UPCOMING FEATURES & OTHER NOTABLE EVENTS

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Thursday, 6/24, 7:30: The Great Room, New England College, Henniker, NH. I’ll be doing a one-man show, 45 minutes and up, to introduce myself to the MFA program summer residency populace. The show is free and open to the public.

Friday-Saturday Sunday, June 25-26-27, 3:30-5:30: I’ll be giving a workshop on poetry in performance. The work-shop is part of the MFA package, but also open to the paying public—more info on that available through jgens@nec.edu.

(This is kind of special for me, because in January of 2002, when Carol and I were living in Fremont, NH, we drove up to Henniker for a reading by Thomas Lux, Gerald Stern and Anne Marie Macari in The Great Room. It was the inaugural event for the NEC MFA program. At the pub after the reading we had a great conversation with Li-Young Li. It never occurred to me that I might be invited to “teach” there some day. (Actually, it probably would have occurred to me; but I would have dismissed it.))

This MFA program comes highly recommended. Current faculty includes Ilya Kaminsky, Carol Frost, and DA Powell (who had a poem that I liked a lot in the January issue of Poetry).

Sunday, 7/25, 7:30: I feature at the Portland (OR) Poetry Slam, Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave in downtown Portland.

Thursday, 10/14, 7pm: feature at Zippy's Java Lounge, 1804 Hewitt Ave. in Everett, WA, just a short hop off I-5. Open mike; free.

Tuesday, 2/22/11, 6:30: Indelible Ink, Pasadena, CA. I feature as the “National Poet” at a monthly variety show; no open mike. Details later.

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"…when Jack McCarthy took the stage in the first half he completely wowed the packed-to-the-nuts audience. Every now and then, a poet, performer, comes along and puts on this kind of show for an audience (this audience was mainly poets, and lovers of poetry) and by being exposed to the work of a master craftsman, the entire community is raised up. The bar is raised a notch. We, as a poetry community, grow by being exposed to this kind of incredible performance…. I expect to see evidence of growth in the coming months and years, the residual effects of Jack McCarthy's incredibly moving performance. If you ever doubted the power of words…this performance was emphatic proof!!"                                                                                             ----Thomas Trofimuk, www.theroar.ca, Edmonton, Alberta

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OTHER WAYS TO FIND ME
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ANY GIVEN TUESDAY—well, maybe not so much any more. I've had to cut back on late nights and long drives. Instead of every Monday at Bellingham and Wednesday in Seattle, it's more like Monday one week, Tuesday the next (since Seattle changed its night).

If I don't have a feature somewhere else, you have a 50-50 chance of finding me competing at the Seattle Slam, 8:30, Re-Bar, 114 Howell St., Seattle. Sometimes I try stuff out; sometimes I go all out to win. I almost always try to make the third round, in order to do three poems in front of this wonderful audience.

ANY GIVEN MONDAY: For the last five years and more, Bellingham has had the best open mike on the West Coast, and Every other Monday night (or so) I'm at Poetry Night in Bellingham at 8:30. They’re now in their permanent home, the Anker Café, 1424 Cornwall Ave, Bellingham, WA. I’m especially likely to get there the first Monday of the month, because that’s when we slam.

I'm generally flexible. If you're hoping to catch me on a particular night in Seattle or Bellingham, email me and I'll try to adjust my schedule.

Occasionally I cross the border on a Monday to the VanSlam (9pm, Café Deux Soleil, 2096 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, B.C.).

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Last November, I did a phone interview with radio station WQNA in Springfield, Illinois. You can listen to it online at http://www.flyoverz one.com/rr/ rr0810.html. I can't believe how much stammering I did.
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For an online video of "Epithalamion, A Few Words for Kathleen," visit Borders Open Door Poetry at http://www.bordersmedia.com/odp/mccarthy.asp. Be warned that on that website, I'm in awfully good company; you might find it difficult to pry yourself away.
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For an online video of “Drunks,” here's a link to my feature at Hampshire College last April: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y29e-1ZwAaA. Also available at Hampshireslam.com. The quality isn’t bad—except for the curious was the lighting made my hair the exact same color as my skin. Several other of my best poems are available at the same sites.
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If you’d prefer to hear the poem without having to watch me, it went up recently on Indiefeed: Performance Poetry (http://www.indiefeedpp.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=426424), where it resides (with several other of my poems) in a marvelous library of wonderful spoken word. Kudos to Mongo Bearwolf!

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And Kudos to your humble servant:

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"If there was some way to clone Jack McCarthy so that he could be reading his poetry every night to hundreds of people at thousands of places at the same time, night after night or even once, the world and 'the word' would be better for it. I'm known to use the phrase
POETRY IS EVERYTHING, well I've looked it up in the Dictionary of Universal Truths and the first synonym for poetry listed is Jack McCarthy."— Chris Jarmick, President, PEN-Washington

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"…when Jack McCarthy took the stage in the first half he completely wowed the packed-to-the- nuts audience. Every now and then, a poet, performer, comes along and puts on this kind of show for an audience (this audience was mainly poets, and lovers of poetry) and by being exposed to the work of a master craftsman, the entire community is raised up. The bar is raised a notch. We, as a poetry community, grow by being exposed to this kind of incredible performance…. I expect to see evidence of growth in the coming months and years, the residual effects of Jack McCarthy's incredibly moving performance. If you ever
doubted the power of words…this performance was emphatic proof!!"
---- Thomas Trofimuk, www.theroar. ca, Edmonton, Alberta
 

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"In the poetry world, he's a rock star." —The Boston Globe

"Jack McCarthy is one of the wonders of contemporary poetry. He writes—and often performs—dazzling narratives full of wit and humor, sadness and hard thinking. He should be cloned."— Stephen Dobyns

"If you're looking for one of those nights at a poetry reading that makes you want to go out and write, or reminds you why you began writing in the first place, then you want to book Jack. Really. Trust me on this.".—Steve Ramirez of Two Idiots Peddling Poetry, Orange, CA

"He reminds me of a drunken man in a bar full of snobs, who for some inexplicable reason is always right."—Sam Szabo, grade 7 (at the time), Rupert A. Nock Middle School, Newburyport, MA

"I've enjoyed the work of quite a range of modern authors, and many of them lived right here in my own home town, but not all of `em." — Robinson Bolkum

Chris August: "Jack, you're not a geriatric slam poet; you're THE geriatric slam poet."

Head-to-Head Haiku Champion, Individual World Poetry Slam 2007
1996 Boston National Slam Team
2000 Worcester National Slam Team
2000 National Slam Individual Semi-finals
HippoPress: "stooped, grizzled old... veteran poetry machine."
The Boston Phoenix: "Best Standup Poet"
Boston Poetry Awards "Best Love Poet,"
Cambridge Chronicle: "…sort of grumpy-looking older guy…"
Cambridge Poetry Awards: "Best Spoken Word (Male)" and "Best Humorous
Poet (Male)"

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SECOND CD: Whereas "Breaking Down Outside a Gas Station" was live, rowdy, and rough around the edges, "By Gift unearned" is studio produced, not without humor but not quite so in-your-face. I think of it as a voice to keep you company on those long rides home late at night. Includes Epithalamion, Drunks, Magnum Iter, and Odysseus Responds to Kalypso, among other favorites. $10 from me or http://www.em-press.com.

My CD, "Breaking Down Outside a Gas Station," is always available for $10 + shipping at www.thewordsmithpre ss.com.

"SAY GOODNIGHT, GRACE NOTES," JACK McCARTHY'S NEW AND CORRECTED POEMS IS !YES! AVAILABLE FROM BARNES & NOBLE! BUT YOU CAN STILL GET IT FROM http://www.em-press.com. That website includes a glowing review from the American Library Association Booklist. There's another wonderful review at http://www.ocweekly .com/ink/03/51/art-infante.php and a very nice article at
http://www.hippopre ss.com/books/ 030403_spokenword.html.

CHAPBOOK: "disGrace Notes, Confessions of a Relapsing/Remitting Catholic," was one of the chapbooks published from Pudding House's annual competition. It's a poetic documentation of my lifelong love-hate relationship with the Church, and our ultimate estrangement. Available now! From me for $10 + shipping from Pudding House Publications, 81 Shadymere Ln, Columbus, OH 43213 or info@puddinghouse.com.

One of the best buys in poetry is "Actual Grace Notes," 44 pages of my best poems written mostly 1996-2000; $5. Also available at www.poetryslam.com or at www.thewordsmithpress.com. The following review recently appeared on Amazon.com. It's by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz,
Urbana MC and poet extraordinaire.

"an inspired collection from an amazing storyteller, June 4, 2008”
By C. O. Aptowicz (NYC, NY)
Jack McCarthy is one of the National Poetry Slam community's worst kept secrets. To see him perform is to immediately fall in love again with the art of storytelling. His idiosyncratic work finds a home in any ear, and pulls laughter out of previously cynical throats, tears
out of previously stubborn eyes. Where ever he goes, Jack earns himself a new legion of fans. And now, we believers can take a little bit of Jack home with us with this amazing collection of poetry, lovingly put together by Ann Arbor's The Wordsmith Press. Many of
Jack's best known pieces -- including his wonderful "Car Talk" series -- are interspersed with haikus, poems about dating God and wry spot-on rants about SUVs & rampant consumer consumption. Although be forewarned that crowd favorites "Neponset Circle" and his wedding toast to his daughter are NOT included in this book, it is nonetheless a solid and charming home-spun addition to any poetry library."

BOOKS OUT!
"THE SPOKEN WORD REVOLUTION REDUX" came out early last year. I have a poem and an essay in it, and YES! IT'S AVAILABLE IN EVERY BORDERS AND BARNES AND NOBLE IN THE COUNTRY! DEFINITIVE ANTHOLOGY.

Some have suggested that I should have a DVD. But realistically, I don't see that happening any time soon. I used to do a cable TV show in Billerica, MA. Over five years we did about 50 shows. I would invite a poet whose work I admired—in some cases, venerated--and we
would swap poems for about 45 minutes; the show would end with a brief open mike. Some real heavyweights came on with me: Donald Hall (probably the best show we ever did), Thomas Lux, Patricia Smith, Stephen Dobyns. Those shows are available on videotape--probably, by now, on DVD: email batv.batvinc@ comcast.net.

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The Arroyo Vista Inn has given support to this poet. If you like doing business with generous, arts-minded people, consider www.arroyovistainn.com.