyst for growth and change as well as a powerful vehicle for bringing people together.
Currently residing in Chatham, NY, Meghan Mercier is a born-and-raised Hudson Valley composer and cellist. She is a graduate of Bard College, where she studied composition with Joan Tower and Matt Sargent, Meghan was the co-recipient of the Bard Class of 2020 Jacob Druckman Memorial Prize. In her compositions and her performance, Meghan is interested in collaboratively creating affective sonic environments through improvisation.
Adriana Tampasis is a Hudson Valley-based composer, performer, and poet. She has composed for solo, chamber, and large ensemble groups, integrating traditional and nontraditional notations including narrative and graphic scores into her compositions. Her work is inspired by the fusion of jazz, chamber, and literary arts, employing both improvisation and through-composition. She has held a recent residency at Westben as a Performer-Composer and is currently recording an album with her jazz-fusion quartet, Pocket Merchant.