PRESS 2009-2010

PRESS, a series devoted to the intersection of engaged experiments in text arts and left political movements, is rolling on. Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, in conjunction with The Evergreen State College its literary journal editors, is happy to announce three upcoming guests for this year's series:

David Buuck (Oct, 2009)

CA Conrad (March, 2010)

Kaia Sand & Jules Boykoff (Feb, 2010)

Eleni Stecopolous (TBA)

Sarah Mangold (TBA)

PRESS Poets Theater Week (June 2010)

Lydia Davis is also coming to read, tho Wheelhouse is only donating some of its services, and not co-sponsoring the event.

These amazing people above have agreed to visit, make a ruckus, create some beautiful things on the heels of a visit by David Buuck last month (see post below).  I announce this now, with dates yet to be firmed up, as I want to cross-reference PRESS with another important post by CA Conrad at PhillySound.

Here, Conrad writes about finding the HUMAN BEING in himself amidst the continued oppresive violence that those of us in the queer "community" are enduring.  And I say "enduring" here as epithet; so much of our middle-class, latent neo-liberal calls to action pivot around gay marriage and equal rights to join the military and kill people, occupy them, who, as Conrad points out, include gay Iraqi men, who are being slaughtered without hardly a word about it in the news, among activist groups, etc.  Yet, what to do with this anger?  How "to find peace," not in a quietist sense, but in the way that kari edwards, remarks Conrad, as well as Thom Donovan, did in xer last book, Bharat Jiva.  To find the human in oneself, to ground oneself in a sense of love for, if not those who oppress, than the possibility within them, to realize their humanity.  Which is a call to action, to alliance--alliance between the labor movement, the anti-war movement, the LGBT rights movement, etc.  A really amazing post that takes a hard look at edwards' work, at its own frustrations and desires to live or feel otherwise.  The paradox does not resolve here, opening the floor for us to ask more questions, to ask in the form of acting, through collective reimagining of who we want to be, and how we want to be, or: a radically renewed activism.