The Third Area: Poetry at Pharmaka is a monthly poetry reading series, (usually) on the last Thursday of each month, that celebrates some of the most vibrant new work by local, regional, national and international poets. Hosted by Pharmaka Art Gallery in Gallery Row, the heart of the art scene in downtown Los Angeles.
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Featuring Readings from:
Rick Lupert, John Harris, Corrie Greathouse, Jeffrey McDaniel
Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of four books, most recently The Endarkenment (2008, University of Pittsburgh Press). His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 1994; American Poetry Review; Ploughshares; The Best American Erotic Poems; and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Rick Lupert is the author of 11 collections of poetry, most recently A Man With No Teeth Serves Us Breakfast. He created the PoetrySuperHighway.com, an online resource and publication for poets. He has hosted the weekly Cobalt Café reading series since 1994 and recently edited A Poet’s Haggadah, an anthology of poets reinterpreting the traditional Passover text. Rick works as a freelance graphic designer and at a synagogue in Northridge as a music teacher.
Corrie Greathouse is the author of Portraits: Invisible Ink on Parchment (2008) and has been featured in The Toronto Quarterly, Falling Star Magazine, poetix and on radio shows and podcasts such as The Drop and WSN’s The Plebian Rags. She has also performed her work at The Bowery Poetry Club and St. John’s Manhattan Campus as well as in the Bay Area and Southern California, sometimes in collaboration with graffiti61, the brainchild of Hollywood-based ambient/electronic/minimalist sound artist Dominic Massaro.
John Harris founded the poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque in 1969 with Joseph Hansen. Early regulars include Kate Braverman, Wanda Coleman, and Tom Waits. As proprietor of Papa Bach Bookstore he published books by William Pillin, Bert Meyers and George Hitchcock as well as the journal Bachy. His poems appear in several anthologies, scores of periodicals and two books: Where Love Is and Against the Dead. His manuscript Climbing was shortlisted by Muriel Rukeyser for the University of Pittsburgh Press U.S. Poetry award.
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May 21, 2009
A CELEBRATION of LETTERS to the WORLD: POEMS from the WOM-PO LISTSERV
FEATURING:
Kate Gale, Catherine Daly, Cati Porter, and Ann Fisher-Wirth
Kate Gale is Managing Editor of Red Hen Press. Author of several poetry books including Mating Season and Fishers of Men, a novel and librettos, she received her PhD in literature from Claremont Graduate University and speaks widely on publishing, editing and writing. Her opera Rio de Sangre with composer Don Davis is being released as a world premiere at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee in 2010.
Catherine Daly was one of the first WOM-PO members, and even acted as list webster for a while. She recently founded a women's prose listserv, WOMPROSE. Now author of eight books, including DaDaDa (Salt Publishing), Locket (Tupelo Press) and most recently VAUXHALL (Shearsman Books, 2008), she wrote the anthologized poem in front of the historic Frederick's of Hollywood about the first Lingerie Hall of Fame.
Cati Porter is the author of a chapbook, small fruit songs (Pudding House, 2008), and Seven Floors Up (Mayapple Press, 2008). Some of the journals where her poems and book reviews have appeared include Fringe, Rattle, Poetry Southeast, Umbrella, kaleidowhirl, and in the anthologies White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood, Letters to the World and Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel -- Second Floor. She is founder and editor of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry.
Ann Fisher-Wirth’s third book of poems, Carta Marina, appeared from Wings Press in April 2009. She is the author of Blue Window and Five Terraces and of the chapbooks The Trinket Poems and Walking Wu Wei’s Scroll. With Laura-Gray Street she is coediting Earth’s Body, an international anthology of ecopoetry in English. Her poems appear widely and have received numerous awards. She has had Fulbrights to Switzerland and Sweden. She teaches at the University of Mississippi.
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May 28, 2009
FEATURING:
Majid Naficy, Michael Datcher, Tony Barnstone, and Sholeh Wolpé
Majid Naficy is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry and essays in Persian. He fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife, Ezzat, in Tehran. He has published two collections of poetry, Muddy Shoes (Beyond Baroque Books, 1999) and Father and Son (Red Hen Press, 2003), as well as his doctoral dissertation, Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature (University Press of America, 1997), in English.
Michael Datcher is the author of the New York Times bestseller Raising Fences, a TODAY SHOW Book Club pick. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, LA Times, Baltimore Sun, Vibe and many other publications. Datcher is the former Director of Literary Programs at the World Stage Writer’s Workshop in Leimert Park and editor of The Truth About the Fact: International Journal of Literary Nonfiction. He is a professor of English at Loyola Marymount University.
Tony Barnstone's awards include an NEA in Poetry, the Pushcart Prize, the Benjamin Saltman Award for The Golem of Los Angeles, and the John Ciardi Prize for his forthcoming book, Tongue of War. His other poetry books are Impure and Sad Jazz: Sonnets. He is also the author of five books of Chinese translation and three world literature textbooks. He is a professor of English at Whittier College
Sholeh Wolpé translated Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (U of Arkansas Press, 2007), and is the author of The Scar Saloon (Red Hen Press), Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press), and Shame (a play in three acts). She is the associate editor of The Norton Anthology of Modern Literature from the Muslim World (Norton, 2010) and the editor of the Atlanta Review – Iran Issue (2010.) Her poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in publications worldwide. She was born in Iran and lives in Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE THIRD AREA
Sarah Maclay, award-winning poet (most recently, The White Bride), editor, and visiting assistant professor at LMU, serves as artistic director, with curating collective members Frankie Drayus (finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Prize), Dina Hardy (2008 Stanford University Stegner Fellow), Tess. Lotta (curator of Literati Cocktail reading series and editor for Media Cake \ eMagazine), Stephany Prodromides (chapbook manuscript finalist for the 2008 Center for Book Arts and co-host of Redondo Poets reading series) and Jan Wesley (author of Living in Freefall and Pushcart nominee) to host the series on the last Thursday of the month. The Third Area showcases outstanding established and up-and-coming poets as featured guests.
