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Christine Burke / Moving Lines Ensemble / open poetry reading
Jul
1
7:00 PM19:00

Christine Burke / Moving Lines Ensemble / open poetry reading

all ages / $10 suggested donation

This event will feature two musical acts, with open poetry reading in-between! Poets with any level of experience are invited to read, please plan to keep readings under 6 minutes so that more can participate.

Christine Burke is a composer from Iowa whose music has most recently been performed by LIGAMENT, UCLA's FLUX ensemble, the Valparaiso University New Music Ensemble, a.pe.ri.od.ic., Duo Axis, and line upon line. Her debut album, "Something kept close", was released on Sawyer Editions in 2022. In February 2025, Lex Leto x the Christine Burke Ensemble (a group Iowa-based experimental musicians) self-released their indie/experimental classical album "I am here but I must go". Current projects include tabletop organ improvisations and recording an album of recent works by members of the Christine Burke Ensemble.

Moving Lines Ensemble will be premiering a new piece featuring a combination of imaginative arrangements of the music of Johnny Cash, and autobiographical spoken word with musical improvisations. An Albuquerque and Iowa City-based ensemble, Moving Lines Ensemble was formed in 2018 with an aim of exploring interactions between music and spoken word. They create primarily through processes of collaboration and improvisation, establishing pieces which range from open frameworks to more traditionally notated scores and poems, playing with the relationship between the inevitable score and its moment-by-moment realization. The current ensemble consists of John Barney (poet/performer), Levi Raleigh Brown (percussionist/composer), saxophonist Charlotte Leung, and guitarist/bassist Ian Davis.

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Storytime at the Afrofuturist Library on Montez Press Radio
Apr
22
5:00 PM17:00

Storytime at the Afrofuturist Library on Montez Press Radio

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Genevieve Trainor reads selections from the CAS Reading Room Library on NY-based digital radio station Montez Press Radio.

Tune in at: https://radio.montezpress.com/

Montez Press Radio was founded in 2018 with the goal of fostering greater experimentation and conversation between artists, writers, and thinkers through the medium of radio. This platform is an experiment in broadcasting and community building which allows different corners of the art world to interact with each other in person and on air—a place where media finally meets flesh. Offering space and time to both the established and emerging or underrepresented, we are drawn to art that exists in the unexpected, the authenticity of sharing without a script, the sounds of ideas in the making, conversation that forgets there’s an audience. We strive to question current knowledge economies while doing our best to interrupt commercial means of communication. 

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Open House Poetry Reading: Matt Hart, Lauren Haldeman, Skylar Alexander, and Izzy Casey
Oct
7
7:00 PM19:00

Open House Poetry Reading: Matt Hart, Lauren Haldeman, Skylar Alexander, and Izzy Casey

  • 229 North Gilbert Street Iowa City, IA, 52245 United States (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join us for an open house poetry reading at our new space (229 N Gilbert) featuring visiting poet Matt Hart and IC’s own Lauren Haldeman, Skylar Alexander, and Izzy Casey.

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Matt Hart is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently Everything Breaking/for Good (YesYes Books, 2019) and The Obliterations (Pickpocket Books, 2019). Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including The Academy of American Poets online, Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Harvard Review, jubilat, Kenyon Review online, Lungfull!, Mississippi Review, Ovenbird, POETRY, and Waxwing, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a 2013 individual artist grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band NEVERNEW: www.nevernew.net.

Lauren Haldeman is the author of Instead of Dying (winner of the 2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry), Calenday, and The Eccentricity is Zero. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Tin House, The Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, Fence, Tupelo Quarterly, among others. A graphic novelist and poet, she’s received an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You can find her online at http://laurenhaldeman.com

Skylar Alexander is a writer, teacher, and graphic designer living in Iowa City, Iowa. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Cutbank; Smokelong Quarterly; Hobart; Poetry City, USA; PromptPress; Mantra; Beholder; Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, and Light Industrial Safety, and many other places. Recently, she became the lead designer for Poet Lore, America's oldest poetry journal, and designed the Iowa Writers' House's We The Interwoven series. She curates TroubADORE, a lifestyle blog for writers eager to develop a sustainable, healthy writing practice. Her first poetry collection, Searching for PetCo, is forthcoming from Forklift Books.

Izzy Casey is a poet from Los Angeles. Her poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Gulf Coast, Bennington Review, BOAAT, New York Tyrant, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is an editor for the University of Iowa Prison Writing Project. She is a current recipient of a fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.

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An Eerie Evening of Music, Art, & Words with Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Christopher Eck, and Erik Whittaker
Oct
30
7:00 PM19:00

An Eerie Evening of Music, Art, & Words with Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Christopher Eck, and Erik Whittaker

Devil’s Night. Jennifer MacBain-Stephens and friends celebrate her book The Vitamix and the Murder of Crows (Apocalypse Party, 2018) with an eerie evening of music, art, and words. Experience poetry about crows, outer space, Tarot, Stephen King, and other people’s ghosts.

Opening images and poems with Christopher Eck (How to Draw a Knife).

Special musical guest Erik Whittaker.

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the Black Dada Reader Reading
Apr
22
3:00 PM15:00

the Black Dada Reader Reading

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University of Iowa Professor of English Miriam Thaggert and writers Alea Adigweme, & Raj Chakrapani read selections of their choosing from Adam Pendleton’s Black Dada Reader, followed by reflection and conversation.  The Reader is a collection of texts that illustrate “Black Dada,” a term Pendleton uses to define his work. By activating the Reader through spoken word, the Black Dada Reading engages Pendleton’s language-based practice, which seeks to explore, in his words, “language as material/material as language; language as image/image as language.” 



Co-presented with the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, the event took place in the Dada Futures exhibition in the UISMA's gallery on the 3rd floor of the Iowa Memorial Union, in advance of Pendleton's April 26th visit and lecture in Art Building West through the Intermedia Research Initiative.

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