Cedric Bardawil: Poetry Reading
Sunday 02 June | Time: 4-5pm
On the occasion of Eddie Ruscha's exhibition 'Seeing Frequencies’, Matthew Holman will be leading a late afternoon reading, celebrating West Coast poetry, at Cedric Bardawil.
In their geometries and abstractions, Ruscha’s displayed works are in conversation with the rich history of the Californian avant-garde, from Oskar Fischinger to Jordan Belson, Maya Deren to Richard Diebenkorn. Finding a poetic counterpoint to these lyrical compositions, Matthew and friends will lead a memorable summer evening of poetry, painting, and expanded consciousness.
Matthew will be joined by celebrated poets and scholars Sam Ladkin, Eleanor Careless, and William Burns. Expect poems by Diane di Prima, Clark Coolidge, Barbara Guest, and much more besides.
Please arrive from 4pm, readings from 4.30pm.
Free, unticketed, no latecomers.
I would say that California has always had me in its grip. It’s really the end of the line before time starts again. It’s got a sunset embedded in it. It also was symbolically the birth and death of counterculture starting with the acid tests and ending with Altamont (the infamous music festival which broke out into violence, resulting in one homicide and several deaths by misadventure) and the Manson Family murders. I suppose all that stuff has seeped into what I do since way back. Zap Comics, cult mythology, and Jack Parsons (rocket engineer and part of an occult movement founded by English occult writer and practitioner Aleister Crowley) all form a West Coast brew I find intoxicating.
–– Eddie Ruscha
