Salon Salvage, March 28

This was my first visit to the new home of this monthly reading at the Upstairs Arts Collective, at 403 Fulton St., Troy, NY. The 3rd floor (there is a classic clattering elevator) space is the studio of host & coordinator of Salon Salvage Matthew Klane (with Hajar Hussaini & Amie Zimmerman) & this night there were about 25 in the audience, fellow poets & artists scattered about the split space.

Matthew began the night with a tribute to the recently gone poet/translator/professor Pierre Joris. Matthew recalled how he first met Pierre at SUNY Buffalo before Pierre went on to settle in Albany, then read from the 2007 anthology Oh One Arrow (film forum press) 2 selections by Pierre “#7 exhalation (tarab)” & “#11 comradeship (rifq)” from Pierre’s series Meditations on the 40 Stations of Mansour Al-Hallaj (also published as a chapbook by Anchorite Press, 2007).

Hajar Hussaini introduced the first reader, Maggie Greaves, who teaches at Skidmore College, & whom I’d see read last Fall at the monthly reading & open mic series at the Saratoga Springs Senior Center. A couple of poems were repeated from that reading, including the hilarious “Things My Daughter Said During the Wildfires.” She included poems on Outer Space (e.g., “Outer Space is the Suburbs”), her daughter, love (e.g., “My Husband Washes the Dishes While Humming”), & she ended with “Autobiography” that began with a quote from Gertrude Stein. Her poems are built on images of a mix of the everyday & the exotic, simply told.

Mayada Ibrahim read from an anthology that she is compiling of translations from the Arabic of contemporary Sudanese poets, all, or mostly women. While she did mention their names it was difficult for me to be able take down that information, but the poems were all compelling pieces, including a series of prose poems on death & mourning, one in which a woman in labor calls out, “a god!, a god” on the birth of her child. I’d be very interested in reading the anthology when it comes out so I hope she is able to keep at it.

Judith Braun is well known in this area as a visual artist; she was born in Albany & has returned to Upstate New York after years in NYC. Tonight that work was shared along with written autobiographical pieces from years past. She read 3 pieces against the backdrop of large projections of her visual work, mostly drawings, that were “unrehearsed,” i.e., not coordinated with the writing. The first piece, “The Life of an Artist,” was a humorous, perhaps ironic, take; “He Liked My Work” was a chatty autobiographical piece, with occasional rhyme, on being arty; while “A Wink and a Nod” was about a romance from some years ago.  Over the years I have seen Judith Braun’s work in a number of local venues & this was a pleasant, informal retrospective of her work & life.

This “Multi-modal poetry & performance series” continues on the last Saturday of each month at Upstairs Arts Collective, 403 Fulton St., Troy, NY at 7pm, donations encouraged. Find them on Instagram.