Events

Wednesday, October 23
Doors: 7 pm
Event: 7:30 pm
at 2220 Arts + Archives

Questions about the event? Visit The Poetic Research Bureau for full details.

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Roof Books, the legendary New York publisher of experimental and avant-garde poetry, invites you to a reading to celebrate the launch of two new titles by California poets: Bumblebees, by Deborah Meadows, and Through a Window by Norman Fischer. Hosted by the publisher and editor of Roof, James Sherry, readers also include Roof authors Diane Ward and Brian Kim Stefans.

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Norman Fischer is a poet, essayist, and Soto Zen Buddhist priest. His recent poetry titles are Nature, There Was a Clattering As…, The Museum of Capitalism, and Men in Suits. Just out from Roof Books is his serial poem Through a Window. In 2022 Chax Press brought out his Selected Poems 1980-2013. His latest Buddhist title is When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen. He lives in Muir Beach CA with his wife Kathie, also a Zen priest. He is the founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation wwww.everydayzen.org

“Through a Window teems with the exquisite flora (cypresses, opium poppies, eucalyptus and plum trees) and fauna (sparrows, foxes, juncos, deer) of Fischer’s home in Muir Beach, and reading it feels like a kind invitation to sit there with him. —Nada Gordon

Deborah Meadows’ new book of poetry is Bumblebees. She recently had work included in Hyena, a publication that celebrates the legacy of women’s surrealism on the occasion of the journal’s centennial. Recent poetry titles include Neo-bedrooms (Shearsman, 2022): Lecture Notes, a duration poem in twelve parts (2018), and The Demotion of Pluto: Poems and Plays (2017). She is an Emerita faculty member at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, lives with her husband in Los Angeles’ Arts District/Little Tokyo. www.deborahmeadows.com

“In Bumblebees, Meadows’s lines stitch topographic contours through mountains of thrown out sound, hyphae reaching out to fellow artists, with mycelial kin drawing a collective map of California from the carbon museum of the future.”— Jonathan Skinner

Diane Ward’s poetry appears in the Spontaneous Publication “What Do You Say?” and is forthcoming in Julebord. Her books include Never Without One and Relation (both published by Roof Books), and Theory of Emotion (Segue / O Books). She is working with Phyllis Rosenzweig, Rod Smith and P.Inman to edit the Collected Works of Tina Darragh, and with Jacob Kahn on a collection of essays & poems by Roberto Bedoya. She lives in Sacramento where she works with urban agriculture programs and nonprofit groups.

Brian Kim Stefans‘s most recent books are For Trapped Things (Roof, 2023), a collection of poems, and Festivals of Patience: The Verse Poems of Arthur Rimbaud (Kenning Editions, 2021), translations. Word Toys: Poetry and Technics, about poetry and the philosophy of technology, was published by the University of Alabama Press in 2017. He teaches English and new media studies at UCLA. His website is: www.arras.net

James Sherry is the author of 15 books of poetry and prose. His selected works, Comin’ ‘Round, is just out from Chax Press. Selfie: Poetry, Social Change & Ecological Connection was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2022. Since 1976, he has edited Roof Books and Roof Magazine, publishing nearly 200 titles of seminal works of language writing, flarf, conceptual poetry, new narrative, and environmental poetry.

Roof Books can be ordered here: https://www.roofbooks.com/