Online: Interactive presentation: A Downtown State of Mind PART II

A fun, interesting, and interactive presentation from a vibrant community of word singers and image-makers : Zoom Afternoon of Art, Poetry, and Inspired Palaver.

 A Downtown State of Mind celebrating the launch of LiVE MAG! #17  The CoViVid Issue.

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 decidedly 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

 Patricia Spears Jones is the author of five books of poetry. Jones is the editor of "The Future Differently Imagined", an issue of About Place Journal, the online publication of Black Earth Institute. Previously, she was the co-editor for Ordinary Women: Poems of New York City Women. Her poem "Beuys and the Blonde" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Jones was the winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize for 2017, and she will serve as the 2020 Louis D. Rubin Jr. Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University.

Paco Marquez is a poet based out of Manhattan, author of Portraits in G Minor (Folded Word Press, 2017). His poems can be found in Fence, Apogee, Live Mag!, and Huizache. Originally from León, Mexico, Paco has spent most of his life in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Larry Sawyer’s books of poetry include Daylight Hammer (White Hole Press, 2021), Breaking Lorca (White Hole Press, 2014), Vertigo Diary (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and Unable to Fully California (Otoliths Books, 2010) among others. Sawyer's poetry has appeared in publications including Verse Daily, Boston Review, Chicago Tribune, LiVE MAG!, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Project and has been included in anthologies including Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), Poem-a-Day: 365 Poems for Every Occasion (Academy of American Poets, 2015), and A Writers’ Congress: Chicago Poets on Barack Obama’s Inauguration (DePaul Humanities Center Press, 2009). Currently living in Toronto, he has previously taught for the Chicago School of Poetics and curated the Myopic Poetry Series for 15 years.

 Lydia Cortés is the author of the collections of poetry, Lust for Lust and Whose Place. She has also been widely published in many anthologies. She has been awarded residencies in Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain, and at The MacDowell Colony. She is currently at work on a poetry memoir about herself and the late Nuyorican poet/playwright Pedro Pietri.

 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.

Bob Heman's art includes collages, cut-outs (“participatory cut-out multiples on paper”), and drawings. During the late 1970s, he was an artist-in-residence at The Brooklyn Museum. His work has been exhibited in a small two-man show at The Brooklyn Museum [cut-outs and drawings], in a retrospective of his cut-outs at BACA's Brooklyn Downtown Cultural Center, and in group shows in Toronto, Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. His collages have appeared on the covers of books by poets Alex Caldiero, David Mills, Evie Ivy, Cindy Hochman, Karen Neuberg, Patrica Carragon, and the late Harry Crosby. He has edited CLWN WR (formerly Clown War) since the early 1970s.

Related program:      Saturday, March 6th at 2 pm - A Downtown State of Mind part I.