Hello good people! Happy 2007! Here’s a quick update on where I’ll be performing for the next few weeks; hope you can make it to one or all of these great shows. There’s a slam, a crazy showcase, and a Piper Jane Project Friday night spectacular!

Also, check out the great workshops louderARTS is offering this year. These are an incredible value, and an experience not to be missed. Read on!

~ Monday, January 15: louderCHAMP SLAM at Bar 13
~ Thursday, January 18: WHAT?!: INCANTATIONS FOR ’07 at The Bowery Poetry Club
~ Friday, February 2: the Piper Jane Project with Rebecca Hart at Mo Pitkin’s

+ the next three Sundays: Down to the Bone Gristle workshop with Tara Betts!

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MONDAY, JANUARY 15 – louderCHAMP SLAM

louderARTS: the reading series presents the louderCHAMP slam, pitting the eight top-scoring poets from the season against one another in four rounds with varying time limits. Poets slamming include: Marty McConnell, Rachel McKibbens, Abena Koomson, Falu, Kesed, Roger Bonair-Agard, Jacob Rakovan, and Darian Dauchan.

Our feature for the night is long-time louderARTS favorite Amanda Lichtenberg. Born and bred in New York City, Amanda’s poems have appeared in Caesura, LUNGFULL! and Mima’amakim, in the anthology Earth Beneath, Sky Beyond and online at poetz.com. She was a 2001 Amy Award recipient in poetry and received her MFA from New England College in 2005.
louderARTS: the reading series
every Monday at 13 Bar/Lounge, 35 East 13th Street @ University Place 2nd Floor
4, 5, 6, L, N, Q, R, W to 14th Street/Union Square * 7 p.m. * $6 ($5 for students)
2 for 1 drinks all night
www.louderARTS.com

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 18 -- WHAT?!: INCANTATIONS FOR ’07

Beau Sia is back and madder than ever, presenting a fabulous bill of poets followed by DJ Mas – it’ll be poetry, and a party, and you know you want to be there.

The show will include performances by: Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Big Mike, Black Ice, Regie Cabico, Flaco, Celena Glenn, John S. Hall, Suheir Hammad, Sarah Kay, Lemon, Marty McConnell, George McKibbens, Willie Perdomo, Shappy, and Leticia Viloria. Hosted by Beau Sia, DJ’d by Mas.$7
at The Bowery Poetry Club 308 Bowery (between Bleecker and 1st)

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – PJP and Rebecca Hart at Mo Pitkin’s

THE PIPER JANE PROJECT
and
REBECCA HART + full band

at Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction
34 Avenue A (between 2nd and 3rd)

10 p.m. -- Piper Jane Project
11 p.m. -- Rebecca Hart

Just $8 for two great shows, back-to-back!

The Piper Jane Project is Emily Kagan, Marty McConnell, Rachel McKibbens, and Lynne Procope. Four of the top performance poets in the country, these women fuse ferocity with wit and craft, producing a volatile mix of politics, passion, and poetry.

Rebecca Hart is our favorite chick with a guitar, rockstar in waiting, and this time around she’s got a full band backing her. She disappears to Ireland for long stretches of time but on this night NYC has her and the rockin’ songs off her first full-length album, “Crash & Strum.”

www.louderARTS.com/LIVE * www.myspace.com/piperjaneproject
www.rebeccahart.net * www.myspace.com/rebeccahart

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WINTER WRITING WORKSHOPS 2007

The louderARTS Project is pleased to present three new workshops!
You’ve been asking for it, and here it is: a series of wonderfully original workshops for poets who want to perfect their craft and try something new. All workshops take place in Manhattan and run Sundays from 3-6 p.m. The cost is just $30 per workshop or $75 for all three (total must be paid on or before the first workshop of the series to receive the discount and can be paid through our secure PayPal links). Please send any inquiries to workshops@louderARTS.com. Workshops are designed for writers of all levels of experience.

JANUARY: Down to the Bone Gristle: Revising Your Poems with Tara Betts
FEBRUARY: A Thousand Throats: The Persona Poem and You with Patricia Smith
MARCH: Between the Sheets with Your Readers: Gender, Sex, and Sexuality with Richard Jeffery Newman
Sunday JANUARY 14, 21 and 28
DOWN TO THE BONE GRISTLE: Revising Your Poems
Facilitator: Tara Betts
“I breaks it down to the bone gristle.” -- GZA, “Shadowboxing” How can we poets say exactly what it is we want to say? How do we get past the first draft, that rush of ideas and images? In this workshop, we will engage in exercises that reduce the excess we writers often experience in early drafts. We will discuss different strategies to avoid redundancies and extraneous words and look at drafts from work by notable poets. For the first session, poets should bring a poem-in-progress that needs to tighten its focus. One recommended (but not required) text is “The Hand of the Poet” by Rodney Phillips. Tara Betts received her MFA in Poetry from New England College and is a Cave Canem graduate. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including “Essence,” “DrumVoices Revue,” “Callaloo,” “WSQ,” “Obsidian III” and “Gathering Ground.” She also appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and SPOKEN on Robert Townsend’s Black Family Channel. She has also taught workshops at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, Long Island University and in several other venues outside of academia. ***
Sundays FEBRUARY 4, 11, and 25
A THOUSAND THROATS: the Persona Poem and You
Facilitator: Patricia SmithIn this workshop, we will explore the tempting, unpredictable and vaguely disturbing practice of writing in persona. Far beyond "stepping into another’s shoes," this underrated poetic device is laughable when it’s mishandled, and devastating when it’s done well. We’ll learn to do it well.

Patricia Smith is the author of “Teahouse of the Almighty” (selected as a winner of the prestigious National Poetry Series) and of three previous collections of poetry, the children’s book “Janna and the Kings,” and co-author of “Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery.” A record-setting four-time national poetry slam champion featured in the film SlamNation and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, Smith has graced stages from Lollapalooza to Carnegie Hall. She lives in New York.

Sundays MARCH 4, 11, and 18
BETWEEN THE SHEETS WITH YOUR READERS:
Gender, Sex, and Sexuality
Facilitator: Richard Jeffery Newman

SEX. It’s central to our lives – but how do we write about it without resorting to cliché or seeming to write only for shock value? How do we talk about gender, sexuality, and yes, the act itself, with the same integrity we bring to all other topics? It takes courage to write about these issues. In this workshop, we will explore, communally and individually, what it means to cultivate that courage and to define for ourselves the idiosyncratic language it requires.

Richard Jeffrey Newman, a poet, essayist and translator, is the author of “The Silence Of Men” (CavanKerry Press, 2006), a book of his own poetry, as well as two books of translations from classical Persian literature (both from Global Scholarly Publications, 2004 and 2006). His essays and poems have appeared in “Changing Men” magazine, Salon.com, “The American Voice,” “The Pedestal,” “Circumference,” “Prairie Schooner,” “Birmingham Poetry Review” and other literary journals. His work has been anthologized and translated into Dutch. He is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York.

www.louderARTS.com/workshop