if you are in the st. Louis area, or in the mid-west anywhere:


READINGS @ city museum
 
To be held in Beatnik Bob’s Theater
701 North 15th Street, St. Louis MO
 
All readings are SATURDAY NIGHT @ 8:00 PM
Museum admission - $5 - Stay & play till 1 AM!
 
 
November 8 - Jarek Steele & kari edwards


Though they've never met, gender activists Steele and edwards are nevertheless cobelligerents in the many-fronted war against patriarchal power. I am impressed with their bluntness and with their willingness to be who they are without worrying about whether or not the community will automatically embrace them. Such virtue is not only American but, in fact, essentially religious and vital to our survival as a race. Stylistically they range apart, however--while Steele's writing is personal and somewhat confessional, edwards pours out words, levels clichés, phrases, mixing the holy and profane. So, in different ways, these poets participate in the same project to dismantle and demolish a power structure that is at once political and linguistic.
 
Jarek Steele's poem Trans-Substantiation won Booksense.com's first-ever Poetry Slam, held on May 31 at BookExpo America in Los Angeles, and he has an article forthcoming in Lambda Book Review. Usually reticent about sharing his writing, he is now beginning to come out of the closet a little bit--a poet all along!  He works at Left Bank Books in St. Louis.