We are writing with news of a transition we both deem very exciting.

By the end of 2010, John Tranter and Pam Brown will have put out 40 issues of Jacket (jacketmagazine.com). It began in what John recalls as “a rash moment” in 1997 – an early all-online magazine, one of the earliest in the world of poetry and poetics, and quite rare for its consistency over the years. “The design is beautiful, the contents awesomely voluminous, the slant international modernist and experimental.” (So said _The Guardian_.)

After issue 40, John will retire from thirteen years of intense every-single-day involvement with Jacket, and the entire archive of thousands of web pages will move intact to servers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where it will of course be available on the internet to everyone, for free, as always. But the magazine is not ceasing publication: quite the opposite.

Starting with the first issue in 2011, Jacket will have a new home, extra staff and a vigorous future as Jacket2. Jacket and its continuation, Jacket2, will be hosted by the Kelly Writers House and PennSound at the University of Pennsylvania.

The connection with PennSound, a vast and growing archive of audio recordings of poetry performance, discussion and criticism, is seen as a valuable additional facet of the new magazine, as is the relationship with busy Kelly Writers House, a lively venue for day-to-day poetic interchange of all kinds. The synergy in this three-way relationship has great potential.

Al will become Publisher and Jessica Lowenthal, Director of the Writers House, will be Associate Publisher. The new Editor will be Michael S. Hennessey (currently Managing Editor of PennSound) and the new Managing Editor will be Julia Bloch. John will be available as Founding Editor, and Pam will continue as Associate Editor.

More news about Jacket2 in the weeks and months to come. Meantime, the Jacket2 folks extend gratitude — as many in the world of poetics do — to John and to Pam Brown for the extraordinary work they’ve done. And John, for his part, is mightily pleased that Jacket will be preserved and will continue and grow in a somewhat new mode but with a continuous mission and approach.

John Tranter & Al Filreis

http://jackemagazine.com

Informative links:

The University of Pennsylvania: http://www.upenn.edu/

Al Filreis: http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/

http://writing.upenn.edu/

Kelly Writers House: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/wh/
3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA: tel: 215-746-POEM

Kelly Writers House Director: Jessica Lowenthal:  http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/people/staff/

Michael S. Hennessey: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Hennessey.php

Julia Bloch: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Bloch.php

Pam Brown: http://thedeletions.blogspot.com/

John Tranter: http://johntranter.com/

————————————————————————-
John Tranter

>>  http://johntranter.com/

>>  http://jacketmagazine.com/

39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Australia

3) Bird and Beckett Series: 1st and 3rd Mondays: open mic+features, 700 to 900, Bird and Beckett Books, 653 Chenery nr Diamond: 586-3733 (near Glen Park BART), Host:Jerry Ferraz

4) Cafe International: Fridays: open mic: readers + musicians, 745 sign up – starts 800, Cafe International, 508 Haight St. @ Fillmore: 552-7390 Host: Tyren McElwee + Wiseproof

12) 3300 Club: Last Tuesdays: open mic: food + features, 630 sign up – starts 700, Keane’s 3300 Club, 3300 Mission @ 29th St.: 826-6886 www.3300club.com

(14) Sacred Grounds Cafe: Wednesdays: open + features, 700 sign up – from 730 to 950 Sacred Grounds Cafe, 2095 Hayes @ Cole: 387-3859, www.sacredgroundscafe.com, Host: Jehanna Wedgewood

(16) Smack Dab: 3rd Wednesday: open mic: words, music, comedy, sign up 730 – start 800, Magnet 4122 18th St. nr Castro: www.magnetsf.org, Hosts: Kirk Read, Larry-Bob kirkread@earthlink.net

(17) On the Page: Off the Page: 2nd Tuesday: open mic: written, spoken word + song, starts 700, SFPL Park Branch, 1833 Page St. nr Cole, wwwsfpl.org, Host: Diamond Dave Whitaker

(19) Bazaar Cafe: Thursdays: open mic: music + poetry, starts 700, Bazaar Cafe, 5927 California St., nr 22nd: 831-5620, www.bazaarcafe.com, Host: Robin Galante (Note: although the venue features original, accoustic music poetry is welcome.)

(21) SF/Word UP!: Second Tuesday: open mic: starts @730, $100 prizes, Bistro Yoffi, 2231 Chestnut St. nr Pierce: 885-5133, Hosts: Mona Webb and L. Abdul kenyatta abdulkenyatta@aol.com

(22) Final Fridays, Youth Speaks: 4th Friday; open mic: opens 630, Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market St nr 6th, www.youthspeaks.org

(23) LUNADA: each full moon, open mic + features, music, theatre, 7:30 sign up, Galeria de la Raza, 2857 24th St @ Bryant: 826-8009, galeriadelaraza.org/eng/exhibits/calendar, Host: Marc David Pinate

(25) Faithful Fools Series: 2nd + 4th Saturdays: open + features, starts 400, 234 Hyde St, Host: Ramu Aki

(27) Club 6: 1st and 3rd Tuesdays: Music spoken word, hip hop, poetry, 10 to 2AM, Club 6, 60 6th St. betw. Market and Mission: 863-1221 Hosts: Roxanne, Monolyth and John, oshea_ent@comcast.net

(28) Poetry Happening: Thursdays: step up + be heard, starts 10+/- PM @16th St. BART Station Plaza, Hosts: Charlie Getter et al, http://16thmission.com

(36) Amnesia Bar: Tuesdays: open+features, 7pm to 9pm, Amnesia Bar, 853 Valencia 19th/20th: 970-0012 http://www.amnesiathebar.com/ Host: Phillip T. Nails

(42) Sizzle: 2nd Saturdays: open and features, starts 800pm, Femina Potens Gallery 2199 Market St @ Sanchez, Contact: Tina Butcher, feminapotens@ gmail.com see: http://feminapotens.org/index

(43) Brainwash: Mondays: poets, comics, vaudville, skits and more, 7 to 10 pm, Brainwash Cafe, 1122 Folsom St. nr. 7th St.: 255-4886, Hosts: Mike Scott, M.G., Martin w/Leaky Plumbing

(44) Venom and the Anecdote, 2^nd Saturdays: open+features, 5 to 7pm, The Greenhouse, 329 W. Portal Ave.: 681-3991, Hosts: Monica Storss and Errol Davis

(45) Hotel Utah, Mondays: open, 7pm to 1030pm and later, Hotel Utah’s Saloon 500 4th St, http://hotelutah.com (Notes: The order of perfomers is determined via a random drawing at 7:30pm, musicians get 6 minutes; although the venue features music, poetry is welcome.)

(46) Pirate Cat Cafe, Friday‚open+features, singing, spoken-wd music, 4pm to 6pm, sign up 330pm Pirate Cat Cafe, 2781 21^st St. @ Florida, http://www.piratecatcafe.com Host: Diamond Dave Whitaker, 240-0286 or email: dmndv@hotmail.com

VOLUME #3  OF TGAPS IS NOW OPEN TO UNLIMITED  SUBMISSIONS OF POEMS IN ENGLISH ON ANY SUBJECT AND IN ANY FORM, STYLE, LENGTH AND NUMBER WHENEVER FROM WHEREVER EITHER BY EMAIL TO INFO@TGAPS.NET OR BY MAIL WITH SASE TO THE GREAT AMERICAN POETRY SHOW, P. O. BOX 69506, WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA 90069.

Paperback: http://www.bewrite.net/merchant2/4.00/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=B&Product_Code=978-1-906609-34-4&Category_Code=

eBook: http://www.bewrite.net/merchant2/4.00/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=B&Product_Code=978-1-906609-35-1&Category_Code=

BeWrite Home Page: http://www.bewrite.net/merchant2/4.00/merchant.mv?

Note that the BeWrite prices are in BPS, but I have been assured the payment is converted for US buyers. Also, there are distributors in the US and the UK, so only buyers from countries other than these will be charged overseas shipping rates.

The book is also available from retailers such as Amazon (http://www.amazon.com) and Barnes and Noble (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/), and it will be available from bookstores worldwide within a few weeks.

From the BeWrite website: <<“Michael McIrvin’s high-octane, intelligent novel is an immaculately researched, powerful indictment of brutal counterintelligence, including torture and murder, an exploration of how ends are achieved by a nation-state. This book is frighteningly timely.”

Sonny, a drunken convenience store clerk living uneasily in a relationship with twin sisters, woke up naked and blue. Not sad, but actually blue from head to toe. A warped warning from a former CIA colleague? A message from a deranged hit man that he and those he loves are marked for death? Or is his blueness a more invidious omen? Sonny’s search for answers will lead him to a perverse reconciliation with his former bloody role in geopolitics – and his destiny – on the bloody trail to Chiapas. Along the way he will befriend a people struggling to survive, reconsider the nature of terrorism and the drug trade, and decipher an ancient Mayan vision of the end of time. He will also meet another former CIA operative who doubles as a jaguar shaman, a Mayan holy man whose prophesies include Sonny, and a mysterious boy whose role in his people’s future is both mythic and deadly. Sonny’s flashbacks to his gore-stained government work in Mesoamerica, including the act for which he was ‘excommunicated’, constitute proof of power’s inhumanity, but his darkest revelation is that violence and greed are the true mechanisms of history.>>

The charity, poetry anthology, The Book Of Hopes And Dreams as an e-book has been relaunched.  As you may remember, this book was originally published as a paperback, but after a series of let downs by the publisher it had to be withdrawn from circulation.  It is hoped, by releasing it as an e-book, it can generate revenue for the charity, Spirit Aid, and their operations in Afghanistan, where they provide medical supplies and doctors for outlying regions whose infrastructure has been destroyed in the 25 years of conflict and struggle that this country has suffered.

As you know, the market for poetry is small, and the market for poetry e-books is probably smaller, but this book has a host of very fine contributors, and I think, with sufficient publicity it could sell in the hundreds, certainly, and maybe even in the thousands.

Please help to publicise this book.  If you can stretch to it, you could carry the “copy” below in your magazine.  If not, maybe you could give it a mention and/or include the link to our Facebook group on your website, blog or Facebook.  Or, if you’d be willing to review it I could email you a review copy.

Whatever you can do would be gratefully appreciated, not only by me, but by Spirit Aid and the people of Afghanistan..

Despite all the disappointments of the years, despite all the terrible things that go on in the world, I still believe poetry can make a difference, and I know you do to.  You wouldn’t be doing the thankless task of editing a poetry magazine if you thought otherwise.  The Book Of Hopes And Dreams can make a difference too, especially with your support.  Please support this project.

Wishing you all the very best

Dee Sunshine

*********************************************************************

THE RE-LAUNCH OF “THE BOOK OF HOPES AND DREAMS”

The Book Of Hopes And Dreams is a charity, poetry anthology, featuring many award-winning and internationally respected writers, including Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Moniza Alvi, Alan Brownjohn, David Constantine, Cyril Dabydeen, Carol Anne Duffy, Ian Duhig, Ruth Fainlight, Vicki Feaver, Elaine Feinstein, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Ades Fishman, Magi Gibson, Alasdair Gray, Tony Harrison, John Heath-Stubbs, Michael Horovitz, Mimi Khalvati, Tom Leonard, Robert Mezey, Edwin Morgan, Lawrence Sail, Penelope Shuttle, Jon Stallworthy, Anne Stevenson and many others.   Money raised from sales of this book will go to Spirit Aid for their aid programme in Afghanistan.

The Book Of Hopes And Dreams has been re-launched as an e-book and is available for a minimum donation of $2 (though larger donations will be gratefully received).  Please make your payment via paypal to dee@thunderburst.co.uk and send an email to that address to let me know you’ve paid.  As soon as funds are received you will be emailed your e-book.  All funds raised (minus paypal admin charges will) go direct to Spirit Aid.

NB: Spirit Aid is one of the best, most-efficient charities in Scotland.  It is staffed entirely by volunteers, who donate their time willingly because they wholeheartedly believe in the ethos of Spirit Aid, which is to give practical assistance to war or disaster torn regions of the world and to promote peace in a secular, non-religious way.  Because it is staffed entirely by volunteers, 90% of all funds raised go direct to its projects… unlike many other charities, which have to deal with huge staff payroll and other administrative costs.

A Facebook group has been set up to help publicise The Book Of Hopes And Dreams.  Members will be informed of what is happening and will be kept posted about sales and money raised.  http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=206604665798

Please please please, help to spread the word about the re-launch of The Book Of Hopes And Dreams.  You can help, just by forwarding this email onto your friends.  Alternatively, if you have a Facebook, please post the link to The Book Of Hopes And Dreams Facebook page on your Facebook page.  Or you can post it on your blog or on your personal website.  This will take just a minute or two of your time, and may help to generate more sales, which means that more children in Afghanistan will get the medical attention that you and I take for granted.

To find out more about what Spirit Aid are doing in Afghanistan, click on this link: http://www.spiritaid.org.uk/afghanistan.html

Thank you.

I wish you all the best

Dee Sunshine

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Website - www.thunderburst.co.uk
Blogger - http://deerimbaud.blogspot.com
MySpace - www.myspace.com/captainmelted
MySpace - www.myspace.com/sunshinesoundz
Facebook - www.facebook.com/captainmelted

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CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE

Complete submission guidelines are online at www.fearlessbooks.com/Poetry.htm.

Volume 1 of the Series, THE LIGHT IN ORDINARY THINGS, has just been released. For information about this title, see www.fearlessbooks.com/Poetry2.htm.

FEARLESS BOOKS
PO Box 1292
Berkeley CA 94701
510 849-4028

invites you to a Poetry Reading & Discussion
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 7:00pm
at
The Philoctetes Center
247 East 82nd Street
(Phone: 646-422-0544; email: info@philoctetes.org)

This event is free and open to the public.

Persian Poetry: Origins, Translations, and Influences

This reading and discussion among five distinguished Persian poets and translators will begin by touching on the two-thousand year history of poetry in Iran. Panelists will highlight the significance of such classical masters as Sa’di, Hafez, Rumi, and Omar Khayyam, as well as contemporary Iranian poets like Nima Youshij and Forough Farrokhzad. Special attention will be given to what often gets lost in English translation. The poets will consider how their understanding of Persian verse and culture, from its origins in Iran, influences the poetry they and others write in English.

Iraj Anvar is the translator and editor of Jalal al Din Rumi’s Divani-I Shams-I Tabriz: Forty Eight Ghazals of Rumi. He has been a leader of the New York Ava Ensemble, which is dedicated to promoting traditional Persian music and performing classical Persian poetry.

Richard Jeffrey Newman is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Nassau Community College, where he coordinates the college’s Creative Writing Project. He has published translations of two books of classical Iranian poetry, Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan and Selections from Saadi’s Bustan, and a poetry collection of his own, entitled The Silence of Men.

Roger Sedarat is the author of a collection of poems, Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic, and a forthcoming chapbook, From Tehran to Texas. He teaches poetry and translation in the MFA program at Queens College, City University of New York.

Niloufar Talebi is the editor and translator of BELONGING: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World and founder of The Translation Project, which brings contemporary Iranian literature to the world through events and literary and multimedia projects. Inspired by Iranian storytelling traditions, she dramatizes new Iranian poetry in theater projects such as ICARUS/RISE.

Katayoon Zandvakili’s collection of poetry, Deer Table Legs, won the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series prize, and her work has been anthologized in American Poetry: The Next Generation; Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora; Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond; and The Poetry of Iranian Women.

All Philoctetes programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

_______________________

Events at Philoctetes are free and open to the public. Seating is on a first come basis.

The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination was established to promote an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of creativity and the imaginative process. To achieve its mission, the Center organizes roundtable discussions and music, poetry and film series. All programs are free and open to the public. Visit www.philoctetes.org for more information.

(You are receiving this email because you signed up to receive notifications about programs at the Philoctetes Center. To unsubscribe, please reply to this email and type “unsubscribe” in the subject line.)