Matvei Yankelevich and Anna Moschovakis Reading / September 28, 2006
Event Report
Poets Matvei Yankelevich and Anna Moschovakis kicked off the fall 2006 season of the UMaine New Writing Series on September 28 before an audience of forty-five people in the Soderberg Center Auditorium.
Yankelevich opened his 35-minute set with several short poems (“I’m not sure I like writing…,” “Mr. Artaud says…,” “I didn’t get paid because I didn’t work hard enough…,” “Next summer…”), then read four translations from Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms‘s The Blue Notebook. The remainder of his set was devoted to the first public performance of his chapbook, The Present Work (Los Angeles: Palm, 2006) in its entirety.
Moschovakis began her 30-minute set with excerpts from her new Turtle Point book, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, including the opening untitled poem, the sequence “Preparations,” and portions of the long poem “The Blue Book.” Her set also included the sequence “Critical Writing” and the first public performance of a new long poem, “My Life in Violence, or Death as a Way of Life” (title approximate).
A lively question-and-answer period followed the reading. Topics include: poetry & philosophy, the Ugly Duckling Presse collective, “intersections” in poetic practice, Moschovakis’s “The Blue Book,” violence, humor, and book-making.
For the full photoset, visit our Flickr page here.