Featuring poets from Apathy Press: Jennifer Blowdryer, Tom Diventi, Sparrow, Carl Watson
Hosted by George Wallace
Plus open mic
21+
$3 suggested donation. Two drink min, alcoholic or non.
Jennifer Megan Baring-Gould Waters, aka Jennifer Blowdryer, is from Rhode Island, Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco and NYC. She’s written columns for Maximum Rock’n’Roll, New York Press, and Downtown/Night Howl. JB has had a few books published, is widely anthologized, and is also a lyricist/recording artist. Her education was various and includes SF State, UC Berkeley, and an MFA from Columbia’s Writing Division. She sang in a punk band (The Blowdryers, SF, ‘78) and currently works with musicians in nyc, pioneered and mc’ed Smut Fests, shows which featured the art of ‘sex workers’, in Hamburg, Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco, London, and NYC from ‘88 on. An HBO Special on Smut Fests was produced by a reptile. She has a deep and long lasting bond with Apathy Press, Baltimore. She will be reading from her new Apathy book, True Blue: Essays on New York, a collection of essays, satire, and creative non-fiction.
Sparrow lives in the close-knit town of Phoenicia, New York with his wife, novelist Violet Snow. He is the author of 10 books, including The Princeton Diary (Vinal) and Small Happiness and Other Epiphanies(Monkfish). Sparrow has been writing for The Sun for 41 years. His new Apathy book is Stories. Twitter: sparrow@sparrow14
Carl Watson is a poet and fiction writer. His most recent novel is Only Descend (Autonomedia), is the third installment in a trilogy of novels including Idylls of Complicity (Spuyten Duyvil), and Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming (Sensitive Skin Books). Other works of fiction include Hotel of Irrevocable Acts (Autonomedia), and Beneath the Empire of the Birds (Apathy Press). His fiction has been published in translation by Gallimard and Editions Vagabonde in Paris. Poetry collections include Stage Fright (Apathy) Pareidolia, (Autonomedia) and Astral Botanica (Fly By Night Press). He has written for various journals including The Village Voice, NY Press, The Williamsburg Observer, Sensitive Skin, The Brooklyn Rail, Evergreen Review, Degraphe, La Liberation and others. Watson received the Kathy Acker Award for Fiction in 2012. His new Apathy book is After Thought, a book of poems. He currently splits his time between NYC and an old barn in the Catskill Mountains.
Apathy Press Poets constitutes a coherent subculture, transcending geographical location and infrequent social contact. Apathy Press is a small publishing house printing broadsheets and chapbooks of mainly, but not exclusively, Baltimore poets. Apathy exists side by side with other local small presses and also within a national network of small presses, little magazines, and individual poets. This retrospective of Apathy is not unlike leaving a family and returning for a visit to better understand where one comes from. The interviews and observations of Apathy Press Poets and others who affiliate themselves with Baltimore’s artistic-literary community illuminate a shared spiritual bond that exists alongside that of occupation. Cultural identity is constantly created, re-created, and maintained through the common attitudes, experiences, and ideas expressed through the vehicle of Apathy Press Poets.
Besides Apathy existing within a cultural framework of little magazines, it also exists as an historical offshoot of the Beat Generation, of Beat literature in general, and the New York School of poetry. Tom Diventi, the founder of Apathy Press, says his “literary ancestors are Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and other significant beat generation poets, that whole group bonded together by their alienation from the status quo. The On the Road idea.”
Despite the Apathy Project beginning 20 years after the height of the Beat Generation, a bridge connecting the two cultures was built partially through the reading of Beat literature by Apathy Poets and partially through the attendance at Beat and New York School readings. The readings include the names of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Micheline, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Ed Sanders, Diane di Prima, William Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Taylor Mead, and Ray Bremser. The New York School poets who have read in Baltimore include Ted Berrigan, Jim Carroll, Alice Notley, Anne Waldman, and John Giorno. Diventi began the Apathy Project in 1977. He was in the now-defunct Sherman’s Bookstore on Mulberry Street and Park Avenue in downtown Baltimore when he saw a button that read “Apathy.” He said this started him thinking about apathy as a concept. Tom says that “it’s a catalyst for action. You can’t have sloth without work. Apathy is a great motivator.”