This past Saturday, the local literary press known as [sic] held its second quarterly event, which took place in the stunning OmniCorpDetroit hackerspace at Eastern Market, and featured poetry readings by New Yorkers Allyson Paty, Mike Lala and Amy Lawless, along with local poets Ivan Grass and Phreddy Wischusen. There were also musical performances, as well as an incredible array of artwork, photos and video on display throughout the 4,000-plus square foot artist co-op.

)”]

Forming an apt backdrop to the reading was Ben Bunk’s “Drawing Detroit,” an illustration of every building between his house on the near-east side and downtown on an unbroken 90-foot scroll of paper. Also on display, glowing and hulking and hung from an industrial pulley in the center of the room, was a kind of hyper-industrial chandelier by local metal sculptor Eric Froh. There was also video by Katie Barkel, a hand-painted signage sculpture by Chris Turner, photos by Karpov the Wrecked Train, music by Audra Kubat and Brain Rottar, as well as a smoke ring cannon. And let us not forget, of course, the beautiful chapbooks published by [sic], which were the reason for the event.

Each poet that read is featured in an elegant and sparely designed chapbook by [sic], representing diverse literary styles ranging from disarming to dense, comical to personal, tragic to sublime. One of the night’s poets, Lawless, read from a series of melancholy and oddly humorous poems called “Elephants in Mourning.” The poems, written in a manic burst in response to the sudden loss of family members, ultimately works to stave off despair, weaving in personal tragedies and comic turns with obsessively repeated and invented facts about elephants.

The highlight of the night for me was the off-the-cuff poetry-meets-sermon-meets-stand-up-comedy-meets-inspirational-game-day speeches of Wischusen, author of “Estuaries.” Wischusen chose not to read poetry from his book, deciding instead to go unscripted in two separate pieces. In the first he expounded at length about the tragedy of the American Dream through the lens of Michael Jackson and his son, Prince Michael Jackson II (nicknamed “Blanket”). In the second piece, he detailed the unraveling of a relationship, using it to demonstrate the importance of shouldering responsibility — of being an agent — even though what we truly desire is relief from that burden.

At one point during the event, Jonathan Rajewski, [sic]’s co-founder, along with Achille Bianchi, remarked that he never imagined a poetry reading in Detroit could attract so many people. But beyond imagining it, he created it by setting himself to the labor of building a literary press from nothing. That he chose to do it in Detroit represents a seismic shift for the city. A decade ago, Rajewski and Bianchi might have been more likely to join in the mass migration of creative young folks to Chicago, New York and San Francisco. The significance of the fact that three of [sic]’s readers flew in from New York to be part of the event can’t possibly be overstated.

Leaving the [sic] event, I was reminded of the titular phrase of the book “Making Your Own Days,” by Kenneth Koch (a phrase he cribbed from his close friend, the equally legendary Frank O’Hara). For Koch, the phrase refers to the act of writing poetry, and with that an approach to daily life that is active and creative and a way to mark each day with ownership. The [sic] event clearly marked the activity of creative individuals who, wanting something to exist and finding that it didn’t, simply and quite naturally decided to make it themselves.

All photos after the first by Sarah Sharp.