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Big Night! Poet Ca Conrad & More

Tucked downtown near Buffalo’s Electric Tower is the two-story home of Just Buffalo Literary Center and the Western New York Book Arts Collaborative (WNYBAC), which pumps out incredible energy for the Big Night series with its second event in November. The exciting, genre-blending performances continue on Saturday, November 21 with poets CAConrad and Simon Pettet, hot on the heels of November 12’s Beatnik Big Night.

CAConrad describes himself as “the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift.” A dynamic personality, Conrad will feature selections from Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009) and The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009), which won the Gil Ott Book Award. A prolific poet, his books include (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a forthcoming collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Books, 2010). You can check him out online at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com and http://PhillySound.blogspot.com.

Simon Pettet is an English poet living in New York City who will be reading from Hearth (Talisman House, 2009), his most recent book. A collection of 30 years of work, it’s described by fellow poet Joanne Kyger as “always insightful, ardent, playful, right on the spot, and ahead of the current.” Pettet’s talents extend to inspired collaborations, significantly, Talking Pictures, and Conversations About Everything, with filmmaker-photographer Rudy Burckhardt, and Other Flowers: The UnCollected Poems of James Schuyler, co-edited with James Meetze, which is due out from Farrar, Straus, Giroux in 2010.

Kyle William Butler (BFA, Central Michigan U, 2008) was born and raised in rural Michigan, and has since moved to Buffalo to begin teaching and pursuing his MFA degree in Visual Studies at UB. Butler describes himself as “a fledgling artist working in painting, video, and audio, and is in preparation for becoming a toiling mid-career artist who will anticipate gaining a meager reputation after achieving the professional status of dead artist and/or collegiate professor.” With that sense of humor, his video presentation is pretty much guaranteed to surprise.

For $5 or less—it’s free for members of Just Buffalo, WNYBAC, Big Orbit, and CEPA Galleries—the night also includes Gulf War veteran, Culinary Institute of America grad, poet and BlazeVOX [books] publisher Geoffrey Gatza’s impossibly delicious gourmet buffet. Bring your appetite for adventure on Saturday, November 21st at 8pm at Just Buffalo at the WNYBAC, 2nd Floor, 468 Washington St. at Mohawk.

robin brox

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