Balancing Letters

$24 members/$34 Not-yet members

In-person at the Burchfield Penney Art Center

Rework the sense of sight, sound, and touch by altering image and text, by responding to images with words, and, through those words, creating new images. To embody paintings, engage in improvisational writing and reading, we will experiment with structure, pattern, and rhythm.  Participants will connect their passion for words by pushing letters off the edges, bending meaning, and generating new forms.  

Participants:

Participants are encouraged to bring a sketchbook/journal and a pencil (no pens) to the sessions. 

Registration Form: Please fill out the form and email it to shirokkg@buffalostate.edu

For further information about the series contact Kathy G. Shiroki at shirokkg@buffalostate.edu or 716.878.3549.

Innovative Team: Michael Basinski, Judy Frizlen, Katherine Hastings, Paul Hogan

Michael Basinski

Michael Basinski lives a little past the airport in Buffalo, New York. He is a visual, sound, and performance poet and over the years, his work has appeared in many, many magazines including Rampike, Jacket 2, Yellow Field, Nerve Lantern, Mimeo Mimeo, Vanitas, New American Writing, Talisman, Angry Old Man, Vort, and Poetry, and in The Canary Island Connection - 60 Contemporary American Poets. In 2019, BlazeVOX Books published his collection titled Salvage. His most recent books of poetry are Tub Bunny ( Spuyten Duyvil 2020 http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/tub-bunny.html ) and The Blob ( Model City Press 2021 (Model City Books).  

Judith Frizlen

Judith Frizlen is a writer, educator, and longtime Buffalo booster. Founder of the Rose Garden Early Childhood Center, Judith has a warm place in her heart for young children, mothers, and caregivers. Her books include Words for Parents in Small Doses, Words for Caregivers in Small Doses, and Unpacking Guilt, A Mother’s Journey to Freedom. To create more time for writing, enjoying her grandchildren, and outdoor recreation, Judith transitioned the Rose Garden Early Childhood Center into a worker-cooperative in 2018. Currently, she is teaching an online course about the art and science of play, called “Becoming Champions of Play” and writing Forty Stories of Grandma Love. 

Katherine Hastings 

Katherine Hastings is the author of four full-length collections, most recently A Different Beauty (Spuyten Duyvil NYC, 2022).  Poet laureate emerita of Sonoma County, CA, Hastings edited three anthologies: Know Me Here — An Anthology of Poetry by Women; Digging Our Poetic Roots — Poems from Sonoma County; and What Redwoods Know — Poems from California State Parks.  Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Book of Forms — A Handbook of Poetics (University Press of New England).  She curated and hosted WordTemple on NPR affiliate KRCB FM and the WordTemple Poetry Series in Sonoma County for over a decade. Following the October 2017 wildfires, Hastings moved with her partner to Grand Island in 2018. 

Paul Hogan 
Paul Hogan is a poet, essayist, electric bassist, former non-profit administrator, and retired executive vice president of the John R. Oishei Foundation. He has two book-length collections of poetry, Points of Departures (White Pine Press, 2008) and Inventories (BlazeVox Books, 2012). His work was selected for the 1990 White Pine Press anthology The Legend of Being Irish: An Anthology of Irish-American Writers and the digital literary journal Hamilton Arts and Letters (Spring 2013). A frequent contributor to the Buffalo News Poetry Page, he also was the subject of a “Buffalo Focus” piece by BlazeVox Books in their digital Late Spring 2009 journal (www.blazevox.org/focus.htm). Hogan earned a B.A. (cum laude) in English and an M.A. in Creative Writing at the University at Buffalo. He was awarded the David Gray Fellowship in Poetry and Letters under Robert Creeley and was chosen to be a ‘Living Legacy’ artist by the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s Arts Legacy Project in 2015. He is a WNY native and currently lives in Tonawanda.