West Philly Community Poem in the Philadelphia Inquirer

@westphillycommunitypoem is in the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning! Along with words from Philly Youth Poet Laureate Cydney Brown and LindoYes, who joined us in the pop-up offering personalized poems for participants to walk away with.

Read the full article here: https://www.inquirer.com/…/everyday-places-barnes-west…

“Doing poetry in public, Kavanaugh’s learned, can be a ‘healing medium’ that gives people space to ‘work things through, through poetry.’

“With emotions that can be difficult to express, he explained, poetry offers a chance to find language for them. As the words reach deep within ourselves, poetry can touch without touch, he continued.”

Thank you so much to writer Cassie Owens and photographer Jose F. Moreno for taking the time to capture so much of the scene at La Pearl Beauty Emporium, and further describe the purpose of the #EverydayPlacesWestPHL Artist Partnerships presented by #BarnesWest LoLa 38 and The Barnes Foundation!

Did you miss our first pop-up? That’s okay! We have several more pop-ups through October! Our next date is on Sunday, August 29th at La Pearl Beauty Emporium on Lancaster Avenue

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Travel By Haiku – crankie by Marian McLaughlin

This is just about the coolest gift imaginable! My sister commissioned the ever-amazing Marian McLaughlin to make a personalized crankie based on my cross-country road trips.

Subscribe to my Patreon to see the full video: https://bit.ly/PledgeToHaiku

What is a crankie, you may ask? It’s an old storytelling device where a long, illustrated scroll is hand-cranked through a viewing window while a story is told. @marianmclaughlin makes them on demand on any topic or idea. Send her a message if you’d like to commission a gift like this for someone you love. She’s open for requests and as you can see an extraordinary dream laborer. This storyboard features the likes of Parse Seco, and the unicorn Ma Ja Ka, as well as a snapshot of the Poets For Peace.

As far as the new book, it includes haikus like the ones featured in this clip. We’re a quarter of the way to funding a release party that’ll feature performances like this. Your pledge to my Patreon campaign means I’ll be able to pay performers and promote the new book.

For as little as $1 a month, you can read all the rough drafts and watch the accompanying animations. For $7 a month, I’ll mail you a signed copy of the book when it’s released in March 2021. All tiers of support have a chance to contribute to the behind the scenes of a book of poetry being born out of the dust of the road.

Haiku #1021

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing around with old haikus. Here is a haiku I wrote while hiking in the redwoods last January.

If you like what you see here, become a patron!
http://www.patreon.com/marshalljameskavanaugh

You can subscribe to access more content like this, as well as see snippets of my forthcoming novel.
Only $1 a month and you too can #TravelByHaiku! Any support will really help me out this winter.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Feel free to SHARE with other haiku lovers if you think they’d dig.

Haiku #1010

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing around with old haikus. Here is a haiku I wrote beneath a waterfall in the desert of Boulder, UT last September.

If you like what you see here, become a patron!
http://www.patreon.com/marshalljameskavanaugh

You can subscribe to access more content like this, as well as see snippets of my forthcoming novel.
Only $1 a month and you too can #TravelByHaiku! Any support will really help me out this winter.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Feel free to SHARE with other haiku lovers if you think they’d dig.

Pecha Kucha Night Taos, Volume 28

Marshall Kavanaugh – Pecha Kucha Night Taos Volume 28 from pechakuchataos on Vimeo.

 

As part of The PASEO Festival 2018 in Taos, NM this year, I was invited to discuss my work as an installation artist and services as a Dream Poet For HIre at Pecha Kucha, Volume 28. I decided to take the opportunity to wax poetic on the archetype of The Poet and how they fit in with the larger world based on the things I’ve learned and experienced over the years while typing poetry on the street. Here is the video from that night. Enjoy!

The Paseo Festival 2018 – Recap

Give the River a Voice at the MANIFESTATION STATION

Objective: Through community dialogue and art creation we seek to give the river and surrounding watershed a sovereign voice, both as a means of creative expression and eventually legal reasoning.

Manifestation Station: The Manifestation Station is a lotus tent acquired for water protection in 2016. Since then it has been utilized as a shared community space to release fears and trauma that hold us back so we can open up space, personally and collectively, for the manifestation of positive dreams to emerge through these challenging times of planetary changes.

For the Paseo Project outdoor arts festival on September 14-15, the Manifestation Station will be a collaborative installation in the park at the John Dunn Shops created to raise awareness about our local watershed and allow the community a meeting point to discuss the future of our watershed. The installation will involve a series of audio and visual projections based around the surrounding waterways. Sounds of the river will be amplified above the conversations this will create, while video of these same waterways will be screened inside the lotus tent and on surfaces surrounding the installation. Inside the tent there will be two typewriters connected to an infinite scroll. Upon the scroll, community members will be instructed to write out prayers for our watershed, in the form of hopes and dreams for the world they would like to cultivate and leave behind for future generations, and fears and doubts for the world that is currently being manifested by the industrialized culture we live in.

Conclusion: The goal of this art installation is to transform our understanding of community, and to encourage people to get involved in the safeguarding of our watershed through positive, co-creative actions based in reverence for life. Break-out groups will form that will take up this call and form the necessary values that will protect our collective future here locally. The first steps are to meet and greet each other at the “water hole,” ask important questions together, raise awareness and begin crafting positive solutions together.

at The PASEO

September 14-15, 2018

Taos, NM

a collaboration with Taos Water Protectors

“Libraries” at The Front in NOLA

Hey, New Orleans friends! Check it out! In addition to the installation I curated this past weekend at Currents New Media Festival, on Saturday some of my printed works were featured on the other end of the country.

“Libraries”, an exhibition curated by my alma mater Little Berlin, is up right now at The Front in New Orleans, LA. The exhibition will be on view at the gallery until July 9th.

Thank you to Will Owen and Cayla Lockwood for thinking of me and including me in the collection of zines and printed works from the Little Berlin zine library.

If you’re in New Orleans, go give the exhibition a look and check out some of my writing from the past couple of years.

Currents New Media Festival – Recap

 

Today, I’m feeling really honored to have been asked to be a part of the international cast of artists who are participating in Currents New Media Festival (@currentsnewmedia) this year. Opening weekend was a wild blur of disjointed surreality with so many vulnerabilities exposed and manifestations transposed.

When we set out to create the ManifeSTATION Station, there was no way of knowing how many powerful moments our energies would conjure. From a stranger asking us to write a dream to celebrate 15 years since she had a stroke as a kid, to the family sharing their story about how they almost missed their son’s birthday because of car trouble and a cancelled flight, to all the new friends that repeatedly visited us throughout the weekend to decompress from the festivities happening on the main stage.

There were tears shared. There were hearts opened wide. The unicorn and clown animas brightened the moments that felt lonely. Everyone thought we were on psychedelics, but we were probably the soberest people there, just one foot in the dream, doing the Fool’s leap to other dimensions.

On our last night we stayed late in the tent reading all of the manifestations that had been written throughout the weekend. Reading writings from the Hopes and Dreams side, I felt a tug at my heart, and started weeping. There’s so much suffering in the world. All of the visitors. It felt like the lotus tent behind us had spread a wide net to round up all of the fellow freaks and outsiders.

The space presented itself as a space to recover from the outside perils. Something about the vacant lot we assembled it on, held this vortex of energy. Only the right people even saw us, much less entered. Every moment shared was a return to personal peace.

Every click of the typewriter adding to a soundbath elixir. The mantras projected animating inner consciousness. An expansion of installations assembled in the main gallery.

And in that main gallery, themes of climate change, identity, and expanding community continued to reflect what we set out to accomplish. It felt like everything was a deep conversation on the human experience. I appreciate so much the folks we shared the stage with.

Dream Poet For Hire in Taos News

Excited to see myself and Anthony Evan Carson featured in the Taos News this week for our #poetryondemand and #drawingsbyrequest around the area over the last few years!

Come check us out at Currents New Media Festival this weekend where we’ll be manifesting #dreamsbyrequest all night long.

Hours of operation
Thursday, 6/7 install/soft open
Friday, 6/8 12pm-12am
Saturday, 6/9 12pm-12am
Sunday, 6/10 12pm-7pm

Special thank you to Dawn Franco for the incredible write up documenting all the collaborations and projects we’ve been pulling together recently.

You can read the full article here: https://taosnews.com/stories/dreams-on-demand,48761?

Currents New Media Festival – Update

Working today with Anthony Carson on our ManifeSTATION Station, which will premiere at Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, NM during opening weekend, June 7th-June 10th.

Step inside this lotus tent and add your manifestations to the air. There will be audio and visual projections to make all these manifestations come true. We’re talking about the simple things and the big things. The everything that is personal and the way things like the Earth call us home.

Outside the ManifeSTATION Station, Anthony and I will be offering #dreamsbyrequest in the form of drawings and typewritten poetry. Can’t wait to pull this wild experience together and share it with you all, come June!