Breathing the Water: Short Films about Denise Levertov

Monday May 4th, 6-7pm at The Project Room

View fullsize

Photograph by Christopher Felver

Denise Levertov was a great 20th century American poet who lived in Seattle from 1989 until her death in 1997.  A convert to Catholicism, she wrote about faith, nature and the environment, politics and social justice.

Author Rebecca Brown, Poet Jan Wallace, and The Project Room will host this evening remembering Levertov by introducing her work, screening short films about her and sharing audio and video clips of Levertov reading. 

Breathing The Water is part of a city-wide celebration of Levertov which culminates May 16th, Seattle's official Denise Levertov Day.  Join the final celebration on May 16, 2015, when Coral Arts, a vocal ensemble in residence at St. Joseph Church where Levertov was a parishioner, will present the world premiere of a setting of Levertov's poem "Making Peace." St. Joseph is also sponsoring the city-wide celebration of Levertov's legacy as poet, activist, and woman of faith.  Concert tickets are available through Choral Arts. 

Read more about Levertov in TPR's recent Off Paper Essay,  "Bearing Witness" by Jan Wallace. Information about additional Levertov events online.  Special thanks to Levertov event sponsors: 
 

FULL SCHEDULE OF CITY-WIDE EVENTS

April 27 Introducing Levertov, St James Cathedral, 7 PM
May 4 Levertov films, The Project Room, 1315 E Pine, 6 PM
May 5 Homage to Levertov reading, Sorrento Hotel, 7 PM
May 7 Introducing Levertov, St Joseph Parish Center, 7 PM
May 9 Levertov gravesite visit, Lake View Cemetery, 11 AM
May 14 Levertov evening, Elliot Bay Bookstore, 7 PM
May 16 Choral Arts concert, St Joseph Church, 8 PM
preceded by preconcert conversation, 7:30 PM
Reception, St Joseph Parish Center, 6:15 PM

City of Seattle declares May 16 Denise Levertov Day

---

Rebecca Brown. Photo by Andrea Auge

Rebecca Brown is a writer, teacher and literary activist.  She is the author of seven novels, including The End of Youth, The Terrible Girls, and What Keeps Me Here, and her short stories are widely anthologized. Her novel The Gifts of the Body won a Lambda Literary Award and has been translated into several languages. Brown divides her time between Seattle and Vermont, where she is a faculty member in the Master of Fine Arts program at Goddard College.

Jan Wallace, poet and essayist, was a dear friend of Denise Levertov's.  Her poems currently appear in Terrain, A Journal of Built and Natural Environments. Her work has also appeared in ARCADE, Fine Madness, Field and other journals. Read Jan's recent essay about Levertov, "Bearing Witness" in TPR's online journal, Off Paper. 

Unseen monuments

Thursday, February 5th at 7p at The Project Room

Author Michelle Peñaloza launches The Project Room's new topic, Monument, with a discussion about the unseen Seattle monuments she uncovered while writing her forthcoming book landscape/heartbreak. 

Over the course of a year, Michelle asked people in Seattle to take her on walks from the Richard Hugo House to places in the city where they’d had their hearts broken. With poems and maps, Peñaloza's chapbook landscape/heartbreak creates a literary cartography of heartbreak in Seattle.

Join us to ask, "How do our ephemeral experiences create monuments?  What kind of story can a city tell if this isn't just the corner of Broadway and John, but the corner where X learned that Y never really loved him? Or if this isn't just the hospital across the street, but the place where Z told her mother she loved her for the very last time?"

landscape/heartbreak book cover (Tessa Hulls)

Photo by Timothy Aguero Photography for Poetry on Buses, King County, WA

About Michelle:

Michelle Peñaloza grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming from The Asian American Literary Review, The New England Review, TriQuarterly, Pleiades, Pinwheel, and INCH.  She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the University of Oregon, Kundiman, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, the Richard Hugo House, and Literary Arts, as well as scholarships from VONA Voices, PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists), Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Napa Valley Writers' Conference.  She lives in Seattle.  Her chapbook, landscape / heartbreak, is forthcoming from Two Sylvias Press on Valentine's Day, 2015.

Michelle also recently published an essay, "Who Was Your First Hero, Michelle Peñaloza?" on TPR's online literary journal, Off Paper.  Take a peek to learn more about the character that brought her comfort and courage: Muhammad Ali. 

Why Tessa Hulls is Great. Welcoming our New Editor.

Tessa Hulls is a reader, writer, illustrator, painter, public speaker and all-around maker.

Illustration by the multi-talented woman herself, Tessa Hulls.

This presents a problem. The problem lies within describing someone creative who does everything because they could be misrepresented as a hobbyist. It is the curse of the multitalented. So, I very carefully note that Tessa makes work and executes her ideas in a variety of forms, such as illustration, writing, murals, and performance art (I’m not even sure she would call it that, but what else do you call a spoken presentation with drawings that illustrate an idea one is grappling with?). You may have seen Tessa sketching at a TPR event as her way of note-taking, or perhaps you have read her beautiful responses to one of her ambitious solo overseas bicycle trips (yes, she is also good at biking alone in remote places).

What makes perfect sense throughout all of her efforts is the honesty in everything she makes, as she unapologetically interweaves her different creative formats with her personal life in beautiful ways. This is perhaps most noticeable in the outstanding personal essays she has published during her solo travels and her way of explaining how inspiration comes to her from such different sources as Calvin & Hobbes and The Great Gatsby.

Tessa has the perfect open-mindedness of someone who is curious about creativity and is not bothered by the experimental nature of The Project Room. Directing TPR’s online platform for writing and thinking about creativity can only be put in the hands of an editor who knows when to get on the abstract side of an idea and when to just get something direct and understandable on paper- er, online. In other words, the trick to Off Paper is creating a readable collection of essays and images that reflect on TPR’s current themes while grounding them in something anyone can read and enjoy. Tessa Hulls is the perfect person for this challenge.

I am honored by Tessa’s loyalty to TPR since she first offered her skills in 2012, and I cannot wait to see what she makes happen in 2015!

Thanks, Tessa (:

Xoxoxo

Jess

Now meet The Project Room's Director, Tia Kramer