Featuring Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Jason Bredle
Also Erin Teegarden and Rafael Torch
B.Y.O.P. Bring Your Own People
When: Saturday, June 30, 2007
Time: Reading begins at 7:00PM
Cost: Free admission.
Location: Peter Jones Gallery, 1806 W. Cuyler, 2nd Floor, Chicago
"Chicago is a storytelling town. Whether through poetry or prose, Chicagoans have plenty to say about life, the world, home teams, and cicadas...but too often we only talk to those in our own neighborhoods. The Guild has always stood for crossing the street into the next neighborhood to learn where our stories intersect and differ. Through B.Y.O.P., the Guild invites two members of Chicago's literary neighborhoods -- reading series, individual writers, lit mags -- to partner together to offer an evening of literature, conversation and hanging out."--Guild Complex
To learn more about the writers, click continue
I have a rather large back yard by many standards, and especially by urban standards, although it is not as large as some of the other Wicker Park properties I view when walking the crazy dog about the neighborhood. My “back yard” includes my garage roof, upon which, as I have previously mentioned, I have installed large boxes in which I grow both tomatoes and potatoes. (I prefer the “toe-mato,” “poe-tato” pronunciation at the moment, but then again this is about being weak.) And a lot of other things. Carrots. Okra. Jalapenos. Cucumbers. Baby Bok Choy. Indian Corn. Zinnias. But even on the garage roof, the trees are encroaching. One of my favorite artworks is a section of a video opera by
I know what he means, and I want to cry at the truth of it. But in my back yard, the trees are coming to me. Shading the southern half of the yard, there’s a diseased Siberian elm that just won’t die while all the magnificent American Elms in the entire metropolitan area wither and succumb to Dutch Elm disease. And then that huge mulberry tree from my northern neighbor’s yard that has claimed all the airspace the Siberian elm hasn’t. And then there is the crab apple tree that was the sole feature of the back yard when I was a mere renter and my elderly Polish landlord kept four or five dogs who trampled the earth so effectively that nary a weed would grow. The crab apple tree hovers over the garage, and it a convenient place to hang my tomato cages when turning over the boxes, but it has grown tall and blocks the sun as it sinks into the west. It has gotten to the point where the yard is dark, and not even shade-loving plants will grow. So of course, being the self-reliant person that I am, I must trim the trees.
