A Galère of Poetic Autopsies
Featured readers: Venus de Mars, Lynette Reini-Grandell, Cat Tyc
“A Galère of Poetic Autopsies” is a monthly series at Hudson’s historic Park Theater on the first Thursday of each month (except July 2024 which will be first Wednesday). Expect the unexpected as poets, writers, and other creatives from the Hudson area and beyond reveal the inspiration and shadows behind their work.
galère: [French (galƐr) noun. A group of people having a common interest, esp. a coterie of undesirable people.]
Hosted by Jane Ormerod and John K Lawson
$10 suggested donation to be shared among performers.
Venus de Mars is a multidisciplinary artist and musician, best known as a singer-songwriting transgender rock star and leader of the glam-punk trans-band Venus de Mars & All the Pretty Horses. Venus came out as transgender in 1988 - a time when identifying as trans meant being classified as having a mental perversion and living as an outcast. Her refusal to live a shadow existence, instead embracing her uniqueness, complicated her musical and artistic career paths. She is now mid-process in writing a memoir reflecting her thirty-year trans journey and place in this fast-changing, trans-embracing-backlashing world where we now find ourselves. Venus, along with her spouse Lynette Reini-Grandell, are also the subject of the 2004 award-winning rock-documentary Venus of Mars by filmmaker Emily Goldberg. (Available for streaming via Amazon Prime Video). Venus is working on a new album due in the winter of 2024. Visit venusdemars.com / patreon.com/venusdemars / instagram.com/venusdemars / facebook.com/venus.demars
Lynette Reini-Grandell is the author of the memoir Wild Things: A Trans-Glam-Punk-Rock Love Story (2023) as well as two books of poems: Wild Verge (2018) and Approaching the Gate (2014, winner of the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for Poetry). Other work has appeared in Alligator Juniper, The Understanding between Foxes and Light, MNArtists.org, Poetry Motel, Revolver, Poetry City U.S.A., and Seminary Ridge Review, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart and received grants for her work from the Finlandia Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She performs with the Bosso Poetry Company and the jazz/poetry collective Sonoglyph. Her work is often inspired by Finnish folk culture and song, and she frequently collaborates with Nordic Roots artists in multimedia performances. Her poems are on the walls of the Carlton Arms Hotel in Manhattan, in an installation created with her spouse Venus. She lives in Minneapolis on the ancestral homeland of the Dakota people.
Cat Tyc is an interdisciplinary writer/artist who has three chapbooks, An Architectural Seance (dancing girl press & studio), CONSUMES ME (Belladonna* Collaborative) and I AM BECAUSE MY LITTLE DOG KNOWS ME (Blush Lit). Her most recent writing has published in Maggot Brain The Recluse, Shock of the Femme, Touch the Donkey and FENCE. She has presented and performed at the Microscope Gallery, Anthology Film Archives, Brooklyn Museum, Hauser & Wirth, Kassel Fest and the synthesis gallery in Berlin. She has directed music videos that have been added to the rotation on LOGO’s NewNowNext and MTVu. Cat’s first solo exhibition, SIGNIFICANT OTHERNESS, was presented at Tanja Grunert Gallery in 2022. She has been granted residencies and fellowships at Signal Culture, The Flaherty Seminar and Mass MOCA and has received support from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. Cat teaches writing at the School of the Visual Arts in New York City and lives in Hudson, NY.