Your Neighborhood’s Feminist Witchcraft: An Interview with Jericho Brown & Yours Truly!

Here’s an interview about this upcoming Hugo House Literary Series reading with Jericho Brown and Porochista Khakpopur, where I talk about The Male Gaze, God watching you, and how maybe we could lock those two in a staring contest and go about our revolution. Jericho questions “whether there is such a thing as ‘universal’ and whether experiences that are not universal can be rendered as the so-called sublime.”

https://hugohouse.org/rachel-kessler-jericho-brown-lit-series/

Come hear us read!

Hugo Literary Series: Jericho Brown, Porochista Khakpour, Rachel Kessler

November 10 at 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM

Fred Wildlife Refuge (128 Belmont Ave East) | 21+ | Doors open at 6:30 pm
General: $25 | Hugo House member: $20 | Student (with ID): $12

The 2017-2018 Hugo Literary Series coincides with our move to a new and permanent home on the same site where we first opened our doors over 20 years ago. In this same spirit of development and growth, we’ve commissioned new work on themes of real estate—from the pragmatic issues of property value to the more nebulous idea of place.

Award-winning poet Jericho Brown; critically acclaimed writer Porochista Khakpour; Seattle-based poet, performer, and one-half of the Vis-à-Vis Society, Rachel Kessler; and musician Katie Jacobson will present new and original work on the theme of “Area Protected by Neighborhood Watch.”

Books will be for sale through Elliott Bay Book Company and Open Books: A Poem Emporium.

Perhaps I will show some slides of some experimental maps I made:

DSC_0023(photo credit Maude Deslauriers)

Video Poems

I’m teaching a class on video poems with the fantastic organization Path With Art right now, so I thought I should post a few of the video poems I’ve made with my collaborator, Sierra Nelson, as part of our literary performance art group Vis-a-Vis Society. (Click on the highlighted links to be transported to my vimeo videos!)

Our most recent heavy metal palindrome one-shot piece: “O, GO” which was part of an installation at the starting line of NEPO House‘s 5K “Don’t Run” artwalk last summer. Brilliantly shot by Genius Award Winning cinematographer Ben Kasulke.

An instructional video on the theme of “It’s All Downhill From Here” as part of NEPO 5k 2012, “DOWNHILL“.

“Coats” was shot on Super 8 one snowy afternoon in 2006, and recently appeared in Velocity’s Next Dance Cinema‘s 2014 program at the Northwest Film Forum. It began as a multiple choice poem about favorite coats.

VisaVisSociety_moleculehandlingVis-a-Vis Society - Michael Doucett Photography 5422122857_6cbeb2a720_b(2)

Christian Charm Workbook: Rachel Kessler Does Everything Wrong

(Zacchaeous in the Tree Halloween Costume, circa 1981)

Zacheous In the Tree

I will read from my work-in-progress memoir Christian Charm Workbook, (previously titled Hack) illustrated with my cartoons, old photos, maps, charts, and graphs at the Hugo House. Local literary luminaries Rebecca Hoogs, Sierra Nelson, Jason Whitmarsh, and Kevin Craft will each perform a poetry PowerPoint presentation, Pecha Kucha-style. This multi-media project is supported by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and 4Culture. Free and open to the public, it all takes place on Tuesday, October 7, 2014 at 7:00 PM at the Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, Seattle. The bar will be open! We’ll eat some cake! And maybe have a sing-along?