Live Poetry Reading: Celebrating the Publication of BIRD/DIZ

Live at Fergie’s Pub – 1214 Sansom Street and on zoom – Registration Link

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIof-yuqTMrGNSy3JtKXrfrsfF4WkPD1f2p

Celebrating the publication of BIRD/DIZ by Warren C. Longmire

What becomes of a history overwritten, sampled, celebrated and smeared? How do we find creation past erasure? Part new media archive, part visual poetry project, BIRD/DIZ [AN ERASED HISTORY OF BEBOP] is a journey into highs and lows of Black America’s first global music export. Taking biographies of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as a jumping off point, BIRD/DIZ jumps between actual erasures of the written/oral history of Bebop, redacted poems taken from those words, and reflections on historic performances from some of jazz’s chief characters. From St. Louis heroin dins to Copenhagen sound stages, it strives to find, in the continued disappearance of Black American contributions to world art, the seed of innovation that never dies.

Elliott Levin is a Philadelphia jazz legend. Whatever it is jazz performers do when they blow into their horns Levin does a lot of it, on tenor saxophone and flute. He has a quite active career as a published poet and likes to combine the two aesthetics in his performances, much to the delight of the growing live poetry audience and to the chagrin of hipsters who insist jazz poetry is a form of torture, worse than cold showers. Other listeners might find the entire free jazz experience itself torture, in which case it’s back to the beginning as far as advice regarding Levin: there is nothing watered-down or weak about his performances, no attempt to make the music a bit more accessible to the novices, tender-hearted or just plain wimpy.

Warren C. Longmire is a poet, technologist and an educator from the bad part of North Philadelphia. He is a former co-editor of Apiary Magazine, a board member for Blue Stoop and has taught at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He’s been published in journals including Prolit, American Poetry Review and The Painted Bride Quarterly and is featured in the Best American Poetry 2021 anthology. His first full length publication, OPEN SOURCE, was released in 2021 through Radiator Press.

Scott Sigl is a musician, poet, and teacher based in the South Jersey/Philadelphia area. He has been writing, coaching, and performing wild and unhinged poetry for over ten years. As a musician, Scott teaches 5 instruments and is part of a successful band that performs weddings and events. Currently studying Jazz Piano under Temple University Professor Tim Brey, he creates original soundscape music under the name Pitch Drop Experiment, and has decided he has given up trying to be “normal.”