Friday, March 29, 2013

Friday, April 5: "Illegal Leaves of Grass": Poetry, Animation & Comedy of Grass-Related ideas from Walt Whitman to the War on Drugs

In honor of National Poetry Month and 420 Day

Illegal Leaves of Grass

An exploration of grass-related ideas from Walt Whitman to the War on Drugs

Friday, APRIL 5, 6 pm

Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street (between Bleecker & W. 4th St.)
Admission: $12 (includes a free drink)

An wild array of comics, dramatists and visual artists hit the stage as Three Rooms Press presents "Illegal Leaves of Grass: An exploration of grass-related ideas from Whitman to The War on Drugs"

Visual artists include DEAN HASPIEL (an Emmy-award winning animator, and creator of the Eisner Award-nominated Billy Dogma) and PETER SCHMIDEG (offering the world premiere of his animated Walt Whitman poem). Dramatists include JOHN FARRELL (founding member of NYC’s legendary Everyman Company and author/star of Off-Broadway show Walt Whitman: Time Traveler), along with PAUL DeRIENZO (detailing his "War Against the War on Drugs"). And wrapping up the show will be the hilarious sketch comedy duo BLEACH & BONG, along with stand-up comic, political activist and 2013 NYC mayoral candidate RANDY CREDICO.

The event will include giveaways of Illegal Leaves of Grass-related dvds, books and other prizes!

Doors open at 5:45. Admission is $12, which includes a free drink. Cornelia Street Cafe is at 29 Cornelia Street, in the West Village, between W. 4th Street at Bleecker (http://corneliastreecafe.com). Reservations and additional information: info@threeroomspress.com.

Illegal Leaves of Grass of is the latest installment of The Monthly at Cornelia Street Cafe, a unique series curated by Three Rooms Press that brings together leading poets, intellectuals, performers and budding rebels on a different topic each month. Upcoming events include: APRIL 12: GIMME SHELTERS (all-open poetry reading—to account for yourself!! Special $8 cover charge); MAY 3: HAVE A NYC 2 (readings of New York-based short stories! Special $8 cover charge); JUNE 7: HYDROGEN JUKEBOX (modern poetry performed to live rock band).

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The Launch Pad Goes Corsican: Monday, March 25! Rare Appearance By Patrizia Gattaceca!

Direct from Corsica! An Evening with Singer/Songwriter/Poet

PATRIZIA GATTACECA and Friends

Featuring the U.S. Launch of her book

Isula d’Anima / Soul Island

Renowned Corsican singer/songwriter/poet Patrizia Gattaceca travels to New York City for the launch of her first English / Corsican book Isula d’Anima / Soul Island (Three Rooms Press) at Le Poisson Rouge on Monday, March 25 at 7 pm. She will read from her book in English, French and Corsican, plus perform her music, with special guests.

PATRIZIA GATTACECA is well-known worldwide as a singer-songwriter, active in the Reacquistu (the Corsican cultural revival movement), and founder, with Patrizia Poli of the female polyphonic singing trio Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Courses, which catapulted to international fame after a stunning performance in the 1992 Winter Olympics. She has performed and recorded with John Cale, Patti Smith, Manu Dibango and numerous other international musicians. Her poetry is remarkable: proverbs, filled with imagery of moons and mountains and sea and underneath it all, the taut sensation of loss and sorrow, the heartfelt exploration of the loneliness of the human condition, and, as well-known Corsican poet Ghjacumu Thiers describes, "the infinite within the finite."

In addition to her creative work, Gattaceca is known as "one of the most courageous women of France." In 2007, she was accused of aiding Yvan Colonna, a suspect in the 1998 murder of Claude Érignac, the prefect of Corsica. Some background: On February 6, 1998, as he left a theater in Ajaccio, Corsica, Érignac was shot three times in the neck. An investigation identified Colonna as the prime suspect. He disappeared, sparking the biggest manhunt in French history. Colonna was captured in 2003.

Four years later, Gattaceca was indicted for aiding Colonna in 2002 and 2003. She was shackled, brought to a Paris prison and fiercely interrogated for nearly a week. For three years, while her case was pending, she was unable to leave France, hampering her international singing career. When she finally was brought to trial in May 2010, she risked years of penal servitude for aiding Colonna. She admitted to feeding Colonna but denied that act made her a terrorist, telling Journal du Diamanche in a pretrial interview that while she disobeyed one law, she had obeyed another: “the duty to show hospitality and solidarity toward someone she considered innocent.” In July 2010, she was sentenced to time served. The prosecution immediately made an unprecedented appeal and, after numerous delays, Gattaceca is slated to go back to trial in April 2013.

The Three Rooms Press edition of Isula d'Anima / Soul Island marks one of the world's only Corsican-English poetry books. UNESCO classifies Corsican as a potentially endangered language, although it is a key vehicle for the preservation of Corsican culture which is rich in proverbs and polyphonic song. Three Rooms Press' goal in publishing the book was to help preserve the language, and thereby the culture for future generations.

The Launch Pad @ LPR is a series, created by Three Rooms Press in partnership with Le Poisson Rouge, which brings newly published work of established, emerging and estranged poets from around the world to the New York spotlight. Session 4 of The Launch Pad @ LPR is Monday, March 25. Doors open 6:30 pm; showtime: 7 p.m. Le Poisson Rouge is at 158 Bleecker Street (at Thompson).

Additional information: info@threeroomspress.com.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

March 15: Dada Poetry/Performance Festival @ Cornelia Street Cafe

The Sixth Annual

NYC Dada Poetry and Performance Salon

featuring the NYC launch of

Maintenant 7: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art

plus live reading & performances by

Experimental poet JEROME ROTHENBERG
Romanian Dada descendent VALERY OISTEANU
The Duke of Dada PETER CARLAFTES
Electronica Music/Performance by BANLIEUE QUEENS
DADAnewyork LOIS KAGAN MINGUS & ROBERT HIEGER
New Jersey Dada JOHN J. TRAUSE
Los Angeles Dada JAN MICHAEL ALEJANDRO

Friday, March 15, 6 pm

Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street (between Bleecker & W. 4th St.)

NEW YORK—Modern day Dada poets, collagists, performers and artists are creating controversial and thrilling work that continues the spirit of the avant garde art movement sprung from disgust with World War I. Their work will be featured at 6th Annual NYC Dada Poetry and Performance Salon—and launch for Maintenant 7: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art—on Friday, March 15, 6 pm at Cornelia Street Cafe. Featured performers include visual/sound poet Jerome Rothenberg, Romanian Dada madman Valery Oisteanu, the maverick Duke of Dada Peter Carlaftes, vibrant DADAnewyork performance artists Lois Kagan Mingus and Robert Hieger, and surprise guests. The event is sponsored by Three Rooms Press.

The first 10 people will receive a free copy Maintenant 7 and all will be eligible to win Dada-related prizes including books, dvds, photographs and more.

Doors open at 5:45. Admission is $12, which includes a free drink. Cornelia Street Cafe is at 29 Cornelia Street, in the West Village, between W. 4th Street at Bleecker (http://corneliastreecafe.com). Reservations and additional information: info@threeroomspress.com.

Maintenant 7: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art is the sixth edition of an annual collection of contemporary Dada work inspired by Dada instigator and Three Rooms Press spiritual advisor Arthur Cravan. Since 2008, the Three Rooms Press series has collected outsider art, poetry, mail art, collages and more from around the world. This year's issue, edited by Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, features an essay about Marcel Duchamp's seminal work Fresh Widow by New York gallery owner Francis Naumann, poetry by American writers Gerard Malanga, Andy Clausen, Roger Conover, Charles Plymell, Mike Watt, W.K. Stratton and Jerome Rothenberg, and an expanded selection of work by leading European, Asian and Central American dadaists including Tomomi Adachi, Jaap Blonk, Lucille Calmel, Jelle Meander, Philip Meersman, Ulf Stolterfoht, J.L. Rodríguez Pittí and many more.

The original Dada movement peaked from 1916-1922, primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Its purpose was to ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world. In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and anarchist in nature.

The Dada Salon is the latest installment of The Monthly at Cornelia Street Cafe, a unique series curated by Three Rooms Press that brings together leading poets, intellectuals, performers and budding rebels on a different topic each month. Upcoming events include: APRIL 3: ILLEGAL LEAVES OF GRASS (a tribute to Walt Whitman and an exploration of the movement to legalize marijuana); MAY 3: HAVE A NYC 2 (readings of New York-based short stories); JUNE 7: HYDROGEN JUKEBOX (modern poetry performed to live rock band).

Monday, January 21, 2013

Women in Love — Radical Ideas on Sex and Eros — Feb 1 at Cornelia St. Cafe

Three Rooms Press presents THE MONTHLY at Cornelia Street Cafe

Radical New Ideas and Poems on Sex, Power,

Soul and Eros in the Month of Love

Cintra Wilson | Hettie Jones
Lily Scarborough Heehs
Alyssa Pinsker | Rachel Chapple, PhD

Amber Atiya | Sarah Herrington

Emily Linstrom | Diane O'Debra

Hosted by Kat Georges

Friday, February 1, 2013, 6 pm

Cornelia St Cafe, NYC

Beat-era original Hettie Jones faces off with Cintra Wilson ("the Dorothy Parker of the cyber age") to divulge radical ideas about love, sex, power, soul and eros with an eclectic line-up of women writers and performers as Three Rooms Press presents "Women in Love," Friday, February 1, 6 pm at Cornelia Street Cafe. The event features performances and readings by nine passionate, irreverent and intense women artists, burlesque dancers and cultural influencers.

The madcap mix of performers includes Cintra Wilson (Author, Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny; columnist for Salon.com and The New York Times); Rachel Chapple, Ph.D. (Writer, artist, designer, cultural anthropologist and founder of the online art and storytelling initiative real-stories-gallery.org); Alyssa Pinsker (Moth Storyteller, NBCC book critic, global correspondent for Huffington Post, stand up comic, teacher and writer); and Emily Linstrom (Fiction writer, burlesque bombshell, performance artist).

Additional performers include Lily Scarborough Heehs (Writer, Spectacle, Tenuous Confessionalist, Poet, Fiction Writer, Bookslut, Nerdface); Amber Atiya (poet and performance artist); Sarah Herrington (big-apple farmer, dharma bum punk, author of Always Moving); and Diane O’Debra (Improv performer and poet). Kat Georges (author, Our Lady of the Hunger, and co-founder of Three Rooms Press) hosts.

The reading is part of THE MONTHLY at Cornelia Street Cafe, a new monthly reading series hosted by Three Rooms Press, in which a unique blend of writers, artists, and performers explore contemporary ideas and culture. Doors open at 5:45. Admission is $12 which includes a free beer, wine or soft drink.

Cornelia Street Cafe is at 29 Cornelia Street, in the West Village, between W. 4th Street at Bleecker (http://corneliastreecafe.com/). Info and reservations: info@threeroomspress.com

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Call for Submissions to Maintenant 7: Journal of Contemporary Dada Poetry & Art

Three Rooms Press' annual journal is inspired by DaDa instigator and Three Rooms Press spiritual advisor Arthur Cravan — who created the very first ‘zine in the world with his publication Maintenant and we’re proud to carry on the tradition. In past issues, we have published bold work from Neo-Dadaists worldwide. We are honored to be included in the Museum of Modern Art NY archives.

Black & White art (collages, mail art, etc.) and short poems encouraged. Details on online submission form at http://bit.ly/TPZXnF