motemamusic on Mar 13, 2010
Red Velvet In Winter is taken from Geri Allen's album "Flying Toward The Sound". The video is excerpted from "Refractions", an art film directed by Carrie Mae Weems.
The music was composed during Geri Allen's John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
More info: http://www.motema.com/artist/geri-allen
The River Crosses Rivers:
A Festival of Short Plays by Women of Color
- Call for Submissions
Deadline: 6 June 2011Going to the River (GTTR) was founded in 1999 at the Ensemble Studio Theatre by the late Curt Dempster and Elizabeth Van Dyke. The primary goal of Going to the River is to provide a major New York City forum in which professional African-American female playwrights may develop, refine and present their work.
The annual projects and events sponsored by Going to the River include a Mainstage production, staged readings of new work, Down By the River All By Yo’Self (solo pieces), a River Poetry Slam Jam, panels and distinguished guest speakers, and a GTTR Writers’ Unit.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Going to the River and Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) are now accepting submissions for THE RIVER CROSSES RIVERS: A FESTIVAL OF SHORT PLAYS BY WOMEN OF COLOR. Going to the River (GTTR) is a program founded to produce and support African-American female playwrights by providing a major New York City forum in which playwrights develop, refine, and present their work.
Requirements: Ten-minute plays by female playwrights of color New and never produced. Limit of 2 plays Estimated running time of no more than ten minutes Please be mindful of cast size. The submission deadline is Monday June 6th, 2011 at 5:00pm EDT Ten plays will be selected and produced on EST’s main-stage in the Fall of 2011.
Only e-mail submissions addressed to gttr@ensemblestudiotheatre.org will be considered. To be considered submissions be in the form of one Microsoft Word document and organized as follows:
Page 1: Cover page to include: the title page estimated running time the playwright’s name, address, city, zip code, phone number
Page 2: A biography of the playwright
Page 3: Character Breakdown
Page 4: Begin the body of the playWe are sorry we are unable to take phone calls. You may address inquiries to: gttr@ensemblestudiotheatre.org
Contact Information:
For inquiries: gttr@ensemblestudiotheatre.org
For submissions: gttr@ensemblestudiotheatre.org
Website: http://ensemblestudiotheatre.org
The “SCARE THE DICKENS OUT OF US”
Short Story Contest 2011
AND
The JUNIOR “SCARE THE DICKENS OUT OF US”
Contest 2011 FOR AGES 12-18
Sponsored by the Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas.
First prize, $1000.00 and a trophy.
Second prize, $500.00 and a ribbon.
Third prize, $250.00 and a ribbon.
Junior contest prize $250.00 and a trophy.Download contest entry form here.
Download junior contest entry form here.
Entry fee $20.00 (check or money order).
Junior contest entry fee $5.00 (check or money order).The Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story contest and the Junior Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story contest share identical rules except the entry fees and the following: Junior contest writers must be age 12-18. Winners will have to provide proof of age.
All publication rights remain with the author.
The contest is a Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library fundraiser and is privately funded. All entry fees go to the Friends and are used for library projects.
The “Scare The Dickens Out of Us” Short Story Contest is in conjunction with the annual “A Dickens Christmas In Lockhart” which is held on the first weekend in December (Friday night, Saturday) in Lockhart, Texas.We want ghost stories. Any genre, any tone, any subject, whatever type of ghost story you can come up with.
CONTEST RULES:
1. The contest is open to published and unpublished writers alike. All publication rights remain with the author.
2. The ghost story must be 5,000 words or less, in English, and typed double-spaced. Entries must be original and unpublished. There are no other restrictions.3. Only one entry per writer.
4. The judging will be done in a blind format. Do not put your name or any other identifying information on the manuscript itself except for the name of the story. Download, print and submit our entry form or our junior contest entry form. The information will include the name of your story, the author’s name, address, phone number, and email address, where you heard of this contest, and your permission to have your story read out loud at a literary gathering if you are one of the winners.
5. Your manuscript and entry fee must be mailed to us at P.O. Box 821, Lockhart, TX 78644 and must be postmarked no later than October 1, 2011. We will accept entries beginning July 1, 2011.
Winners will be contacted at contest end. Winners also will be announced at the “A Dickens Christmas in Lockhart” festival in December, and will be posted at our web site www.clarklibraryfriends.org.
No manuscripts will be returned. Keep the original copy. At the end of the contest entries will be shredded.
Send your manuscript with entry form and entry fee to:
“Scare The Dickens Out of Us” or Junior “Scare The Dickens Out of Us” Short Story Contest, co/Friends of the Library
PO Box 821, Lockhart, Texas 78644.Make out your check or money order to Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library. International entries, please send your entry fee via international money order if possible.
Administrators of the contest, the judges of the contest and the immediate family members of the judges are ineligible to enter this contest.
WINNERS of the 2010 Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story writing contest, which is a fundraiser for the Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas, are:
First place--Karen Katchur of Bethlehem, PA.
Second place--Steven Utley of Smyrna, TN.
Third place--Patricia A. Peirson of Winnetka, CA.In order, places Four through Fifteen were:
John Ankers of Liverpool, UK; Trace Riles of Ontario, Canada; Karen S. Swensson, Chris Lovett and Sharon Lyle of Georgetown, TX; Valerie Whisenand of Glencoe, AR; Tyler Miller of Cheney, WA; Jaclyn S. Miller of Mishawaka, IN; Carl Jonsgma of South Australia; Steven Dake of Jackson, Michigan; Bill Goodwin of Hill City, Kansas; Winona Howe of Riverside, CA; Aaron Peterson of Santa Rosa, CA; and A.F. Schwier of Marble Falls, TX.
First place prize was $1000.00 and a trophy. Second place prize was $500.00 and a ribbon. Third place prize was $250.00 and a ribbon. Fourth through fifteenth prizes were ribbons.
The Junior Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story writing contest winners are as follows.
First place winner-- Jerico Espinas of Oshawa in Ontario, Canada.
Second place winner--Jonathan Kim of Allen, Texas.
Third place winner--Rachel Reimer of Manitoba, Canada.
First place was $250.00 and a trophy. All other prizes were ribbons.Fourth through Tenth place winners were M. Shale Carey of Westminister, MA; Megan Stevens of Remus, MI; Alexa Smith of Round Rock, TX; Thomas Young of Edmond, OK; Shelly Crouch of Woodville, TX; Joe Duncko of Canfield, OH; and Peter Brand of Rochester, NY.
We congratulate all of our winners and all of the other entrants as well. The top winners were formally announced Saturday night December 4, 2010 at the Dickens Christmas in Lockhart festival.
WINNERS of the 2009 Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story writing contest, which is a fundraiser for the Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas, are:
First place-- Jon L. Gillum of Red Rock, Texas ($500.00 and a trophy)
Second place-- Gary W. Brandt of Round Rock, Texas ($250.00 and a ribbon)
Third place-- Monique Hayes of Fort Washington, Maryland ($150.00 and a ribbon)
Caldwell County winner Robyn Gammill ($100.00 and a trophy)
Fourth place-- Michelle Homan of Big Spring, Texas (ribbon)
Fifth place-- Julian G. Martin of Austin, Texas (ribbon)
Honorable Mention-- Miriam King of Kingwood, Texas (ribbon)
We congratulate all of our 2009 winners and all of the other entrants as well. The top winners were formally announced Saturday night December 5, 2009 at the Dickens Christmas in Lockhart festival.Questions about this contest? Please contact the contest coordinators by email - click here.
Contest
Creative Writing Contest: $1,000 Prize and Publication
Finalist Judge: Sarah Manguso
Deadline: May 1, 2011
Theme: Arc – the rise and fall of dramatic tension within a piece. Not sure your work fits? Let our editors and judge decide!
Please note: You do not need to enter our contest to be considered for publication in Mason’s Road; however, only contest candidates will be considered for the $1,000 prize.
To enter the contest:
- Pay the $15 reading fee here
- Upload your piece through the submission manager form using the instructions on the page
Have questions about the contest? Contact Managing Editor Tess Brown at managingeditortess@gmail.com.
Good luck!
Angela Davis & Toni Morrison
LIVE from the NYPL:
Angela Davis & Toni Morrison:
Literacy, Libraries and Liberation
October 27, 2010
Stream:
- Video
- Audio
Also available on:
“When It Hits You,
You Feel No Pain”
“When It Hits You, You Feel No Pain”:
A Conversation about Music and Politics
Wednesday, April 27 · 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Lang Cafe, The New School, 65 West 11th Street, NY, NY, 10003
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY
Music has power to move people’s bodies, but does it have power to move their bodies into action? Music and politics are often intimate partners in society whether an artist consciously connects them or not. What role does music play in the politics of today’s world?
What is the responsibility of artists as public figures to be politically conscious? Can the two stand on their own, or are they forever linked? We will explore some of these and other questions at this panel as part of GPIA’s Media and Culture Concentration’s
Conversations series.
With invited panelists Brian Jackson (musician/composer and Gil Scott Heron’s main musical collaborator in the 1970s), Raquel Cepeda (journalist and director of “Bling, A Planet Rock”), DJ Laylo (DJ/filmmaker), Eddie ‘Stats’ Houghton (journalist, The Fader), Wills Glasspiegel (artist manager and radio producer) and Masauko Chipembere (musician, composer).
The panel will be moderated by Megan Bandle (South Africa House Initiative, Brooklyn).
Organized by Sean Jacobs and Boima Tucker.
Plus, Afterparty at Cayenne featuring Eddie Stats and Boima DJing
128 West Houston. Starting at 10pm
Celebrating Sierra Leone’s 50th Independence Anniversary
Thomas Sayers Ellis
April 2011
Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis: This Book Is Not “Like” Anything You’ve Ever Read
Graywolf Press: Minneapolis, MN, 2010. 112 pages. $23.00
So, you want to know what this book is “like”? What category it fits in? Well, you can go to hell. Or back to the library. Read this book on its own terms: that is the condition set forth by Ellis in his opening poem “As Segregation, As Us.” He writes: “Everything supposedly ‘like’ something else, or forced into skin, / has already been taken advantage of / by an Aesthetic (Affirmative) Action. / If we could measure the integrity of a simile / It wouldn’t be any different” (3). To make a comparison is to situate this new individual work in an over-determined landscape. Delineations among literary borders as among races cover over the real that arises from the particular: “These genres these borders these false distinctions / are where we stay at / in freedom’s way” (3).
Ellis portrays the fitfulness of a living being resistant to a cladogram of genres, species, or races. As biography kills the living person, so a Linnaean tree taxidermizes emergent species. Likewise, a typology of this book as black or white, as American or African-American, as poetry or graphic art preemptively fixes the living art. Skin, Inc. disrupts each of these categorical boundaries as it ranges from lyrical onomatopoeia to graphic art on the page, from graphic to photographic, from revolutionary manifesto to confessional meditation, from prose paragraphs to subtly lineated stanzas. Where the contemporary literary scene divides into the “white space” of poetry on the page and the “black space” of spoken word, Ellis intends to fragment that chess-like opposition: he tells us that the “first footwork [of identity repair] . . . is to fragment the linearity of the contemporary literary, color line” (75).
It’s not that there are no groups, Ellis tells us. In fact, “We know there’s a recognizable We, / an I-identifiable many” (174). This plurality, this “we,” figures and refigures through the book. The book also repeatedly addresses a “you.” So much depends on how you perceive that “you.” Do you feel included or excluded by the pronoun? Is it the second person anonymous, as in, “You know how it feels when . . . ” or is it the second person direct address, as in, “You, there!” Ellis calls this the “door of the pronoun” (43). For the most part, the antecedent of the “you” is plural, or singular-plural, “an all within one, the soul of many” (43). Occasionally, it narrows to a particular you—James Brown, President Obama. But for the most part, Ellis is happy to keep the numerical aspect of the “you” open. He is “committed to subject-verb disagreement, its liberating conflict” (76).
In a footnote-like paragraph at the bottom of a page, he instructs the speaker (or the reader?) that prior to beginning the stanza in the second person there should be “Stage, stanza, some silence, a moment of preface, of breathing, before the door of the pronoun” (43). In other words, if you are going to read this poem correctly, you cannot simply pass over the pronoun “you.” You must pause and “recite the emergence of fire so that it becomes attitude, weather and aesthetic.” The speaking of the “you” sets the weather, the atmosphere of the poem in each new performance. When you address the “you,” do you do so intimately? Diffidently? Inclusively? Violently? You must admit audibly your relationship to this pronoun.
The pronouns “you” and “we” comprise living bodies that are busy remaking their individual and collective selves on the fly. These bodies, these identities, are as malleable and fragile as that of Michael Jackson. Ellis’s series poem “Gone Pop” pays tribute to Jackson and his family. At times it reads like an elegy, at times a mournful critique. Jackson’s father “wanted little falcons and got peacocks” (139), Ellis explains in the first section titled “Falco Berigora” (the Latin genus and species of “brown falcons”). The Jackson children did not fit this typology. Instead, they were peacocks, brilliant birds, who only fly briefly, defensively.
Unlike the peacocks, this is not a colorful book. In this book the very lack of color is at issue. It is literally a book in black and white: black letters on white pages, like a number of other books you may have read. But in this book the very foreground and background of that framework is questioned. Although poetry of page is portrayed as “white” poetry, Ellis finds that “There are small Black settlements / throughout every alphabet” (174). Even as he plays with this black-white opposition, he makes it problematic, just as he does with other dichotomies. Sound and sense can be distinguished but cannot be separated, Ellis suggests; no more can his work be categorized as either auditory or visual. Ellis shows us time in his most graphic poems: he depicts the very temporality of looking across the page. In this, he stylistically and literally alludes to the Futurist movement. He most directly evokes the Futurists in “Two Manifestos” which includes the sections “The New Perform-A-Form,” and “Presidential Blackness: [A Race Fearlessness Manifolk Destiny],” and in “Mr. Dynamite Splits,” an homage to James Joseph Brown. The “perform-a-form” ’s command for participation echoes earlier Ellis work in The Maverick Room.
These poems structurally require interpretation the way a musical score requires interpretation insofar as it is to be lifted from the page into sound. Not speech only but reading can lift an Ellis poem into sound. But the difference between reading and speaking an Ellis poem will be felt. As we are told in “Two Manifestos,” “a perform-a-form occurs when the idea body and the performance body, frustrated by their own segregated aesthetic boundaries, seek to crossroads with one another. This coupling, though detrimental to aspects of their individual traditions, will repair and continue the living word” (71). These poems require the living word. When do words live? Well, when they are not dead: dead of meaning, deadening, dead because unread, unthought, unspoken.
In pursuit of this liveliness, Ellis claims he is too busy making art to concern himself with genre: he is “breathing, / repairing, breathing, // half-interested in progress / and half-interested // in progression, never finished” (6). But this purported lack of concern is belied by the numerous techniques that serve a hyperconscious evasion of typology. Such contradictions are rampant through Ellis’s manifesto. He tells us in the first poem “I don’t allude like you. I don’t call me anything,” but the poems that follow offer one allusion after another, one name after another. If you expect a resolution to such contradiction, then you won’t enjoy Ellis’s work. But, if you can accept that, frustrating as they are, these contradictions reflect the reality of individual and collective working-identity-maintenance, then you will find much to enjoy. The pleasure comes in part from knowing that Ellis has anticipated and negotiated so many possible reactions to his work. He even includes quotations from imagined or real—I can’t tell—reviewers' and colleagues' responses to his work.
In that sense, reading Ellis can feel like playing chess against a master. You know that every move you will make has been anticipated. He thinks what you’ll think about what he thinks about what you think he thinks, whoever you are. He throws down his opening gambit: the claim that this work is un-categorizable, un-like your expectations. He then provokes you into thinking about your expectations, your hopes, your categories, your relation to all three. As in chess, the gambit is offensive, delimits the possibility of reply.
Like Ellis’s graphic poems, the game of chess is deceptively spatial—it appears to take place on the board, in space—but in fact, it is temporal: a playing out of patterns between the white spaces and the black spaces. You’d think there is nothing really for the player to do: the rules are given; one merely adheres. Creativity in chess involves innovation with the rules: an interpretation, not a disruption of rule systems. Poetry, thank goodness, is not like chess. The poet both creates the constitutive rules of play and also plays along with the regulative rules she has made up. (Regulative rule: this poem will be in iambs. Follow the rule until you want to break it. Constitutive rule: poems exist in order to repair identity. Follow rule unless you need to change it.)
Ellis seems to challenge himself with remaking the game, playing it and breaking it in this way with each new effort. It must be exhausting to be Thomas Sayers Ellis, to work with that much self-consciousness. (I would never lift a pen.) But reading this particular mind-body at work is exhilarating.
-----------------------
Kascha Semonovitch teaches philosphy in Seattle. She holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in philosophy from Boston College. Her poetry and criticism have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Crab Creek Review, Literary Imagination, and other journals.
Accra Hustling
By Nana Kofi Acquah
I’ve heard quite a few unforgettable expressions on the streets of Accra. Almost all of these were in Ghanaian languages.
Let’s see if I can translate them into English with the flavuor intact.
I remember once at Abossey Okai (where 99% of Ghanaians by spare parts for their cars), it started drizzling unannounced. A young man who was briskly passing by raised his eyes, looked up into the clouds and says “God, take it easy. Your children, we are busy hustling”.
Another time, I saw two hustlers fighting over money. The broke one was accusing his friend of being greedy. He’s friend retorted: “Even the sea, with all its water, doesn’t reject fresh rain”.
A guy buying coconut from a young kumasi man asked for a discount. Coconut seller looks poor man squarely in the eyes and says “Master, do you think I came to Accra to watch the sea?”
One time in Kantamanto, a guy almost knocked a woman’s wares over and didn’t even bother to stop. The angry woman yells at him” You! You are just a little more handsome than a monkey”.
Now, do have a great week :) And remember, better is always possible.
29 Sep 2009
Spotlight On:
The Boy Who
Harnessed The Wind
William Kamkwamba
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What a 14-year-old African boy can teach the world about ingenuity and innovation.
In July, we had the pleasure of meeting inventor and TEDFellow William Kamkwamba. Today, the world welcomes his brilliant new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope — a wildly inspiring recount of how, at the age of 14, he built an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts and scrap.
To truly get a sense of how incredible this young man is, and how big he dreams, be sure to watch his fantastic talk from TEDGlobal.
We couldn’t recommend The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope more strongly — so grab yourself a copy and generate some mental electricity from this powerfully inspirational story.
And, speaking of book recommendations, we’ve launched a little spin-off project — follow @GreatReadFeed on Twitter for a curated stream of book recommendations spanning the entire spectrum of culture with must-read classics and hidden gems across subjects you didn’t know you were interested in until, well, you are.
After reading about Kamkwamba on Mike McKay's blog Hactivate (which picked up the story from a local Malawi newspaper), TEDGlobal Conference Director Emeka Okafor spent several weeks tracking him down at his home in Masitala Village, Wimbe, and invited him to attend TEDGlobal on a fellowship. Onstage, Kamkwamba talked about his invention and shared his dreams: to build a larger windmill to help with irrigation for his entire village, and to go back to school.
Following Kamkwamba's moving talk, there was an outpouring of support for him and his promising work. Members of the TED community got together to help him improve his power system (by incorporating solar energy), and further his education through school and mentorships. Subsequent projects have included clean water, malaria prevention, solar power and lighting for the six homes in his family compound; a deep-water well with a solar-powered pump for clean water; and a drip irrigation system. Kamkwamba himself returned to school, and is now attending the African Leadership Academy, a new pan-African prep school outside Johannesburg, South Africa.
Kamkwamba's story is documented in his autobiography, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope. A short documentary about Kamkwamba, calledMoving Windmills, won several awards last year; Kamkwamba and friends are now working on a full-length film. You can read the ongoing details on his blog (which he keeps with help from his mentor), and support his work and other young inventors at MovingWindmills.org.
