The So and So Series

Pics of the May 16 So and So Reading

chris vitiello

nicole sorracco

justin marks

so and so patrons warming up

So and So #32

Justin Marks * kathryn l. pringle * Chris Vitiello

Saturday * May 16th * 8pm * Morning Times * 8 E. Hargett Street * Raleigh, NC

Justin Marks' first book is A Million in Prizes (New Issues Press). He is also the author of several chapbooks, the most recent being Voir Dire (Rope-a-Dope Press). New work can be found in Harp & Altar, Sink Review and Tusculum Review. He is the founder and editor of Kitchen Press Chapsbooks and lives in New York City with his wife and their twin son and daughter.

kathryn l. pringle is an American poet living in Durham, NC. she wrote a book called Right New Biology.

Chris Vitiello’s Irresponsibility came out last year on Ahsahta Press. He is concerned with, among other things: clarification, light, stars, the sky, clouds, wind, trees, birds, deduction, eyes, leaves, people and their observable behaviors, grasses, the soil, flowers and their growth, description and representation, vegetables, skins and peels, seeds, nuts, cross-sections, dictionary definitions, synonyms and antonyms but especially synonyms, utility, analysis, skepticism, kindness, goodness, quantity, measurement, direct commands, questions, and fact statements. He lives in Durham, NC, is dad to 2 terrific daughters, and works on literacy issues in the public schools.

The event will also feature limited edition collaborative artwork designed by AdAm Peele. Email rqpoetry@gmail.com for more information, or visit thesoandsoseries.blogspot.com.

So and So Video: #31

Elisa (w/ one "s") Gabbert:

For more, go here.

So and So's Back

Thanks to Elisa Gabbert, Tony Tost, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis for a wonderful first reading in Raleigh. To Robin Vuchnich for her gorgeous broadsides. To Greg and Billy for having us on at the Raleigh Quarterly. To the Morning Times for letting us use their terrific space. And to Raleigh...what an unbelievable turn out! See you again on May 16th. Same bat time. Same bat channel. Justin Marks will be coming to town from NYC to read with Chris Vitiello and Kate Pringle of Durham. All three have exciting new books out.

The other Chris doing the robot

Elisa giving me the subtle pre-reading bird

The crowd

Elisa Gabbert

Tony Tost

Rachel Blau DuPlessis

So and So #31 (our first in Raleigh!!!)

Rachel Blau DuPlessis * Elisa Gabbert * Tony Tost

Saturday * February 21st * 8pm * Morning Times * 8 E. Hargett Street * Raleigh, NC

The on-going long poem project of Rachel Blau DuPlessis begun in 1986, is collected in Torques: Drafts 58-76 (Salt Publishing, 2007) as well as in Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan U.P., 2001) and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnnumbered: Précis (Salt Publishing, 2004). Pitch: Drafts 77-95 is forthcoming. In 2006, two books of her innovative essays were published: Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work on gender and poetics, along with reprinting of the ground-breaking The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice, both from University of Alabama Press. In 2002 she was also awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, in 2007, a residency for poetry at Bellagio, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 2008-09, an appointment to the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.. Her website is http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/duplessis

Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent. Her recent poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Diagram, Eleven Eleven, Meridian, Pleiades, Typo and Washington Square. A chapbook, Thanks for Sending the Engine, is available from Kitchen Press. She is also the author, with Kathleen Rooney, of Something Really Wonderful (dancing girl press, 2007) and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths Books, 2008). Their collaborations can be found in Boston Review, Caketrain, jubilat, No Tell Motel and other journals.

Tony Tost is the author of Complex Sleep (Iowa 2007), World Jelly (Effing 2005) and Invisible Bride (LSU 2004). He lives in Durham, NC with Leigh and Simon.

Broadsides of the poets' work, designed by Robin Vuchnich, will be available.

Our New Collaboration and Our New Venue

We'd like to re-introduce The So and So Reading Series, a quarterly reading and design endeavor soon to be launched in downtown Raleigh (having been transplanted from its Boston origins). So and So seeks to fill Raleigh's poetry void by bringing in both national and regional poets.

The So and So series will coordinate with the new print journal, The Raleigh Quarterly (coinciding quarterly readings with RQ's issue launches). Raleigh Quarterly will print work from the visiting poets alongside visual pieces. Additional poems will be published online.

Additionally, So and So will collaborate with local artists and printers to create limited run broadsides of each poet's work.

Chris Salerno and Chris Tonelli will run the series and edit the poetry element of Raleigh Quarterly. Readings will start in February 2009. We'll make announcements as readings near and rosters are filled.