MEGAN KAMINSKI, JUDY ROITMAN & JENNIFER ZIEGLER

Sunday, April 29th, 4:00pm

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

FREE! (But donations to help with the poets' gas and jerky are warmly accepted)

 Megan KAMINSKI's  first book of poetry, Desiring Map, is forthcoming from Coconut Books (April 2012). She is also the author of six chapbooks, including most recently favored daughter (Dancing Girl Press 2012) and collection (Dusie, 2011). Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Everyday Genius, Post Road, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Kansas and also curates the Taproom Poetry Series in downtown Lawrence.

Judy ROITMAN lives in Lawrence KS. Her chapbook, The stress of meaning: variations on a line of Susan Howe, was published in 1997 by Standing Stones Press, a second chapbook, Diamond Notebooks, was published in 1998 by nominative press collective, and a third chapbook, Slippage, was published in 1999 by Potes and Poets Press. A book No Face: Selected and New was published in 2008 by First Intensity Press. Ku: a thumb book is forthcoming from Airfoil Chapbooks, and Slackline has just appeared from Hank's Loose Gravel Press. 

Jennifer ZIEGLER lives in Kansas City, MO. She is a recent graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, and is currently working as an independent fine artist in the area. Her first book of poetry, We Grew Fragmentary, is forthcoming from Xlibris, September 2012.

JESSICA BARAN, PHIL ESTES & DAN MAGERS

Friday, April 2oth, 7:00pm

at Irving Amphitheater (Irving Building, Kansas City Art Institute, 4402 Oak St., Kansas City, MO. 64111)

FREE! (But donations to help with the poets' gas and jerky are warmly accepted)

JESSICA BARAN is the author of the poetry collection Remains to be Used (Apostrophe Books, 2010) as well as the chapbook of prose sonnets Late and Soon, Getting and Spending (All Along Press, 2011). Her poetry has appeared in Harp & Altar, Sink Review and the Tusculum Review; her art criticism has appeared in Art in America, BOMB Magazine, and the Village Voice, among other journals. She resides in St. Louis, where she's the art writer for the Riverfront Times.

PHIL ESTES' chapbooks are Gem City/Fountain City (Rabbit Catastrophe, 2009) and Children of Reagan (Rabbit Catastrophe, 2012). His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in: The Associative Press, DIAGRAM, Hayden's Ferry Review, Lamination Colony, LUNGFULL!, West Wind Review and others. He lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

DAN MAGER’s first book of poems, Partyknife

(Birds, LLC), was published in spring 2012. He is co-founder and co-editor of Sink Review, an online poetry journal as well as founder and editor of Immaculate Disciples Press, a handmade chapbook press focused on poetry and visual arts collaborations. He lives in Brooklyn.

ADAM CLAY, ADA LIMÓN, MICHAEL ROBINS

Thursday, March 29th, 7:00pm

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

FREE! (But donations to help with the poets' gas and jerky are warmly accepted)

ADAM CLAY is the author A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Quarterly West, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He co-edits Typo Magazine and lives in Lexington, Kentucky with his family.

ADA LIMÓN is the author of three books of poetry, Lucky Wreck (Autumn House Press, 2006), This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions, 2007), and Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed Editions, 2010). Her work has appeared in numerous magazines including, The New Yorker, Harvard Review, and Poetry Daily. She is currently at work on a novel, a book of essays, and a new collection of poems.

MICHAEL ROBINS is the author of Ladies & Gentlemen (Saturnalia Books, 2011) and The Next Settlement (UNT Press, 2007), which received the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry. His recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, The Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. He teaches poetry and literature at Columbia College Chicago.

HEATHER CHRISTLE, MATT HART & BEN HERSEY

Wednesday, March 7th, 7:00pm

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

FREE! (But donations to help with the poets' gas and jerky are warmly accepted)

HEATHER CHRISTLE is the author of What Is Amazing (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), The Trees The Trees (Octopus Books, 2011), and The Difficult Farm (Octopus Books, 2009). Her poems have appeared in publications including The Believer, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and The New Yorker. She has taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at Emory University, where she was the 2009-2011 Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry. She is the Web Editor for jubilat and frequently a writer in residence at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. A native of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, she lives in Western Massachusetts.

MATT HART is the author of several books of poems, including Wolf Face, Light-Headed, and most recently Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati and plays in the band Travel.

BENJAMIN HERSEY is a writer and performance artist living in Northampton, Massachusetts. He recently collaborated with monologuist Seth Lepore in Get a Job/Take Me Home Tonight and Dance and Text: A Lethal Combination. In 2010, he appeared as Christopher Smart in Madeline ffitch's adaptation of Jubilate Agno. A novel excerpt, stories and a performance text have appeared in Everyday Genius, Fact-Simile and Requited. This is What We're Up Against, a chapbook of monologues, was published by Chuckwagon in 2008.

JOE AGUILAR & TEAL WILSON

Sunday, February 12th, 4:00pm

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

FREE! (But donations to help with the poets' gas and jerky are warmly accepted)

JOE AGUILAR is a George Washington Carver fellow in the creative writing PhD program at the University of Missouri. His work is in Quarterly West, LIT, Puerto del Sol, HTMLGIANT and elsewhere.

TEAL WILSON was born in the Southwest, moved to the Midwest, returned to the Southwest, called back to the Midwest. She is an amateur printmaker at the Kansas City Art Institute. Virgo. Year of the Horse. Rage rocket. She is always dreaming of the perfect sandwich.

BIRDS, LLC TOUR: JUSTIN MARKS, EMILY PETTIT, SAMPSON STARKWEATHER, PAIGE TAGGART, CHRIS TONELLI

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9TH, 2011, 7PM

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

FREE! (But donations to help with the poets' gas and jerky are warmly accepted)

JUSTIN MARKS’s first full length book is A Million in Prizes (New Issues, 2009). He is also the author of several chapbooks, the most recent being On Happier Lawns (Poor Claudia, 2011). A founding editor of Birds, LLC, he lives in Queens, NY with his wife and their twin son and daughter.

EMILY PETTIT is the author of two chapbooks How (Octopus Books) and What Happened to Limbo (Pilot Books). GOAT IN THE SNOW (Birds LLC) is her first full-length book. She is an editor for notnostrums and Factory Hollow Press and jubilat. She teaches poetry at Flying Object.

SAMPSON STARKWEATHER is the author of Self Help Poems, The Heart is Green from So Much Waiting, City of Moths and The Photograph. He played professional soccer in New Zealand and was an editor of physics and chemistry books, currently he is the Publications Coordinator at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, you can read recent work here. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and he be a Bird.

PAIGE TAGGART was born and lived in Northern California for 25 years, she's been living in Brooklyn the past 5 years. Her chapbook DIGITAL MACRAMÉ was released by Poor Claudia (Feb 2011), and Polaroid Parade from Greying Ghost Press (July 2011). The Ice Poems are forthcoming with DoubleCross Press. She was a 2009 recipient of the New York Foundation of the Art's grant. Be on the lookout for her poems forthcoming in Jubilat, Sentence, No Dear and Spinning Jenny. Check out her jewelry wares: mactaggartjewelry.blogspot.com

CHRIS TONELLI is one of the founding editors of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press. He also founded and curates the So and So Series and edits the So and So Magazine. He is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press) and For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press), and his first full-length collection is The Trees Around. New work can be found in the upcoming issues of The Laurel Review and Fou. He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife Allison and their son Miles.

BLOOF BOOKS TOUR: SHANNA COMPTON, PETER DAVIS & SANDRA SIMONDS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13th, 4:00pm

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

FREE! (But donations to help with the poets' gas and jerky are warmly accepted)

SHANNA COMPTON’s books include Down Spooky (Winnow, 2005), For Girls & Others (Bloof, 2008), and Gamers (Soft Skull, 2004), and the chapbooks Rare Vagrants (Dusie, 2010), Scurrilous Toy (Dusie, 2007), and others. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, Verse, McSweeney’s, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, the Poetry Foundation’s website, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a new poetry collection called The Blank Verge, forthcoming from Bloof Books in Spring 2012. She lives on the internet at shannacompton.com.

PETER DAVIS writes, draws, and makes music in Muncie, Indiana, with his sweet kids and sweet wife. His first book of poetry is Hitler’s Mustache (2007), and he edited Poet’s Bookshelf: Contemporary Poets on Books That Shaped Their Art (2005) and coedited Poet’s Bookshelf II (2008) with Tom Koontz, all from Barnwood Press. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry series and recent work may be found in Lamination Colony, Everyday Genius, Jacket, No Tell Motel, and elsewhere. He teaches English at Ball State University. More, including his music project, Short Hand, at artisnecessary.com. His third poetry collection, Tina, is forthcoming from Bloof Books.

SANDRA SIMONDS grew up in Los Angeles, California. She earned a B.A. in Psychology and Creative Writing at U.C.L.A and an M.F.A. from the University of Montana, where she received a poetry fellowship. In 2010, she earned a PhD in Literature with an emphasis in Creative Writing from Florida State University. Her second full-length collection of poems, Mother was a Tragic Girl, will be published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2012. She is the author of Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008), which was a finalist for numerous prizes including the National Poetry Series; she is also the author of several chapbooks including Used White Wife (Grey Book Press, 2009) and The Humble Travelogues of Mr. Ian Worthington, Written from Land & Sea (Cy Gist, 2006). Her poems have been published in many journals such as Poetry, The Believer, the Colorado Review, Fence, the Columbia Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Volt, the New Orleans Review and Lana Turner. Her Creative Nonfiction has been published in Post Road and other literary journals. She currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida and is an Assistant Professor of English at Thomas University in beautiful, rural Southern Georgia.

NICK DEMSKE, ADAM FELL & MATTHEW GUENETTE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27th, 7:00pm

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

FREE! (But donations to help with the poets' gas and jerky are warmly accepted)

NICK DEMSKE'S self-titled manuscript was selected by Joyelle McSweeney for the 2010 Fence Modern Poets Series Prize. He is currently wrapping up a 40-some date book tour which traversed across all of America. He normally lives in Racine Wisconsin, but you can visit him at nickipoo.wordpress.com.

Adam Fell is the author of I AM NOT A PIONEER, published by H_NGM_N Books, and the chapbook Ten Keys to Being a Champion On and Off the Field (H_NGM_N, 2010). He is a graduate of UW-Madison & the Iowa Writers’ Workshop & teaches at Edgewood College in Madison, WI, where he co-curates the Monsters of Poetry reading series.

Matthew Guenette is the author of two full-length collections: American Busboy (Editor’s Choice, University of Akron Press, 2011) and Sudden Anthem(Winner, American Poetry Journal Prize, Dream Horse Press, 2008). He has been awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center (2012) and the Hessen-Wisconsin Literary Exchange (2009). Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, his poems have been published in a number of national journals and anthologies, including Barn Owl Review, Diagram, Greensboro Review, Forklift: Ohio, Spoon River Poetry Review, Quarterly West, and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (Eds. Stacey Lynn Brown and Oliver de la Paz, University of Akron Press, 2012). He lives, works and loses sleep in Madison, WI.

SPRUNG FORMAL READING/RELEASE PARTY

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

Wednesday, May 11th, 8pm-10pm

FREE!

We welcome you to come out and celebrate the release of KCAI's 2011 Sprung Formal annual literary arts journal at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary on May 11th at 8pm! There will be free food, beverage, and tantalizing words.

Don't miss it!

In case you were wondering, this year's contributors are:

Mary Jo Bang, Robert J. Baumann, Adam Beris, Daniel Borzutzky, Austin Buckingham, Shannon Burns, Nick Chan, Jack Christian, Bryan Coffelt, Cyrus Console, Linh Dinh, Marie Dougherty, Dustin Downey, Shawna Enyart, Ryan Feeney, Miles Fermin, Abbe Findley, Kathleen Furlong, Madeline Gallucci, Angela Genusa, Tyson Gough, Joshua T. Howell, Kristen Iskandrian, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Justin Kemp, Emily Kendal Frey, Mitchell Hugh Kirkwood, Mark Leidner, Christina Lenert, Richard Lucyshyn, Ryan MacDonald, Alice Miller, Sawako Nakayasu, Annie Raab, Osciel Ramos, Sophie Roessler, James Sanders, Jaclyn Senne, Sandra Simonds, Lauren Stookey, Mathias Svalina, Michelle Taransky, Dana Ward, Dara Wier, Teal Wilson, Dziadek Wydra Odjazdowy, Mike Young, and Joshua Zink

ANNE BOYER & MITCHELL HUGH KIRKWOOD

at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary (1714 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108)

Sunday, April 17th, 7:30pm (sharp)

FREE!

Anne Boyer is the author of The 2000s (Free Poetry), Art is War (Mitzvah), The Romance of Happy Workers (Coffee House), Selected Dreams with a note on phrenology (Dusie Kollektiv), and Anne Boyer’s Good Apocalypse (Effing). She has also written some free pdfs, like Ma Vie en Bling 1&2. Her novel Joan is forthcoming from Bloof books, and she is at work on a second novel, Nero, as well as a few other books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. Her work has been widely published in journals, and she has been invited to read in a number of cities, but she has never before read in Kansas City, where she teaches about Utopia, Digital Society, and writing at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Mitchell Hugh Kirkwood is from Kansas. He is currently studying sculpture and creative writing at the Kansas City Art Institute. His favorite colors are red and yellow, and he is into highway driving. Go Chiefs!