Best American Poetry Blog

The Bonfire Reading Series in Pittsburgh [by Guillermo Parra]

Tom Raworth(Tom Raworth, February 16th, 2013)

One of the best poetry readings I’ve ever attended took place in a comfortable living room with a dozen people listening to the English poet Tom Raworth read at his signature breakneck speed. The night —which began with the raw and powerful folk music of Ben Collier and concluded with everyone chatting amiably throughout the house— was part of the Bonfire Reading Series here in Pittsburgh, PA. The readings always follow a simple but effective format: an invited musician, the featured poet, and an informal gathering afterwards with potluck snacks and drinks. The series has been running since 2012 and is curated by a collective of poets that includes Emily Carlson, Sten Carlson, Robin Clarke, R/B Mertz and Joshua Zelesnick.

The members of the collective met while they were poetry MFA students at the University of Pittsburgh several years ago. The idea for a reading series emerged as a natural extension of their friendship, as well as their belief in poetry as an essential part of their everyday lives. As Sten told me recently, when I interviewed him about the reading series: “We wanted to create poetic events that meant something to us.” The series is a reflection of their desire as poets to “create an eventful life together, as opposed to discrete, private acts of writing.”

All of the group members are educators and Sten also works as the Managing Director for the University of Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series. My wife Dayana and I moved to Pittsburgh in 2012 from Durham, NC, and befriending this group of poets is one of the reasons we love this city so much. Since we're neighbors, Sten and I tend to meet a couple times a month to talk about poetry at the nearby Kelly's Bar & Lounge in the East Liberty neighborhood. During one of those get-togethers recently (I half-jokingly call them our “poetry work meetings”), I took notes while Sten talked about the Bonfire Reading Series. I also e-mailed several questions to the group members. Between our conversation that night and various group e-mails, the following responses emerged.

 

You all met while studying at the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. When and how did the idea for the Bonfire Reading Series emerge? Were there any models that inspired you?

Joshua Zelesnick: I think one of the contributing factors to starting the Bonfire series came from the Occupy Movement—and the activism we’ve all been part of in some way. Yes, Pitt made it possible for all of us to meet, but the reading series was not as much informed by our Pitt experience (at least I would say). I remember R/B Mertz reading from her amazing book, Leaves of Money at the kick—off march towards People’s Park here in Pittsburgh (Mellon Green: the Occupy Pittsburgh camp site). Every week we would go to the campsite and read poems—anybody could read.  It seemed to always boost morale, and so many people read. I remember meeting down in the T (subway) and gathering in a circle. Someone would just get up and read for a few minutes, then someone else. One time we read on the subway train. You can ride for free downtown for a few stops. I remember reading my poem, “Capitalism Poem #1.” A few strangers even clapped after I finished reading it. Of course, some people just seemed to be embarrassed for me.

Sten is really into finding and reading little Zines—you know, independent hand-made (photocopied and/or PDF) journals. When Occupy took off, he had an idea that we should make a zine, so we did. It was called Squat the Burgh. I’m not sure, but I think Robin Clarke came up with the title. We gathered pieces from our sisters and brothers at Occupy Pittsburgh and Sten included radical pieces by Lin Dinh, Jodi Dean, and others. Every page had creative collages that demonstrated the failure of capitalism in some way: like, the IWW logo, “the cat’s out of the bag.” Yes, the cat’s been out of the bag—now let’s re-imagine a better way of living—and this is what poets can help do.
 
“No poetry without revolution, no revolution without poetry!” This is what Jacob Russell had us all chant before a poetry reading during a planning and revitalization of Occupy (after most of the camps were “legally” wiped out by corporately loyal police departments) held in Philadelphia during the summer, 2012.  Me, R/B and Robin went.  We met many of the Philadelphia poet-activists: Jacob, CA Conrad, Frank Sherlock, Ryan Eckes, Debrah Morkun, and others…  Conrad has been growing his hair out for years in protest to illegal U.S. wars and occupations abroad.  The magical, inspiring sage, Jacob Russell was the first reader of the Bonfire Reading Series, which I believe was ultimately the idea/brainchild of R/B Mertz.  Her and Jacob really hit it off (mabe Becca would like to speak more to this), and R/B invited him to Pittsburgh to give a reading.  The spiritual, radical Jacob, with his feathers and magical staff (walking stick) kicked off the Bonfire series in the late summer, 2012. 
 
From my point of view, this is how it started…and I’ve been happy to be a part of it. Me, Robin, R/B, Sten, and Emily Carlson are all socially conscious, politically (political, in that we recognize the oppression of the system we were born into—and realize we have a responsibility to write into this mess) motivated writers/living beings who thrive on (are informed by) and are inspired by each others’ work.
 
Dayana Fraile Bonfire(Musicians Nic Lawless & Matt Holden w/ featured reader Dayana Fraile) 
 
R/B Mertz: Sometime after I graduated from Pitt, I went to a reading there by Hoa Nguyen, I think most of us were there, and she spoke really beautifully about the journal she and her friends put out, Skanky Possum,and about the reading series she and Dale Smith hosted at their house in Austin; I was also really impressed by her attitude toward publishing and being a “poet” which was a confusing prospect graduating from an MFA program… but this was the first time I remember realizing that poets could “be poets” outside of institutions and even outside of galleries and coffee shops—that we could make the reading space in our own homes, or outside in the garden, really freed up from a hierarchy or strict financial system— the idea for me, that you could have a reading series without rent or charging people—and in our own true space, not a public space, but a private space opened to public—this seemed to put the cultivation of such a thing into my own hands, into our hands, rather than the hands of “Them,” whoever they are, who usually decide these things that we attend. I think a big part about this is that the censorship of public space is really antithetical to poetry, and you feel that censorship everywhere now, even in the cafes, where revolutions are supposed to start—so doing it in a home seems to make radical results and experiences more possible.
 
Sten Carlson: I think the impulse to do this series came out of a bunch of us having survived an MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh, and been ejected out the other side into the city of Pittsburgh. While on the one hand the MFA was a blessing because we'd magically encountered each other there and spent three years reading and writing poetry together, on the other it had a pretty horrible and professionalizing effect on the life of poetry we all dreamed of living. It is so easy in grad school to become preoccupied with one's identity as a poet, and to fall into pretty conservative habits of thought around what a poem (let alone a community of poets!) is allowed or not allowed to do; and because all of the energies of poetry are captured by and circulated within the channels of the academy, it is pretty impossible get the social and the poetic to overlap in any meaningful ways.
 
We all shared a desire, I think, for poetry (or poesis, in any case–the spirit and activity of invention) to flow through and inform and rupture our everyday lives in much messier ways that the academy allowed. What I mean is that we wanted both that our poetry be infused with all of the fucked up contingencies of our daily lives, and that our daily lives be shaped by the anarchic, beautiful, sometimes destructive existence of poetry. Most of us worked at the only thing the MFA had prepared us to do: sell our labor back to the University (or other educational institution) at a massive loss. Yet we were happy to be teaching and living in an affordable city we loved, happy to refuse the national MFA job market altogether because it would necessitate leaving this city and each other whom we loved. So the reading series was an effort to make a space for poetry to appear outside of the competitive, soul crushing institutional setting that we poets fist crossed paths in. And while we've seen a little bit of what happens to poetry when you set it free into living rooms and backyards, and pair it with banjo players, pooping babies, etc, my expectation is that we haven't seen anything yet.
 

Shortie, the Poet(A Bonfire Reading Series regular, Shorty)

In December of 2013, after a reading one night, I happened to be around when you had a discussion about possible future readings. I was so impressed by the informal yet thorough and democratic way that you made decisions. How do you all decide on what poets and musicians to invite?

R/B Mertz: I think the important thing is that everyone really respects each other and each others’ work and aesthetics, and we trust each others’ taste, I think, or are at least always open and genuinely interested about anyone someone else is interested in, or really anyone who is producing good art or interesting art, of whatever sort; so it’s been fairly haphazard—who is in town when, who knows a musician that someone might pair up with the poet; it’s very spontaneous and improvisational; but I think that’s why it’s great.

There's a magical atmosphere at your readings, whether they're held outside in the garden or indoors in your living room. What are some essential components of your reading series?

R/B Mertz: The fact that the readings take place in or around a home is really essential to me, maybe because when I think of the tradition of poetry I first encountered as a reader– I first read about people reading poems or reciting them stiffly and formally, in British novels and stuff like that, where some ladies would read aloud or recite in drawing rooms to their families or suitors or whoever—reading these private lyrical things, Romantic poems, probably, in a private space, which was somehow made public by the communication across time and space between the poet and the reciter or reader, and the audience, and the author of the novel, and me…so to me, poetry was this thing that was created in absolute privacy, confessional, etc; and yet always accessed in this way that’s really removed from the author, and read aloud or performed (un-like a novel), which goes back to Homer reciting his stuff around the fire or wherever, or the village gathering in the theater or square…I find all the layers of this public/private stuff really fascinating, especially because we’re in this monumental phase of human communication, where publishing and authorship and all of these things are being re-defined, and of course viewing and audience-ship and reading and listening are all being re-defined, there’s something both ancient and radical about opening your home/private space to strangers, and to The Stranger that poetry is, or the poet is, and the strangeness of all that converging around live art vs. the recorded art of the television or the radio or the internet.

Robin Clarke(Robin Clarke reads from her book Lines the Quarry, Omnidawn, 2013)
 

Is there a particular highlight from the readings that you'd like to tell us about?

Robin Clarke: During a particularly serious and important poetry reading (LOL I mean me! when I had the chance to read at our series) our fellow planners' 1-1/2 year-old, Jules, took a big dump in his portable potty training potty, which was discreetly located right there in the reading space! As I recall he must not have peed, because the toilet produces music when you pee. But generally the presence of children at these readings is amazing. When Tom Raworth read, he read a crazily fast poem about his kids in honor of this same potty-training child, who he'd been hanging out with the day of the reading. Poetry should not ever be a space for decorum, and the anarchic children just about clear us of that temptation. I'm told I was literally saying the word "embarrassed" when the dump was dropped. Lately I've been thinking poets have to be willing to risk humiliation at all times. Jules helped me learn that.

R/B Mertz: When Tom Raworth came, that was so special. Particularly because when we were in grad school, taking a class with Ben Lerner, who we admired a lot, Tom Raworth came to town for the first time. When Ben heard that Tom was going to be in town, he and Sten organized a reading for Tom in about a week. And I think Ben was kind of appalled that no one else was doing it, and he had just gotten to Pittsburgh and didn’t know the venues or anything yet, but they had the reading at a hookah bar, with people burbling the whole time. So, Ben at one point gave this speech about how we should go to every reading, everywhere, and if we heard a poet was going to be in town, we should host them; so when Tom Raworth was in town again, it was really special to be able to have him with us, and to know that we had put this thing in place that was ready to receive him, which was also a tribute to Ben, for me, in that moment, like we were completing the ultimate homework assignment from our teacher. Also, Tom Raworth is a fucking rockstar and can drink and smoke like one, and write and perform times better than one, which I found really inspiring.

Also, when gt rabbit read outside last summer, that was probably the most personally special for me; he had just returned from two years in South Korea, so it was like a reunion, and he did this really electronic sound art outside, which also messed with this public/private/house stuff I’m interested in, because gt rabbit read alongside his sound art, and sort of played the sound art “live” –like technology or electricity or the computer or the internet were exploding outside, right in the garden, and what they were exploding into was poetry for friends, for an audience, the poet, etc; gt rabbit used this great recording of a Robert Creeley reading (“The Plan is the Body” on Pennsound) where Creeley is really high or drunk or both, and he’s losing his place and debating a heckler, but also giving one of the best readings ever; so it was like all these electronic devices and recorded voices of history were emerging so clearly as a result of this one body, who collected and “read” them; this one lyric/poet moment which was happening outside, where you think all those electronic things aren’t really supposed to be.

Do you have any specific plans or goals for the reading series that you might share with us?

Sten Carlson: I think that as poets we need to invent a life outside the university. We'd like to keep building these collaborative elements, to invite horizontal —not hierarchical— collaboration. We'd also like to start our own press in the future. We see this reading series as a way of practicing a politics that we aspire to live on a daily basis.

R/B Mertz:

“the plan is the body.

Who can read it.”

(Robert Creeley)