Splashed in this week’s NEW YORKER: It’s the BIG SUR BROOKLYN BRIDGE Festival (May 12-19)!Henry Miller Memorial Library

Splashed in this week’s NEW YORKER: It’s the BIG SUR BROOKLYN BRIDGE Festival (May 12-19)!Henry Miller Memorial Library

And squeeze in if you can to our party: Ping-Pong Opening night Soiree!

Interview with Magnus Torén

by Maria Garcia Teutsch

MGT: Tell me about how you got started thinking about the Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge project?

Magnus Torén: I have had this in the back of my mind for a long time--it isn't exactly a great big novel idea! Miller grew up in Willamsburg and it seems we should go there to show off what we do on behalf of the homeboy who did good! Specifically what clinched it this time was when I spoke with my friend Peter (Hale) about coming over to do this and he mentioned the City Reliquary, a place we had visited together some years back, being right around the corner from 662 Driggs Ave, (where Miller grew up) I thought 'OK, this is it--it is meant to be!'

MGT: What will your participation be in this event, you know, besides running the show?

MT: I look forward to meeting people, getting a chance to share in ideas about what it means to celebrate art and writers, what it means to support freedom of expression, and perhaps find out if we can get a place to have a Miller Library on a permanent basis in Brooklyn.(!) You know it'll be a busy time, I'll have a bunch of little things to tend to . . .

MGT: What are you most excited about seeing in this event?

MT: The streets of Brooklyn in May!

MGT: What role do you think artists have in the 21st century?

MT: Since our ability to communicate is undergoing a paradigm shift, artists play an increasingly important role; the facility with which good and bad ideas can spread to the peoples of the world is astounding; therefore, it is ever more important to populate those airwaves and microwaves with humanism and the arts!

MGT: How does the Henry Miller Memorial library support artists?

MT: We propose the idea that art matters to all that come by. 

We have a place where we attempt to celebrate just being in the moment, no frills, some tea, coffee, books and green grass!

MGT: Why does this matter?

the 'art' is the vessel we use to share our common humanity, a way for all to communicate across borders, time and space. 

Seriously, I think art is so very, very, important and sometimes when you talk about it out loud it sounds like hyperbole. 

But, I don't think you can overstate the importance of supporting artists, it is in part through art that we arrive at an understanding of one another and our place in the world.

MGT: How will the Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge extend this role?

MT: It seems a natural extension of what we've done for the last 20 years - Paris is next! Aller Retour Big Sur!  

For more on the Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Festival (Williamsburg May 12-19th) go here for list of events

The Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Festival--the 3 Ps of poetry: Ping-Pong, Parachute and poetrycrush!

Big Sur in Brooklyn? Well, a little piece of the wonder that is the Henry Miller Memorial library happens May 12-19. For a full schedule of events go here: HENRY

Ping-Pong, Parachute, and Poetry Crush brings you the first night's offering of poetry, performance, and prose. (with apologies for the alliteration, but hey, we're all poets over here).

These amazing folks will be dazzling us with their brilliance:

Monday, May 13^th, 7:00 pm--til at the City Reliquary

Big Sur/Brooklyn Bridge night of poetry, prose and performance is hosted by Ping-Pong, a journal of art and literature published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library, the Coney Island performance festival Parachute, and the Brooklyn-based poetry blog: poetrycrush.

Jonathan Ames has varied his creative output in recent years to span numerous media. He published another well-received collection of autobiographical essays in 2006 entitled I Love You More Than You Know; in 2008, he collaborated on The Alcoholic, a semi-autobiographical graphic novel with artist Dean Haspiel and launched Bored to Death, an HBO series about a creatively-blocked Brooklyn writer named Jonathan Ames (played by Jason Schwartzman) who reinvents himself as a private investigator; and in 2009, Ames published yet another collection of gonzo essays, entitled The Double Life Is Twice as Good.

Todd Colby has published four books of poetry: Ripsnort, Cush, Riot in the Charm Factory: New and Selected Writings, and Tremble & Shine, all published by Soft Skull Press.  He was also the editor of the poetry anthology Heights of the Marvelous: A New York Anthology (St. Martin’s Press). Colby serves on the Board of Directors for The Poetry Project, where he teaches poetry workshops. Colby has given readings at The Poetry Project, The Rubin Museum, New York University, The New School for Social Research, Brooklyn Public Library, Cornell University, The Kingston Writers Conference, The Whitney Museum of American Art, PS 122, and more. He posts new work on

gleefarm.blogspot.com.      

Amanda Deutch’s poetry has appeared in Esque, Denver Quarterly, Delirious Hem, Boog City, 6x6, Watchword Press and elsewhere.  She is the author of four chapbooks:  Gena Rowlands (Sounds Nice) (forthcoming), Box of Sky: Skeleton Poems (Dusie Kollektiv 4), Motel Drift, and The Subway Series. As a poet, she has collaborated with musicians, video artists, installation artists, sculptors, theatre companies and her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Deutch is the recipient of a 2007 Footpaths to Creativity Fellowship to write in the Azores Archipelago. In 2009, she founded Parachute: the Coney Island Performance Festival, a literary non-profit that hosts a festival, free writing workshops, and innovative poetry happenings in Coney Island. www.ParachutePoetry.tumblr.com She lives in Brooklyn and plays skee-ball in her spare time.

Christine Hamm is a PhD candidate in English Lit., and a former poetry editor for Ping*Pong. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat. Her poetry has been published in Orbis, Pebble Lake Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, Dark Sky, and many others. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English at CUNY. Echo Park, her third book of poems, came out from Blazevox in the fall of 2011. In 2012, she was a runner up for the Erbacce poetry prize, and Erbacce published her chapbook, My Western. Christine was a runner-up to the Poet Laureate of Queens.
  

Becca Klaver is the author of the poetry collection LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and several chapbooks, including Nonstop Pop (Bloof Books, 2013) andMerrily, Merrily (Lame House Press, 2013). She co-founded the feminist poetry press Switchback Books and is a member of the outreach committee for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Becca is currently a PhD candidate in English at Rutgers University, where she is writing a dissertation on U.S. avant-garde women's poetry, feminism, and the everyday. She grew up in Milwaukee, WI, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. 

J. Hope Stein is the author of the chapbooks [Talking Doll]:  (Dancing Girl Press 2012), Corner Office (H_NGM_N BKS 2012) and [Mary]:  (Hyacinth Girl Press 2012).   She is also the author of poetry/humor site eecattings.com, editor of poetrycrush.com.

Maria Garcia Teutsch is a poet and the editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong magazine published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library, and also The Homestead Review published by Hartnell College. She has been published in The Café Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poets and Writers, Prairie Schooner, Whole Beast Rag, The Cold Mountain Review, Two Review, and many others. She serves as President of the Board at Henry Miller Memorial Library. She spends half of her time in Penang, Malaysia and half in Santa Cruz, California. More here: marialoveswords.com

Edwin Torres is a bi-lingual poet rooted in the languages of both sight and sound. A native New Yorker, he's received a number of fellowships and acknowledgements over his lifespan as a poet and has traveled the world seeking like-minded mind-travelers. He has work in the forthcoming anthologies; "Postmodern American Poetry Vol. 2" (Norton) and 'Kindergarde: Avant Garde Poetry, Stories and Songs for Children" (Black Radish Press) and is the author of seven books of poetry including, “Yes Thing No Thing” (Roof Books), “One Night: Poems For The Sleepy” (Red Glass Books) and the forthcoming collection "Ameriscopia" (University of Arizona Press).

Los Angeles based artist TimYoud will be “performing” the entirety of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn over a two week period May 9-19 in New York, the setting for Miller’s classic and outrageous novel.  The performance consists of Youd reading aloud and typing the novel on an Underwood Standard, the same model typewriter used by Miller.  This sustained performance will begin on May 9 at the Pulse Art Fair in Manhattan and culminate over the course of the week long Henry Miller celebration at the City Reliquary in Brooklyn.  Youd is represented by Coagula Curatorial gallery in Los Angeles, in whose booth at Pulse the performance will commence and run through May 12.  He will move to the Reliquary from May 13-19.

Jenny Zhang is the author of the poetry collection, Dear Jenny, We Are All Find (Octopus Books, 2012.) Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Fence, Bomblog, HTMLGIANT, Glimmertrain, Altered Scale, Pen American, Coconut, Octopus, Pinwheel, Sink Review,Jezebel, The Guardian, and Vice. She writes for teenage girls at Rookie magazine, and teaches high school students in the Bronx. She's currently a writer-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

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photo credit: Stewart Ferebee

This is Not a Love Poem

I.

Through the warped glass of the bedroom window

she watches him, in the garden at night

amid a teepee of pinto beans

killing earwigs and roly-polys,

bent with a hammer in one hand, a flashlight

in the other.  Her teeth press lips against glass.

II.

With a leg over the saddle of his hip

sinew of thigh             he inhales

she opens an inch                     he exhales

she seams herself to each mole

nipples, belly button, cesarean scar          he sleeps.

At rest, her elbow on his shoulder

book in hand

licks a finger

turns a page.

III.

Three days of cheshire and a cuckolded moon

she does not miss him.

Four days--

she works the air for his scent.

Four days--

she thinks she sees him

but it's a rotting pine, a stellar jay, a ski lift, no--

a forklift.

She does not miss him.

 originally published in the The Cold Mountain Review

NewPages magazine reviews “Ping Pong” – the literary journal of the Henry Miller Library!Henry Miller Memorial Library

NewPages magazine reviews “Ping Pong” – the literary journal of the Henry Miller Library!Henry Miller Memorial Library

If you are wondering what to get me for Christmas . . . 

Go to Poetry Crush!

Donate Now! - Monterey County Gives! 2012

Donate to the Henry Miller Memorial Library, it's good for the soul. . . 
Donate Now! - Monterey County Gives! 2012