Davida Singer to Perform at Bluestockings Bookstore, 9/21

Poet/performance artist Davida Singer mixes it up with jazz/klezmer artists Frank London (trumpet) and Daniel Kelly (keyboard) to perform excerpts from her new collection Port of Call (Plain View Press, 2012). Written with a strong feminist voice, the book follows the journey of a woman at the turn of the 3rd millennium, where personal experiences morph into a lyrical meditation on space and time, and where loss, rebirth, and unsettled relationships mirror global shifts. The event will take place at Bluestockings Bookstore, located at 172 Allen Street (NYC), on Friday, September 21, 7-9 p.m. It will be followed by a book signing. For more information, visit: www.davidasinger.com or www.bluestockings.com/events, or call 212.777.602.

Whitman-like in its connection of the personal with the cosmic, Port of Call was hailed by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz as “both autobiographical and historic, all movingly bearing witness to her time and ours.” In a spare and lyrical form, Singer creates a woman’s metaphysical journey moving through eight transformational destinations—New York, East End of Long Island, Vermont, Millennium, Dementia, and beyond. Time blurs as we meet past and present lovers, a mother with dementia, and revisit her roots and the loss of a father. Recent backdrops—9/11 and global warming-mirror personal frailty; a fractured pelvis and unsettled relationships become metaphors for a world of heightened disconnection. The future is dicey and hope lies in ordinary moments captured and rekindled by the heart.

Davida Singer is a poet/performance artist, who has done numerous readings combining spoken word with jazz and klezmer. Her first book, shelter island poems (Canio Editions), led to khupe, which was performed with musicians Frank London, Ken Filiano, John Rangel and others at venues including The Kitchen and Cornelia Street Café. Davida was the recipient of fellowships in 2004, 2005, and 2006 from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. She was also a featured artist at the 2010 SOMOS Writers Series in Taos, and has published extensively in journals. She was a contributing writer for the Manhattan-based newspaper,The Villager, for 13 years and is currently teaching writing and literature at Hunter College and School of Visual Arts in New York City.(www.davidasinger.com)

Grammy award winning composer/trumpeter Frank London is a member of The Klezmatics, and leads his Klezmer Brass Allstars, whose CD Carnival Conspiracy was Rolling Stone’s #1 Non- English recording (2006). His opera Green Violin was performed in Amsterdam, St. Petersburg and New York’s Jewish Museum. He has explored Jewish jazz with Hasidic New Wave, cantorial music (Hazonos and Invocations), and mystical music (tsuker-zis, Nigunim and The Zmiros Project), is Artistic Coordinator of KlezKanada and teaches at SUNY Purchase. (www.franklondon.com)

Award-winning composer/pianist Daniel Kelly is an innovative musical voice in New York City jazz and improvised music scene. He has collaborated in performance and on disc with Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano, David Liebman, Don Byron, Lauryn Hill, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and many others. He can be heard on four highly acclaimed CDs as a leader. His group has received the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award. (www.danielkellymusic.com)

“Singer’s keen eye masterfully splits punctuated moments of love and loss, hovers above them, and gives wings and lightness to even the darkest of emotions. These poems are full of heart and hope. There is a sly wisdom here, and I am happily the wiser for having come to know her rich, incisive, generous words.”--Cusi Cram, playwright and author of A Lifetime Burning
“Davida Singer’s port of call is a delight. In her chronicles of one woman’s life at the turn of the millennium, she includes us all.”--Jan Heller Levi, poet and author of Skyspeak
For more information, visit: www.davidasinger.com