Everyone's all excited about how, on Friday, the date will be 11/11/11. Some folks put mystical stock in it; other people used it as an excuse to make fancy dinner reservations. Whether or not you think of this row of 11s as some kind of cosmic mathematical star gate, it still seems like an auspicious date on which to start something.
Fort Gondo is starting something on Friday: the Fort Gondo Poetry Series. It is organized by Jessica Baran and Jennifer Kronovet, and partly sponsored by cooperative print shop All Allong Press, which will produce limited-edition letterpress ephemera for each poet, plus an anthology of all the readers at the end of the series. Baran is a poet herself (here is our interview with her earlier this year, after the publication of her books Remains to be Used (Apostrophe, 2010) and Late and Soon, Getting and Spending (All Along Press, 2011)). She also writes art reviews for the Riverfront Times, and is Assistant Director at White Flag Projects. Kronovet is a writer-in-residence at Wash. U., and has published work in Colorado Review, Fence, Open City, The Nation, Ploughshares,and A Public Space. Her book, Awayward (BOA Editions, 2009) was selected by Jean Valentine for the A. Poulin Poetry Prize, and she is co-counder of Circumference: Poetry in Translation.
The aim of the series is to present interesting local and national poets who have just published a book or a chapbook. The first three poets are Chris Martin, Ted Mathys, and Mary Austin Speaker. Martin and Speaker are husband and wife, and live in "the oldest freestanding house," in Iowa City. Speaker's chapbooks include In the End There Were Thousands of Cowboys, Abandoning the Firmament (Menagerie Editions 2009 and 2010), and The Bridge (Push Press 2011). Her work has appeared in Boog City Reader, Bright Pink Mosquito, Pleiades, Big Bell, 20012, La Fovea, Highchair, New Orleans Review and has work forthcoming in Mrs. Maybe. Martin's books include American Music (Copper Canyon 2007) and Becoming Weather (Coffee House 2011); he is the former editor of Puppyflowers, and currently edits Futurepost, the blog for Futurepoem Books. Ted Mathys is from Ohio, but now lives in St. Louis, and works in environmental advocacy. He's recieved fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts; his work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, BOMB, Fence, Conjunctions, and Jubilat. His include The Spoils (2009) and Forge (2005), both from Coffee House Press.
So, the italic lists of books and journals is interesting and necessary, but that doesn't tell you much about each poet's work. Go here to read poems from Speaker, here for Martin, and here for Mathys. The reading begins at 7 p.m., and books will be available at that most exciting of places (at least for readers!) the poetry merch table. Future readings will be announced as they are scheduled. Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts is located at 3151 Cherokee. For more info, go to www.fortgondo.com/poetry, or drop a note to gondopoetry@gmail.com.
