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Poet of conscience
Wild Onion Festival
Making the invisible Indian visible
Classic iconoclast
Perseverance through controversy
Words of warmth, Warning
Literature
People depart, venues move, activities arrive. New voices are heard, but rarely published. Organizations hold their own. The outsides of literary life in Indianapolis change, but the insides stay much the same. This stability is just that, neither good nor bad, but certainly reflective of a culture in tentative times. Character departures accomplished and soon-to-be leave the poetic community less lively. Alice Friman, nationally recognized award-winner and a kind of muse to many younger women poets, accompanied her academic husband Bruce Gentry (no literary small-fry himself) to a new job in Georgia (See NUVO, “Good city people,” May 14-21, 2003). Forthcoming losses include the frenetically furious Damaged Goods (David Jones), an engaging stalwart of many open stages, and the sensitive slammer Ben Rose, an important voice both poetic and programmatic in recent years. Both are headed for California. New voices will no doubt appear to fill the stages these few leave diminished. The number of open opportunities for output seems never to shrink in Indianapolis, a hotbed of the oral/aural evolution of the art since the ‘80s presence of Etheridge Knight. These stages range from the more formal versions produced by the Writers’ Center (at the Indianapolis Art Center) and the Poetry Alliance of Indy (at the Carmel Barnes & Noble) to the Midtown Writers’ more rhythmic Kafe Ku’umba (new location at Big Fella’s Restaurant) to the happily chaotic Outspoken series at United States Of Mind each Friday. In between come poetic events at Outward Bound Bookstore and New Age People II, as well as open mics (not all poetry) at Club Zambezi and The Cozy. Two stages recently on board are the Art of the Spoken Word at Club 421 and Sound Off at Vic’s Espresso Bar. How do the poets avoid breathlessness, filling such a list? And the list is not complete. Café Li’ture, long hosted by the Etheridge Knight Festival of the Arts will be moving to the Abbey Coffeehouse at College and Massachusetts Avenues. The Festival’s many other activities continue, with new and old stage productions coming in the fall. Midtown Writers hosts a second version of Kafe Ku’umba at X-Pression Bookstore and Gallery, most definitely worth finding in its new location at 970 Ft. Wayne Avenue. X-Pression is M-pressive in its modernistic but high-ceiling historic digs. Owner Donna Stokes-Lucas will gladly share the Buschmann Building’s story and has turned her expertise in African-American cultural heritage into a business sideline, touring places of interest both local and regional. Well-known writers are part of the scene, too, but few of the famous are local. The universities continue to offer a slew of visitors, to read, read, read, while the audience listens, listens, listens. Butler’s massive schedule is headed by expatriate Indianapolitans Dan Wakefield (9/11) and Michael Lewin (with his fellow British mystery writers Peter Lovesey and Liza Cody, 10/11) and National Book Award-winning Chinese expatriate novelist Ha Jin (10/14). IUPUI’s and U of I’s shorter but also high-quality lists are headed for fall by fictioneer Wendell Mayo (9/18) and poet Stephen Corey (9/19), respectively. IUPUI’s Polis Center’s Spirit and Place Festival will this year feature the important fiction writer Charles Johnson, who will appear at both IUPUI and Butler (11/9-10). The Indiana Historical Society will offer up visiting literary speakers early in 2003, and continue to schedule occasional programs by or regarding Indiana literati present and past. On a monthly basis the Irvington Branch Library continues to present “Two Poets and a Fiction Writer.” The series shines a welcome spotlight on accomplished local writers. The veteran Writers’ Center of Indiana celebrates its first year headquartered in the cultural complex near the Indianapolis Art Center. Its quarterly series of Hispanic poetry, Las Voces is a current hit, and a revisioned annual Festival offers a productively busy day Oct. 11, headlined by poet Li-Young Lee, editors, agents and many others. WCI’s attractive literary magazine Maize promises two issues by year’s end. That’s a good thing, because while the words in the air are flying, on-the-page literary publishing in town is scant. One out of every two poets seems to be self-producing a spoken word CD, and a few chapbooks — almost all self-published. At least half the fiction reviewed in the Star’s bullet reporting on Indiana books is produced by 1stBooks, iUniverse, or another “on-demand electronic” — read self-contracted — publisher. This form of often less-than-well-edited publishing threatens the traditional literary process that typically demands a writer’s slow growth abetted by significant interaction with editors and other senior mentors. Of course, Indianapolis is hardly the only place so suffering. Here, at least, the literary heart beats strongly on stage, poetry being one of the things whose wounds of war bleed profusely but with purpose. At stage after stage, words of warning suggest that the culture’s tense marking of troubled time is far from over.
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Oct 12, 2008
Hilbert Circle Theater
Performers include Vincent Pastore ("The Sopranos"), Ashley Brown ("Mary Poppins"), Hugh Panaro ("Phantom of the Opera"), Gary Beach ("The Producers") and ...
Do you sleep in the nude?
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