Come and celebrate the release of Chelsea Tadeyeske’s new chapbook “if you bend it backwards nothing really happens” featuring readings from Tadeyeske, edie roberts, Robin LaMer Rahija, and Ciona Rouse, andChristine Hall. 

"This poetry is a glorious sad punch in the face inside your face. It’s like a war grew a beautiful filagree talon, meant not to hurt anyone but to hang your skin on so you can go away somewhere you want to be known and lonely. How does Chelsea Tadeyeske do that? It’s embarrassing. It’s great."
- Cathy Wagner, author of Nervous Device (City Lights Books, 2012)

Chelsea Tadeyeske is a poet, performer, and bookmaker from Milwaukee, WI. She is the founding editor of pitymilk press (pitymilkpress.wordpress.com) which publishes short-run chapbooks as well as an online and print journal. Her work is interested in investigating the Venn diagrams made of the shame, trauma and desire that are rooted in femininity, often making visceral the hurt of societal expectations and perspectives in her performances and on the page. Two of her chapbooks, ‘if you bend it backwards nothing really happens’ and ‘we’re all born with the right to be angry’ are forthcoming from Rabbit Catastrophe Press and bathmatics, respectively. Her poems can be found online at Pretty Owl Poetry, Delirious Hem, Smoking Glue Gun, among others. She is a seasoned performer having toured extensively in the United States, as well as some dates in Europe. She is a Virgo sun/Aquarius moon/Libra rising born in the year of the snake. To see a more summarized view of her work, visit https://chelseartadeyeskeblog.wordpress.com/ 

edie roberts is a genderqueer performer and activist currently living in Detroit, MI. They are the author of The Heel and The Face, Little Book of Shit, and The Roof is on Fire, among others. Their work is steeped in a characteristic American anxiety, searching for identity through cultural interrogation and radical vulnerability, then connected to global economic and environmental concerns with an activated desperation. Their poems and sound pieces have appeared and disappeared at Thunderclap Magazine, Duet Duet, Those That This, Sawbuck, The New Gnus, No Exit, etc. They are currently making books/zines/etc under the umbrella of bathmatics, and organizing for housing and workplace justice in Detroit. They have performed extensively through the United States and Canada, as well France, Ireland and the United Kingdom. They would love to come visit you... or vice versa... write them at edierobertsmessmaker@gmail.com
http://edieroberts.wordpress.com/

Robin LaMer Rahija is from Kansas City, MO. She runs Rabbit Catastrophe Press. Her poems have appeared in Diagram, The Washington Square Review, PANK, and elsewhere. 

Performance poet Christine Hall was raised in a trailer at the edge of the Adirondacks by cultist pornographers and troubadours. Inculcated with American mythology--tool girl calendars, bible stories, science fiction--she built on this education while hitching rides across the continent. Now at home in the Nashville arts community, Christine organizes the monthly Poetry in the Brew open mic. Her work has appeared in Out & About Nashville and Calliope, on MTA buses, and on stages with the Yoni Pearl Monologues and Cabaret Noir Collective.

Ciona Rouse hosts Lyrical Brew, and her new chapbook VANTABLACK is out from Third Man Books.