Welcome to the events hub for LevyFest 2014! We look forward to a fun, educational, and productive festival this October, and hope that you will be able to join us for opportunities to meet with poets active during the Mimeograph Revolution, learn about print history and the role of the small press in Cleveland, peruse the Michael Schwartz Library's levy collections, and share in the LevyFest experience! Please submit any event proposals using the form in the navigation sidebar. Please be as thorough in your description as possible. Additional forms will be posted soon to reserve a slot for the community reading events, as well as to RSVP for LevyFest events (registration is not mandatory to attend any events.) See you in October!
Schedule

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2014
Saturday, October 25th
9:30 AM

Meet and Greet - Coffee and Cakes

Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University

Michael Schwartz Library, 1st Floor East Wing

9:30 AM - 10:00 AM

Library services will open the day with a brief meet and greet including coffee, juice, breakfast cakes, and information on LevyFest and the events schedule.

10:00 AM

Russell Salamon: Recollections and Poetry Reading

Russell Salamon

Michael Schwartz Library, 1st Floor East Wing

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Russell Salamon reflects on his friendship with d.a. levy, the Mimeograph Revolution in Cleveland and reads selections of his own poetry.

11:30 AM

Press and Vendor Tables & Book Room

Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University

Michael Schwartz Library, 1st Floor East Wing

11:30 AM - 4:45 AM

Following the morning panel, tables will be made available for publishers throughout the remainder of the day, press operators, and independent poets/printers to display, trade, or sell published works as well as distribute promotional materials and meet with other writers and publishers.

For more information, or to register for a table reservation free of cost, please email Alex at alex@hydeoutpress.com.

12:00 PM

Film showing: "If I scratch, if I write" - d.a. levy documentary by Kon Petrochuk, 1982

Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University

Michael Schwartz Library- Film Preview Room, RT 325

12:00 PM - 4:00 PM

"A collection of interviews, locations, art, speculations and poetry of and about poet d.a. levy, who committed suicide at the age of 26. He was a very active poet and publisher for his short life. He was well-known by poets throughout the world and is remembered by Allen Ginsberg in the film. The film is an organization of much diverse material that is made to flow like a poem reflecting levy's style and subsequent turmoil"--from Canyon Cinema website. 51 min. Continuous showings, 12:00-4:00 pm.

1:00 PM

"Armed With Words: Perpetuating the levy Legacy in Person, In Print and Online."

Mark Kuhar

Michael Schwartz Library, RT 401

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Mark Kuhar describes how levy's example influenced his own personal Cleveland literary journey, from creating two levyfests and a live reading series; to starting up a small press for print editions; to taking advantage of digital opportunities to publish and promote poetry; to becoming a community activist; and what levy's own words – "in the days unborn you will find my brothers armed with words you haven't even dreamed of," – means for the future.

Mark S. Kuhar (markk) is a writer, poet, editor, publisher, artist and songwriter. His poetry, fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many print and online publications. He has published four chapbooks or poetry: “acrobats in catapult twist” (2003); “laughing in the ruins of chippewa lake park” (2004), “e40th & pain: poems from deep cleveland” (2006); and “mercury in retrograde” (2012). he is the founder of deep cleveland llc,, www.deepcleveland.com, a literary, entertainment and educational venture designed to perpetuate post-industrial literary culture and other types of cosmic enterprise in the service of the arts. He lives in medina, ohio, with his wife and three children. He holds a BA in English, with a specialization in Creative Writing (1980) from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio.

Display: d.a. levy Collection Archive

Joanne Cornelius, Cleveland State University

Michael Schwartz Library, Contemporary Poetry Room, RT 415

1:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Peruse the Library's d.a. levy Collection archive firsthand. Original works of levy's poetry, art, collages, ephemera as well as alternative press publications The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle and Marrahwanna Quarterly will be on display in the warm and inviting space of the Contemporary Poetry Room.

Library staff members Joanne Cornelius and Vern Morrison will also be on hand throughout the afternoon to chat about the collection and development of the related d.a. levy collection website.

"Renegade Flowers" - Anthology Roundtable

Alex C. Nielsen, Cleveland State University

Michael Schwartz Library, RT 502

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Alex Nielsen of the anthology "Renegade Flowers: d.a. levy in the Digital Revolution," leads a reading group discussing the work, reading selections, and describing the aesthetic and editorial choices of the text.

This event is open to both anthology contributors and members of the public.

2:20 PM

"Mysticism in the Mimeograph Revolution"

Joshua Gage, Cleveland State University

Michael Schwartz Library, RT 502

2:20 PM - 3:20 PM

No abstract available

"The Hand That Made invisible: Mimeo Revolts, The Self Publish Dilemma and Other Concerns"

R.A. Washington, Guide to Kulchur

Michael Schwartz Library, RT 401

2:20 PM - 3:20 PM

Bookseller, writer, Print Shop Wrangler, and Director of the Guide To Kulchur Cooperative Print Workshop and Bookstore RA Washington will discuss how Cleveland's Mimeo Revolution informs the making of books today, and the how this making has become increasingly invisible to the poetry enthusiasts.

3:40 PM

"Cities Covered In Lines - Advocating Small Press Publishing in the Urban Academy"

Alex C. Nielsen, Cleveland State University

Michael Schwartz Library, RT 502

3:40 PM - 4:40 PM

Poet and publisher Alex C. Nielsen uses the historical role of the Mimeograph Revolution in Cleveland's downtown environment to contextualize the role of print technologies and self-publishing as a pedagogical tool for urban academies.

"Self-publishing and the radical impulse in American poetry"

George Wallace, Pace University - New York

Michael Schwartz Library, RT 401

3:40 PM - 4:40 PM

On July 4, 1855, Walt Whitman designed and self-published the first edition of Leaves of Grass, containing a dozen poems. He then engaged in a ruthless campaign of marketing and promotion, subverting the rules of book publishing by anonymously writing reviews in praise of his own book, noting the break-through nature of his "transcendent new work." Whitman’s youthful and vigorous insurgency, seizing the means of production and bending the established rules to get his message to the public, was a precedent for the democratization of publishing that has served poets ever since – from small press movements to the mimeograph revolution, and from desktop publishing to the digital age. While the technologies may change, the instinct remains the same – to subvert the power of the publishing elite, and liberate the poet’s voice from capitalist marketing imperatives.