Matt Hart & The Small Dance

Friday

Matt Hart is the author of two books of poems, Who’s Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006) and Wolf Face (H_NGM_N BKS, 2010), as well as several chapbooks.  A third full-length book, Light-Headed, will be published in 2011 by BlazeVOX, and a fourth book, Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless, will be published by Typecast in 2012.  A co-founder, and the editor-in-chief, of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

The Small Dance is a collaborative translation from text to movement. The text in question, “The Small Dance,” by Chris Martin, is a long poem that takes its name from a choreographic technique by dance pioneer Steve Paxton and can be found in Becoming Weather (Coffee House Press 2011). For this performance, the translators are Lydia Bell, Sarah White, Eric Conroe, Lisa Keskitalo, and Colleen Hooper. Each translator was given a section of the poem, open access to dialogue with the author, and complete autonomy over their means of translation. Other performances of The Small Dance will take place this summer in Minneapolis and this fall in San Francisco. Chris Martin’s second book of poems, Becoming Weather, was published by Coffee House Press this spring. He is also the author of American Music (Copper Canyon 2007) and the chapbook How to Write a Mistake-ist Poem (Brave Men Press 2011). He is an editor at Futurepoem Books where he curates the response blog Futurepost and co-curates the event series Futurepoem Presents.