A Collective Note taking Here and There

Online reading with Deltaworkers resident Frank Keizer, New Orleans writer Skye Jackson, and poet Kelly Harris.

Thursday May 7th, 2020, at 2pm New Orleans / 9pm Amsterdam
Zoom in here

Youtube documentation here

Kelly Harris received her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Cave Canem. She recently completed her tenure as guest poetry editor for Bayou Magazine at the University of New Orleans.
Her debut poetry collection, Freedom Knows My Name, is set for release next month.

Skye Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds an English degree from LSU and a JD from Mississippi College School of Law. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop where she serves as an Associate Poetry Editor of Bayou Magazine. Her work has appeared in the Delta Literary Journal and Thought Catalog. She was recently a featured author in Rigorous: a journal for people of color and has work forthcoming from the Xavier Review. Her prize-winning chapbook, A Faster Grave, was published in May 2019 by Antenna Press. An interview about the collection is forthcoming in the New Delta Review. In March 2020, she was awarded the Vasser Miller Poetry Prize. She is currently an instructor at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, where she teaches poetry to young artists.

Frank Keizer (NL) is a poet, critic and editor. He is the author of Onder normale omstandigheden (Under Normal Circumstances, 2016) and Lief slecht ding (Sweet Bad Thing, 2019). His current writing project Hot Autumn revolves around the crisis of current political, historical, ecological and literary imaginaries, and the urgent need to develop critical languages situated between science, theory and literary writing that respond to this crisis.

Frank Keizers residency is supported by the Dutch Literature Fund

A Moment At The Maple Leaf

As part of the longest running literary reading open mic event in the USA (40 years!), Dean Bowen (NL) will be featured reader for this May Sunday.

The Maple Leaf Bar hosts the longest continuously running poetry reading series in North America. It is free and open to the public. The poetry series has been a platform for a great diversity of writers to present their work, from the published and well-established to the novice poet alike. The reading series was founded in 1979 by Franz Heldner, Bob Stock, and the consummate poet laureate of the Maple Leaf Bar, Everette Maddox.

Dean Bowen, currently in residency with Deltaworkers, is a poet, performer and psychonaut. He examines the dynamics of the composite identity and how this relates to a political and social positioning of the self. Bowen questions how he and others relate to the idea of their ‘blackness’ in relation to the diasporic spreading of black bodies over different continents. This ethnic and cultural identity marker has become an international transcontinental dialogue that aims to disrupt the alleged hegemony of the western imperialist narrative. Through his writing he feels connected to this larger conversation.

Presented as part of the Maple Leaf Bar Literary Readings

Thanks to Nancy Harris

Tracing my Lover’s Wrinkles in a Non-linear Way

An image-rich talk on queer time by Simon(e) van Saarloos and performance by Maryboy.

When: Tuesday April 9th, 7pm
Where: SALON artist residency, Canal Place (333 Canal St.), second floor next to Anthropologi
Big Thanks to PARSE NOLA for lending their equipment.

Can a 30 year age difference between two lovers result in something other than ‘having a past’ versus ‘having a future’? Inspired by Jack Halberstam’s quest to illegibility and to live a life that cannot be traced, Simon(e) celebrates her invisible lover (because woman, because older, because queer). When together, random people identify them as mother and daughter. Simon(e) reappropriates the apparent incestuous outlook of her relationship as she tries to imagine a non-linear future.

Drawing from Denise Ferreira da Silva and Paul Preciado as well, Simon(e) questions how time approaches us and how we approach time.

Maryboy is a genderqueer, andro glam drag star based in New Orleans.

Simon(e) van Saarloos is a US born writer and philosopher, living in Brooklyn, NY and Amsterdam, NL.

Sometimes, in New Orleans

Some memories of my Deltaworkers’ residency…
Thank you so much Maaike and Joris for making it happen and to make my time in the residency wonderful. And also a big thank you to Maggie and Dawn DeDeaux for their precious help!

DSC_2021b

mercredi 11 novembre 2015
Wednesday 11th of November 2015

La lumière attaque la surface rugueuse des briques,
laissant seulement la chaussée dans l’ombre.
Il parle tout seul – au bord de l’artère aux voitures filantes.

L’air chaud s’échappe des corps et du bitume,
et aussi, l’odeur forte caressante des cuisines des cantines sur St Bernard Ave.
Ils, la réparent encore – la vieille ford grise, sous les arbres.

Les couleurs s’immiscent à l’orée du jour,
écrasant les reliefs à cette heure là du Sud. Les berges du Canal s’assombrissent.
Elle, d’un autre âge, roule son cyclo-pousse rose scintillant, en chantant – I will love you forever.

Et les trois soeurs, la nuit tombée, rentrent à la maison,
oubliant derrière elles la journée passée.
Elle, la plus petite, chante aussi – And I will meet you, you, you again.

——-

The light strikes the rough surface of the bricks,
Leaving only the pavement in the shadows.
He speaks to himself- at the edge of the road to the cars shooting past.

The hot air rushes out from the bodies and the tarmac,
Along with the strong, caressing smell from the kitchens on St Bernard Ave.
They fix it again- the old grey Ford, under the trees.

Colours interfere at dawn,
Crushing reliefs at this hour of the day (in the South). The banks of the Canal darken.
She, from another age, rides her shiny pink trishaw, singing – I will love you forever.

And the three sisters, in the twilight, go back home,
Leaving the past day behind them.
She, the smallest one, also sings- And I will meet you, you, you again.