SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011, 5pm

On Sunday, September 11, 2011, at 5pm, The Jubilant Thicket Literary Series presents readings by poets Pattie McCarthy & Brian Carpenter & music by omnitonik (Lilla Kultsar). 

PATTIE MCCARTHY is the author of Table Alphabetical of Hard Words, Verso, & bk of (h)rs, all from Apogee Press -- as well as L&O, forthcoming this year from Little Red Leaves.  She teaches Literature & Creative Writing at Temple University & is a 2011 Pew Fellow in the Arts.

BRIAN CARPENTER has been living in Philadelphia since 2005, after moving from his native habitat of Seattle & spending two years in the Poetics program at the University of Maine.  He has self-published two books of poems (Aspect Cycle, Bluest Keys), & one box (Small Seasons).  An earlier prose poem, The Green Island Problem, is available through Vancouver’s Kootenay School of Writing collective.  He currently works as an audio archivist of Native American language recordings.


OMNITONIK  grew up in Budapest, Hungary behind the iron curtain, but has never seen it. She liked hitchhiking through Eastern Europe and taking long train rides there. She has been musically involved with herself for a few decades and is still getting a kick out of it. She has not been trained as a guitarist, so keen listening and hightened sense of patience are very much appreciated. She finds music as a vibrational element, and rhythm, to be her great connectors to particular states of being that she draws from and plunges into when inspired. She chizzles her lyrics with care: some songs she has been working on for years and some are pieces of popcorn from Pallas Athena. 

This all occurs at The Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA.  Will be amazing.  Please come.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 14, 2011, 5pm

On Sunday, August 14, 2011, at 5pm, The Jubilant Thicket Literary Series features poetry readings by Carlos Soto Roman & Sueyeun Juliette Lee, plus film/music by James Short & Maurice Wright.

CARLOS SOTO ROMAN is a Chilean poet who is currently living and attending school in Philadelphia. Carlos is responsible for the Elective Infinities project, and works with the New Philadelphia Poets to help change the face of poetry throughout the city.

SUEYEUN JULIETTE LEE grew up three miles from the CIA. She currently lives in Pittsburgh, where she edits Corollary Press. Her books include That Gorgeous Feeling (Coconut Press, 2008) and UNDERGROUND NATIONAL (Factory School, 2010).   

JAMES SHORT researches the potential of video as a development in the medium of writing. He has exhibited his motion picture studies in more than fifty group and solo exhibitions, most recently the 3LD Art & Technology Center in Manhattan, the SINErgy Project Space & Gallery in Philadelphia, and The Intermedia Festival of Telematic Arts at Indiana University Purdue University. He also visually scores music, dance and theatrical productions, and collaborates on butoh stage performances. He lives in Philadelphia.

MAURICE WRIGHT was born in Virginia, and has worked with computer music for over 40 years. His works for computer sound and images have been featured at festivals in England, Sweden, Germany, Canada and South Korea in the past few years alone. A student of Mario Davidovsky and Charles Dodge at Columbia University, he has lived in Philadelphia since 1980, teaching music composition at Temple University. He would like you to visit his website: mauricewright.org .


Promises to be a beautiful experience.  Please come.  This all occurs, as usual, at The Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA.

SUNDAY, JULY 10, 2011, 5pm

On Sunday, July 10th, 2011, at 5pm The Jubilant Thicket Literary Series presents poetry by Hailey Higdon & Vladimir Zykov, as well as a lecture + Q&A by Sam Durso on Virginia Woolf.

HAILEY HIGDON lives in Philadelphia, PA, where she teaches pre-kindergarten & runs the small, small press, what to us (press).  She is the author of The Palinode Project, which can be read & accessed at www.palinodeproject.blogspot.com.  Her newest chapbook, How to Grow Almost Everything, was recently published.  She is originally from Nashville, Tennessee.

VLADIMIR ZYKOV is a founding member of forgodot.com:  research in poetry.  His areas of interest include procedural & ambient listening, movement & space, dialectics, shamanism & bioenergetic analysis.  His work has been exhibited at the ICA Philadelphia & the Kelly Writers House, & will appear in Against Expressionism, a forthcoming anthology of conceptual writing edited by Craig Dworkin & Kenneth Goldsmith.

SAM DURSO divides time between arts & politics, having most recently run the writing program at the University of the Arts, where he was an assistant professor of Literature, & managed a City Council campaign.  He is the political director of the progressive group Philly For Change & blogs on Young Philly Politics.  He has written & directed plays & may have given Tina Fey her first speaking role.  He believes everyone should read A Room of One's Own in high school.

This all happens at The Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA.  Please come!

SUNDAY, JUNE 12, 2011, 5PM

On Sunday, June 12th, 2011, at 5pm, The Jubilant Thicket Literary Series presents a celebration of (Soma)tics, featuring a reading & discussion by CAConrad, and films by Courtney Shumway.

CACONRAD is the son of white trash asphyxiation.  His childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother & helping her shoplift.

COURTNEY SHUMWAY is a series of movements contained within a female body centered out of nowhere & existing forever tomorrow beside you.  They were hungry so she fed them.  8.  All at once.  She is least relevant in the early morning & highly significant at any other time of day, unless the sun is up.  She has gone mad with your waiting & fills herself with things untold.  In spite of knowing better, she speaks constantly, resulting in her continued presence & frequent misgivings.  She is deeply honored to bear, among other tragedies, the affliction of poet.

This will be an amazing day in the history of the world & poetry.  Please come.  This happens, as ever, at The Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, at 5pm EST.

SUNDAY, MAY 8th, 2011, 5pm

The Jubilant Thicket Literary Series presents poetry by Dorothea Lasky & Stan Mir, as well as a lecture + Q&A about the concept of understanding in tragic poetry by William McGuire.

DOROTHEA LASKY is an American poet.  She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on March 27, 1978.  Lasky earned her BA in Classics & Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis.  She earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers, & her Ed.M. in Arts & Education from Harvard University.

STAN MIR is the author of two books of poetry, Song & Glass (Subito Press, 2010) & The Lacustrine Suite (Pavement Saw Press, 2011), as well as the chapbooks Flight Patterns & Test Patterns, both published by JR Vansant.  His work has also appeared in Fascicle, Ixnay, LVNG & The Poker.  Currently he lives in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

WILLIAM McGUIRE bravely sacrificed a normal social life in order to read old books with odd titles.  He enjoys poetry, philosophy, & sleazy detective novels, but not in that order.

This all occurs, as usual, at The Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia PA.  Please come.  Will be stupendous.

SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2011, 5PM

On Sunday, April 10th, 2011, at 5pm, THE JUBILANT THICKET LITERARY SERIES features poetry by Joe Hall & Wade Fletcher, & visual poetry by Francesca Costanzo.

JOE HALL is the founder & co-organizer (with Wade Fletcher) of the Washington, D.C. area reading series Cheryl's Gone.  His first book, Pigafetta Is My Wife, was published by Black Ocean Press in April 2010.  He is also an avid collector of bloody noses.

WADE FLETCHER lives in Falls Church, VA with his wife & their wonderful new son.  He teaches composition, literature, & poetry at two of the George Universities:  Mason & Washington, & also serves as assistant manager for Fall of the Book, a yearly literary arts festival.  He completed his MFA in poetry in 2008 at GMU, where he held the Heritage Writer Fellowship.  A former poetry editor for Phoebe, he now coordinates Cheryl's Gone, a monthly multi-genre reading & performance series in Washington D.C.  His chapbook, Snitch Culture, was published in 2007, & recent poems have appeared in Barrelhouse & Versal.

FRANCESCA COSTANZO sought refuge in her room for writing poetry at the age of five.  At age six, she took photographs at family gatherings.  Now, she blends the two together to create a mood, an emotion, a sequence in time.  Never knowing the final outcome, she manipulates her piece until words jump off the pages & images pop like firecrackers.  Like still moving pictures showing what just was, & what has been forever captured in time.

This all occurs, as usual, at The Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia.  Please come!

SUNDAY, MARCH 13th, 2011, 5pm

On Sunday, March 13th, 2011, The Jubilant Thicket Literary Series features poetry by Lauren Ireland, film by Brian Melton, & a lecture plus Q&A by Nicholas Deboer on Ezra Pound's The Cantos.

LAUREN IRELAND  grew up in coastal Virginia & southern Maryland.  Currently an editor at Lungfull! Magazine, she also curates the monthly poetry series The Readings at Chrystie Street, & edits Invisible Magazine with Steve Roberts.  Her poems have appeared in Sixth Finch, Conduit, Caketrain, & Bateau, among others; a chapbook is forthcoming from Factory Hollow Press.  She lives in Brooklyn.

BRIAN MELTON is a freelance cinematographer who's worked on indie films such as Great World of Sound, which premiered at Sundance in 2007 & the Oscar-nominated Junebug.  In February of 2007, the American Society of Cinematographers awarded Brian the ASC Heritage Award for Cinematography for his work on the 16mm short film Red Autumn.  Since then, he has shot several projects including an HD feature directed by Stephen Cone called The Chritians, which made its debut in November of 2008 at Chicago's Gene Siskel film center, a Joshua Harrell music video that is currently running on MTV's LOGO network, & Cowboy Funeral, an upcoming independent feature produced by Crosswater Entertainment.  Brian is an alumnus of the North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking.  He currently lives in Philadelphia.

NICHOLAS DEBOER was born at 1024pm with a temperature of 29.1 degrees farenheit.  The wind gust a bit, around 5.8 mph under a clear sky in Chicago, Illinois.  It was the Michael Reece Hospital, designed by Walter Gropius.  He certainly still likes to think about it.  Later on, he attended schools, they were nice schools & some of his friends were met there.  He found out that he could get obsessed with things by the age of 11, when his mother told him he could listen to their vinyl & found a photograph of Edgar Poe in the Beatles' seventh album.  It got worse, over time.  By his early 20s he found out that he really liked Guy Debord & the Situationist International, & really thought it was important at 18 to watch Citizen Kane something like 100 times.  Now, it's Ezra Pound, then it's Charles Olson.  He went to Naropa & Western Michigan University.  People have been nice enough to take some of his words in poetry journals, such as Fact-Simile, Bombay Gin & other(s).  He was born on the 23rd of October, 1981.

This all happens at 5pm at The Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA.  Please come!