MLA OFF-SITE READING 2009 - THE VIDEO

Click on the part number to navigate to the videos.

Part 1 - Julia Bloch, Matthew Landis and Rodrigo Toscano

Part 2 - Carlos Soto Roman, Kim Gek Lin Short and Jacob Russell

Part 3 - Angel Hogan, Ish Klein and Gregroy Laynor

Part 4 - Nava EtShalom, Ryan Eckes, Sueyeun Juliette Lee and LRSN

Part 5 - Norma Cole, Rod Smith and Frank Sherlock

Part 6 - C.A. Conrad and A.L. Nielsen

Part 7 - Bob Perelman and Suzanne Heyd

Part 8 - Emily Abendroth, Laura Moriarty and Evie Shockley

Part 9 - Pattie McCarthy, Ron Silliman and Thomas Devaney

Part 10 - Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Tyrone Williams and Jenn McCreary

Part 11 - Carla Harryman, Kate Lilley and Steve Dolph

Part 12 - Chris McCreary, Jennifer Scappettone and Lisa Howe

Part 13 - William Howe, Charles Cantalupo and Julie Phillips Brown

Part 14 - Norman Finkelstein, Mel Nichols and Aaron Kunin

Part 15 - Jamie Townsend, Michael Hennessey and Chris Carrier

Part 16 - Eric Selland and Barrett Watten

Part 17 - James Shea, Sandra Lim, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan and Danny Snelson

Part 18 - Michelle Taransky, Herman Beavers, Adrian Khactu and Julia Bloch

MLA OFF-SITE READING 2009 - Philadelphia

Point your browser here for a recording of the event.

"Coming in from the Cold" -- Celebrating 20 Years of the MLA Off-Site Reading

Seeing that the Modern Language Association was scheduled to meet in D.C. in December of 1989, Rod Smith seized the opportunity to organize a literary event featuring visiting writers. Hosted by Bick's Books in Adams Morgan, the evening showcased readings of poetry by Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman and me, followed by a critical paper read by Marjorie Perloff. Thus began a new tradition, growing into an annual reading held away from the MLA hotel and typically presenting more than fifty local and visiting poets. You can hear a recording of that 1989 reading at the Penn Sound site, here. And you can hear this reading by visiting this URL.

This year the MLA recognized that twenty years of marathon poetics with an on-site mini-version reuniting all the poets from that first event, along with poets who have organized some of the readings and poets who have appeared in them. Readers for this occasion included Elizabeth Willis, Tyrone Williams, Rodrigo Toscano, Rod Smith, Evie Shockley, Jennifer Scappetone, Bob Perelman, Laura Moriarty, Patrick Durgin and Charles Bernstein.

MLA 2009 - PHILADELPHIA

When I got to my hotel room at 8:00 AM and looked in the mirror, I got a lesson in why they call those flights "red eyes." I also learned, as part of my continuing education in Starbucks anthropology, that a "red-eye" is a cup of black coffee with a shot of espresso.

I guess the good people at the Philadelphia Mariott feared that after two previous MLAs in recent years we might have grown tired of the venue; things had been moved around quite a bit since our last visit. The bar, most particularly, had been moved and enlarged. I suppose they've been reading their newspapers and figured we had a lot to drink about.

The conference itself was great this year. While I had to miss all too many sessions (including some of my own Poetry Division's panels) due to varied pieces of business that obliged me, the talks I did get to hear were uniformly non-uniform.

I started out at the panel on Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture (where I learned just how universal Catholicism may be), and I closed out the conference listening to presentations on Langston Hughes. In between, still more poetry -- In posts to come I'll be sharing photos from the readings in Philadelphia.