by | Jan 4, 2023 8:52 am | Comments (0)
Brian Robinson, poet and host of Open Mic Surgery — a weekly open mic poetry night held at Never Ending Books — joked on Tuesday evening that poets are always late. Yet when he arrived at the appointed time of 6:30 p.m., he found a room of people waiting for him.
“Everyone’s here on time, and it’s kind of weird,” he said.
“I think it’s a sign that more people are coming,” someone in the audience said.
by | Nov 22, 2022 8:43 am | Comments (0)
Sara Scranton’s “Spider Girl” partakes of old circus posters and underground comics from a generation past, but it has a modern twist that tweaks the formula. “Don’t get caught in her web,” the caption warns. It gives Spider Girl a little say in the matter.
That say is brought out in the poem by Karen Ponzio of the same title. “You speak of webs woven / Though your version of a trap is / My version of home. / Should I be punished for being hungry? / Is every ‘should’ a lure / Towards my demise? / Break my heart if it feeds / Your appetite or / Brings you joy. / I can rebuild anything / You attempt to destroy.” The poem, written in response to the painting, twists the painting even further, turning it inside out. Each piece amplifies the other.
Continue reading ‘Artist Collaboration Brings Out The Best At Never Ending Books’
by | Nov 18, 2022 9:00 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Katy Rea.
Poetry about the end of the world. Pop music by turns dreamy, elliptical, lush, and jagged. And transfixing music from half a world away. All three art forms were on lavish display at Never Ending Books on Thursday night, as two poets and three musical acts comprised a diverse and thoroughly engrossing evening that entertained, warmed, and nourished.
Continue reading ‘Poets And Musicians Offer Salve To The Cold’
by | Nov 7, 2022 8:50 am | Comments (1)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Movimiento Cultural
The world-renowned Shubert Theatre was home to some of New Haven’s own on Saturday night, as a show entitled Elm City’s Finest brought artists performing everything from bomba to dramatic monologues to rock ‘n’ roll to this first-of-its-kind event. The evening also included work displayed by local visual artists, food from local restaurants, and wares from local vendors.
by | Jul 27, 2022 9:24 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
“I don’t want to X‑ray your ghost,” Brian Robinson began, speaking to someone to told him that “it was just a rash and you would get it checked / You told me you would clean up, stop drinking, and fix up the sun room / where the folded cardboard Amazon boxes sneer a stupid arrow smile / alongside Mike’s Hard Lemonade and chewy pet supplies / all wedged behind the rusted patio furniture you never sit in to read a book.” The poem, in exquisite detail, portrayed a life spun slowly out of control, “even as you fold another box and call to say your results came up negative.”
by | Jun 23, 2022 11:03 am | Comments (0)
Courtney Luciana Photo
Mark Lamoureux.
Walking home to Wooster Street from a cleaning at the dentist on the first day of summer, Mark Lamoureux planned to get to some student papers — then some stretch out at yoga, followed by some family time.
by | Jun 13, 2022 3:29 pm | Comments (0)
Early in Felon: An American Washi Tale, poet and lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts talks about how, as a prisoner serving time for a carjacking, he heard his fellow prisoners calling to each other in the dark, looking for something to read. “Yo, send me a book!” they called out, and in the dark, he heard the paper slide across the cell block floor. It took him a while to muster the courage to ask for himself — “Yo, send me a book!” The poetry anthology that slipped under his door set him on the path to his freedom.
Continue reading ‘In Arts & Ideas Production, Reginald Dwayne Betts Blazes A Paper Trail’
by | May 26, 2022 5:28 pm | Comments (27)
Maya McFadden Photos
Participants in Thursday's "Children's March" to Edgewood Park.
One hundred and fifty New Haven middle and high school students put their pencils down and posters up Thursday to give the city a lesson on solidarity, passion, and leading through action.
by | Apr 18, 2022 3:45 pm | Comments (0)
Kimberly Wipfler Photo
Yaira Matyakubova and Lyala Stowe at gathering on Peck Street.
The room was hushed when Lyala Stowe began to speak. Her voice was soft. She is from Ukraine, and she was about to recite poems by Ukrainian poets.
Stowe apologized that most audience members would not comprehend the words, spoken in her native tongue. Regardless, the room held onto every syllable.
Continue reading ‘Violin Strings, Heartstrings, Pulled For Ukraine’
by | Apr 12, 2022 9:05 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Anne:Gogh
The concept of time has had its way with all of us in the past two years, leading many to redefine its more linear aspects and reimagine a new framework. On Saturday night five poets made their way through Artspace New Haven to pose and present their own interpretations of time, influenced and inspired by the “Dyschronics” exhibit currently displayed there, as well as Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. The event was part of One City, One Read, an ongoing International Festival of Arts and Ideas program series that continues now through June throughout New Haven, focusing on Butler’s all-too-prescient novel.
by | Mar 10, 2022 8:43 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
Zacks.
At Best Video on Wednesday night, Michelle Zacks read in a clear voice: “When the city was destroyed, / they started fighting over the cemetery. / It was right before Easter / and wooden crosses over the freshly dug graves / put out their paper blossoms— / red, blue, yellow, / neon green, orange, raspberry pink. / Joyful relatives poured vodka for themselves / and for the dead — straight into their graves. / And the dead asked for more, and more, and more / and the relatives just kept pouring.”
Continue reading ‘Literary Fundraiser For Ukraine Offers A Cry From The Heart’
by | Feb 28, 2022 12:12 pm | Comments (1)
Alec Pedersen, a New Haven Academy student, shares poetry at Istoria's Storytelling Night.
A night of storytelling and live music offered a point of creative connection among Yale students and New Haveners at Koffee?.
Continue reading ‘Storytelling Night Bridges New Haven Gaps’
by | Feb 10, 2022 8:47 am | Comments (1)
Courtesy Octavia E. Butler Estate
Butler.
A new art exhibit, and a panel on migration facilitated by Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS). The screening and discussion of the “first-ever ethnographic acid Western.” A Sun Ra tribute concert.
All these events and more, happening between now and the middle of May, are organized around a single novel by a science-fiction visionary that is the focus of this year’s One City: One Read, a campaign organized by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, in partnership with Yale’s Schwarzman Center, the New Haven Free Public Library, Artspace, and Best Video.
by | Dec 23, 2021 11:24 am | Comments (1)
To drive Omicron away, to sleep without fever dreams
To curl up inside the curves of the letters
To dream in Greek, to become one with the swerve
Continue reading ‘How Allen Ginsberg And James Baldwin Saved Us From Omicron’
by | Dec 6, 2021 1:23 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Stewart and Taylor.
The Wandering, an event organized by artists Anika Stewart and Elizabeth LaCroix Taylor, turned Bregamos Community Theater into an arts bazaar, music venue, and burlesque stage all at once on Saturday night.
by | Nov 10, 2021 1:24 pm | Comments (2)
Paul Bass Photo
Frank E. Brady at WNHH FM.
Shout-out to Miss Henderson: You lit the spark that led to Frank E. Brady versifying for a worldwide audience to mark an historic moment.
by | Sep 28, 2021 1:39 pm | Comments (1)
MAMADI DOUMBOUYA PHOTO
Dwayne Betts (right) and his 2019 poetry collection, Felon.
Local poet, lawyer, and criminal justice reform advocate Dwayne Betts can add another title to that list — “genius,” now that he’s been tapped as one of 25 Americans to receive the prestigious MacArthur fellowship award.
Continue reading ‘Dwayne Betts Tapped As MacArthur “Genius”’
by | Sep 20, 2021 8:08 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Still from “Skin.”
Black Haven Film Festival returned on Saturday for its second year, with five new filmmakers ready to share their vision via spoken word, song, dance, and animation — both in person and online.
by | Sep 13, 2021 1:08 pm | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photos
In a Dixwell parking lot, literature came to life and spoken words about loss, faith, injustice, family, and self-love filled the air.
by | Sep 6, 2021 7:55 am | Comments (1)
Six Green Chairs
Six chairs sitting out on the wet green lawn
Always makes me feel interested, even hopeful
by | Jun 21, 2021 8:40 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Abiodun Oyewole.
Park of the Arts became a poetry garden on Friday night as famed poet and teacher Abiodun Oyewole led a poetry workshop for grateful attendees as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.
by | Jun 9, 2021 8:46 am | Comments (0)
Maria and Ndemeh.
Making a painstaking cup of coffee the traditional way while recounting a harrowing story of flight from Ethiopia into an unknown future. Family photographs lovingly thumbed through, even while the speaker mourns a sense of childhood lost. And dancing that invokes ancestors and reaches back into the past to both face trauma and draw strength.
Curated and produced by Jasmin Agosto and featuring Haben Maria, Colleen Ndemeh, Paul Bryant Hudson, Zvlu, Yexandra Diaz, and Ch’Varda, Yerba Bruja is part ceremony, part storytelling, part music, spoken word, and dance performance, and all honesty and respect, as the participants ruminate on what it means to leave home, lose home, and reconnect and stay resilient, in ways large and small.
Continue reading ‘“Yerba Bruja” Finds Roots In Elm City Earth’
by | Jun 3, 2021 8:40 am | Comments (0)
Kaitlyn Higgins
The Art of Breathing.
It’s a series of faces moving through an intense range of emotions. Maybe it’s the same person over a period of time. Maybe it’s multiple people in the same moment. Maybe the difference isn’t all that important. Kaitlyn Higgins’s The Art of Breathing is both a study in how to render emotions in paint and an expression of all those moments at once. It’s part of a series of paintings by Higgins that explore parallel senses of outward claustrophobia and inner turmoil. There are no easy answers, but in the accurate rendering of the situation, there’s communication and compassion.
by | Apr 30, 2021 8:45 am | Comments (0)
Persephone Hoffman / James Hillhouse High School
“Foraged Picnic”
The following is a poem written by Metropolitan Business Academy student Keiara Orr and republished from the magazine Elm City Sage.
by | Mar 16, 2021 9:33 am | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery Photo
On Friday evening, Elena Augusewicz, Peter Cunningham, Jared Emerling, Jessica Larkin-Wells, Conor Perreault, and Charli Taylor — a.k.a. six of the Never Ending Books Collective — met in the storefront at 810 State St. They talked about how the beloved bookstore, music spot, and community space, which announced it was ending its decades-long run in December, may turn out not to be ending after all.
Continue reading ‘Collective Keeps Never Ending Books Alive’