You're Allowed :: December 1st

Every month I run into the same problem: I try and think of a new thing or things to say about a reading that goes basically on the same trajectory from month to month. Maybe this month I'll  try metaphors, some of which may or may not explain the general ambiance of that room on that day when we're all sitting in it:

-Dramamine is used to prevent nausea and when the ocean is far from our heads we feel sad.
-Fireflies in a field appear as strange landing pads for the kinds of birds that don't exist or won't land.
-The oranges are in a bowl. The bowl is on the table. We cannot eat them. If we do it will no longer be summer. They rot. It is still summer. It is about to snow.
-Alcohol has made us speak in a soft voice to our feet. The city is large. We may never hike again.
-When the dishes are used and piled in the sink I feel as if I have lots of friends.
-Buses have pretense of community. So do toes.
-Timmy Reed likes Wal-mart. There aren't that many ways to say hello. Only old or worried men say hello and feel it in their throat. Timmy Reed likes Wal-mart.
-Succulent plants look like they should taste like tequila but in a much different way than a pig + a cow should taste like a hot dog.

That ought to explain everything. Yes? Good. But if it doesn't, please send all questions to nobodyslistening@wedontcare.com.

Bios:

-Megan Boyle has jumped into a freezing cold bay though no one wanted her to. She came out smiling and smoked a cigarette. She has broken her ribs on a seesaw at 3am. She married Tao Lin in Vegas. The preacher was old and looked tired. The garishness of ceremony happened only virtually. She has peed in your sandbox. She has a new book out called "Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee" (Muumuu House). She has been published by online places: here, here, here, here, etc. etc.


-Sarah Jane Miller hosts the Town Square Reading series at the marvelous Minás Gallery in Hampden, 3rd Sundays, and she wants to see you there. When not working as a saddle-shoed librarian, she can be found running, cooking curries, and watching old Bela Lugosi films.

-Little Lungs Little Hips is a band. They are girls. Grietje Smid may kick your ass and plays violin. Megan Lloyd plays guitar, sings and is Little Lungs Little Hips.
 

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You're Allowed :: November 3rd

It feels like forever since we've done one of these, these, reading-things. Though it's only been a little over a month. But no matter, we've missed the hell out of you, my darlings (note the hint of Royal Tenenbaums).  So this month, in order to get back into the swing of things, we're coming back to Dionysus with a bang. We are proud to feature two great poets, Mike Young and Kendra Kopelke. And as always we'll cap the night off with an open mic.

See ya'll on the third floor.

-Mike Young is the author of Look! Look! Feathers (Word Riot Press 2010), a book of stories, and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (Publishing Genius Press 2010), a book of poems. He co-edits NOÖ Journal and runs Magic Helicopter Press. He lives in Baltimore, MD.

You can read some of Mike's work here or here or here or here or here or here.

-Kendra Kopelke is a widely acclaimed poet and a fixture on the Baltimore literary scene. She directs the MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and was named “Best Poet” by Baltimore Magazine in 2001. Kopelke’s poetry collections include: Eager Street; Carpe Diem, Ants (the link has nothing to do with the book, it just reminded me of the title); Bladderville; and Hopper’s Women. She is also included in the anthology, When Divas Dance. She is founding editor of Passager, a national literary journal.

DogDownDirty Halloween Party :: You're Allowed

DogDownDirty from Melissa Streat on Vimeo.

For the October reading we've decided to change things up a bit: we've dropped the pretense that anyone cares about words or literature* and for this month only we're just going to have a party, a gore-filled, rafter-swinging, dark, dirty, dance-crazy Halloween party. Why would we do this? Well, we decided to make the change from our normally scheduled reading series for two reasons: one, we just wanted to; and two, all the editors of Artichoke Haircut are themselves writers, and, as you probably know, there are a few things all writers love: one, masks (read persona), and two, carnivals, big debauchery filled carnivals, where every rule you've decided for whatever reason to follow is simply thrown out of consideration for really no reason at all. The whole of the world is one huge masquerade, and what other holiday in all of Christendom allows one the opportunity to have all these at the same time: Halloween (yeah, I know, I thought of Mardi Gras too, but this is Baltimore not New Orleans). So Halloween it is.

There will be drinks, Dj's, and prizes for the craziest costume – judged by us of course. Believe you me, you wanna dress up because you're going to want this prize. For now we can't tell you what it is, but all will be revealed on the 22nd. 

And for those of you who must have their reading in October, there is a solution. Earlier that very day ('round 6 or 6:30) Liam's is also going to host a reading, dubbed the "Hidden History Happy Hour," presented by Melville House. So one could think of the 22nd as a literary extravaganza, or just a reading and a party – whatever. But don't worry, next month we'll be back at Dionysus, and back with our readings and open mic, and all will be back in its rightful place.

So dress up, and we'll see you at Liam's on the 22nd.


*Just in case you didn't get it, this was a joke.

Words & Whisky :: You're Allowed

So what’s with the horse head? A couple of you may have noticed pictures of an editor dressed in a centaur-esque getup… No, it might be more accurate to say he’s the opposite of a centaur, with the head of a horse and the body of a man… Hold on, is that the opposite?… Wouldn’t the opposite of a centaur have the body of an animal opposite a horse, like a mermaid? No, that doesn’t make sense either. How can anything be opposite a horse?



Anyway, he kind of looks like Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his image has been floating around Facebook and here on the blog. You may have even seen him sitting at one of our readings. Well, for the last three or four months we’ve been working on a short film which will premier at our next reading with Marion Winik, Dave K. (bio below) and a very secret and special guest* on September 1st. I’d post something of a summary of the film here but I’m not exactly sure how. It’s just absurd, and that’s how we like it. You’ll just have to come to the reading and see for yourself.

You know the drill, third floor of Dionysus, 8:30ish, and as always, fun and drinks abound.

Oh yeah, and coming soon, Halloween...


Bio:

Dave K. is a writer, graphic designer, and theater tech who lives in Baltimore. He is a regular contributor to Adfreak, TSB Mag, and the Gettysburg Times, and his creative writing has been published in The Bullet, Ghoti Hook, Battered Suitcase, the Nautilus Engine, ULA Redux, The Light Ekphrastic, and Welter, among others. Dave K. is also a small, dense star composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter.

*The guest has been revealed... Shucker (onemanawsomeband).

Another Installment of "You're Allowed"

This month we present two of our favorite writers, Stephen Matanle and Lily Herman. Plus we will be premiering our very strange trailer for the reading series and the magazine. This is a must see reading. Or maybe not, this damn thing is out of our control. Who knows what is going to happen.

And as always, the open mic will have 10 available slots that are first come first serve. If you would like to read come early, they always fill up.

See you on the third floor.

Artichoke Haircut Volume Two is now available!

The response we have gotten for our latest issue of Artichoke Haircut has been incredible. Our magazine release party last night at Dionysus could not have been more of a success. Harwood could not have sounded better. The submissions we included in this issue could not have been more enlightening, more funny, more moving, more well written, etc., etc. And, I guess it goes without saying, our egos are now swelling.

In all seriousness, we really are humbled by the response. We could not have asked for a better group of writers and readers who constantly surprise us with the quality of their work, and with their support. Keep sending in your work, and keep coming to our readings, and we'll keep trying to put out the best magazine we know how to.  

You can get the latest copy of the magazine at our online store to the right of this post. Also we will be stocking area independent bookstores in the coming weeks.

For pictures of Artichoke Haircut Vol. Two release party click here.

Words & Whisky :: You're Allowed

For the second installment of our monthly reading series we have quite a treat for you. Artichoke Haircut is releasing the second volume of their odd little magazine, and to celebrate there will be drinking, readings from the contributors, an open mic (as always), and a live set from Harwood. The magazine is fresh off the press and we're excited to open the box to the world. Though saying it like that reminds me of Pandora's box––maybe I should delete that last sentence. Nah. We promise, there are no plagues or diseases in this box, just a bunch of shiny, happy books.  

Same time and place as always (see the flyer for details). Come on down.

Pretty Absurd, Absurd Pretty Pictures

Hayagriva has fallen to musing.

We don't have a lot of money. But what we do have is a murder of talented friends (just incase that doesn't make sense: "murder" is a term used to describe a flock of crows – e.g. a murder of crows – but I like it here: a group of artist, or cantors squawking for a purpose comprehensible only by themselves; and if they're doing it right, waking people up in the early morning with their bull shit and bombast). Anyway, some very talented friends of ours are making a short-short Artichoke Haircut film, which should be up on our website in the coming weeks. This is just a taste. A few stills from the set. Click here to see a few more.

Photos by Melissa Streat

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." Dr. Samuel Johnson

You're Allowed :: Words & Whisky

It is now official, Artichoke Haircut will hold a monthly reading on the first Thursday of every month on the third floor of Dionysus Lounge. So if you're going to take advice from me – and I'm not 100% sure why you would – you might as well just go ahead and take that following Friday off work from here on out. Because both you and I know you're not going to be able to handle the morning after.

And to start off our monthly reading series we have two very talented and very odd writers (seriously, they are the oddest people we know, but we mean that in the best possible way). We are thrilled to be featuring the prose styling of a young Baltimore icon, Timmy Reed, and the quirky/crazy poetry of an up and coming Baltimore icon, Erik Pecukonis. I really can't imagine why you'd want to miss either one of these talented writers.

We'll see you there.

Bios:

Timmy Reed is an endangered, sub-intelligent hominid from North Baltimore. He writes stuff in hieroglyphics and has it translated by slaves. Follow his micro-awesome-short-rad-flash-supercool  fiction on Twitter at @BMORETIMMYREED. Also, check out the Bicycle Review on June 15th for a short story about neighborhood associations. Buy him a drink sometime maybe. Don't sleep.

Erik Pecukonis is, well... come to the reading and you'll see.

Baltimore, there are words in my whisky... again.

So we're doing it again. The readers and the crowd that came to our last reading were so incredible that we just couldn't help but throw another one of these shindigs. This time we present two very talented writers; two people who I guarantee will fill your drunken minds with all the wonderful and manic gobbledygook any one man can take. Ian Humphrey and Jess Borowski have been friends of Artichoke Haircut ever since we were just a wee child. So it is our pleasure to keep this one in the family and give these two excellent writers the attention they deserve.

And did I say there would be alcohol... What more could you want?

Dionysus Reading :: March 10, 2011

  

Saralyn no like picture

Drunken Weirdos Confess and Entertain

About halfway through the process of putting this magazine together—for the second time—it sort of occurred to me that we might have made a mistake. 

We agreed early on that we would resist all forms of thematic consistency.  All of us had taken classes with a teacher who told us that her definition of “good” writing was “verbal surprise,” and we were all stuck by that in one way or another.  So, we would organize our magazine according to an inexplicably organic sense of flow, rather than adhering to genre associations or the alphabet.  Though I think we’re all too hesitant to admit it for fear of sounding pretentious, our decidedly ambiguous method has always been a point of pride. 

Once we started soliciting submissions, though, the confusion arose:

    “Submit to our magazine,” I would say.
    “What’s it called?”
    “Artichoke Haircut.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What should I submit?”
    “Whatever you want….something good.”
    “How do I know if it’s good?”
    “Um.”
    “How do you know if it’s good?”
    “I don’t know…”

…And so on.  Eventually, it started to feel like I was talking people out of submitting.  I’d wanted to inspire writers to create something surprising or to find something surprising in their existing work, by robbing them of expectations and parameters.  In practice, the approach just came off confusing and pointless.  At least, that’s what I was thinking as I headed into the March 10th reading at Dionysus. 



It was a rainy night and I was sick.  I remember telling Adam I shouldn’t have driven, having downed a rather heavy portion of cough syrup a few hours prior to our meeting up.  Melissa was worried that no one would show up, and so was I, though I was telling her not to worry.  We stood outside of the bar trying to “heckle” people into joining us.  Our utter lack of mission, which had at one point seemed inspiring, was disturbingly transparent.  So I busied myself, arranging and rearranging tables and chairs while people trickled awkwardly in.
Once the music started (a local band called Us and Us Only), my nerves started to calm a bit.  The open-mic sheet was filling up; the sound of bottles colliding softly behind me indicated an occupied bar.  Before the band’s set was over, I remember even having to shush people with a cold stare. 

The editor readings were no surprise to me (we read each others’ work constantly), but between Saralyn’s sincerity of tone and the disproportionate level of attention given to Adam’s elusive flask of Jameson, I started to feel like people were getting a real idea of what we, as editors and as friends, were all about.  I like to think that our readings helped set the tone for the rambunctious open-mic that followed, something I found delightfully surprising.
It started off abrasive, with Natan Lefkowits’s strange/funny/assaulting poems, and continued on in an intoxicating slur, ranging from embarrassing to desperate to outright hilarious pieces by some of the best writers you’ve probably never heard of.  Somewhere around the middle of Timmy Reed’s story about a tiger-liberation farce, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of success.  I realized that night, listening to the drunken weirdos confess and entertain, that the theme of our magazine had been happening to us, that the community of writers who had decided to assemble at that bar on that Thursday night, for whatever reason, was all the consistency we would need.  It was inexplicably organic.

So…If you read at Dionysus on March 10th and have not submitted, do it now.  If you’re thinking of submitting but don’t know what to say, come out to Dionysus on May 12th and find out what you’re getting yourself into.  Reveal something to us, about you and about ourselves.  Surprise us.

-By Jon Gavazzi

Ian Humphrey... reading?

For more pictures of the reading: www.flickr.com/artichokehaircut

Baltimore, there are words in my whisky.

So we are having a bit of a shindig on March 10th. So all tens of you who read this need to get on the ball around 7 or 8 and check us out at Dionysus. Bring your words and pink underwear.

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