Poetry Electric: LiVE MAG! Monster Word Mash

Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is an artist, eco-activist, publisher, impresario and critic and is best known as a poet. His 12th book, Triple Crown, Sonnets, is out from Spuyten Duyvil. This year he completed a feature film called “The Key Ceremony” about his experiences in East Village community gardens. Wright currently produces an art and poetry showcase called Live Mag! www.jeffreycypherswright.com

‍Ilka Scobie

Ilka Scobie is a native New Yorker who teaches poetry in the public school system. Recent readings include The Bronx Museum, Bowery Poetry Club and the City College Poetry in Performance Festival. Her work appears in Live Mag, here/there, Vanitas and other small press publications. She writes about contemporary art for London’s Artlyst.

Nava Renek

Nava Renek is a writer, editor, and educator.  She has published two novels, Spiritland and No Perfect Words and a collection of short stories, Mating in Captivity.  She also conceived of and edited Wreckage of Reason:  Anthology of XXperimental Prose by Contemporary Women Writers and Wreckage of Reason 2: Back To The Drawing Board.  She received her MFA from Brooklyn College/CUNY where she works as a Program Coordinator at the Women’s Center. Her fiction, essays, and book reviews can be found in a number of literary magazines and blogs, including The Brooklyn Rail, Skidrow Penthouse, American Book Review and www.mrbellersneighborhood.

‍Michael Lally

1959 started reading poems in coffee houses and bars; first published 1960; military 1962-66; U. of Iowa Writers Workshop on GI Bill ’66-69; ran for sheriff of Johnson County, Iowa, Peace and Freedom Party 1968; 27 books published since 1970; 1972 92nd St. Y Poetry Center’s Discovery Award for The South Orange Sonnets; NEA Poetry Awards, 1974, 1981 (in Congress right-wing representatives accused the NEA of rewarding “pornography” citing the poem My Life); 1997 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature for Cant Be Wrong; 2000 American Book Award for It’s Not Nostalgia; worked as piano player (jazz & R&B), editor, college teacher, book critic, night guard, chauffer, TV and movie actor, screenwriter and script doctor.

Uche Nduka

Uche Nduka  is a Nigerian-American poet,essayist and collagist. He was awarded the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize for Chiaroscuro in 1997. He lived in Germany and Holland for over a decade, and was the recipient of a Goethe Institut Fellowship and Heinrich Böll Haus Guest Author  Fellowship. His books include eel on reef, Ijele,Nine East, Belltime Letters, Heart’s Field, If Only The Night, Flower Child etc. He teaches at CUNY and Pratt Institute and  resides in Brooklyn, New York , with his wife the Photographer/Artist Fiona Gardner and their daughter Sula.

‍Jason Napoli Brooks

Jason Napoli Brooks’s fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in various publications, including Asymptote, 3 AM, Ninth Letter, and H.O.W. His plays have been staged in New York, Philadelphia, Berlin, Prague, and Madrid. He is also the author of the spy serial Cock of the Walk.

‍Demetrius Daniel

Poet, musician Demetrius Daniel from Kensington, Georgia, has been a Washington Heights resident since 1990. He began reading poetry in 1996 at Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe. He received mention in a NY Times article (3/20/09), “Where Boundaries Are Melting, a Place to Celebrate Differences.” He has a CD, “Word’s Speak.” Publication credits include Nomad’s Choir Poetry, Brownstone Poets Anthology 2009, and The Cartier Street Review. A featured trombonist on Fred Arcoleo’s CD, “Seeds,” his concept, “Tromboetry” infuses poetry with trombone riffs Demetrius performs regularly at “Word Up” bookstore and Nomad’s Choir. A Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance member, he formed and leads the NYC Brass Brothers Band.

‍Dianne Bowen

Originally from Brooklyn New York, multi-media artist Dianne Bowen lives and works in New York City’s East Village. Bowen’s work while formally addressing drawing pushes the boundaries of what it means through various combinations and mediums. She studied at the School of Visual Arts, in New York as well as participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Creative Capitals, Artist Summer Institute, Governor’s Island, NY, 2011; completed the Brydcliffe Residency, Woodstock, NY, in 2008. Her work has been included in international gallery and museum group shows as well as solo exhibitions in New York and Italy with Galleria Ninapi. Exhibitions of note include; 7th Biennial, A.I.R. Gallery, NY, NY, 2007, curated by Connie Butler, Chief Curator, Drawings and Prints, MoMA, New York, NY, “Dimmi Tutto”, solo exhibition, Galleria Ninapi, Ravenna, Italy, 2012, The NADA Art Fair New York 2013, with AS Artists Studios curated by Curator and Art Critic, Jill Connor, and “One of Kind” Unique Artists Books”, AC Institute, NY, NY curated by Heide Hatry. Currently her large scale out door interactive drawing mural “Wild Is The Air” is on view for the next six months in The East Village, on Houston Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue in the park organized by First Street Green Space. Bowen’s work has been reviewed in numerous publications. Of note; “Art in Dialogue” film documentary screened at the Museum for New Art, Parnu, Estonia, 2006, Art in America, June/July 2007 “Girls, girls, girls” by Carey Lovelace pg. 90, 2007, and Praeteria “artist-writer-artist” interview with Philip Hartigan,2010. In March, 2013, Bowen’s work was featured in “Maintenant” Dada Art and Poetry Journal published by Three Rooms Press.

‍Katie Peyton

Katie Peyton is a New York-based artist, writer and curator.  She has exhibited internationally and teaches at Parsons the New School for Design in New York.  A contributor to Bomb, she has been published in literary journals including Gargoyle and Short Fast and Deadly.  Peyton also operates Undercurrent Projects, an alternative space on East 5th near Bowery.

‍Emily Skillings

Emily Skillings is a dancer and a poet. She is the author of two chapbooks: Backchannel (Poor Claudia) and Linnaeus: The 26 Sexual Practices of Plants (forthcoming from No, Dear/ Small Anchor Press). Recent poems can be found in the Philadelphia Review of Books, Stonecutter, Maggy, Elderly, Bone Bouquet, Big Lucks and Poor Claudia :: Crush. Skillings dances for The Commons Choir (Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik) and presents her own choreography in New York. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective and event series. With poet Adam Fitzgerald, she recently co-curated the exhibit “John Ashbery Collects: Poet Among Things” at Loretta Howard Gallery.

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