Art City
RUSSELL JAFFE
Get Artsy Mark your calendar with these April art events:
Strange Cage 11
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n its 11th year, Poetry in Public continues to bring Iowa City voices to the public sphere—literally. In this UNESCO City of Literature, it’s a given that poetry talks the talk. But every April, just in time for National Poetry Month, it also walks the walk. Enter Poetry in Public (PiP); established in 2002 by then-Poet Laureate Marvin Bell, the program transforms seven-line submissions of poetry into posters displayed in some of Iowa City’s most accessible public areas. “When it first started we had just finished the Iowa Avenue Literary Walk,” Marcia Bollinger, Iowa City’s Neighborhood Coordinator, explains. “The whole component of literature within the art program was really significant. Writers wanted to know what kind of role they could play. So this idea of Poetry in Public came up … Almost every major city has some kind of major venue for poetry to be on display. Marvin Bell helped come up with the game plan for how to create and promote it.” While Iowa City has no shortage of readings and events for poets—ranging from established reading series events like Anthology and Talk Art, to open-mics at Uptown Bill’s
Fair Grounds | April 15 | 8 p.m. | Free or salon-style house readings—there’s really nothing quite like having poetry usually reserved for the page quite so (as the program puts it) public. “[Poetry in Public] expands every year,” Bollinger explains. “We wanted to get them in the downtown kiosks. [In 2002] we had just seen the downtown improvements bring those kiosks in, and we also wanted them on the downtown buses, the rec centers—downtown and Mercer—and at the Senior Center, the public library and last year we had them at Sycamore Mall. The whole idea was to get poetry into places where people who might not otherwise read poetry would see it. It’s really become enlightening to me to see how many people have a passion for poetry, whether writing it or participating in it, or simply encountering it.” In a community that bends like a river around an obstreperously steadfast, beautiful stone slab of literature, the reflected sky’s the limit for how literature can wash over Iowa Citians. Yet there are limits to how many poems can be a part of Poetry in Public. “It all depends on how many buses there are!” Bollinger laughs. “That sounds really silly, but the first year we
Strange Cage 11 features poetry by the legendary Kate Greenstreet, Writer's Workshop members Ted Mathys,Sarah Smith and Emily MacWilliams, local talents Callie Garnett, Michael Goldberg and Michael Fidel Marquez, and the return of Actualist movement figure Joyce Holland after 40 years of silence. Miss it and die. (Disclosure: Russell Jaffe is basically Strange Cage.)
WALK IT OUT Presents: the 4th Annual Multicultural Fashion Show IMU Main Ballroom | April 13 8 p.m. | $3 advance-$5 day of The 4th Annual Walk It Out Fashion Show! presents groups performing Africa, Latin America, LGBTQ, South Asia, East Asia, Middle Eastern, and Hip Hop.6:30 pre-show includes appetizers and a raffle. Proceeds raised at the show will go to the University of Iowa HIV/AIDS Clinic.
Landscape Synthesis: A talk by visiting artist Steve Rothwell Art Building West | April 11 5:30 p.m. | Free The highly decorated Steve Rowell is an artist, curator and researcher whose transdisciplinary practice focuses on overlapping aspects of technology, perception and culture related to the landscape.
22 April 17-May 1 2013 | Little Village