The Creative Writing Program & the Department of English Studies at Illinois State University will present “Cinépoetry,” poetry films on Monday, Feb. 22, 7 p.m. at The Normal Theater, 209 North Street in Normal. This event is free and open to the public.

Poet and new media artist and executive director of the Poetry Center of Chicago Francesco Levato will present a series of short poetry films in an examination of the convergence of cinema and poetry in the emergent genre of cinépoetry. The 50-minute program, which will include Levato’s award winning documentary short film War Rug, will be followed by a Q&A.

Named an Official Selection at the Potenza International Film Festival, War Rug, the film, is based on the documentary poetics of the book length poem of the same name. Interwoven narratives—from first hand accounts and news reports to counterintelligence manuals and autopsy reports—explore life within conflict zones through the lens of current warfare. The film collages and juxtaposes archival source material with U.S. Military footage in an exploration of alternative narrative interpretations of the source text.

Featuring: Tiziano Fratus (translations read by Akilah Oliver and Francesco Levato), Gian Maria Annovi, Antonello Borra, Alessandro Polcri (Translations read by Amelia Moser), and Paolo Valesio (Translations read by Graziella Sidoli).

NewFilmmakers goes to war. More films in our continuing series of films about wars past and present.

Jeremy Pommier HONOR (2008, 7 Minutes, Video) Three soldiers parachute into post-invasion Normandy during the war, and talk about their lives back home while they patrol the seemingly quite countryside. The sudden appearance of a sniper changes everything in an instant.

Francesco Levato WAR RUG (2009, 20 Minutes, Video) “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

For more information please visit: www.NewFilmmakers.com

A screening of War Rug will follow a reading by William Cody Maher, an American writer living in Germany, whose latest book of prose deals with the effects of war on U.S. society.

For more information please visit: www.literaturwerkstatt.org

The Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago presents a reading and discussion on the art of translation featuring Tiziano Fratus and Francesco Levato. Fratus and Levato will read from Fratus’ new collection of poetry, Creaturing, translated from the Italian by Francesco Levato.

Francesco will read from his latest collection of Italian poetry in translation, Creaturing by Tiziano Fratus, at Woodland Pattern’s Redletter reading series.

Redletter is a reading series featuring local and regional poets and writers on the third Friday of each month, and is curated by Chuck Stebelton. The program begins at 7pm with an open mic hosted by Melissa Czarnik, followed by one or two featured readers.

For more information please visit: www.woodlandpattern.org

War Rug, the film, will be featured at The 2010 War, Literature, and the Arts Conference at the United States Air Force Academy.

This international conference will offer top-tier academic presentations and keynote speakers in a variety of genres to include literary and journalistic criticism, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film studies, photography, painting and music. The thematic center of the conference is the representation and reporting of America’s wars from 1990 to present. This timeframe presents a compelling opportunity to focus on the near past as well as current engagements: topics and creative output that directly affect all Americans in the present.

Featured Speakers:

Benjamin Busch, “The Wire,” “Generation Kill”
Mark Boal, “The Hurt Locker”
Dexter Filkins, “The Forever War”
Brian Turner, “Here, Bullet,” “Phantom Noise”

Please note: the conference runs from September 16-18. “War Rug” will be screened on the 17th.

For more information please visit: http://wlajournal.com

“Translating 2010” is a poetry event that is happening during the Rec Roomers series, as part of the 2010 Chicago Calling Arts Festival. This event explores the theme of “translations” in its wide range of permutations and possibilities: translating matter into energy, time into memories, poetry into prose, the present into the past, the future into the present, the page into the air, promises into reality, ideals into facts, pencils into sketches into carvings, frames into motion, clouds into rain and water into ice, sound into words. Also, some of this event’s participants will present creative re-imaginings of poetry by Jules LaForgue, the French Symbolist poet who was born 200 years ago. Participants will include Francesco Levato, Mariela Giffor (via Skype), Dan Godston, and other TBA individuals.

Documentary Poetics
Leader: Francesco Levato

Documentary poetry incorporates news reports, government documents, legal testimony, and statistical data, among other source material, and it is assumed by the definition of “documentary” that the facts are presented “objectively without editorializing or fictional matter,” but often the poet is engaged in politicizing a certain view. This workshop will examine the role of poet as documentarian and the poem as record of fact.

RHINO/the Poetry Forum invites all poets to its Poetry Workshop & Peer Exchange. Attendees bring 15 copies (no longer than two copies) of a poem to be critiqued, and participate in an ongoing discussion of poetry and poetics. No registration is required, and the workshop is free, though a $5 donation is appreciated.

For more information please visit: www.rhinopoetry.org