poetry, zombies and madness

Brooklyn poet, Brandon Johnson is in town tonight giving a poetry reading at the Dikeou Collection with local poet-hero, Bin Ramke, at 7pm. Johnson received his BA in creative writing at the University of Denver in 2006, where he was a student of Ramke (long-time editor of the Denver Quarterly).

Given that the Denver/Boulder area was a key landscape during the Beat movement, (and let’s not forget that Anne Waldman is still alive and kicking at Naropa, and her niece Eleni Sikelianos is writing her own language-splintering work, also at the University of Denver), it’s no surprise that under the rug there’s a rich, exhilarating literary community that ranges from the slam-poeteers to edgy lit. journals to cozy reading series allover town and that the people attracted to this community are home-grown as well as out-of-towners all the way from New York.

And perhaps what’s even more electric about the Denver scene is that you can have a group of poets with extremely different aesthetic textures read side by side, (and even engage in a mutually-nourishing teacher/student relationship like that between Ramke and Johnson). For example, Ramke’s work is psychological, prayer-like, and highly intertextual whereas Johnson favors a humorous, urban, dark, New York School flavor. Ramke’s content focuses on mind, madness, and history. Johnson writes about surrealist instants of “venomous cupids” and “drizzling beasts.” Ramke’s work feels like you’re peering into an exposed braincase, Johnson’s feels like you’re being chased by zombies. If you’re looking to be over-stimulated by something like a “winged female figure alighting on a tendril” or a “neo-apocalypse” of “artificial pleasure” and the “downloading sea,” keep an eye on the small presses and reading series between the 16th St. Mall and the Laughing Goat in Boulder. There’s a mob of people, “keeping the world safe for poetry.”

The Dikeou Collection is located in the Colorado Building, 1615 California St., at 16th St., Suite 515, Denver.

Ramke’s work and books can easily be found on-line, for example, right here: http://www.amazon.com/Tendril-Bin-Ramke/dp/1890650269. Johnson has self-published several chapbooks, to acquire his work write to info@zingmagazine.com