BONK! 39–Saturday, December 17th

BONK! 39

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17th
THE BLACK-EYED PRESS
312 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)

bonkperformanceseries.wordpress.com

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FEATURING:

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poet                        CM Burroughs

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poet                        Larry Sawyer

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musician                  Naomi Marie

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CM BURROUGHS has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cave Canem Foundation, Callaloo Writers’ Workshop, and the University of Pittsburgh. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the 2009 Gift of Freedom Award, her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, VOLT, Bat City Review, and Sou’wester. Her poem “Artist’s Delight” was published as a broadside in 2008 for Pennsylvania’s Public Poetry Project, and appeared in the literary journal Tuesday; An Art Project. Burroughs is a graduate of Sweet Briar College and the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in Chicago, IL, where she is the Elma Stuckey Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College of Chicago. CM’s debut collection, The Vital System, will be released by Tupelo Press in 2012.

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LARRY SAWYER thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever, but you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun. When he’s not engaging in satiric japery, he edits milkmag.org, curates the Myopic Books Poetry Series in Chicago, and is a member of the core faculty of The Chicago School of Poetics (chicagoschoolofpoetics.com). His first full-length collection is titled Unable to Fully California (Otoliths Press), of which David Shapiro wrote “It is not so much a strange poetry as the poetry of a stranger, the way Bishop was a Brazilian in Boston and a Bostonian in Brazil. I fell in love with your ‘blue fruit’ and ‘inescapable tomorrow,’ also what seems like renunciation not of sentimentality but of cliché …I like even the quasi-Romantic dislocations here: ‘There is a beauty to ice / only a statue understands.’ I’m not a statue, so I only partially understand, but that should be more than enough for Larry Sawyer’s uncanny picnic on no grass … seemed as real as the Bronx, and I couldn’t stop thinking:  I am so lucky that this poetry is so good.” Sawyer’s poetry, essays, and reviews have also been published or are forthcoming in Action, Yes; The Argotist (UK); The Chicago Tribune; Coconut; Court Green; Esque; Exquisite Corpse; Jacket2; The Miami Sun Post; Moria; The National Poetry Review; Otoliths (Australia); Paper Tiger (Australia); The Prague Literary Review (Czech Republic); ReadMe; Seven Corners; Skanky Possum; The Tiny; Van Gogh’s Ear (France); Vanitas; Verse Daily; VLAK (Czech Republic); Ygdrasil; and elsewhere, and his work was anthologized in The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for a New Century (Cracked Slab Books).

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NAOMI MARIE is a solo acoustic artist hailing from the heart of the midwest, in the twin cities of Minnesota. She began her musical endeavors at a very young age and grew up with an increasing love for composition. Through various stages, she acquired the skills of a guitar player, a pianist, and a distinctive vocalist. While her sounds are derived from 40′s jazz singers , folk guitar players, and contemporary piano pop, she is, essentially, a story teller. Her songs are made up of lyrical narratives, giving voice to the emotionally driven melodic expressions. In August of 2011, Naomi recorded her first E.P, Four Miles to Story City, in Kenosha, WI at Skies Fall Studios. She has since relocated from Minneapolis, MN to Kenosha and is currently a student.