Brenda Sieczkowski & Eryn Green Reading for Ark Press this week!!

Brenda Sieczkowski & Eryn Green

(Thurs July 28--Fri July 29th)

Brenda Sieczkowski’s chapbook Wonder Girl in Monster Land is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.   She is currently working with Salt Lake’s chronically homeless and at-risk youth populations while she completes her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Utah.  She is also the Artist-in-Residence at the Salt Lake Community Writing Center.  Her poetry, creative nonfiction, and other hybrid-genre works have appeared in a wide variety of journals.

Check out Brenda’s “/ end notes /” at No Tell Motel.

Eryn Green’s poetry has appeared in Eclipse, the tiny, Bat City Review, H_NGM_N, Word for/ Word, Rhino, Iron Horse Review, Pheobe, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Denver Quarterly.  He holds an MFA from the University of Utah and he is currently pursuing his PhD in poetry at the University of Denver.

Check out Eryn’s “Bones” in H_NGM_N.

EVENTS/ SCHEDULE ::

Brenda Sieczkowski and Eryn Green will be reading at the Todd Mercantile Bakery Thurs, July 28^th at 7 pm. 

Brenda will be giving a talk entitled “The Spectacle of the Every Day” at the Todd Mercantile Bakery Fri, July 29^th at 7 pm.  Eryn will be giving a talk entitled “Poetry and Dictation: Jack Spicer and the Poet as Radio” immediately after.  

Joseph Wood Kicks Off the Ark Press Reading Series

On Thursday night our dear friend, Joseph Wood, kicked off Ark's Summer Reading Series.  After driving 11 hours from Tuscaloosa, Alabama the night before, Joseph read and talked about poems with a small but enthusiastic crowd at the Todd Mercantile and Bakery amidst the sound of pick-up trucks, tractors, riding lawn mowers and town dogs, staying late to talk with interested audience members (the range of topics I can remember include poetry, goats, farming and road construction). Later, at home, he whipped up a decadent meal consisting of at least three different kinds of fat and some asparagus.

Warm and endlessly generous, Joseph also insisted on making dinner for anyone who showed up for his talk about the space of belief in poetry the following night.

We are so grateful for his company and his commitment to poetry and community-making. It was a pleasure to have him in Todd this weekend.

You can check out Joseph's account of his visit as well as follow his ongoing exploration of poetry and daily life (among other things) here.

Inaugural Reading of the Summer Reading Series This Thursday, Talk Friday!

Joseph P. Wood 

(Thursday, July 14-Friday, July 15) 

Joseph P. Wood is the author of two full collections of poetry, Fold of the Map (Salmon Poetry Ltd., forthcoming) and I & We (CW Books, 2010), as well as five chapbooks, which include Gutter Catholic Love Song (Mitzvah Chaps, 2010), and In What I Have Done & Failed to Do (Elixir Press, 2006), which won the Elixir Press Chapbook Prize. His poems and reviews have been published widely in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, BOMB, Boston Review, diode, Gently Read Literature, Gulf Coast, Hotel Amerika, Hunger Mountain, Indiana Review, Poetry London, Prairie Schooner, Rain Taxi, RealPoetik, Verse, West Branch, among others. He's held residencies at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and at Artcroft. 

Wood teaches creative writing, English and American literature, and composition at The University of Alabama. In 2009, he co-founded The Slash Pine Projects (Slash Pine Press), an undergrad internship that focuses on immersion learning and community arts. Students take leadership positions in chapbook production and promotion, community arts event planning (whose yearly highlight is The Slash Pine Writers' Festival), grant writing, fundraising, mini-documentaries of poetry performance, technology and the arts, among a dozen other fluid projects. 

Wood will be reading at the Todd Mercantile Bakery Thursday, July 14th at 7:00 pm. 

He will give a talk entitled "The Poem and Ecumenical Humanism" at the Todd Mercantile Bakery, Friday, July 15th at 7:00 pm and will be co-hosting a creative writing workshop immediately after. 

Find a sample of his work here and here.