A Micro-Arts Festival on the Buffalo River: Constant Stranger Release Profiled in the Buffalo News

On Saturday, August 18, Foundlings Press will unveil Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford, the biggest release yet from the little publishing collective a few friends and I started only two years ago. Including a cross-generational cast of luminaries and legends like Forrest Gander, C.D. Wright, Ada Limón, Steve Stern, and Terrance Hayes, the book celebrates the life and work of the poet Frank Stanford. Our unveiling — this Saturday at Silo City — coincides with the last Just Buffalo Silo City Summer Reading Series performance of 2018, featuring Kazim Ali and Marcus Jackson (5pm), as well as an immersive theatrical experience, STATIONS, presented by Torn Space and a host of international an internationally acclaimed collaborators (7:30pm).  (Tickets to STATIONS are available here, for $20 with the discount code "JBLC".) Our unveiling will be held at Duende, an awesome bar on the Silo City property.The Buffalo News previewed our "micro-arts festival," a term coined by Just Buffalo's Noah Falck, founder and curator of the Silo Reading Series (and Constant Stranger contributor). He added that visitors can “pop in and out” of events as they choose, and can expect to be "inundated with poetry, music, pop-up art and avant-garde theater.”Following readings from Ali and Jackson, and a musical performance by UVB76, Foundlings will bring Matthew Henriksen (poet and organizer of the Frank Stanford Literary Festival) and Bill Willett (Stanford’s friend) to read some of Frank Stanford's poetry as a transition into the Torn Space portion of the evening's events.Our after party starts between 10 and 10:30pm, in Duende, where we'll have copies of Constant Stranger on sale. The Buffalo News called the book "a timely project that Foundling Press’s Aidan Ryan said 'spiraled out of control' after he and co-editor Max Crinnin sought to build on renewed excitement about Stanford following two major 2015 publications of his verse," and one that "aims to solidify Stanford’s status as a major American poet." To offer a mix of new and old perspectives on Stanford — the Buffalo News called him "a Southern poet whose prolific production of hauntingly visceral verse was cut off with his  tragic death at age 29 in 1978" — we pulled together tributes, poems influenced by Stanford, critical essays, memoirs, and Spanish translations of Stanford’s verse, all culled from the 40 years since his passing.Buy the book.