Tuesday, January 24 — Jeremy Hoevenaar, Adam Robinson, Laura Smith, Mande Zecca

More new writers and more long time favorites; now more than ever!

JEREMY HOEVENAAR has lived in Baltimore for 1 1/2 years. A small book of his poems, Cold Mountain Mirror Displacement, will be released sometime this spring. Some recent work ca...n be found in Sink Review, H_ngm_n., and Forklift, Ohio. Jeremy is a loyal acolyte of the Whole Arm Movement and a founding member of the Gestalt Horse Sense Society.

ADAM ROBINSON is the author of ADAM ROBISON AND OTHER POEMS and SAY POEM, which he self-published and self-awarded second place in the STUPID RIVER POETRY PRIZE. In 2005 he wrote and produced a horror play called THE PROFESSOR, in which a first-year associate professor attempts to teach his students about gothic literature by faking murders around campus -- and then the murders become real. Or do they? Adam runs PUBLISHING GENIUS PRESS and plays guitar in the rock band called COACH TAYLOR.

LAURA SMITH comes from Baptist preachers, dairy farmers, and tough Southern ladies. After a youth of fiery sermons and raw milk, she studied poetry at Naropa Institute and completed a Ph.D. in literature at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also produced a shadow puppet version of Alice Notley’s epic The Descent of Alette. Writing has recently appeared in Monday Night, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and various academic journals. She teaches poetics, African American literature, and creative writing at Stevenson University and leads gender and sexuality writing workshops at OutYouth centers and the International Drag King Extravaganza. Her work has been produced by the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the Painted Bride Art Center, and the Cohen New Works Festival in Austin, TX.

MANDE ZECCA's poems have appeared in Cutbank, Colorado Review, Ploughshares, Propeller, and other journals. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is a PhD candidate in English at Johns Hopkins. She lives in Medfield with her cat.

Tuesday, January 24 —— Doors 7:30, Reading at 8 —— FREE
(but bring $$$ for booze and books)
@ the METRO GALLERY (1700 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD)
----WORMS is not responsible----

"To Be Continued" by Jamie Gaughran-Perez

Hope grew up on the East Coast and attended public school. She had great teeth.

Constance always said, “Want in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.”

June was tough and quick-witted. She moved to Germany after college. Later she moved to Texas, I hear.

Will lived through his job. Late at night he could be found in his office, staring out the darkened window.

Charity was a serial monogamist. Some people habitually change up their style to match their partners. She was the kind of person you’d do that for.

Chastity was never very close to her family. She had to file multiple state tax forms year after year, too.

Happy was never very credible. Beyond the ridiculous name (what were they thinking?), he always had horrible breath.

April lived in a 70s-style split level ranch and came from a traditional “broken home.” She was good people, though.

Our heroine sees all these faces and more when she closes her eyes, and yet manages to get out of bed every day.



Jamie will be performing his work at WORMS at the Metro Gallery on December 20.

"Yelling Seance in a Crowded Theater" by Megan McShea

Dots gang up on lines in a tiny room, they go into a tiny room then something happens outside the room, and they stop what they were doing and do something different, until they are bigger than the entirety of whatever is outside the room. Then they relax, their dogs relax, their crabs relax, they become oysters and listen. Nearby, the jello salad is a world unto itself, a complexity going unnoticed within this complexity, until now, with the quiet oysters listening. Outside again, making something tall out of something wide, a thin scaffolding viewed from afar, where the laboring classes are getting agitated about it, taking turns being figure and ground, figure and ground, a groundswell of answers to questions no one has asked yet, and a final, wavering opening, like a tunnel flying. Like they borrowed a picnic and made a brain out of it. Like showing what’s going on in five different rooms of a house, and suddenly what’s going on is the same in all the rooms, and the house turns into a huge mechanical buzzard and flies off.

Quick lace everywhere, ornamenting silence with a tasteful quick lace everywhere, so a hundred thousand souls can laugh in peace.


Megan will be performing her work at WORMS at the Metro Gallery on December 20.

"Instruction piece for a night in November" by Ric Royer

Stare at an object until it changes
becomes something different
something independent from you
its own thing.
Stare at the object until it becomes nameless
as mysterious as it was before
anyone had ever seen it.
Then walk away.

Ric will be performing his work at WORMS at the Metro Gallery on December 20.

Tuesday, December 20 — Jamie Gaughran-Perez, Megan McShea, Caroline Marcantoni, Ric Royer

Exciting new readers this time around, PLUS Baltimore ex-patriate back by popular demand! Jamie Gaughran-Perez, Megan McShea, Caroline Marcantoni, Ric Royer.

JAMIE GAUGHRAN-PEREZ lives in Baltimore, but spends his days working in DC as a creative director doing web-ish stuff. When he's not there, he's a co-director of Narrow House — an independent small press in Baltimore — along with Justin Sirois and Lauren Bender. He plays bass in the band Sweatpants and another band that may or may not be called Coach Taylor. He's serious about fish tacos and eating in general. He's been known to interview robots.
http://verymostgood.com/

MEGAN McSHEA has been published in Shattered Wig Review, the i.e. reader, and Topograph and online at Everyday Genius, Superarrow, and On Earth As It Is. Her play, "Aldo is on the floor," was a part of the 2011 Un-saddest Factory's 10-minute play festival. She's currently working on a collection of collaborative writings written with Baltimore writers, tentatively called "Ancient Party." She works as an archivist in DC and spends a lot of time napping on the MARC train.

CAROLINE MARCANTONI has been living, dancing, and talking to people in the Baltimore area for almost 2 years now. After graduating with a sincere degree in philosophy, she woke up to dancing and drumming. She loves to read and write and sing. She loves to listen to music. Some of her favorite authors and artists and people that inspire the way she goes about things are; Fyodor Dostoevsky, Diane diPrima, Frank O'Hara, Virginia Woolf, Dina Kelberman, and Joan of Arc, among others. She is thankful for letting WORMS let her share. Thank you for listening.

RIC ROYER is a writer, performer, writer of performances and performer of writings. He makes Word Shows. It's like theatre, but with extra words. His works of literature include She Saw Ghosts, He Saw Bodies (Narrow House), The Weather Not the Weather (Outside Voices), There Were One and It Was Two (Narrow House), and Anthesteria (Bark Art Press). He is also a founding editor of Ferrum Wheel, now captained by Chris Fritton, and a PhD Candidate in Performance Studies at Brown University.

Tuesday, December 20 —— Doors 7:30, Reading at 8 —— FREE
(but bring $$$ for booze and books)
@ the METRO GALLERY (1700 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD)
RSVP to the facebook event
----WORMS is not responsible----

Tuesday, November 1 — Joseph Martin, Chris Mason, Lola Pierson, Mike Young

WORMS is back for a third season at a new location — METRO GALLERY (1700 N Charles) — and it's on a TUESDAY now. But don't worry! Joseph Martin, Chris Mason, Lola Pierson, & Mike Young are going to be there to help us adjust to the FLUX inherent in the Univers.

CHRIS MASON grew up in Minnesota but has lived in Baltimore since 1970. He is a member of The Tinklers and Old Songs (an ancient Greek poetry song translation group). His book of poetry Hum Who Hiccup was published by Narrow House in 2011.

LOLA PIERSON is a self-producing playwright from Baltimore, MD. She is a founding member of The Un Saddest Factory, a Baltimore based DIY theatre company. She holds a BA in Human Rights and Playwriting from Bard College, and lives and produces work at The Bell Foundry, a performance space which specializes in live literary, theatrical and video performance. Her work has been performed at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The LOF/t, Access Theater, The 2640 Space and a number of smaller nontraditional theatre venues on the East Coast.

MIKE YOUNG is the author of Look! Look! Feathers, a book of stories, and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough, a book of poems. He edits NOÖ Journal, runs Magic Helicopter Press, and writes for HTMLGIANT. Find him online at http://mikeayoung.blogspot.com/.

Tuesday, November 1 —— 8 p.m. —— FREE
(but bring $$$ for booze and books)
@ the METRO GALLERY (1700 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD)
RSVP to the facebook event
----WORMS is not responsible----

NO IDEAS BUT WITH WINGS: A review of Chris Toll's " The Disinformation Phase"

In his new full-length book of poetry, The Disinformation Phase (forthcoming this month from Publishing Genius), Chris Toll offers up a vision of poetic enlightment. Within a deceptively minimal set of syntactic maneuvers, Toll presents a rich and varied world of boundless danger and boundless wonder.

Many poems parody teaser-trailers, setting the scene for some cataclysmic event, ending just before we get there. The book is heavy on foreplay, which is all for the better. Toll earns every climax:

"and my God is you."

"There is an ache where my heart used to be."

"Be light."

Etc., etc.

Counter to the bulk of the last few decades of American poetry—noncommittal, objectivist, compulsively brainy—The Disinformation Phase is aesthetically certain (almost a manifesto, in fact), imaginative, and emotionally fearless. Even when employing classic post-modern devices, Toll remains an enchanted practitioner. For example, puns, too often the frustrated purpose of idle poetic hands, here act in the service of an ongoing, fruitful investigation of a secret spiritual language.

In some ways Toll has been writing the same poem for years. But don't confuse a focused artistic vision with the lack thereof. That's how most people missed the brilliance of the Ramones the first time around. The poems resemble each other because each is an incomplete incarnation of the same vast and intangible generative force. It's like the Tao Te Ching, except it's all lies. Of course, I don't quite mean that. In his poems Toll plays the part of the snake oil salesman, but in this case the snake oil works, and hidden in the performance of the con are many actual truths that range from the personal to the cosmic.


Disinformation Phase release party:

Saturday, June 25, 2011
8PM at the Metro Gallery
(1700 N Charles St, Baltimore)

Readings by
Chris Toll
Christine Ferrera
Megan Boyle

Music by
She Bites!
Sweatpants
Jacob Panic

$10 (w/ book)

www.disinformation-phase.com