Last Red Night?

2011-10-16T03:14:07Z

The Red Night poetry series will close at Beatnik Studios after a year that has featured Mary Mackey, Kathryn Hohlwein, Josh Fernandez, Sandy Thomas, Bill Gainer, Lara Kaapuni, Phillip T. Nails, Crawdad Nelson, James Lee Jobe, Mario Ellis Hill and numerous others, including B.L. Kennedy, who was featured in the first show with Charlene Ungstad.

Kennedy will join Ann Menebroker and Paul Fericano to close the popular reading series that has run the third Wednesday of each month since July 14, 2010, and has been well-attended by poetry and prose enthusiasts.

Organizer Genelle Chaconas, a Sacramento State alum, artist and poet, envisioned the series as a place “where our shared instinct to create would be celebrated.”

“She’s serious about wanting to present very different types of poets and their poetry,” Menebroker said. “I think she’s done a very enthusiastic job of emceeing the poets she’s invited to read. I can only hope she finds another place for her poetry venue.

“(She is) a growing and illuminating poet in her own right, who has an impressive interest in past events, which is refreshing,” Menebroker continued.

Although Red Night has focused primarily on poets from the greater Sacramento area, this final event will include the voice of Paul Fericano, who splits his time between the San Francisco Bay Area and Santa Barbara. He is the co-founder of YU News, a parody news service, and the publisher of The Broadsider. He is widely published and recently performed with Menebroker in a tag-team reading, a concept he is promoting.

“Fericano writes of the human condition, but he also has a talented streak of humor in his work. His work has grown over the years and become even richer, better,” Menebroker said, adding, “Paul is a fantastically great reader!”

Poet B.L. Kennedy is a well-known name in Sacramento as one of the past hosts of the long-running “Poetry Unplugged” series at Luna’s Café and for projects throughout the Sacramento area. Kennedy was also presented both a Lifetime Achievement Award and a Community Service Award from the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. He was the recipient of five new works in performance grants from SMAC and a new projects grant to help produce the film “I Began to Speak,” which he also directed.

About new projects, Kennedy said, “I am planning a special group reading of d.a.levy for next October, and I am also at work on an as yet untitled new collection of poems and a second edition of sonnets.”

“I asked Genelle Chaconas to be included in the last (event) so that I could give thanks to two poets that were major in helping shape my path in poetry,” Kennedy said. “I am both humbled and honored to read with (Fericano and Menebroker).”

“B.L. Kennedy and I have been friends for many years, and we've been on the same stage together many times, but it's been awhile, and I'm looking forward to reading with him,” Menebroker said. “B.L. has always been a dynamic reader and writes from the heart of his hopes and fears and longings with huge feelings and Kennedy Style.”

Menebroker is also a well-known Sacramento poet who doesn’t read publicly as often as some might like. Featured as the Nine of Hearts in the SMAC “Poets on Deck” (playing cards), she has authored over 20 collections, and her work can be found in “The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.”

About the term "meat poet" often applied to her work, she said, “I'm not a great fan of hooking names on movements in poetry. Poets are poets and we do tend to go through periods of writing a certain way at a certain time, but it's an accident of birth and current cultures and histories. My writing has changed a lot over the years; it is no longer so personal, so confessional. There isn't as much “me” in it, although no one can write and keep themselves out of the poem, the idea of it.”

Menebroker's newest book of poems entitled “The Measure of Small Gratitudes” published by Kamini Press in Sweden will be released soon.

These three poets rarely give public readings, so this is an opportunity not only to be at the closing of Red Night at Beatnik but to see and hear three poets, all with different styles, whose works complement one another.

Wednesday’s event begins at 8 p.m. and costs $5 at the door. Beatnik Studios is located at 2421A 17th St.

Red Night Poetry premiere Wednesday

2010-07-12T02:12:44Z

Genelle Chaconas remembers the first time she read poetry in public quite vividly. It was a few years ago at Luna’s Poetry Unplugged open mic.

“I was shaking head to foot,” she said. “A fire truck blared past, three lines into my poem, and someone from the crowd shouted, ‘Start over!’ I thought I was going to just disappear.”

After a timid finish, the audience erupted in rowdy applause. Chaconas decided to speak with the host, longtime Sacramento poet B.L. Kennedy.

“That’s how I got to know B.L. Nobody else knows more about what’s going on artistically in Sacramento,” she said.

Three years later, Chaconas is organizing her own reading at Beatnik Studios. Along with Charlene Ungstad, Kennedy will be the featured poet at the inaugural event.

The reading, called Red Night Poetry, was inspired by William S. Burroughs’ book “Cities of the Red Night.” The title suits the gallery space since Burroughs was a famed “Beat” poet.

Chaconas brings a more serious approach to her poetry readings.

“We need to foster an environment of acceptance and fun loving freedom,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean no standards of rigor will exist. What I hope to bring forwards is a reiteration that poetry needs to be respected as the powerful tool it is.”

Asked if poetry is making a comeback, Chaconas replied emphatically.

“Poetry doesn’t need a comeback as it is something inside and outside of ourselves that must always exist,” she said. “What does need to happen is a new realization that poetry deserves respect, that to respect art is to truly respect the self.”

In addition to featured poets, there will be an open mic with a five-minute limit per reader. The event will be held Wednesday at 7 p.m. with a $3 cover. Beatnik Studios is at 2421 17th St.

Photo:

Genelle Chaconas at a poetry reading. Courtesy of Chaconas.

Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "genelle chaconas"

Last Red Night?

Red Night Poetry premiere Wednesday