Nicholas Karavatos & Improv Band:
Intermedia Spoken Word Performance and Book Launch
This night’s intermedia spoken word performance is a spontaneous collaboration among a poet and improvising musicians. We are invited to celebrate Amendment Nine’s publication of No Asylum, a new book of poems by Nicholas Karavatos.
Beat legend David Meltzer (author of David’s Copy: Selected Poems [Penguin 2005,] Beat Thing [La Alameda 2004], and No Eyes: Lester Young [Black Sparrow 2000], among many others) writes on the back cover of No Asylum:
"Nicholas Karavatos is a poet of great range and clarity. This book is an amazing collectanea of smart sharp voiced political poetry in tandem with astute and tender love lyrics. All of it voiced with an impressive singularity."
Fresh-off-the-press copies of No Asylum will be available at the book launch performance.
Accompanying the poet on stage will be Mark Weston (drums), Jeff Kelley (guitar), Art Brown (guitar), and Shao Way Wu (bass):
Nicholas Karavatos currently teaches literature & creative writing at American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. He has also taught in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman and in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A graduate of Humboldt State University, Nicholas Karavatos was a local resident from 1983 to 1996 when he relocated to San Francisco to study Poetics with Tom Clark, Adam Cornford, Gloria Frym, Lyn Hejinian, and David Meltzer at New College of California. (The NCoC Poetics Program was founded by poet Robert Duncan.) While there he was also a Production Coordinator at Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center, assisting author Dodie Bellamy.
Nicholas Karavatos, sparodically from 1983 to 1996, was a producer of KHSU’s Mad River Anthology, a sound technician at CenterArts, a tutor at the Indian Teacher Education & Personnel Program, a cook at The Sprouted Seed, an artisan at Holly-Yashi, an assembler at Tomas Jewelry, and a local day laborer.
Though he moved overseas in 2000, he still visits us often to perform – and has never stopped writing & publishing poems in such books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera as After the Fallen, Big Bridge: The War Papers, Blackbox – A Record of the Crash, Certain Stones, Cherry Bleeds, Country Activist, debt, Earth First! Radical Environmental Journal, EcoNews, Edge City Magazine, Hamilton Stone Review, Humboldt-Central American Solidarity Newsletter, Juke Jar, Log, Minotaur, mirage[periodical], Numinous, Paisley Moon, PoetsWest Online, Portland Review, Prophetic Voices, Prosodia, Punk Rock Saved My Life, Red Fez, San Fernando Poetry Journal, Steelhead Special, there., Thieves Jargon, Tight, Travelling Poet, Todd Point Review, Toyon, Unlikely Stories, West Wind Review, What the Hell, and With+Stand.
Nicholas Karavatos performed his poems in spontaneous collaboration with Art Brown, Morgan Stern, Mark Weston, and others at the North Country Fair in 1992 & 1993, and twice on KHSU’s Conscious World in the early 90s; with Krayola at HempFest West in Redwood Park in 1992; with Shao Way Wu on bass at the Jambalaya in 1996; and most recently with Jeff Kelley on electric guitar on KHSU’s Mad River Anthology and at the Accident Gallery in Eureka in early 2009. Over the years he’s given numerous readings throughout California, Oregon, and Washington. Outside the United States in 2007 he performed at “Betwixt & Between III: Globalization, Interculturalization & Translation,” an international conference in the United Arab Emirates sponsored by Queen’s University Belfast and American University of Sharjah.
Jeff Kelley, who originally brought Wax Hands to our community gatherings, is a sharp-witted songwriter & guitarist known from such bands as Dreadful Grapes, The River Rocks, Primordial Stew, Deltron 9, Fred & Wilma, The Miracle Show, and his innumerable solo acoustic appearances. From fireside folkie to electrified freak-out, Jeff Kelley is an aural delight of eternal energy.
Mark Weston has drummed in the North Coast’s most evocative worldbeat and alt-prog bands. A percussion luminary, the rest of the world knows Mark Weston from his good times with Chris Berry and OJ Ekomode.
Art Brown is a maestro of ambient guitar, both electric and electronically processed acoustic. He has recently (finally) graduated from Humboldt State University.
Shao Way Wu is a bassist – The Bassist – and performs locally with jazz groups Zu Zu's Petals and Inkling. He teaches music part time at his alma mater, Humboldt State University.
Richard LaPreziosa designed No Asylum for Amendment Nine & Nicholas Karavatos. An upstate New Yorker graduated from Sacramento State University, Richard LaPreziosa is a singing-songwriting guitar-shaman who has been regionally appearing everywhere all time with such bands as the Jazz Monks, The River Rocks, Deltron 9, The Replacements, The Miracle Show, and Eyes Anonymous. He appears here tonight as the sacred typesetter & graphic designer.
Amendment Nine is a new publishing project out of McKinleyville, California.
No Asylum is printed by Robert Arena and Bug Press.
WHEN?
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Door at 7:00pm - Show at 8:00pm – ALL AGES
HOW MUCH?
Admission is a whopping $3 but your ticket stub gets you a $3 discount on the book available at the show.
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The marquee at night - Arcata Theater Lounge. 
