Jan Steckel's Blog: Horizontal Poet Sings Bidyke Blues - Posts Tagged "marie-lecrivain"

A terrific review of my book The Horizontal Poet just got posted by Marie Lecrivain, editor and publisher of the Los Angeles litzine poeticdiversity and a fine poet and writer.

http://alkhemiapoetica.blogspot.com/2...

I love the image of her reading the title poem aloud at a poetry reading in Los Angeles. Wish I could have been there!

April, National Poetry Month, is a whirlwind. Had a terrific time reading the other night at the 10th Anniversary of Poetry Express in Berkeley with my friend Al Averbach. I'll be the featured reader on April 14 at The Poetry Zone, a collegial open mic hosted by Suzanne Frost at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum in Santa Barbara. Then it's back up to Berkeley for a reading with excellent poet Jeanne Wagner at Expressions Gallery, hosted by Steve Arntson, on the evening of April 20, with an open mic, 7-9 PM. Finally, I'll read on April 24 at the Lambda Literary Finalists reading at 6 PM at the main San Francisco Public Library. I'll try to post details about each reading here a few days beforehand.

How are you celebrating National Poetry Month?

Thanks to Evan Karp for posting a YouTube video of the April 24 Lambda Literary Finalists reading at the San Francisco Public Library. Here’s the video of me reading four of my poems from The Horizontal Poet: “Dios le bendiga,” “Twenty Thousand Vaginas Under the Sea,” “The Rose Grew Round the Briar,” and “The History of our Love.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chWLAn...

Thanks to Marie Lecrivain of the Los Angeles Lit Zine poeticdiversity for reprinting my poem “Fourteen Crossings” from my book. The poem appeared previously in Red Rock Review. You can find it here:

http://www.poeticdiversity.org/main/p...

Picks for this week:

I’m attending Oakland poet Cassandra Dallett’s featured reading at Poetry Express at Priya Indian Restaurant in Berkeley tonight. I first heard Cassandra at Paul Corman Roberts’ and H. K. Rainey’s by-submission-only reading Anger Management at Viricocha in the Mission in San Francisco. My husband Hew Wolff will be the featured reader at Poetry Express next week, Monday, May 14. Bring a poem of your own to share, and get 20% off your delicious Indian meal if you’re there to hear poetry. 7-9 PM every Monday night, 2072 San Pablo Ave, (between University Ave & Addison St), Berkeley, CA 94702. (510) 644-3977

This Wednesday, June 9, Jeanne Lupton and I are going to hear my poetry mentor and friend Julia Vinograd featured at Sacred Grounds coffeehouse in San Francisco. Should be a terrific show. Jeanne and I will both read at the open mic, I expect. Open Mic signups begin at 7 PM every Wednesday night, with readings from 7:30 to 10 PM. 2095 Hayes Street, San Francisco, CA 94117. (415) 387-3859

Next weekend, Saturday, May 12, I’m going to Works in Progress, a Women’s Open Mic in Piedmont, a neighborhood of Oakland. I’ll be one of several readers at this bimonthly womens’ reading, but the most exciting action for me this time is singer-songwriter/looper Irina Rivkin’s beautiful, complex music. Shar Bacchus will play recorder. Contact me for details at jmsteckel at aol dot com if you want to go.

Hope to see you around!

Warmly,
Jan

Gnomic, luminous and witty, Marie Lecrivain's new poetry book The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre is an unusually unified work based on the author’s experience of self-transformation. Lecrivain masterfully employs the language of alchemy to explore in various poetic forms the evolution of the self and the cosmos. Ablett’s cover illustration paired with Lecrivain’s photographs burnish the lambent text.

Don't just take my word for it, though. Take those of poet Gillian Prew, author of A Wound's Sound, In the Broken Things, Throats Full of Graves, and Disconnections:

“There has always been a broad awareness in alchemy that tended to view the lab work as a metaphor for the subtle body and, more purely, the spirit - hence the natural similarities between alchemy and poetry. And, indeed, alchemical poetry is not new. John Donne used many alchemical and scientific images and references in his work. Although the original object of alchemy was to produce gold from base metals, the discipline was later spiritualized to that of becoming transformed oneself by the processes which were developed in the laboratory for transmuting elements. Like Blake, Lecrivain’s poems use the symbols of alchemy to point to the breaking down of destructive systems and opening the way to transformation to the new age (Solvé et Coagula).”

You can buy a signed copy of the the book directly from the author via the exquisite indie publisher Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House, or you can purchase one on Amazon.

Marie Lecrivain is the editor-publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, a photographer, and a writer-in-residence at her apartment. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Edgar Allen Poet Journal, Maitenant, A New Ulster, Spillway, The Los Angeles Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, and others. She’s the author of The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre (© 2014 Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House), Love Poems…Yes… REALLY… Love Poems (© 2013 Sybaritic Press), and she’s the editor of the anthology Near Kin: Words and Art inspired by Octavia E. Butler (© 2014 Sybaritic Press). Her avocations include alchemy, alternate modes of transportation, H.P. Lovecraft, Vincent Price, steampunk accessories, and the letter “S."



If you live in Southern California in the U.S.A. and want to meet this remarkable woman, you can hear her read from her new book at any of the following readings in the Los Angeles area:

6/21/14, 3 P.M., as part of the Three Rooms Press Maitenant launch

6/28/14, 3 P.M., at the Open Mic at the Encino Library

8/30/14, 3 P.M., at the Santa Catalina Library in Pasadena

9/28/14, 3 P.M., at Beyond Baroque in Venice at Wyatt Underwood's Nebraska Girls Reading