Edwin Torres: A Startling Performer, Tonight in the Ballroom

Edwin Torres, one of the most startling performers of the Nuyorican poetry scene, will participate in UAlbany's Diasporican Poetry Cafe, tonight in the Campus Center Ballroom, 5:30-7:45 p.m.

"I have seen Edwin Torres dancing to the sound of a musical saw while wearing a hat of dirt on his head in a store window, and once wearing pure white with the painter/poet Elizabeth Castagna on New Year's day 1999. I've always wanted to be Edwin Torres for a day, to think like him, to wear cool glasses, to be as tall and thin, to have Puerto Rican soul so I could write 'I'm near a tiger's smooch, BURP!'"

Read more of Brenda Coultas' Electronic Poetry Center review of Edwin Torres' poetry collection, Fractured Humorous here: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/torrese/fractured.html

Get a taste of Torres' performance style on YouTube here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8uOPBn5jW4

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A Cascade Of Words: Jesus Papoleto Melendez

On the "Artists on the Cutting Edge" program of UCTV (University of California), Jesus Papoleto Melendez, a founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe who will visit Albany tomorrow, talks about a variety of subjects, including how performance is more satisfying than writing, and about his formative years as a kid in Harlem and as a teacher in San Diego.

http://www.uctv.tv/shows/A-Cascade-Of-Words-Jesus-Papoleto-Melendez-2645

More about the Diasporican Poets Cafe tomorrow at UAlbany:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/puerto_rican_diaspora12.html

Photo: Melendez on the Boricua Poetry website.

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Giannina Braschi this Friday at the Diasporican Cafe

Giannina Braschi, major contemporary bilingual poet and fiction writer, will join a number of other "Diasporican" poets on stage 5:30-7:45 p.m., Friday, October 26th in the Campus Center Ballroom.

Written in inventive mixtures of English, Spanish and Spanglish, Braschi's work explores collisions of language, culture and history with regard to the lives and experiences of 50 million Hispanic-Americans living in the United States.

In the Evergreen Review, Barney Rosset said of Braschi's 2011 novel, The United States of Banana, “Revolutionary in subject and form, United States of Banana is a beautifully written declaration of personal independence. Giannina Braschi’s take on U.S. relations with our southern neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean, most especially Puerto Rico, is an eye-opener. The ire and irony make for an explosive combination and a very exciting read.”

In advance praise of Braschi's bilingual novel, Yo Yo Boing! (2011), Harvard scholar Doris Sommer said, “A bilingual rollercoaster....A rush of gloriously nuanced sentences that teeter between the grotesque and burlesque…the text transmutes poetry into novel, into screenplay, dialogue, and by extension to more and sometimes unidentified variants.”

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The Literature of Bullying-- Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions, and Catharsis

In addition to her work as poet and playwright, Magdalena Gomez (who visits UAlbany tomorrow) is the coeditor of a new anthology written by survivors of being bullied:  Bullying: Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions, and Catharsis (2012, with Maria Luisa Arroyo). The book features a variety of original essays, poetry, plays, and commentary by parents, teachers, children and assorted adult survivors on how bullying has affected their lives.

Gomez will participate in two events on Friday:

Conversations with Diasporican Writers — 2:15 – 3:45 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown CampusModerator: Tomás Urayoán Noel, University at Albany
Guest Writers: Magdalena Gómez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, and Edwin Torres

Diasporican Café: Performing Voices of the Puerto Rican Diaspora — 5:30 – 7:45 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom
Guest Writers: Giannina Braschi, Magdalena Gómez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, and Edwin Torres

Five internationally known U.S. Puerto Rican writer-performers will discuss their work in an afternoon panel discussion and present readings/performances in the evening. Both events are part of the 20th Anniversary Conference of the Puerto Rican Studies Association, which is being held at UAlbany October 24 – 27. For more information on the Conference go to: http://www.puertoricanstudies.org. 

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Upstate Nuyorican Poets Cafe

Some key figures of New York City's historic Nuyorican Poets Cafe (pictured here), perhaps the most vibrant institution of U.S. Hispanic literary culture, will visit Albany to participate in a "Diasporican Cafe," free and open to the public, as part of the 20th Anniversary Conference of the Puerto Rican Studies Association.

Featured performers will include Jesus Papoleto Melendez, one of the founders of the Cafe in the 1970s, Edwin Torres, a transformational figure at the Cafe in recent decades, and Giannina Braschi and Magdalena Gomez, both leaders of the Nuyorican poetry movement.

More on the event in Albany: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/puerto_rican_diaspora12.html

More on the Nuyorican Cafe: http://www.nuyorican.org/

And here's a recent article about a newly announced $7 million renovation of the cafe: http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2012/10/nuyorican-cafe-looks-to-undertake-a-7-million-dollar-renovation.html

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