SPLENDID WAKE 4, MARCH 18, 2016, 6:30 p.m.

A Splendid Wake 4

4th Annual Program Celebrating Poetry in the Nation’s Capital

 —1900 to the Present

Friday, March 18^th, 2016 from 6:30-8:00 P.M. at George Washington University Gelman Library, Suite 702, 2130 H Street, NW, Washington, DC (near Foggy Bottom Metro stop). 

Free and Open to the Public!

Join us for our 4th incarnation of A Splendid Wake as we continue our work of documenting poets and poetry movements in the Nation’s Capital from 1900 to the present. Our focus this vernal equinox is on Grace Cavalieri’s selected radio broadcasts of The Poet and the Poem; Letras Latinas in DC with Francisco Aragón and Dan Vera; and Crossing Borders: Literary Translation in DC with moderator Barbara Goldberg, and panelists: Roman Kostovski, Nancy Naomi Carlson, and Vivian Wang.

Recipient of the Silver Medal for Broadcasting from Corporation of Public Broadcasting, prolific poet and playwright Grace Cavalieri presents excerpted recordings of Sterling Brown, first Poet Laureate of Washington DC and author of Southern Road; Lucille Clifton, National book Award winner and author of Blessing the Boats; Ann Darr, one of the first women pilots in World War II and author of Cleared for Landing; Roland Flint, Georgetown University professor and author of Easy; Essex Hemphill, jazz poet and author of Conditions: Poems; May Miller, the most widely published woman playwright of the Harlem Renaissance and author of Halfway to the Sun; Belle Waring, author of Refuge and Dark Blonde; and Reed Whittemore, former Consultant in Poetry to The Library of Congress and author of The Mother's Breast, The Father's House. Cavalieri will read poems from her memoir Life Upon the Wicked Stage.

DC area-based poets Francisco Aragón and Dan Vera discuss Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies and how that initiative has been carried out in DC, which includes collaborations with the Library of Congress, various branches of the Smithsonian Institution, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Aragón established Letras Latinas as part of his work at Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. Dan Vera is author of Speaking Wiri Wiri, the inaugural winner (in poetry) of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize.

The panel Crossing Borders: Literary Translation in DC will discuss the history and present-day state of literary translation, with examples drawn from Czech, French, Chinese, Hebrew, and Kurdish. Particular challenges unique to each language and culture will also be discussed.

Splendid Wake Wiki:  http://wikis.library.gwu/dcpoetry/index.php/Main_Page

For program information contact: Joanna Howard  asplendidwake@gmail.com

For wiki and venue information, contact Jennifer King   jenking@gwu.edu  202/994-0628   

Some Of Us Press

Bruce Andrews and Lee Lally at Trinity College, c. 1970
Photo courtesy of Michael Lally

Beltway Poetry Quarterly has released a special issue celebrating Some Of Us Press. 

Some Of Us Press is one of the best representations of the Small Press Movement of the 1970s. The idea was radical: that the mainstream publishing industry was too conservative, and that writers whose voices would never be accepted by the big houses could bypass them entirely, and simply publish one another. The best of the small presses were experimental, flexible, and varied in their publications. SOUP, for example, published poets who were writing new work that was deeply personal, or pushed free verse to new places. Poems in the series were often political, anti-war, feminist, or openly gay. Some of the writers were immigrants or the children of immigrants, and redefining of what it meant to be American. All are filled with an exuberant sense of possibility.

Michael Lally reading at Folio Books, January 1977. In background:
Doug Lang, Terence Winch, Lynne Dreyer. Photo by Peter Barry Chouka.

Excerpts from thirteen books are included in the issue. Featured authors: Bruce Andrews, Ed Cox, Tim Dlugos, Lynne Dreyer, Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb, Robert Hershon, Beth Joselow, Lee Lally, Michael Lally, Leonard Randolph, Simon Schuchat, Terence Winch, and Ed Zahniser. 

With an introduction by Michael Lally, a preface by Kim Roberts, and a full press bibliography, the issue also features an array of visuals (book covers, photos from readings, flyers) and historical notes at the end of some of the author's pages that give a flavor of the passion and expansiveness of the 1970s literary scene. 

Read the issue: http://www.beltwaypoetry.com/some-of-us-press-issue/