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Artifact Reading Series in Oakland
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Chris Stroffolino
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Last Updated on October, 21 2008 at 02:31 PM
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One of the great charms of downtown Oakland still intact from its
heyday during the first half of the 20th century is Frank Ogawa Plaza,
extending northwest from the intersection of 14th and Broadway,
diagonally up San Pablo and Telegraph. Although restrictive zoning and
curfew laws, along with high real estate costs, have rendered downtown
Oakland a veritable ghost town after 6 p.m., the Artifact Reading
Series does its bit to bring some walk-in
traffic to downtown Oakland...
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Melissa Benham, co-founder of Artifact Reading Series
One of the great charms of downtown Oakland still intact from its heyday during the first half of the 20th century is Frank Ogawa Plaza, extending northwest from the intersection of 14th and Broadway, diagonally up San Pablo and Telegraph. Although restrictive zoning and curfew laws, along with high real estate costs, have rendered downtown Oakland a veritable ghost town after 6 p.m., the Artifact Reading Series at the Oakland Art Gallery does its bit to bring some walk-in traffic (and buying power) to downtown Oakland every few weeks.
The Oakland Art Gallery is run by Nicole Neditch, who was one of the former owners of the popular Mama Buzz cafe, and Kerri Johnson, who is also the co-director of Blankspace gallery. They regularly showcase visual art, but they decided that they needed to add a poetry series. Ironically, it was the author of the essay "Why Poetry Readings Suck," former Kitchen Sink magazine editor Kaya Oakes, who helped find them the writer Melissa Benham and her Artifact Reading Series.
The Artifact Reading Series was founded by Benham and novelist/playwright Chana Morgenstern in a house in San Francisco's Mission district in 2004, and quickly became a mandatory stop on San Francisco's literary scene, especially after the SF Weekly and The San Francisco Bay Guardian got a hold of it. Benham resisted the temptation to take the series to a less intimate venue for years—that is, until she moved to Oakland to raise a family. The new Artifact series reconvened in March 2008, and has been slowly but surely building up steam since. Currently, the Artifact Series has a very specific "avant-garde" bent similar to the kind of 'innovative' writing often taught at Mills, University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco State University, or the California College of Art's MFA programs. Yet, Benham is aware that the kind of experimental writing she is most interested in does not reflect the multi-culturalism in Oakland. And so, she is very keen to expand the series, and perhaps open it up to a more eclectic array of voices.
"I have always wanted it to expand into having a community component. When Chana Morgenstern was involved, we had the idea of having a public project arm, where an artist would bring us a community-based project and we would manage it for them. Both Chana and I taught creative writing to children and teenagers in schools, juvenile detention centers, homeless shelters, and other community programs for many years," says Benham. "So, we also wanted to bring our excitement for innovative writing and small press publishing to children and teenagers who might have only been exposed to poetry as Robert Frost or slam poetry. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with slam poetry, only that I think it can be alienating to anyone who is not interested in expressing themselves in that form or is more interested with writing on paper than performance."
In the meantime, Benham is savvy enough to know it is better to light one candle than curse the darkness, and the monthly series continues. The next reading, on October 25th features local writers Kathleen Fraser, and Will Skinker, along with New York writer (and editor of Fence Magazine) Katy Lederer. They can be contacted on MySpace and Facebook as well as through their blog.
What: Artifact Reading Series
Where: Oakland Art Gallery, 199 Kahn's Alley, 510-637-0395
When: October 25, 7.30 p.m.
How much: $5 suggested donation |
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