news & updates

Chicago School of Poetics: Registration Open.


Have you been looking for a supportive and collaborative environment where you can refine your poetry?

The Chicago School of Poetics offers that and more: weekly face-to-face workshops on location in Chicago, and online workshops that can be attended from your home, or from anywhere in the country.

Our program allows you to get inside the actual writing process of the core faculty and will take you beyond what you might have thought possible in a positive, community-building environment.

Register for our March – April session. Click here for more info.

New book out from Argotist


Endless, Beautiful, Exact
(Argotist eBooks, 2011)

A series of texts, remixed from appropriated oral and written source material, that explore interpersonal conflict through a fragmented and implied narrative. The author seems to have a clampdown on what he is willing to express, and what few words are allowed through are charged with emotion and tension.

Click here to download.

Days and Nights Festival


I’ll be doing a live performance of my cinépoem “Variations on Want” with composer Philip Glass for the “Days and Nights Festival” at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California on August 31st.

About the festival:

World famous composer Philip Glass presents a one-of-a-kind arts festival in Carmel Valley and Big Sur, California. Featuring music, dance, poetry, theatre and film. Premiering this summer, Aug 19 to Sept 4, 2011. (read more…)

Tickets available here: http://philipglasspoetrynight-eorg.eventbrite.com

New poem in BathHouse Hypermedia Journal


“Variations on Want: Sequence II” now online in BathHouse Hypermedia Journal vol. 8.2.

To read online: http://bhjournal.com/issues/Vol8_2

“War Rug” review in Jacket2


The poem as a type of activism
A review of “War Rug”
by STEVE HALLE

Politically charged investigation raises the stakes of poetry for both the poet (as producer) and the poem (as art object). This type of poetry not only invokes the bardic practice of speaking the wisdom of the group, but also uses the poem as a type of activism. When critics question the role of poetry in the real world or what it can accomplish outside of its own existence, activist poetics that enters conversation with contemporary political happenings offers one of the better answers. This activist poetry can reveal knowledge about real happenings through the conceptual relationship between the real and the world of art.

Read more at: http://jacket2.org/reviews/poem-type-activism

Cinépoetry Festival


Ping-Pong Magazine and Henry Miller Memorial library present:

The Verrückter Schwanz Cinépoetry Festival

Selected short films that explore the intersection of cinematic and poetic expression.

Thursday May 12th at 7:00 pm
Food and Wine to be served

Curated by Francesco Levato
Director: Maria Garcia Teutsch
Contact: 831.755.6943

New poems forthcoming


“Variations on Want: Sequence III” Ping Pong (Literary Journal of The Henry Miller Library, forthcoming, 2011)

“Oscillations (i),” “Oscillations (vi),” and “Oscillations (viii)” The Homestead Review (forthcoming, 2011)




New poems and films published


New work published:

“Endless, Beautiful, Exact” Cordite Poetry Review (Australia, 2010)

“Variations on Want: Sequence II: The Film” poetry film, Moria (2010)

New work forthcoming:

“INT. MEDICINE CABINET” Another Chicago Magazine (forthcoming, 2011)

“Variations on Want: Sequence I” VLAK Magazine (Prague, forthcoming, 2011)

“The Opposite Shore” (excerpt) by Fabiano Alborghetti,
translated from the Italian by Francesco Levato, Ezra (forthcoming, 2011)

Elegy for Dead Languages forthcoming (Oct. 2010)


Elegy for Dead LanguagesElegy for Dead Languages
(Marick Press, October, 2010)

Elegy for Dead Languages collects in print the long documentary poems War Rug; Elegy for Dead Languages; and Hood, Handgun, Power Drill.

“Francesco Levato’s powerful documentary, War Rug—like Eliot Weinberger’s What I heard about Iraq before it—detains the language of the perpetrators of global military aggression and redeploys it to indict them. From J.C. Penny catalog copy to counterintelligence manuals and autopsy reports, War Rug is a fierce yet unfortunate reminder of the absolute horrors of our age.”

—Mark Nowak, author of Coal Mountain Elementary about War Rug

“War Rug” official selection Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin


War Rug, the film, was recently selected for the Zebra Poetry Film Festival at Literaturwerkstatt in Berlin, Germany.

The Zebra Poetry Film Festival is one of the premier European festivals focussed on cinépoetry.

For more information: www.literaturwerkstatt.org