Fringe Feast

Last year's Austin International Poetry Festival (AIPF) brought even more poetry than the usual super-sized gamut of selections, thanks to Austin Poets at Large's Fringe Fest. Fringe Fest, run concurrently with last year's AIPF, was intended, according to organizer Thom Woodruff, better known around town as Thom The World Poet, to accommodate the midnight-to-dawn readings of past AIPFs and to place more events in some of the more familiar poetry venues around town. This week, Fringe Fest has added a letter to make it a Feast, and has been pushed back a week, from April 8-April 14, to serve as a sort of ancillary warm-up to the more established festival. Featuring 18 international poets (including 14 first-timers) who range from loud and rambunctious to measured and academic, Woodruff says the intention of this year's festival is to acquaint the visiting British and Australian poets and the Austin poetry scene with each other. Many of the poets featured will also be performing at AIPF, although some of them will leave Fringe Feast in order to complete legs of their American tours. There are numerous events which will be taking place this upcoming week as a lead-in to AIPF; the following are mere highlights rather than an exhaustive list. Full schedules should be available at the usual poetry haunts, and Thom should have them somewhere in his usual stack of voluminous photocopies.

SATURDAY, BRITISH POETS INVADE THE DRAG (2-10pm): Fringeware (2716 Guadalupe) will feature the majority of the international poets in half-hour sets for the entire eight hours, as well as a 7pm performance from local legend Pasha. The British poets will be featured from 3-5pm at Quack's (2120 Guadalupe), and at 7pm at Barnes & Noble Guadalupe, the Bradford 6 will hold a CD release party.

SUNDAY, TED REILLY (5pm): Reilly, a Celtic bard with an Irish Studies background, will read at an appropriate setting -- Fado Irish Pub (214 W 4th). Reilly will also be performing the night before, at 10pm, one door down -- at Ruta Maya (4th and Lavaca) as part of the Austin Acoustic Music Festival.

TUESDAY, DEAN BLEHERT (7pm): The lone American to get the big push from Fringe Feast organizers, the Reston, Va. poet will be reading from his Please, Lord, Make Me a Famous Poet or at Least Less Fat, which Woodruff proclaims to be a send-up of various facets of the current open mike diaspora.

WEDNESDAY, BOOK WOMAN READING (7pm): Six of the visiting international women will stage a reading at the city's best-known feminist bookstore (918 W. 12th St.).

A number of the British poets from Fringe Feast will also help launch the new Hyde Park Theatre Slam, a monthly slam series which kicks off at 9pm Wednesday at the Hyde Park Theatre (511 W. 43rd St). The inaugural slam will be hosted by Genevieve Van Cleve, and will be held the second Wednesday of each month in conjunction with the weekly Austin Poetry Slam, which moves to Red Eyed Fly (715 Red River) on Tuesday, April 20; sign-up starts at 8pm. --Phil West