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Poet Lee Ann Brown kicks off Just Buffalo's new series

It's a Big Night

It seems like every night in Buffalo, there’s something artsy going on. Poetry readings, gallery exhibitions, concerts, performance art…how can anyone manage to fit it all in? Well, Just Buffalo Literary Center has your answer, an answer so big that it can only be called a Big Night.

On Saturday, Just Buffalo hosts an event that manages to cram poetry, literature, music, and food into one evening. The headliner, poet Lee Ann Brown—editor of Tender Buttons Press, professor at St. John’s University, and proprietor of an impressive poetics resume—will read from The Book of Practical Pussies. Damian Weber will perform his folky, often difficult-to-explain tunes. Poet Christopher Fritton and abstract photographer Kevin Kegler will present their year-long collaborative opus, Illuminata, a hand-letter-pressed book that combines their two arts to examine the relationships between light, faith, extension, apprehension, and velocity. Finally, poet and publisher Geoffrey Gatza, former sous-chef at the Mansion on Delaware, will provide free eats. It’s enough to make your head spin, your ears flap and your stomach grumble.

Michael Kelleher, artistic director at Just Buffalo, says Big Night will be a monthly series. “We usually concentrate on literature, but now we’re looking to put literature in conversation with other art forms,” he says. Kelleher has several more tricks up his sleeve for future installments, including theater groups, opera, jazz, video presentations, and even an appearance from a Beat poet.

The event will include the aforementioned free grub along with a cash bar. It takes place at Just Buffalo’s new home in the Western New York Book Arts Center, at 468 Washington Street (at the corner of Mohawk).

Here’s something that you can do on a Saturday night that will make it seem like you’ve toured the city’s entire arts scene when you tell you friends about it the next day. Save yourself the legwork, and pay a paltry five bucks for an all-you-can-experience cultural buffet.

ann marie awad

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