Because March 21st is “World Poetry Day”, Janet Kuypers hosted an afternoon event at Half Price Books in Austin, where people read poems about a variety of topics.
Below are writing links and video links of Janet Kuypers from March 21st 2017 (3/21/17, or 20170321), where she performing 2 poetry readings (one of lengthy world-related poems ad one of shorter world-themed poems), as well as a few individual poem readings, in Austin at Half Price Books.
On March 21st, 2017, people got together at Half Price Books in Austin TX for a show to celebrate “World Poetry Day” mini-feature event hosted by Chicago poet Janet Kuypers. During this event, she performed a set of Lengthy World Poems on World Poetry Day, a set of Short World Poems on World Poetry Day, her “erasure poem: Corner Stone Against Slavery” (where shw took a confederate speech and “erased” portions of it to make an anti-slavery poem), and (because other features that day read poems for other poets for World Poetry Day) Kuypers also read the Carolyn Forche prose poem “the Colonel”.
[tubepress mode=’playlist’ playlistValue=’PLYa-AZK78_horq9aqEoMVFI3ZgitkJrmO’ ]
On the same day as the show, she also released two online chapbooks — one of “Lengthy World Poems on World Poetry Day” and one of “Short World Poems on World Poetry Day“. These two chapbooks are the writings she read in two different reading blocks (in the order they were to be performed). She did not distribute copies of this chapbook to the people in the audience of the bookstore, but she made sure the chapbooks “Lengthy World Poems on World Poetry Day” and one of “Short World Poems on World Poetry Day“ were available online on the same day as her reading, so anyone could (and can) download both of the chapbooks “Lengthy World Poems on World Poetry Day” and one of “Short World Poems on World Poetry Day“ as a PDF file for free any time.
Poems included in this performance:
“Freedom just past the Fence”
“My Kind of Town”
“Been a World Leader”
“Enough’s Enough”
“The Little Differences”
an edited “Communication 2012”
“erasure poem: Corner Stone Against Slavery”
“Every Street Corner”
“Our Lady of Mercy”
“shoe prints on the toilet seat”
“unclean left hands”
“Get His Product to Town”
“Ever Consumed Goat”
“Moros y Christianos”
“middle eastern man in front of me”
“Obama on the Subway”
“Poverty in America”
“Flying to China”
“Building Houses out of Pallets”
“Everyone Has a Choice”
