Continental Divide: Travel Poems and Other Tales of Lost Luggage
Guild Complex
Travel. Mention the word travel and it conjures images of beautiful landscapes, different cultures and memorable experiences.
Jim Banks was a 1989 Green Mill Poetry Slam champion and a member of Chicago’s 1992 National Slam Team. He has been featured at Lollapalooza ’94, Neutral Turf, Around the Coyote Festival, and on NPR and CNN. Jim has also performed in San Francisco, New York, Paris and Berlin. He has been published in Stray Bullets: Chicago saloon Poets Anthology, Power Lines and in the magazines The Third World and Hyphen.
Mary Hawley’s poems have been called “subtle, spare, delicate yet lethally direct (Chicago Reader).” Her first book of poetry, Double tongues, was published by Tia Chucha Press in 1993. She has been featured on WBEZ and WNUR and her work has appeared in the journals Spoon River Poetry Review, Luna and Strong Coffee and two Chicago anthologies, Naming the Daytime Moon: Stories and poems by Chicago Women and Power Lines. Mary used to periodically quit a job so she could travel. Now she travels for work. It’s not nearly as liberating, but still offers unexpected topics to write about. Terry Jacobus co-founded the blue store poetry reading series in 1969 and was editor of Stone Wind Magazine. In 1981, Jacobus organized the first performance poetry competitions in Chicago, then called Main Events. His work has been published in the New York Times, Exquisite Corpse, and Fish Stories. He is the author of Fine, a collection of poems and short stories. Mike Puican’s work has been published in Bloomsbury Review, Oyez Review, Tomorrow Magazine, Luna, and Power Lines. He has been a contributor on WBEZ and was a member of the 1996 Chicago Slam Team. Mike has returned to Chicago from nearly a year in Canada and is anxious to be back in the mix.Michael Watson is a denizen of Murder metropolis, a city of loaded guns, ultra-violence, ultra-sex, racial tensions, whiplash smiles and dangerous masquerades, where the dark suited serpents in our streets whisper to the uniformed rats under our beds. Against this backdrop his poetry serves as a socioforensic science, questioning the cause of the deaths of romance, civility, passion and uttermost grace. Michael is co-producer and host of “WordSlingers” a Sunday night radio show featuring poets on 88.7 FM WLUW.
Performers
Jim Banks, Mary Hawley, Terry Jacobus, Mike
Puican, Michael Watson