Tuesdays at Curley's

Welcome to PoemAlley, Stamford, Connecticut's eclectic venue for poets, poetry reading and discussion! Open to anyone living in Fairfield County and the surrounding area, we meet Tuesday nights at 7:30 pm at Curley's Diner on 62 Park Place (behind Target) . Come contribute, get something to eat, or simply listen!



Feb 28, 2014

"Torn, Disassembled and Ostensibly Glamorous In The Cyber Age": An Evening With Juliana Huxtable

An artist, writer and, as DJ, a veritable steward of the New York nightlife scene, Juliana Huxtable will deliver a mix of performances and readings tomorrow night at Franklin Street Works through the signature personas of Internet-addicted cyborg, priestess, witch and trans girl.

At a time when such topics as LGBT recognition, sexual violence in the armed forces (click here for a related PA entry) and the creepy acquisition by a leading search engine of a series of leading military robot manufacturers pepper the news, her staple fascinations with human identity, physicality, technology and the cross-fertilization of such themes could not be more timely, and will be expressed with the help of friends from the fomenting Manhattan creative 
underground.
Anachronism (2013)

A contributor to the ongoing FSW exhibit, Neuromast: Certain Uncertainty and Contemporary Art, Juliana is a member of the House of Ladosha art collective and has written for, or been referenced in, Maker Magazine, ArtForum and Mousse. Click here for a recent interview. She has appeared at Envoy Enterprises, Artists Space, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and other New York venues. The Juliana 1 video from her Vimeo channel has unrestrained observations on urban pretension, body objectification and gender expression in character-based video games. Get a feel for her punchy delivery in this hilarious segment from TMI:


You can contact and keep up with Juliana's activities on Facebook.


When:

Saturday, March 1, 2014
5:30-7:30 PM

Where:
Franklin Street Works
41 Franklin Street
Stamford, CT 06901

Phone/e-mail:
203-595-5211

Feb 23, 2014

Perspectives Molded by Pain: A Writer’s Journey

Speaking through a selection of visceral, poignant poetry and passages from a memoir-in-progress, lifelong Connecticut resident Cora Santaguida, this Tuesday’s featured reader at Curley’s, will describe her experiences coping, adapting, accomplishing and just plain surviving through the legacy of formative psychological and emotional trauma over the last few decades.

Forced to retire early in 2003 from mentoring, job coaching and youth empowerment work in the public sector, Cora sustained tenacity in shining light on personal shadows both for her own benefit and that of many others enduring similar challenges in silence, accumulating experiences by turns moving, infuriating and generous-minded, all contributing to the profound interplay between self-expression and self-discovery on the road to recovery.

A cum laude graduate from The College Rochelle with a BA in English, Cora has run for public office twice in Stamford (where she serves as a Justice of the Peace). She continues to involve herself in political and social justice activities, mostly surrounding the 10 key values of the Green Party.

While repression might serve as a short-term self-defense mechanism against violent affronts to one’s potential, dignity or welfare, many suffer in modern society because of its own collective exercise of a repression that is more willful in its evasiveness than subconsciously protective.

Current proposals by the Pentagon to artificially excise horrific events from the memories of war veterans (theoretically eliminating PTSD), is the most recent of numerous efforts at manipulating consciousness (see here and here), symptomatic of a way of life so ill both in how it defines--and globally projects--itself, that it would sooner reshape the human condition from scratch before acknowledging the fundamentals of human sensitivity.

Whatever is repressed, suppressed or decompensated for, the following video to Five Finger Death Punch’s “Remember Everything” (whose lyrics inspired one of Cora’s tattoos)  argues with authority and anguish how that which is done to the mind and body is at least as important as the impact it has on what both do over the course of a lifetime: 


Feb 13, 2014

Tongiht's 'Missed Connections' Event At Franklin Street Works Rescheduled

Postponed until next week due to today's storm, New York artist Ingrid Burrington’s Valentine’s Day-themed talk Connection Over Missed Connections at Franklin Street Works will scrutinize romantic longing across various cities as mapped out through a leading Franklin Street Works online classifieds hub. “Analysis of Craigslist Missed Connections postings and communities,” notes Ingrid of her show Taxonomy of Missed Connections, “offers a glimpse into the loneliness and sexual tension that serve as the linchpin of any thriving metropolitan environment.”

Part of FSW’s Neuromast: Certain Uncertainty and Contemporary Art exhibition, Taxonomy of Missed Connections is also a component of Ingrid’s Center for Missed Connections project and its mission to encourage a collective embrace of loneliness, both poetic and banal, within public spaces.
Find out more about Ingrid at her website, lifewinning.com. A free exhibition, Neuromast is curated by Taliesen Gilkes-Bower and FSW Creative Director Terri C Smith and will be on view through March 9.
When:

NEW DATE--Thursday, February 20, 2014
6:30-8:00 PM

Where:
Franklin Street Works
41 Franklin Street
Stamford, CT 06901
(Light snacks and a signature holiday drink to be served)

Phone/e-mail:
203-595-5211