PILOT / P-QUEUE / DTC LAUNCH

Last night's Triple Launch Extravaganza announcing the latest numbers of Pilot, P-Queue and Damn the Caesars was a delightful success. Held at the Adam Mickiewicz Library on Buffalo's East Side, the event brought in an impressive gathering of approximately seventy-five people. More pub and performance space than library, the site of the event featured a dimly lit bar with a wide selection of Polish beers and vodkas, an air hockey table, contemporary Polka, and a large hanger-like theater space where the voices of even the softest speaking poets projected outward to the farthest members of the audience.

It was an honor to begin the event with readings by Steve McCaffery and Karen Mac Cormack, both of whom have work appearing in this latest volume of Damn the Caesars. Publicly acknowledging the recent passing of Bill Griffiths, McCaffery started by reading the first part of an untitled Griffiths poem also included in DTC: "WE move forth// silent (step) separate// atta slow pace over sward/ descending/ from this mausoleum". He then read, at a moderately quick pace, from the longer poem Gobi Vedda. Mac Cormack read the shorter poem "Green Logistics" and "ITS...", a prose poem constructed of dislocated phrases culled exclusively from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Contributors to the most recent number of Matt Chambers' Pilot magazine, the following block of readers included Sean Bonney, Frances Kruk, Sophie Robinson, and Kai Fierle-Hedrick. Assistant editor of How2, Fierle-Hedrick recently returned to the US after eight years in London and was fortunately in the area and available to read. Bonney, Kruk, and Robinson, on the other hand, were able to make the launch through arrangements made by Kevin Thurston and a generous grant from the Mildred Lockwood Lacey Foundation for Poetry. Co-editors of the Yt Communications imprint, Bonney and Kruk traveled from Hackney while Sophie Robinson, now finishing an MA in Poetic Practice at Royal Holloway, traveled from London.

The evening was closed out with readings by Jose Alvergue, Ben Bedard, Jon Cotner, and Siobhan Scarry—all of whom are contributors to the fourth volume of P-Queue magazine founded by Sarah Campbell and now under the editorship of Andrew Rippeon. Alvergue, who received his MFA from the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts, read both work which appears in P-Queue and parts of a newer project. Ben Bedard read from Implicit Lyrics, a series of prose poems, a few of which have recently been translated into Spanish. Jon Cotner read from the first part of his book-length collaboration with Andy Fitch, Conversations Over Stolen Food. The part of Fitch in this first conversation was performed by Zach Finch. Siobhan Scarry ended the evening by reading from a series of occasional poems written earlier that day, including variations on two Shakespeare sonnets and poems generated through cell phone discussions. Guaranteeing their occasional quality and foreclosing on the possibility of further iteration, Scarry set the poems aflame after reading the last and these burning poems marked, in a particularly dramatic way, the end of the event.
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N.B.—ON THE MAGS

Edited by Andrew Rippeon, volume four of P-Queue includes new writing by Michael Robbins, Philip Metres, Siobhan Scarry, Allison Carter, Susanne Hall, Laura Jaramillo, Michelle and Richard Taransky, Harold Abramowitz, Crane Giamo, David Driscoll, Meg Barboza, Jose Felipe Alvergue, Elizabeth Cross, Mathew Timmons, Ben Bedard, Anthony Hawley, Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch, and Jordan Stempleman. Two-color letterpress covers and a numbered two-color letterpress card of poem #6 from Susanne Hall's Loteria, part of which appears in the volume. For further information, write: P-Queue c/0 Andrew Rippeon, 306 Clemens Hall, English Department, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260. Or visit the P-Queue blog: http://pqueue.blogspot.com/

Issue two of Pilot, edited by Matt Chambers, is a boxed set of 17 chapbooks featuring new writing by a wide range of younger British poets, including Sean Bonney, Emily Critchley, matt ffytche, Kai Fierle-Hedrick, Giles Goodland, Jeff Hilson, Piers Hugill, Frances Kruk, Marianne Morris, Neil Pattison, Reitha Pattison, Simon Perril, Sophie Robinson, Natalie Scargill, Harriet Tarlo, and Scott Thurston. Covers designed by Chris Fritton. For further information, write: Pilot c/o Matt Chambers, 306 Clemens Hall, English Department, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260. Email: mjc6@buffalo.edu