Photo Credit: Unknown.
COFFEE EMPORIUM
Thursday, May 28 at 9:15 PM
Friday, May 29 at 9:00 PM
Sunday, May 31 st 8:00 PM
Tuesday, June 2 at 7:30 PM
Friday, June 5 at 8:45 PM
Running time: 70 min.
Where Drunk Men Go: A Poem with Music
Richard Hague
From Cincinnati, OH.
SHOW DESCRIPTION
Four-time recipient of Ohio Arts Council fellowships and 1982 Cincinnati Post-Corbett Award winner Richard Hague’s Where Drunk Men Go is a poem of grief and ecstasy, at once celebrating the exhilarations of drinking and the crucifixions of addiction “in language that is wild, enraged, complex, and multi-voiced” (Maggie Anderson, Wick Poetry Program, Kent State University). The poem tries to achieve sympathy with the sufferings of characters that are composites of folks we all might know; it is a kind of argument with the universe, wrestling with its tangle of mystery, beauty, guilt, innocence, ecstasy, and violence. The high, lonesome style of traditional and gospel tunes by accompanist Michael Henson, columnist for StreetVibes, Cincinnati’s homeless newspaper, and writer of fiction and poetry, including Crow Call, a book of elegies for Over-the-Rhine activist Buddy Gray, complement the poem’s themes, feeling, and style.
ARTIST/COMPANY BIOGRAPHY
Richard Hague, writer and performer, is a winner of the Post-Corbett Award in Literary Arts and recipient of three Ohio Arts Council fellowships as well as finalist for the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize. His book "Milltown Natural," a collection of essays and stories, was nominated for a National Book Award. "Where Drunk Men Go" first appeared in "Alive in Hard Country," winner of the 2004 Poetry Book of the Year from the Appalachian Writers Association. A native of Steubenville, Ohio, and veteran of its steel mills and rail yards, he is a long-time Cincinnatian and teaches at Purcell Marian High School.
Michael Henson, musician, is a counselor in chemical dependency at Talbert House and for the Drop In Center. A poet and essayist himself, he is the winner of the 2002 Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize for poems later published in "Crow Call," an extended elegy for his friend, Over-the-Rhine activist Buddy Gray. His column, "Hammered: Essays on Poverty and Addiction," appears monthly in "StreetVibes."
John Ray, director, is co-founder of TS&M Productions ("Wanda Wilde: Christmas on the Edge," "The Gomorrah-a-Go-Go Club") and a playwright.
'AND THE FRINGIEST PART IS ...'
The gods gave us drink, so the stories go. And with it came ecstasy and agony, heaven and hell, excess and sacrament. Where Drunk Men Go explores this complex landscape mixing the ugly and the sublime with eyes wide open.