Here is the link to JoyFace's May newsletter, with information on our Solar Arts Building Art-a-Whirl studio featured artists and the amazing poets scheduled throughout the weekend in our Poetry Fort! Plus, info on registering for May's writing workshop offerings and our sincere gratitude.

Thursday, May 1st
7:00 P.M.
Solar Arts Building, second floor common area

Space, the human heart, or is the idea of a final frontier a myth in itself?
Join local writers perform creative work that will shed light on the subject.

 Featuring
 SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE
Alison Morse
Paula Cisewski
Chris Title
Lynne Kuechle
Peter Stein
Paige Riehl


SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE
has been described as a “Chicago Institution”,
“Walking creativity”, “The hardest working, most unjustly slept on artist in the
Twin Cities”, and “Everything I love about hip hop”…This award winning hip
hopper is a Twin Cities Native, Chicago transplant, MC, Poet, Producer,
Engineer, Visual Artist, Actor, Educator, Thinker, Lover and one hell of a cook.
He is a recipient of the 2012/13 VERVE Grant from Intermedia Arts which he’s
used to create an exciting new album of spoken word poetry called ‘The Cosmos
According to Your Closed Eyes’. He was also a semi-finalist in the “Forever
Saint Paul Challenge for teh Million Dollar Idea to Make Saint Paul Great”.


Alison Morse
Alison’s poems and stories have been published in the
Water~Stone Review, Natural Bridge, Rhino, Opium Magazine, and mnartists.org,
among other places; and her work won a Tiferet Fiction Award in 2012. From
2011-13, she was a writer for the Women Peacemakers Program at the Joan Kroc
Institute for Peace and Justice in San Diego. She also teaches English and runs
TalkingImageConnection, a reading series where poets and prose writers respond
to visual art in Twin Cities galleries. The next TIC reading, on April 19th,
will be at the Soap Factory. She loves the smell of coffee and the energetic
community-building of Cracked Walnut.


Christopher Title
lives and teaches in the Twin Cities area where he also
produces Barbaric Yawp, a monthly open mic reading series (barbaric.weebly.com).
His work has appeared in Rock Paper Scissors, Asphalt Sky, Konundrum Engine
Literary Review, Cartier Street Review, and Sleet Magazine.


Lynne Maker Kuechle
is a fiscal year 2013 recipient of an Artist
Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made
possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State
Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State
Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Maker
Kuechle was a 2011-2012 creative nonfiction winner in the Mentor Series at The
Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She is at work on a memoir/series of essays
about her lifelong fascination with figure skating.


Paula Cisewski’s
Paula’s second poetry collection, Ghost Fargo, was
selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize. She is also the author
of Upon Arrival (Black Ocean), of the chapbooks How Birds Work and Two Museums, and the co-author, with Mathias Svalina, of Or Else What Asked the Flame. Her poems appear regularly in literary magazines such as South Dakota Review, A Handsome Journal; H_NGM_N; Forklift, OH; failbetter; Everyday Genius; We Are So Happy to Know Something; BOMB; and REVOLUTIONesque.


Peter William Stein
is a native Minnesotan and a father of four sons. His poems have been published in Edge Magazine, Kerouac’s Dog Magazine, the Planet
Formerly Known as Earth, and has participated in various reading series in the
Minneapolis area. His writing is influenced by his studies in philosphy. His
first full length collection of poetry entitled Auto-Bio and other works are
available on his website www.pwilliamstein.com.


Paige Riehl
Paige’s poetry chapbook titled Blood Ties is forthcoming from
Finishing Line Press in summer 2014. Her poetry has also been published in many
publications such as Meridian, Potomac Review, South Dakota Review, and Nimrod International Journal. Poets Jude Nutter and Oliver de la Paz selected her as a winner of the 2012-2013 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry in Minneapolis. She won first place in the 2011 Literal Latte Prize for Poetry and also was a
semi-finalist for the 2011 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry.


This is a reading for the CW festival 2014, 25 readings on an almost daily
basis in a different space with a different cast of voices, featuring
storytellers, poets, slam poets, Creative Non Fiction writers and even the odd
musician


Visit https://www.facebook.com/events/1468498133364247/

 How nice of Sarah Fox to have tagged me in this kind of question chain game.

What is the working title of the book?

My last book, Ghost Fargo, came out a couple years ago. Since then, I’ve been working on three main projects; the most finished thing, the thing that’s just recently starting to see others’ eyes, is this project which is now called The Threatened Everything.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Every poem seems to be oeneric and/or ekphrastic. I became a single mother to my son at an age when many people are giddy to drink in bars with their own IDs. When he recently became an adult, my sense of identity fractured.  Myths and dreams and art helped, so I wrote from them.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Each of the sections is a different manifestation of a self and should be a connected short.

1.      In the opening poem, Kimsooja would play herself, and Christopher Walken would play Martin Heidegger. I’d do my best to support them by playing the minor character of myself. And the baby spiders.

2.      I’d like Isabella Rosellini to be the lead in Because of the Curses. With her glass beer stein legs from Guy Maddin’s movie The Saddest Music in the World. I’ll be the gaffer.

3.      In Empty Next Syndrome, twin broken mothers Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker’s character on Weeds) and Mother Theresa work it out! I’ll do their stunts.

4.      River Sonnets: Shirley MacLaine, but she’s not acting. I’ll be craft services.

5.      Field Guide for Austerity and Surroundings: Brit Marling from Another Earth.

6.       The voices of Baubo and Ame-no-Uzume, two goddesses of laughter, dictated The Laughing Club. They’re fierce and riotous and raunchy, and should be summoned to play themselves. The characters from all the other sections make cameos. I’ll be the props mistress.

Fun! I did NOT expect to spend the most time on this response!

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Burst forth with me/ in this narrow vista/ of the threatened everything.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

3 years? 5 years? 23 years? I’m not sure. I’m a ruminator.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My son. Jack Walsh. The shitty warmongers. Kimsooja. Alison Morse. Nightmares. Blessings. Osama bid Laden. My physical person. 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Forests. Texting deaths. Laughter. Incomprehensible freedom. Searching for a solid reason to keep living. Enormous love.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

What piques the interest of others is almost never what I expect!

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

What a mystery!

Now, it's my turn to tag five people!There's a good chance you've already been tagged. Let me know!

John Colburn
Brenda Iijima
Paige Ackerson-Kiely
William Waltz
Rauan Klassnik