BONK! 46–Saturday, July 28th
July 25, 2012
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
Chris Pusateri is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Common Time (Steerage Press,
2012) and Molecularity (Dusie, 2011). His work appears in many journals in the US and abroad,
including Chicago Review, Fence, Jacket, Verse, and others. In June 2012, he was a visiting artist at La
Kunsthalle Mulhouse in France, where he performed as part of their Locus Metropole exhibit. A librarian
by trade, he lives in Denver, where he reviews new poetry and fiction titles for Library Journal and
curates the Belmar Film Series, a free public program that showcases independent cinema.
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Born in Japan, Michelle Naka Pierce is the author of seven titles, including She, A Blueprint (BlazeVOX, 2011) with art by Sue Hammond West and Continuous Frieze Bordering Red (Fordham, 2012), awarded the Poets Out Loud Editor’s Prize. Pierce has collaborated with artists, dancers, and filmmakers and performed her work internationally, most recently at La Kunsthalle in Mulhouse, France. Pierce is associate professor and director of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.
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Debra Hsueh is a volunteer tutor at Racine Literacy Council and a Guzheng instructor. She came to America from Taipei, Taiwan in April of 2000. She’s been playing Guzheng music in her leisure time since she was in college. The graceful tune of the instrument grasps Debra’s heart. She’s given many Guzheng performances in both Racine and Taipei, including at the World Fest at UW-Parkside, a Fundraising Concert for the children and families of Gaza, the Chinese New Year Celebration at the Racine Public Library, the Multicultural Event at Gateway Technical College, the World Festival at Burlington High School, other private events, and now at BONK!
Nick Ramsey‘s philosophy is simple: “Practice makes permanent.” Born and raised in Racine, WI, Nick began freestyle rapping at the age of fifteen. With thousands of cyphers under his belt and years of experience, he has earned a spot among the most respected freestyle rappers in the Greater Milwaukee area. He has also helped organize a variety of events throughout Southeastern Wisconsin including the Grassroots Wednesdays Open Mic & Artist Showcase, the Dan Jam Music Festival, and Artbeat In The Heat Music & Arts Festival. In October of 2011, Nick released his first recordings on a six-track EP entitled Introducing: Nick Ramsey. This EP blends positive hip hop cuts with poetry and freestyle. Currently, Nick is working on a double disc spoken word/hip hop CD which should be out by the end of the year.
BONK! 45–Saturday, June 23rd
June 5, 2012
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
Feng Sun Chen‘s first book is Butcher’s Tree from Black Ocean. She is also the author of chapbooks and experiments Ugly Fish from Radioactive Moat, and blud from Spork Press. She lives in Minneapolis and is studying at the University of Minnesota.
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Natasha Kessler received her MFA from the University of Nebraska. She currently lives in Omaha where she co-edits Strange Machine Poetry/Books. She also curates The Strange Machine Poetry Reading Series. Her work has most recently appeared in SpringGun, inter|rupture, Burntdistrict, iO Poetry, and is forthcoming in South Dakota Review. A collaborative chapbook of poetry by Natasha and poet Joshua Ware is forthcoming from Alice Blue Books this summer.
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Francesca Abbate is associate professor of English at Beloit College. Her poetry has appeared in Field, Iowa Review, NEO, and Poetry, among others. Her first book, Troy, Unincorporated, is just out from The University of Chicago’s Phoenix Poets Series. Sometimes, like now, she lives in Milwaukee.
BONK! 44–Saturday, May 5th
May 1, 2012
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
JULIE CARR is the author of four books of poetry, most recently 100 Notes on Violence (winner of the Sawtooth Award) and Sarah—Of Fragments and Lines, a National Poetry Series selection. She has a critical study of Victorian poetry coming out in the fall of 2012, and a new book of poetry forthcoming from Omnidawn. She is the publisher, with Tim Roberts, of Counterpath Press and teaches at the University of Colorado, in Boulder. She is also the recipient of an NEA fellowship for 2011-2012.
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CARYL PAGEL’s first collection of poetry, Experiments I Should Like Tried At My Own Death, will be published this May by Factory Hollow Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, 1913: A Journal of Forms, Devil’s Lake, and Thermos. She is the co-founder and editor of Rescue Press, an independent small press that publishes fiction, poetry, essays, and art-based experiments, as well as a poetry editor at jubilat. She lives in Milwaukee, will spend the summer in Iowa City, and is moving back to Chicago this August.
BONK! 43–Saturday, April 21st
March 31, 2012
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
Aaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of The Sore Throat and Other Poems (Fence, 2010). Grace Period, a collection of aphorisms, sketches, and fragments, is forthcoming. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Gabriel Gudding is the author of Rhode Island Notebook (Dalkey Archive Press, 2007) and A Defense of Poetry (Pitt, 2002). His essays and poems appear in such periodicals as Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, and Journal of the History of Ideas, as well as in such anthologies as Great American Prose Poems, Best American Poetry, and &Now: Best Innovative Writing. His translations from Spanish appear in anthologies such as The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry, Poems for the Millennium, and The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry. He teaches poetics, ethics, literature, and poetry writing at Illinois State University.
BONK! 42–Saturday, March 24th
March 22, 2012
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
Dennis Trudell has lived in Madison for many years. He taught at UW-Whitewater for seventeen years. His Fragments in Us: Recent & Earlier Poems was published by University of Wisconsin Press. He edited Full Court: A Literary Anthology of Basketball for Breakway Books. His poems have been repinted in over twenty anthologies.
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Devin Trudell is a cartoonist who grew up in MAD-Town reading MAD Magazine, and has lived in Milwaukee since 2005 with stops in Austin TX, and Seattle, WA along the way. He has published two books: 3 Stories, which contains illustrated versions of his father Dennis Trudell’s short stories, and the graphic novel, The Man Who Lived With Roaches. His work appears in various local papers, including those of the ACLU, Voces De La Frontera, an immigrants’ rights organization in Milwaukee, and the website Black Agenda Report. His cartoons were a year ago unintentionally featured on CNN during the Walker protests at the capital. He has taught the “Cartooning and Political Art” workshop at the ACLU’s Youth Social Justice Forum for several years. More information and examples of his work can be found at the website Artnightbooks.com.
BONK! 41–Saturday, February 25th
February 4, 2012
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
Amanda Smeltz is the author of Imperial Bender, a full-length poetry collection from Typecast Press, out in early 2013. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, H_NGM_N, Pax Americana, and Big Bell. She balls out of control as the assistant poetry editor for Forklift, Ohio. She serves wine, oysters and baby pigs in a Manhattan restaurant; Brooklyn is her stomping grounds. Buy her a drink.
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Paul Martínez Pompa earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University, where he served as a poetry editor for Indiana Review. His chapbook, Pepper Spray, was published by Momotombo Press in 2006. In 2007, his poetry and prose appeared in two anthologies: The Wind Shifts, New Latino Poetry and Telling Tongues, A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience. His first, full-length collection of poetry, My Kill Adore Him, was selected for the 2008 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2009. He lives in Chicago and teaches composition, poetry, and creative writing at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois.
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EVAN MARUSZEWSKI, known as Captain Evan, Pastor M., or simply “The Admiral,” has been experimenting with music, writing, and art since boyhood. A student of life, literature, and language he struggles to this day with rhythm, rhyme, and rhotacism in a modern world. Current projects include animation, striving to write decently, and the world’s first completely non-ironic polka/hip-hop band, The November Criminals.
BONK! 40–Saturday, January 14th
January 9, 2012
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
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JAMIE KAZAY was born in Hollywood, CA. She writes poetry and often dabbles with one-act plays. She holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from California State University, Northridge and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College, where she teaches writing. She is also a lecturer at the City Colleges of Chicago. Her work has been published in Northridge Review, Columbia Poetry Review, and Poetry Super Highway. She has also published a chapbook, titled Small Hollering (Dancing Girl Press, 2011).
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FAMILIES joined together in early 2008 in Chicago, as friends Justin Rose, Erica Johnson, and David Shay found themselves telling stories wrapped in simple music. They are folk story tellers, with souls of grass and minds made out of the mountains, weaving personal tales from the Bible. Families is about community, folklore, and the Kingdom.
BONK! 39–Saturday, December 17th
December 10, 2011
THE BLACK-EYED PRESS
312 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
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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.
Bonk! 38–Saturday, November 19th
November 12, 2011
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
LAURA GOLDSTEIN’s poetry, reviews, and essays can be found in American Letters and Commentary, MAKE, jacket2, EAOGH, Requited, Little Red Leaves, How2, Seven Corners, Text/Sound, Rabbit Light Movies, Otoliths, CutBank Reviews, and Moria. She has written four chapbooks to date: Let Her, to be released by Dancing Girl Press in 2012, Facts of Light from Plumberries Press (2011), Day of Answers from Tir Aux Pigeons (2009), and Ice in Intervals from Hex Press (2008). She currently co-curates the Red Rover reading series with Jennifer Karmin and teaches Writing and Literature at Loyola University.
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KELSEY GRAY is a local poet, student, lock technician, mother, and mentor. Since a young age she has been very involved in her community, doing volunteer work, organizing neighborhood events, attending marches, and facilitating youth groups. She is currently a member of the Safe Start Youth Council for the Women’s Resource Center. You may have seen her around performing at local open mics and other poetry functions. Her poetic influences are Tupac and Emily Dickinson. The goal she hopes to accomplish with her writing is to spread a message to the brainwashed masses, and in the process of spreading that message, remove a few blindfolds.
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HUNTER McKENZIE is a Lake County- and Kenosha-based singer-songwriter and poet. His songs weave the haunting echoes of the delta blues with Irish-tinged Appalachian folk, telling stories in sparse verses that explore love, war, and spirituality. A multi-instrumentalist, he is often spotted in coffee shops and tall trees.
Bonk! 37–Saturday, October 8th
September 16, 2011
RACINE ARTS COUNCIL
316 6TH STREET
RACINE, WI
6PM (doors open 5:30)
Lily Brown was born and raised in Massachusetts. She holds degrees from Harvard University and Saint Mary’s College of California. Her chapbooks include The Renaissance Sheet (Octopus Books) and Old with You (Kitchen Press). Rust or Go Missing, from Cleveland State University Press, is her first full-length book of poetry. Currently, Brown lives in Athens, Georgia, where she is a PhD student at the University of Georgia. Her book received this praise from Michael Palmer: “Reading Lily Brown’s poems, I feel myself in the presence of an electric consciousness gazing at the temporal rifts and physical folds beneath landscapes and the manifold tensions between bodies. Poetic language here is an instrument of thought or, rather, of a thinking that breathes and is embodied and seeks a new path.”
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Claire Becker is the author of the poetry collection Where We Think It Should Go from Octopus Books and the chapbooks Untoward, Get You , Young Adult, We Know in 2010, We Survive, and The Werld. She co-edits the journal RealPoetik with Lily Brown and teaches in the high school mainstream program at the California School for the Blind. Graham Foust says this of Becker’s work: “Poems should go to where we think, which means that they often end up in the loneliest, most impossible places. . . . Claire Becker’s poems seem both driven by that impulse and in love with that result. They’ve got a throb at which it’s hard not to wonder and, like more than one of us, an aching oddball soul.”
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Marco Jaimez is a musician from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He played at Bonk 10 with David Algrim as part of the group Ihavethreehands. He has been part of a few music projects such as Chopo Bazaar, The Bear Approves, and The Fiendish Dr. Wu. Mexico City Is Sinking is his current solo, acoustic music project. You can check out his music on Twitter: twitter.com/mcissinking and Facebook: facebook.com/mexicocityissinking
