Douglas Kearney Live!

Two free events in Houston! 

1)

Douglas Kearney Live!

Friday, November 16, 2012
6-9pm
Art League Houston 
1953 Montrose Blvd 77006

Rather than a traditional reading, renowned poet and performer Douglas Kearney will be live as part of the STACKS exhibition curated by Robert Pruitt at Art League Houston. The exhibit is a site of transformation addressing themes of Black imagination, creativity, and commodification. 

Douglas Kearney will be joining the artists of STACKS on opening night to participate in their performance. During this performance the artists will deconstruct materials and objects loaded with

 cultural stigmas. Mr. Kearney will provide eulogies for a selection of these materials, contemplating their former usefulness and the world in their impending absence.

Please come out to see Douglas Kearney and the entire STACKS show. Kearney is an amazing poet, performer, librettist and educator based in Los Angeles who does innovative work with sound, visual poetics, rhythm and more. His interests are broad and diverse—from song lyrics to African American trickster figures, from performance aesthetics to opera librettos, from the L.A. riots to experimental poetry, from innovative visual poetics to text art on walls in galleries.

More info on the STACKS exhibit is here.

More info at the Facebook event page for the Kearney reading.

To hear Douglas read more and for further dialogue and experimentation, there will be a workshop on Saturday, November 17 from 1-4pm at Project Row Houses. More info on the workshop can be found here.

2)

Workshop on Innovative Poetry
Saturday November 17, 2012
Project Row Houses, Live Oak and Holman
1-4pm

On Saturday, Kearney will offer a free workshop at Project Row Houses (2521 Holman St. 77004) from 1-4pm for all those interested in further dialogue and experimentation. The workshop will explore ways of mixing song lyrics and poetry; so bring (on paper, device, or in your mind) lyrics to one song you love; one song you’re sick of; and one song that reminds you of a struggle in your life. The workshop will be a space for discussion, reading, writing, performing and listening.

More info on Kearney's workshop on the Facebook event page.

Both of these events are supported by a grant from Poets & Writers, Inc.

Bio:

Douglas Kearney's first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. His second manuscript, The Black Automaton, was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series and published by Fence Books in 2009. It was also a finalist for the Pen Center USA Award in 2010. His chapbook-as-broadsides-as-LP, Quantum Spit, was released by Corollary Press in 2010. His newest chapbook, SkinMag (A5/Deadly Chaps) is now available. He has received a Whiting Writers Award, a Coat Hanger award and fellowships at Idyllwild and Cave Canem. Kearney has performed his poetry at the Public Theatre, the Orpheum, The World Stage and others. His poems have appeared in journals such as Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, nocturnes, Ninth Letter, miPoesias, Southampton Review, Washington Square and Tidal Basin Review. He has been commissioned to compose poetry in response to art by the Weisman Museum in the Twin Cities, the Studio Museum in Harlem, FOCA and SFMOMA. Performances of Kearney’s libretti have been featured in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Europe and he has been invited to speak on poetics in New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Malmö, Sweden. Born in Brooklyn, and raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in California’s Santa Clarita Valley. He teaches at CalArts and Antioch.

For more info on Kearney: http://www.douglaskearney.com/