This month’s line up:

Karl Gartung

Patricia Cumbie

Macyn Taylor

Mariah Carey*

6pm at Peppermint (515 6th Street)

doors open at 5:30

you are all a bunch of ninnies.

*note: Mariah Carey will have to unexpectedly cancel last minute for this performance.

also, don’t forget:
LIBRARY HOSTS ABE SMITH WORKSHOP AND READING (WITH STEVE TIMM)

Racine – The Racine Public Library, with assistance from a grant awarded by the Wisconsin Center for the Book, has invited one of contemporary poetry’s most innovative and dynamic performance artists for a poetry workshop and performance on Friday, November 6.  High school students are invited to participate in an exclusive master poetry workshop with contemporary poet/performance artist, Abraham Smith. Smith, known for his cutting edge experimental poetry and unforgettable performance style, will share his knowledge and expertise with creative writing students in grades 9-12 from 10am-2pm at the Racine Public Library, 75 Seventh St.  Master workshop participants will have a unique opportunity to explore their own poetic voice and performance techniques with a professional and highly-acclaimed artist. The workshop is free and lunch will be served, but is limited to 20 participants.  Those interested should contact Becky Spika at 262.619.2571 or becky.spika@racinelibrary.info to reserve a spot as soon as possible.

The Racine Public Library will then host an evening of exciting poetry performance by Abraham Smith and friends at 7 pm on Friday, Nov. 6. All workshop participants are invited to share their artistic voice in the evening’s open mic performance.

Abraham Smith originally hails from Ladysmith, Wisconsin.  His first book of poems, Whim Man Mammon, was recently published by Action Books and has met with critical acclaim.  His journal credits include American Poetry Review, jubilat, Northwest Review, Denver Quarterly, Typo, and Ninth Letter, among others.  He was a 2004-05 Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA.  Presently, he teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Alabama.

This project is sponsored by the Racine Public Library and the Wisconsin Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, WI.

Woodland Pattern Book Center is dedicated to the discovery, cultivation and presentation of contemporary literature and the arts. Their goals are to promote a lifetime practice of reading and writing, to provide a forum and resource center for writers/artists in our region, and to increase and diversify the audience for contemporary literature through innovative approaches to multi-arts programming. Woodland Pattern is the only Milwaukee, Wisconsin arts organization presenting contemporary literature to the general public on a continuous basis.

And, of course, my reading at Woodland Pattern, in Milwaukee, on 11/20/09.  More info here: http://www.woodlandpattern.org/

Oh yeah…check out Boo journal, an online sort of arts journal I (Nick) just recently started, where several of the BONK! performers,  (including Daniel Borzutzky and K. Silem Mohammad) have new work to read.  Delicious!

boojournal.wordpress.com

BONK! will be a year old this October.

Please come celebrate with us.  We happen to have a crazy-great line up and the event will be outrageous.

*note: this BONK! falls on the third Saturday, rather than the fourth (as usual) due to scheduling problems).

Our line up:

writer— Daniel Borzutzky

poet—K. Silem Mohammad (click to see a great video of him reading)

musician—Brent Mitchell

The writers this month are irreverent, weird, creepy and, most of all, hilarious.  Daniel comes to us from Chicago and K. Silem all the way from Oregon.  And, if you don’t know Brent Mitchell, he’s a local musicain that is just unbelievably excellent.  He played the first BONK!, so we wanted to have him bring in our second year as well.  To see a video of Brent playing at BONK!, go to the videos tab above and scroll almost to the bottom of the page.

Happy Birthday to you all for supporting BONK! that it might survive this long and can’t wait to see you on Oct 16th at 6pm.

No Maurice this month, but the dopeness of Ish, Johannes and Joyelle (see previous post for more).  We will try to have Maurice come up soon.

Come to BONK! on Saturday!

The next BONK! is going to be utterly great.  I am so excited for it.  We have four incredibly accomplished, phenomenal performers reading for us.  These are internationally respected wordsmiths and Racine is super-fortunate to have them coming to our community.

The line up for BONK! 12:

Joyelee McSweeney

Ish Klein

Johannes Goransson

Maurice Kilwein Guevara

Let’s show up large and give this group of artists tons of Racine love.  Can’t wait to see you all on the 26th to celebrate this visit from such an outstanding group of writers (and puppeters, etc. )

The Wandering Endorphin (musician)

James Lacy                                   (saxophonist)

W.A.S.T.E.L.A.N.D.S. (hip hop group)

First all music BONK! ever.  All three of these acts have crazy unique characteristics about them and the blend is going to make for a really excellent night.  Can’t wait to see you all there.

Question: What is radical?

Answer: BONK! the tenth

Quraysh Ali Lansana (poet)

Jennifer Karmin (poet)

Austin Spika (percussionist)

I have three hands (music group)

Question:what is better than the four acts listed above?

Answer: That is a dumb question.

See you all for BONK!’s first venture into the double digits : )

Yo homies!

The bad news: our culinary artist has canceled on us.  I know.  That sucks big time.  But he had to.

The good news: these amazing acts have not:

Liam Callanan

Anne Shaw

Poetry Everywhere

Remember, we’re at 515 6th street now.

You will stink if you don’t come.

Thanks to both the new and old BONK! video homies, we not only have Angela Malone’s video from January on the video page now (as well as directly below), but we also have excerpts from the three acts that made up BONK! 8.  Go check them out and be merry.  Enjoy.

Either because Nicky-Poo can’t seem to post HTML code, or because he can’t navigate his own google account, we apologize for the lateness of this video. Those of you who’ve searched for it through GoogleVideo have already seen it — because it’s been there for two months; but those of you who are too lazy to do anything but click links to the BONK! site probably haven’t. So, for all you lethargic do-nothing beatniks, here’s the video of Angela Malone reading at BONK waaay back in January.

Sincerely,

The Surly Video Guy Who Left Some Months Ago