Demosthenes Agrafiotis reads in New York!

Contemporary Greek poet, Demosthenes Agrafiotis, author of Post-Apollo's "Maribor" will be giving a reading at Poet's House in New York to celebrate the release of his newest book "Chinese Notebook", which was also translated by John & Angelos Sakkis. We hope to get him out to the West Coast for a Bay Area reading soon!

Here's what Demosethenes has to say (swiped from translator John Sakkis' blog)

***

Dear friends
from Demothenes...

"The Ugly Duckling Press will publish my book "Chinese notebook" in september 2010.
We are going to celebrate the publication with a poetry action in the POETS HOUSE in NY
(see site below),on 6th of October ,at 07.00 pm.
John Sakkis (one of the translators -the other translator is Angelos Sakkis) will be present.
The event includes :video projections,readings in greek,english,french,performance,debate..
I will be happy to invite you for this <>.
If you distribute this information to your friends and collegues,I will be extremely grateful.
I will be in NY from the 2nd until the 10th of October .
I will stay in Brooklyn .
Thanks in advance for your attention.
all the best
da"

Upcoming Events Celebrating the Life and Work of Leslie Scalapino

November 16th, Dixon Place
New York City
Flow-Winged Crocodile
A play by Leslie Scalapino
Directed by Fiona Templeton
Performed by The Relationship

December 3rd, UC Berkeley, Maude Fife Room
Berkeley, CA
Bay Area Memorial Reading for Leslie Scalapino
*Simone plans to contribute to the evening with a short reading.

December 4th, Small Press Traffic
San Francisco, CA
Celebration of Leslie Scalapino's plays

December 21st-22nd, ODC Theater
San Francisco, CA
Flow-Winged Crocodile
Directed by Fiona Templeton
Performed by The Relationship

*If you haven't had a chance to check out the extensive and inspiring 4 Day Tribute to Leslie Scalapino happening over at Delirious Hem, we highly, highly recommend you do.

Jalal Toufic Now Available Online

For the past year or so we at The Post-Apollo Press have been plum OUT of two of Jalal Toufic's most engaging and sought after novels: Vampires and Undying Love, or Love Dies. We hope to be able to reprint both books in the future, but unfortunately, do not have the means do so just yet. In the meantime, there is good news: Jalal Toufic has made several of his publications including Vampires and Undying Love, or Love Dies available for download as pdfs on his website JalalToufic.com. Hooray!

I (Lindsey Boldt, assistant editor) recently read Toufic's Two or Three Things I'm Dying to Tell You, which by the bye, is one of the most frustrating,entertaining and mind shuffling works of cross-genre criticism I have ever encountered. Toufic's retelling of Hitchcock's Rear Window and Vertigo as a mashup titled "Rear Window Vertigo", was a highlight definitely worth the price of admission. Since then I have been hot to read his other works but we honestly sold the very last copies in the office! Thank you to Jalal Toufic for generously sharing his work!

Stay tuned for reprints from Post-Apollo.

The Post-Apollo Press is Pleased to Announce:

Leslie Scalapino’s Masterpiece. . .

The Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom

Poetry 176pgs $29.00 ISBN: 978-0942996-72-2

On The Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom
by Leslie Scalapino

The Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom, in short chapters usually not more than a page or half page, was composed by process of alexia, word-blindness: unknown words were chosen by randomly leafing through Webster’s Dictionary; these generate characters and events that cohere as a sci-fi novel in which the characters are apparently divided from their senses (said to be dysaphic, they are seemingly without tactile senses, without memory or seeing—though they are also said to see and touch); by virtue of this dysaphic quality they act to heal mind-body split visibly demonstrated by the dihedrons and the gazelle-dihedrals, humanlike creatures with structures opened to show their organs and muscles—who inhabit the emerald dark apparently either cyber or real space. These umbra creatures have been affected by ‘idea’ being the goal and description of everything, divided from ‘being’ itself.

The Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom is an endless landscape in which new characters arising from the words, with their own lives and actions that briefly refer to outside events and history (such as Sara Palin, one of the characters for an instant), access spatial-sound openings, tactile and aural sensations, the conception being that we’ve been split distorted, cut off from our present-future-past, time acknowledged as really non-existent as we conventionally define it. The characters are particularly the abandoned orphan girls (left by parents or placed in orphanages as is occurring at present in China and India but here location is not specified, is as if a futuristic everywhere), millions of whom stream through the sci-fi realms in which horses roam as in Mongolia. Leafing through the dictionary I ran across the two words “base runner”—from this, a main character arose, the base runner who is trapped in an emerald dark freezing space where he runs to reach widely separated bases, no one else present in the game from which he can’t depart (if he does he will be killed); he’s bound apparently in a cyber program possibly gulag from which terrorist actions arise or are reflected. One such event, the attack on Mumbai, is the origin and connection of all the events of the book. The avatars of the base runner are an eagle and an octopus; the latter frees the base runner by making love to a woman (another main character named the distaffer) as she is swimming in the sea after her plane with a load of orphans has crashed into the sea. The octopus and the woman “come” allowing the base runner to come to them breaking through from the emerald dark. The dihedrons (seen only sideways, they arrive without appearing to move) and the gazelle-dihedrals (different manifestation of the same creature but this version zooms only forward) are completely opened in the sense that their organs-musculature-skeletons are simultaneously displayed to be literally outside and inside at once. These creatures are either protective or threatening, akin to Tantric Buddhist figures; they are present while the human characters catch on fire in the emerald zone, the living people protected by their avatars (an octopus, a Silvertip grizzly, a white wolf-dog, an eagle).

The characters alter by their experience. Some who are the abandoned girl-orphans growing up become manifestations of characters (loosely conceived) from Greek myths. One main character is “the deb” (the debutant) who is the daughter of a slut named Chrysanthemum (a manifestation of a fiery red Mongolian wrathful deity, a figure of enlightenment); given the hardship of having such a mother, the daughter grows up to be Artemis whose avatars are a Silvertip grizzly and the Silver Wattle Tree. Another main character is a child, one of the abandoned girl-orphans, who grows up to be Venus/Aphrodite (also Venus Williams, the tennis champ). One minor character is Hera, a harridan who is abusive to one of the abandoned orphans.

The intent of this work is free rein of the imagination, as if ‘on a run’ pushing it as far as can be to break through—to have it ‘unite’ with a sense of being real. The intent is also that one as reader have the sense of seeing one’s separation from one’s own senses in living in our society—as our separation from paradise—and as reading, to have even a tactile as well as mental sense of union with that paradise. Though since it is real, paradise as the book’s reality includes also terrifying events of the actual world (as well as daily events, sometimes humorous).

The Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom contains images by Jess, Masami Teraoka, and Kiki Smith. Images by Jess and Masami Teraoka (an octopus sucking a woman) are part of the meaning of the text, as if the images are memories of events in the lives of the characters (who have only single memories arising occasionally, or are devoid of memories until these begin to break through). Kiki Smith has given permission to use images from her Spinster Series, included as part of my text. Her figure of a girl (from her already existing series) is used as a reference to a figure of a girl in the emerald dark. The images by these artists are thus real events already existing outside, already experienced in the text independently, neither illustrating the other—verifying each other as part of a huge background of sensory events.

The inside of action and of being in these actions at the same time—have the tactile sense that there is no present even seeing there in its midst experiencing sensations. The characters, the deb (debutant), the distaffer, and the base runner, with their avatars—so they have more than one manifestation at once—exist alongside and somehow programmed in relation to real-time events: a recent terrorist attacks on a cricket team and the recent attack on Mumbai (the two events conflated as if one). Akin to Henry Darger’s endless landscapes, narrative is from the outside always—at the same time the intent is for the writing to be the sensation of having/being other people’s sensations as well as non-human, that of flowers—not only to have the pleasure of this vivid life but the sense of not struggling for future.

This work, possibly referencing a cyber Alice in Wonderland is based in the sound of words intended to make a sensory realm, as if the characters while not having senses, have these given to them as the writing being all of the senses.


May 2010
Oakland, CA

Another great review for MARIBOR

Amy Henry reviews "Maribor" by Demosthenes Agrafiotis on her blog The Black Sheep Dances.

Thank you, Amy!

Forthcoming this August!

The Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom
by Leslie Scalapino
~ August, 2010

Watch video of Leslie reading from "The Dihedrons Gazelle Dihedrals Zoom" and "Floats Horse-Floats or HorseFlows" shot by Konrad Steiner at Penn Sound.

Photos from our Books & Bookshelves Release Party

Photos from our May 26th Book Release Party for Post-Apollo's first two books of 2010 at Books & Bookshelves. Spirits were high, the store was packed, in short, we celebrated. Thanks to everyone who came and thanks especially to David Highsmith for being such a gracious and warm host. If you are not already familiar with this bookstore, go check it out. David has the best collection of new and rare poetry chapbooks in the city, probably in California, and a great selection of full-length poetry books. The bookshelves are gorgeous and the store always smells of freshly cut wood. Many recommendations!











Denise had some kind and thoughtful things to say about Simone's commitment to experimental and cross-genre literature, and to Post-Apollo's international character and support of translation. Indeed!










Denise then gave a moving reading from her new book "The New Make Believe"(Post-Apollo). It was especially enjoyable to hear this book read aloud for its often sing-song nature and play with sound.











Angelos Sakkis (left) and John Sakkis (right) read from the original Greek and from their English translations of "Maribor"(Post-Apollo) and from "Chinese Notebook"(forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse)by Demosthenes Agrafiotis. Angelos and John traded off, Angelos reading from the Greek and John from the English. "Maribor" marks the American publication debut of Demosthenes Agrafiotis, who's work as a poet, photographer and performer is well known in Europe. It is great fun to see these two, uncle and nephew read together.











And here's everyone, that's me (Lindsey, assistant editor) in the middle, all of us beaming proudly.

I know Simone and Etel would have loved to have been there for the evening. They are currently in Beirut, recovering from the celebration of Etel's homage, the opening of an exhibition of Etel's paintings and so, so much. I recommend you read this article in The Daily Star to get any idea of what Etel in particular has been up to. Simone and Etel are two truly inspiring women.

Thank you again to Denise, John and Angelos for their inspiring readings. Hooray for 2010!