Special evening of sonic composition and improvisation centered on poetry. Three stellar presences: Oliver Ray, No Land, & Steven Taylor.
OLIVER RAY, writer and composer, will present fragments from the forthcoming book-length poem Source Vagrant-- as well as excerpts from Spoon Thief, a poem-prose novella.
Oliver Ray is all over the place: a writer, musician, and composer, he works across the boundary lines of these disciplines. His work is focused on the intuitive sense of the supernatural and the ways it finds expression in our lives. He worked alongside and co-wrote songs with Patti Smith for over a decade. Most recently, he adapted her book Woolgathering for the stage of Baryshnikov Arts in New York City; which was featured as a NY Times Critic's Pick. Described as a "spoken word opera," the piece which Ray composed and directed was a meditation on the roots of the artist in the landscapes of childhood. In 2023 he collaborated with the poet & artist No Land on "Cremation Piece," for the Allen Ginsberg Estate, a sonic-poem work and cinema piece around "Neal's Ashes," by Allen Ginsberg. He is interested in the idea of the archive as a work of art.
He is currently working on two pieces, a prose work called Spoon Thief; and a long poem "Source Vagrant" which is the imagination/consciousness of the prose piece. An album called beingone of 8 songs will be released in December, 2025 on the label Dark Harbor Records. Also, in December, Ray will be presenting his paper Anthroposophical Anarchism and the Decentralization of the Spirit for the 100 Years of Steiner conference at the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Excerpts from all of these works may be heard at Torn Page Oct 7th.
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Poet & artist, NO LAND, will present poetries from her recent book The Velvet Wire (co-authored with Anne Waldman, Granary Books 2024) as well as selections from her forthcoming, semi-secret book of poetry (2025). She will be joined by Oliver Ray on guitar for a sonic-poem collaboration. In performance, No Land’s ephemeral, hand-painted scrolls, codex-like-poem documents, and typewritten text fragments are strewn upon her table— which becomes a type of altar as she recites in a trance-like state. Poems are improvised, channeled, and recited in communion with musicians’ sounds as No Land weaves a live, poetical score. Each recitation is unique as the poetry lives in a state of transmutation and amorphous mosaic.
Of The Velvet Wire, Bradley King of the Brooklyn Rail writes: “A sacred text and unique art work— The Velvet Wire is a poet’s shrine to the shared interior and telepathic relationship between Anne Waldman & No Land. It’s a relic of how poets sustain one another through attention, care, and through the cultivation of lineages across generational lines. It’s also a teaching on how to survive— how to offer sustenance and exuberance, one to the other.-- Bradley King
"The artist known as No Land is aptly named. Their work exists in an upper atmosphere, an etheric realm, invisible and moving. Prana, Qi, Life Body or Ether body, are different names for the mysterious life force which animates all that exists over and above the mineral realm. Where this force comes from has been speculated upon since humans were making ochre handprints on cave walls by the light of a torch. The work of No Land won’t fit in a portfolio. Not because there is too much of it, but because it is always moving. Poem scrolls and fragments are laid out on a table. The reading begins; No Land looks through the work like tea leaves or tarot cards. Certain pieces step forward and offer themselves. An hourglass stands beside a rock holding the papers down. The sand travels in both directions, suspended in the unfurling present, an oracle of words. Lines from other poets appear and are given new meaning. The fragment, cutup, collage is taken to its terminus, then sets out on foot forward to origin; being: born anew, integrated, continuously. The poem becomes a drawing, the drawing a song hummed while painting. Valery said that poems are never finished, only abandoned; however, it is this unfinished-ness, this abandon, which is the work. With deep respect for the diversity which surrounds her, we learn that in the quantum jetstream of No Land’s creations, all words, sound, and image are energy vibrating behind appearance. The veil is removed. Creation quivers, a drop of dew reflects the city in summer twilight, and falls away." - Oliver Ray
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STEVEN TAYLOR is a member of the seminal poetry rock group the Fugs. He will present a selection of songs by himself and his poet collaborators.
$10 Suggested / no one turned away for lack of funds