Busy, busy, indeed, Kasper. Good on you.

Some of us might just follow up...

Doug
On 2013-05-08, at 5:35 AM, Kasper Salonen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi all! I haven't been that active on petc in a long while and I started
> writing a reply to Andrew about gig opportunities that expanded to a
> general update of my goings-on, so here y'are.
> 
> 
> I'm the acting executive director in a stage poetry association called the
> Helsinki Poetry Connection. We have two monthly poetry clubs, the biggest
> and beautifulest of which is the Helsinki Poetry Jam, an event where we've
> had poets come to perform from Estonia, Sweden, the States and other
> countries since 2010. We're going to be putting together some of our Fall
> lineups during the summer. We don't have a lot of cash ourselves, only
> having registered our outfit as a non-profit association this past January,
> but we've had four years of great successes nonetheless. Our blog is almost
> entirely in Finnish, although I make an effort to translate most of our
> press releases and things: http://hkipoetryconnection.blogspot.com/ .
> Barring monetary snags it would be great to fly some of you poetryetc.ers
> over here!
> 
> There's also a cultural organization called Nuoren Voiman Liitto
> (translatable perhaps as something like the "union of youthful vigor":
> http://www.nuorenvoimanliitto.fi/) that has been in action promoting and
> empowering literature, culture, criticism and art in Finland since the
> early 20th century. I'm currently employed there as a civilian serviceman
> (i.e. non-grunt) and project assistant. NVL gets tens of thousands of euros
> in grants, publishes two magazines and organizes the only literature
> festival in the capital region, called Runokuu (i.e. poetry month or Poetry
> Moon, here's the website from last year: http://uusi.runokuu.fi/?page_id=204).
> We're currently in the process of choosing and contacting our intended
> international guest performers (including Sam Pink (USA) and Carmen Keates
> (AUS)) for a club called the Night of the Living Poets; last year the
> featured poets were Naomi Shihab Nye (USA), Joyelle McSweeney (USA),
> Johannes Göransson (SWE), Jaan Malin (EST) and Claus Ankersen (DEN), with
> Finnish poets Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen, Heli Slunga, Esa Hirvonen and Leevi
> Lehto. So anyone who made it all the way over here would be in good company.
> 
> I can give you NVL's executive director's contact information if anybody
> would be interested in exploring the possibility of shuttling over for some
> crazy poetry action. She'd want cvs and sample texts and such.
> 
> Wow, I've been meaning to write an update on my poetry comings and goings,
> never seemed to get around to it till now (I'm at work right now, ha).
> Personally, I'm still writing and performing in Finnish and English, spoken
> word in the latter, causing mayhem on the stage in various forms;
> considering/contemplating a bilingual poetry collection and a spoken word
> album. Apart from that it's all performance workshops, hosting, managing,
> spitballing, PRing, translating, &c. Busy busy.
> 
> Anyway yay!
> 
> KS
> 

Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/

Latest books: 
Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
Recording Dates
(Rubicon Press)

You know, verse
is a lovely thing.
 
It issues,
like the vapors,
 
from the rock
 
                      Charles Olson