100 Thousand Poets for (spare) Change: The Unbearables Rollo Whitehead Memorial Reading (pt. 1)

Before I say anything else, I need to say that there are going to be a lot of photos to look at, and I'm going to post them in multiple entries, over the next couple of days. Please bear with me, and if I can figure out, at the end I will cross-link between them.

Saturday, September 24, 2011 was the 100 Thousand Poets for Change, global poetry reading - go to their web page for more information. When I heard about it from Ron Kolm, my reaction was "what change? Spare change? That would make sense." So, no matter how good the poetry or righteous the cause, in my mind, I kept seeing poets reading for spare change. Anyway, read they apparently did - all over the NYC, the state, the country, the continent, the world. I only got  to one event, The Unbearables' Rollo Whitehead Memorial Reading at A Gathering of the Tribes. This was only a couple of days after the official release of The Unbearables's Big Book of Sex, that massively useful instruction manual on how, when, where, why and what the hell sex is really all about. If you haven't already heard about it - well, now you have. If you haven't already bought a copy, then surely you are not the type of person who supports poets in need of spare change, your spare change.

It was late afternoon, it was the East Village - or is that the Lower East Side of Manhattan - and a good sized crowd was there. The gallery is small, and it was full. That was good. Jim Feast was master of ceremonies and Ron Kolm major domo, or whatever, but he helped keep it going. 

These photos were all taken during the social period that proceeds any of these events. People have to say hello to each other, even if they were reading together only an hour or two earlier. After all, they live on the edge, and people who live on the edge sometimes fall off, never to be heard from again, and you wouldn't want to have that happen to someone and not said goodbye, would you?

Despite anything else, there was a lot of good poetry read, and many of the poets are very good at delivering their words. If I had any spare change, I would've given it up right then.

Permalink: https://kayester.blogspot.com/2011/09/100-thousand-poets-for-spare-change.html

The Unbearables' Big Book of Sex - Part 2 of a reading at A Gathering of the Tribes.

Here's the second and final batch of photos I took at the Unbearables' Big Book of Sex release reading at A Gathering of the Tribes gallery on East 3rd St. in the East Village on Wednesday night, Sept. 21.

I wasn't there until the end, so I don't have photos of everyone who attended, nor of everyone who read. If there's no photo of you, and you read, and you aren't pleased, well, get over it. I'm no magician, it was a weeknight and I wasn't going to stay out until 2AM when I've got to get up at 5AM in the morning.

The reading was terrific. Everyone's piece was appropriate, whether a seven line poem, excerpts from a an essay, or a short story. I think the only thing missing from the evening was graphics. The book is filled with them - there's a color insert and the title page for credits for the graphics is two columns long. 

Somebody ought to figure out a way to get someone to pay to mount them as a show at a gallery somewhere. They are worth the seeing.I have to give special credit to the people who put this all together, the editors and organizers as well as all the contributors. It's a big book, it's full of colorful words and images, and some monochrome too. If you don't go out and get it, you are surely going to miss out on something you ought to read, look at and think about. The book is published by Autonomedia.

Anyway, if you click on the pictures they magically grow bigger. If you hate them, well, to bad. If you like them, that's to bad, too.