Online: Interactive presentation: A Downtown State of Mind
Location
A Downtown State of Mind celebrating the launch of LiVE MAG! #17 The CoViVid Issue.
A fun, interesting, and interactive presentation from a vibrant community of word singers and image-makers: Zoom Afternoon of Art, Poetry, and Inspired Palavar.
The event is organized by New York Public Library’s Hudson Park and Tompkins Square branches.
Dubbed “Mr. Underground” by WDRE, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright has been publishing art and poetry for decades. His vision has a decidedely downtown slant and the new issue of Live Mag! is true to its East Village roots.
Live Mag! began on the stage of the Bowery Poetry Club in 2007 and has since published work by hundreds of poets and artists. Issue 17 is the first issue that includes full color art. It is anchored by East Village legend Ed Sanders’ gorgeous glyph-poem.
The entire issue champions the champions of a countercultural aesthetic and features literary luminaries Andrei Codrescu, Patricia Spears Jones, Sharon Mesmer, David Mills and more. Plus art heavy hitters Amanda Church, Pablo Delano, Carl Hazlewood, Barbara Rosenthal, y mas. Over forty contributors provide a snappy, snazzy, and savvy sampler of avant reverence and irreverence.
The hosts: Deputy Editor Ilka Scobie, Publisher Jeffrey Cyphers Wright.
PARTICIPANTS
Andrei Codrescu is an homme-de-lettres whose poetry, novels, and essays have been infiltrating the American psyche since he emigrated from his native Romania to Detroit in 1966. He is the author of forty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, and the founder of Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Life & Letters. He has received a Peabody award for his film Road Scholar, and has been a commentator on NPR’s "All Things Considered" since 1983. He lives in New Orleans, the Ozarks, and New York.
Olena Jennings is the author of the poetry collection Songs from an Apartment and the chapbook Memory Project. Her translation with Oksana Lutsyshyna of Artem Chekh’s Absolute Zero from the Ukrainian was released in 2020 by Glagoslav. Her novel Temporary Shelter is forthcoming in 2021 from Cervena Barva Press. She is the founder and curator of the Poets of Queens reading series.
Cindy Hochman is the president of "100 Proof" Copyediting Services and the editor-in-chief of the online poetry journal First Literary Review-East. She has written book reviews for American Book Review, Pedestal, Home Planet News, great weather for MEDIA, and others. Her work has been widely published across the globe in print and online journals. Her latest solo chapbook is Habeas Corpus (Glass Lyre Press) and her collaborative book of poems with poet/collagist Bob Heman is The Number 5 Is Always Suspect (Presa Press). She is a proud resident of Brooklyn, New York, where she reads, writes, edits, meditates, studies Russian, and agonizes over politics.
David Mills is the author of two poetry collections — The Dream Detective and The Sudden Country. He has received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Crab Orchard Review, Fence, Colorado Review, Jubilat, Live Mag, The Literary Review, Hanging Loose and Callaloo.
Helen Oji was highlighted in the early 1980s New York City art scene as an artist with a distinctive vision. She has exhibited her paintings, works on paper and prints in numerous exhibitions in New York, nationally and Europe. In addition to her artwork, she collaborated with a range of performers/writers in creating set designs that were presented in New York City, London, and across the US.
About Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
Publisher and editor, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, moved to New York City in 1976 and began Hard Press, publishing poetry postcards and books. He attended workshops at St. Mark's Poetry Project with Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, and Jim Brodey. He went on to study with Allen Ginsberg at Brooklyn College, where he earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry. Wright launched Cover Magazine in 1987. Wright is the author of 17 books of verse including, most recently, Blue Lyre from Dos Madres Press, Radio Poems from The Operating System, and Fake Lies from Fell Swoop. Wright contributes criticism regularly to the American Book Review and ArtNexus. Recently, he received a Kathy Acker Award for writing and publishing. Wright has been publishing Live Mag! since 2007.
Related program: Saturday, March 20th at 2 pm - A Downtown State of Mind part II.
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