A Furniture Press Affair : Ruthless Grip, Washington, D.C.

Toby Altman * Martine Bellen * Alyse Knorr * Magus Magnus * Chris Mason * Alicia Puglionesi * Iris Cushing

This event was part of the Ruthless Grip series, curated by the incomparable Mel Nichols and hosted by Dan Gutstein and Meg Ronan.

 

 

Dan Gutstein introduces Meg Ronan

 

Introductions (Christophe Casamassima)
 

Chris Mason

...is a member of three bands: The Tinklers, Coocoo Rockin Time, and Old Songs, which translates Archaic Greek poetry and puts it to music. Books of poems: Hum Who Hiccup (Narrow House, Baltimore, 2011), Where To From Out (Furniture Press Books, Baltimore, forthcoming in 2013), Click Poems (shabby editions, London, 1982), Poems of a Doggy (pod books, Baltimore, 1977). Prose: The Elements, by the Tinklers, (Shattered Wig, Baltimore, 2009).

Toby Altman

...lives in Chicago where he co-curates the Absinthe and Zygote series with Anne Shaw. His poems have (or will) appear in Gigantic Sequins, Rhino, The Berkeley Poetry Review, and other journals. He is cofounder of Damask Press and a member of the Next-Objectivists. His chapbook Asides was published by Furniture Press Books in 2012.

http://furniturepressbooks.com/chaps/altmanasides/

Alyse Knorr

...is the author of Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books 2013). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO, Sentence, Puerto Del Sol, Gargoyle, The Minnesota Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press). She received her MFA from George Mason University.

Martine Bellen

...is the author of eight collections of poetry, including GHOSTS! (Spuyten Duyvil), THE VULNERABILITY OF ORDER (Copper Canyon Press), and TALES OF MURASAKI AND OTHER POEMS (Sun & Moon Press), which won the National Poetry Series Award. Her collection THE WABAC MACHINE is forthcoming in March/April of 2013, published by Furniture Press Books. A bilingual collection of her poetry has been published in Germany by Verlag im Waldgut (translator, Hans Jürgen Balmes). She has written the libretto for OVIDIANA, an opera based on Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES (composer, Matthew Greenbaum) and AH! OPERA NO-OPERA, which she collaborated on with David Rosenboom.

Magus Magnus

...has two books out with Furniture Press: Heraclitean Pride (2010) and The Re-echoes (2012). He is also the author of Verb Sap (Narrow House 2008) and Idylls for a Bare Stage (2011). Magnus blogs about the theory and technique of the Idyll (a poetry performance form originated by the Greek poet Theocritus) at http://sharedimagining.blogspot.com/.

http://furniturepressbooks.com/books/magnusechoes/
http://furniturepressbooks.com/books/magnuspride/

Iris Cushing

...was born in Tarzana, California. She is the author of Wyoming (winner of the 2013 Furniture Press Poetry Prize) forthcoming this fall. In 2011, she was a writer-in-residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Her poems have appeared in the Boston Review, Paperbag, No, Dear and other places. Iris lives in Brooklyn and edits Argos Books. She is also currently at work on a couple of collaborations with visual artists.

Alicia Puglionesi

...writes about the history of telepathy, psychic mediums, and nineteenth-century men of science in a scholarly capacity. Her current project is a dictionary of nonverbal communication. A collection of short stories related to Karl Krall, the German animal psychologist, is forthcoming with Cars Are Real press in the fall of 2013. She lives in Baltimore.