Fifty pages of my memoir Outside Inside — expertly excerpted and condensed by Brigid Hughes — is featured in issue 22 of A Public Space. With many photographs. Issue 22 –print or digital— or an annual subscription — can be ordered here: http://apublicspace.org/magazine
While I posted announcements on Facebook in October and had a marvelous send-off at the November 2015 Prose Pros reading series at Side Walk – aided by friends Vincent Katz, Mitch Highfill, Kimberly Lyons and Burt Kimmelman, who read excerpts from my work and their own autobiographical prose – I never posted the story on this blog.
So, once again, I have the pleasure of putting up the photograph taken by Lynn St. John back when I was 22. Here it is as the spread in the magazine:
Spread in A Public Space, with my article and Lynn St. John’s photo.
While the whole manuscript (all 300-plus pages of it) awaits a publisher, check out this issue. Not only for my stories, some sad and some glorious, with Basil King, Paul Blackburn, Dan Rice, Frank O’Hara, Lucia Berlin, G.R. Swenson, Robert Duncan, Jim Rosenquist and others, but also for the entire issue which has many special pleasures and rewards. I’m very happy to be in it.
Just got (unrequested) a look back at 2015 from Facebook, hitting not much of much interest. Thus am prodded to do my own.
February – Baz reads at the Dia Foundation with the wonderfully multi-talented multi-named Pam Dick (Mina, Gregoire, et al) in celebration of the 2014 publication of his The Spoken Word/The Painted Hand. Marsh Hawk Press. Available at SPD and elsewhere. (Probably even ABE’s for the pennysavers.)
“Basil King’s … mashups of art, culture, and lived experience, both minute and momentous challenge the reader out of conventional notions of art history, by a continuous attention to detail. . . .” — Kevin Killian
April – At the AWP meeting in Minneapolis. Martha speaks in a panel discussion, organized by Martha, about the influence of Black Mountain today, with C.S. Giscombe, Burt Kimmelman, Lee Ann Brown, and Vincent Katz. Later a terrific reading by Baz and C.S. Giscome and a larger group reading also including Sam Truit, Kim Lyons, Burt Kimmelman, and more, at James and Mary Laurie Booksellers
April – In conjunction with AWP, “Basil King: MIRAGE” a film by Nicole Peyrafitte and Miles Joris-Peyrafitte is screened at the Walker Art Center.
May – Baz is 80 years old.
June – New York premier of selections from George Quasha’s monumental Poetry Is project at Anthology Film Archives includes Quasha’s interview with Baz.
June– Martha returns to poetry with work in Bone Bouquet, 6.1. Still available: http://www.bonebouquet.org/issue-6-1/ So too is Bone Bouquet 6.2 just out this fall. One way to reassure oneself that the era of adventurous magazine publishing is far from over is to check out this magazine.
November – Martha’s memoir Outside Inside – that is 50 pages of it, expertly excerpted and condensed by Brigid Hughes, is featured in issue 22 of A Public Space magazine.With photos of the long ago that seem fresh. Issue 22 –print or digital—can be ordered here: http://apublicspace.org/magazine
December –short podcasts of Baz reading the following poems – and one personal recollection of TV in the early 1950s. Go here! https://soundcloud.com/joseph-terranella/sets/basil-king-2015
Basil’s Lifeboat (1 minute 23 seconds)
Inside Delacroix’s Garden (2 minutes 14 seconds)
The Butterfly and the Rat (2 minutes 32 seconds)
Looking for the Green Man (3 minutes 53 seconds)
Highway Obstacle (4 minutes 11 seconds)
Channeling 3 – (4 minutes 18 seconds)
The Americans – The Immigrants (6 minutes, 48 seconds)
Grey – complete (14 minutes 27 seconds)
Working in TV – from an interview (2 minutes 46 seconds)
AND MUCH TO COME IN 2016, including BASIL KING ART at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, Asheville, N.C., opening SEPTEMBER 2.
Bone Bouquet, Spring 2015Martha King reading in Minneapolis . Photo by Sarah Kaplan.Baz reading at the Dia Foundation. Photo by Garth Davidson.At the Walker Museum, April 2015
News, opinion, excerpts, and images from Martha King – of my work and Basil King’s. There are, as it happens, two of each of us: The "other Basil King" was a Canadian Christian minister and novelist (1859-1928) – see page above. And the "other Martha King" was Martha J. King, who died in 2011. She was an editor and translator of contemporary Italian writing, especially women’s. See my post of February 1, 2013. Neither of these are us!