One open mic and one reading tonight, but the one reading is a goodie.

There will be a Subtext group reading at the Chapel Performance Space in Wallingford tonight. There will be at least one certified Stranger Genius reading. Christopher Frizzelle says of poet John Olson:

It’s easy to find surrealist influences in Olson’s work (“The caribou are unfolding from the day like a hill”), as well as the influence of Beat poetry (“We allow ourselves to become intimate with the idea of intimacy”), language poetry (“the man was a tube of armor ejaculating metal at the idea of blood”), Gertrude Stein (“Computers and airplanes have made our city wealthy and it is full of coffeehouses”)—you can comb his poems for literary derivatives, if that’s your thing. There is something athletic and ruthless about the way Olson does so many things at once, as well as something strangely at ease.

And there will also be readers like Stacy Levine, who is awesome, and Nico Vassilakis, who is always working on something experimental and interesting, and Drew Kunz, who also produces some gorgeous chapbooks. The Subtext series is a good way to get a handle on who’s producing good local work.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.