Poetry Electric: Live Mag! Straight Out of America

Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is an artist, critic, eco-activist, impresario and publisher, but is best known as a poet. He received his MFA in Poetry after studying with Allen Ginsberg. From 1987 to 2000 he ran Cover Magazine, the Underground National. He is the art editor for Boog and for many years he was the poetry reviewer for The Brooklyn Rail. In 2014 he won Theater for the New City’s poetry contest. ! His 12th book, Triple Crown, Sonnets, is out from Spuyten Duyvil.  Wright currently produces an art and poetry showcase called Live Mag!

Vyt Bakaitis, a native of Lithuania, has been living in New York City since 1968. Two books of his poems are still in print: City Country (Black Thistle Press, NYC, 1996), and Deliberate Proof (Lunar Chandelier Press, Brooklyn NY, 2010). constructs, his book of visual poems and photographs, came out in a limited edition in 2001 (Arunas K. Photo+Graphics, NYC).    Vyt has also published translations of poetry from several languages, including Daybooks 1970-1972, the second book of his translations from the Lithuanian poems of Jonas Mekas (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, NYC, 2003).

Gabriel Don received her MFA in creative writing at The New School, where she worked as the Reading Series and Chapbook Competition Coordinator. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Understanding Between Foxes and Light, A Minor, Westerly, Mascara Literary Review, The Legendary, Transtierros (translated into Spanish), Gargoyle 62 and Three Rooms Press MAINTENANT 9. She has appeared in visual poems such as Woman Without Umbrella and Unbound and started several reading-soiree series. She has received press for her work including  Quiet Lunch ,Let Them Talk, Art Loves Her, Yes Poetry! and Great Weather for Media.  Don was born in Australia, grew up in the Middle East and Singapore and is currently based in New York City.

Filip Marinovich is the author of WOLFMAN LIBRARIAN, now out from Ugly Duckling Presse. He served as a librarian at the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street. He teaches the workshop QUEERING POETS BY SUN SIGN, a conversation at the intersection of Queer Poetry, Time, and Archetype Study.

Paco Marquez is originally from Mexico and Northern California, he is poetry editor at Washington Square. His work has appeared in Apogee, the Squaw Valley Review, and OccuPoetry, among others. He was featured as “Lo-Writer of the Week” in Juan Felipe Herrera’s California Poet Laureate website, and more recently, on Columbia University WKCR 89.9 FM’s “Studio A.” One of his poems went up on a public mural through Sacramento’s Del Paso Words & Walls Project. He recently completed an MFA in poetry at NYU.

Joe Pan is the author of two collections of poetry, Autobiomythography & Gallery (BAP) and Hiccups (Augury Books). He is the publisher and managing editor of Brooklyn Arts Press, serves as the poetry editor for the arts magazine Hyperallergic and small press editor for Boog City, and is the founder of the services-oriented activist group Brooklyn Artists Helping. His piece “Ode to the MQ-9 Reaper,” a hybrid work about drones, was excerpted and praised in The New York Times. In 2015 Joe participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Process Space artist residency program on Governors Island. Joe attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, grew up along the Space Coast of Florida, and now lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Wanda Phipps is a writer/performer living in NYC. Her books include Field of Wanting: Poems of Desire and Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems. Her poetry has been translated into Ukrainian, Hungarian, Arabic, Galician and Bangla. She has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Theater Translation Fund, and others. As a founding member of Yara Arts Group she has collaborated on numerous theatrical productions presented in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Siberia, and at La MaMa, E.T.C. in NYC. She’s curated reading series at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and written about the arts for Time Out New York, Paper Magazine, and About.com.

Ilka Scobie is a native New Yorker poet and art critic.  She writes for  London’s Artlyst and recent poems have appeared in Urban Graffitti, LiveMag, Vanitas and here/there. She teaches poetry in the public school system, and co-curated ART AM 3, a group show of Italian and American artists in Soncino, Italy.

Rachel Swaner studied classical piano for 15 years, and has been playing with various groups (Main Squeeze Orchestra, Famous Accordion Orchestra, The Drunkard’s Wife, Brian & Silbin and Friends) throughout NYC for two decades. When not playing music, Rachel teaches public policy at NYU, makes mosaic murals, rock climbs, and daydreams about having a garden.

Mike Topp was born in Washington, D.C., and currently lives in New York City unless he has died or moved. Recent books include Born On A Train (with Raymond Petttibon, published by David Zwirner Books), Sasquatch Stories (Publishing Genius) and 29 Mini-Essays (Amazon Kindle). He is currently collaborating on a novel with the poet Sparrow titled Goodbye Girl.

David Friedman, trained as a painter, he became interested in treating the canvas as “skin,” and his work has long focused on physicality. He works with unconventional materials — supports loaded with their own identities and past lives — that demand his collaboration. He excavates into and project onto these surfaces.