Join us in the basement at Alter Space for the inaugural reading from John Sakkis’ recent book, Rave On!, in conjunction with a reading by Cedar Sigo.
Higher State of consciousness sounds
like bottlerockets around the world
At Homebase on fire
on video while my childhood
is burning at the base
on Hegenberger Rd.
I was shot dead by a crackhead
in the parking lot fuming
Nag Chompa rocking
JNKO’s and Hilfiger sucking
a blueberry Blow Pop
with my pistol-whipped friends
-John Sakkis
excerpt from Rave On! (BOTH BOTH Books, 2016)
JOHN SAKKIS is the author of The Islands (Nightboat Books, 2015) and Rude Girl (BlazeVOX Books 2009) as well as numerous chapbooks and ephemera. From 2005-2015 he edited BOTH BOTH, a little magazine of poetry and art. With Angelos Sakkis he has translated four books by Athenian poet Demosthenes Agrafiotis: most recently Y’es and Diaeresis (forthcoming 2015 from Dusie Press); their translation of Agrafiotis’s Maribor (The Post-Apollo Press, 2011), was awarded the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation. He Lives in Oakland.
CEDAR SIGO was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of eight books and pamphlets of poetry, including Language Arts (Wave Books, 2014), Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010), Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008), and two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003 and 2005). He lives in San Francisco.