Thursday April 20th, 7pm
Big Orbit Gallery
33d Essex St, Buffalo, USA 
Small press poetry reading hosted by Kevin Thurston
Free. Click here for directions to the Big Orbit.

Buffalo is in for a treat for the final installment of the Small Press Sub-series via Just Buffalo's Orbital series as Washington DC's Buck Downs and Philadelphia's CA Conrad come to town.  Both poets are remarkable in their commitment to ethics and in their ability to convert their ethics into poems of beauty that retain their sense of humor to avoid being too heavy handed—indeed, with the state of (poetry in) America, who wants to be lectured to?

Buck Downs has virtually dropped out of the trade-publishing world after his first book Marijuana Soft Drink published by Aerial/Edge books, which is a bit strange as he himself publishes books under the eponymous Buck Downs Books.  In a world wherein people can constantly 'opt-out' of receiving unsolicited marketing, Buck has managed to create a growing list of people who wish to 'opt-in'.  In doing so, he has managed to dodge the back-door politics that often dominate who is published by whom when via a series of postcard poems and small booklets that simply arrive in the mailboxes of those who have asked Buck to receive his poems.  Now, beyond the occasional time when an editor of a magazine solicits him, Buck is completely content with his decision. 

"I'm sure that my opinion gets read as some kind of sour grapes and/or blithering contrariness. But I would put it to anybody who writes poetry and is baffled or unhappy: stop sending poems to strangers who edit magazines; make a list of the friends & fellow poets you want to share with; send those people your poems, & expect nothing.

Buck is known to twist the traditional reading a bit, treating it more like a conversation with the audience, mixing poems and thoughts together into a stew that leaves people wanting more.  Mike Basinski, head curator of the University at Buffalo's Poetry and Rare Books Library, has described Buck's reading in Buffalo as "an important event."  Look forward to poems such as pontiac fever on Thursday:

drive off the side
of the driveway.

high off the side
of the highway.

punch a walking
set of quotation-
marks to make
the case complete

only got jerked
half off

so much for an
uncloudy day

CA Conrad is committed to numerous political issues, most notably economic disparity and gay rights.  His first collection of poems, Deviant Propulsion from Soft Skull Press, has Publishers' Weekly comparing him to Allen Ginsberg.  Indeed, Conrad's poems have that sexy playfulness and the willingness to expose hypocrisy that leads through Ginsberg back to Walt Whitman with a bit of the New York Schools (Frank O'Hara and Ted Berrigan in particular) thrown in to keep it humorous. He has two books forthcoming, The Frank Pomes from Jargon Society and advanced Elvis course from Buck Downs Books.  These snippets are from the title poem of his forthcoming book:

she won't
drive down
Bush Street
because of the
president not
the genitalia

"i want to
rub my titties
all over this
city" she says

"me too!" i say
today's inner child
a sexy old whore

This reading may not fit everyone's politics, but it will get you engaged with the work and through that, with the world around you.  If art is supposed to do something else, somebody let me know.

Buck Downs' poems can be easily found online, at places like canwehaveourballback, yourblackeye, and fascicle. EDGE Books published his marijuana softdrink in 2000. For the last ten years he has primarily relied on direct distribution of his poems as postcards and related ephemera objects. A native of Jones County, Mississippi, Buck Downs lives and works in Washington, D.C.

CA Conrad 's childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift.  He escaped to Philadelphia the first chance he got, where he lives and writes today with the PhillySound poets. He coedits FREQUENCY Audio Journal with Magdalena Zurawski, and edits the 9for9 project. Soft Skull Press recently published his book  Deviant Propulsion .  He has two forthcoming books, The Frank Poems (Jargon Society) and advanced ELVIS course (Buck Downs Books). He is the author of several chapbooks, including (end-begin w/chants), a collaboration with Frank Sherlock.  For correspondence, write to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

For more information, check out The Orbital Series. Kevin Thurston is a double agent. Wage slave by day, poet by night, he tries to take afternoons off.