>> Green-minded poets and poetry lovers will want to attend Brave New Voices 2010: Speak Green to hear 12 poets read green poems. Van Jones will be there! The free event happens tomorrow, Wed., July 21 starting at 7 pm at Club Nokia, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90015. RSVP and get your free ticket NOW.

>> Rose Bowl Green Expo will feature speakers, green exhibitors, and workshops on environmental topics. Be there Fri., July 23 from 10 am to 6 pm at The Rose Bowl, 1001 Rose Bowl Dr., Pasadena. Register online.

>> Join me to Walk and Ride for a Safer 4th Street! Organized by the L.A. Bicycle Coalition, this event highlights efforts to turn 4th Street into a bike boulevard. The bike ride starts at 10 am from Pan Pacific Park, the walk starts at 10:30 am from 4th and Normandie and ends at Shatto Park, 3191 W. 4th St., Los Angeles — where free refreshments will await all participants.

>> Find handmade gifts and items at the FREE 2nd Annual Renegade Craft Fair. You’ll get to shop from more than 250 indie crafters, take advantage free workshops, and enjoy entertainment. The fair happens Sat., July 24 and Sun., July 25 from 11 am to 7 pm both days in Los Angeles State Historic Park, 1245 N Spring St., Los Angeles. Earlier: On Spring: Organic cafe with locally-grown eats in L.A. State Historic Park.

>> After a 2-month break, EcoTuesday is back! Go meet fellow green businesspeople on Tues., July 27 starting at 7 pm at M Cafe de Chaya, 9343 Culver Blvd., Culver City. Earlier: EcoTuesday: Green business networking with a structure.

Like green LA girl’s Facebook page to learn about more fun green parties, sales, and events happening in the L.A. area!

Image via bravenewvoices.org

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1. Find your love for wheels. Two wheels, that is. Singular, a magazine for happily single people, is organizing a Valentine’s Day Beginner’s Mountain Bike Ride in the L.A. area. Bike 5-6 miles through the Sullivan Canyon in Brentwood on Valentine’s Day from 10 am to 1 pm. Plus, Singular magazine can be a great Valentine’s Day gift for all your happily single friends.

2. Make art for the environment’s sake. Clear your Saturday night for Lucent L’Amour, an annual “visionary lovefest” with art exhibits, bands, and other live performances happening this year at the Shrine in Los Angeles. In the midst of all the entertainment will be Lighting in a Paintcan, when 20 live painters will create art pieces with used and recycled paint. A silent auction during the event lets attendees bid on the pieces — with the proceeds going to buy art and music supplies for local underfunded schools. Support eco-art and a future generation of local musicians and artists too, while enjoying the lovely spectacle.

3. Lust after free fair trade yummies. WorldofGood.com’s giving away 15 fair trade gift baskets — worth $98 each — filled with a handmade bear, chocolates, cocoa, and candles. To win, all you have to do is reveal who you’re going to give the gift basket to and why in 75 words or less.

Winners will be judged on a “variety of factors including, but not limited to, originality, humor, sincerity and/or desperation” — so a humorous note about why you sincerely deserve to eat the entire gift basket yourself could work. Enter by Feb. 7 — and even if you don’t win, you’ll get a coupon for $10 off a $25 purchase of fair trade goodies from WorldofGood.com.

4. Embrace public transit and celebrate Valentine’s Day a few days early by taking the bus or train to the Move LA Valentine Celebration. The local pro public transit nonprofit is raising funds while celebrating car-free travel in L.A. with music from KCRW’s Tom Schnabel, live music from Latin salsa band Opa Opa, and more. The party begins Thurs., Feb. 11 from 6 pm – 10 pm at The Center at Cathedral Plaza, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles. $50 gets you in.

5. Spread the handmade love. Why buy a single Valentine for one person when you can get bargain package deals on Etsy for all your lovers? At the L.A.-based Marmoset shop, get a pair ($4) — or quartet ($8) — of handmade Valentines crafted with upcycled and reclaimed paper to send to everyone you love — in post-consumer recycled brown kraft envelopes, of course.

6. Have a crayon heart. Want little gifts to go with those cards? An instructables member who goes by Some Art Mama’s put up photo-illustrated, step-by-step instructions for turning old crayons into pretty little hearts. Collect old crayons and a few simple supplies — and a little messy work later, and your homemade, eco-friendly, pretty-as-well-as-useful gifts will be ready.

7. Find love for your glove. Lost a glove? Find your widowed glove a mate by sending it in to Glove Love, a cute little initiative by a green website called Do The Green Thing that pairs up single gloves with sorta-matching partners. Jasmin Chua at Ecouterre calls it a “matchmaking service for lovelorn mitts.” You can also buy a pair of pre-loved, mix-and-matched Glove Love gloves for £5.

The bad news: As you may have guessed from the “£,” Glove Love’s in the U.K. A closer-to-home green glove idea’s to plan a Valentine’s Day clothing swap — that includes lonely accessories like single earrings and gloves, or if you’re bold, shoes — to mix-and-match or upcycle.

8. Get green bling. Have too much room in your jewelry box after upcycling the earrings sans partners? Keep your shopping eco-friendly by opting for recycled and ethically-sourced jewelry. I love my Peace Love Earth recycled sterling silver necklace from Annatarian (right, $60), and have my eye on a recycled Silver Butterfly Pendant from Brilliant Earth ($50). Of course, buying pre-loved jewelry is an even greener option — so don’t forget about my guide to pre-loved fashion shopping in Santa Monica!

9. Give with chocolate. Yes, that “with” is supposed to be there, because why would you give chocolate to others when you can eat the perfectly delicious stuff yourself? Okay — Nicobella’s organic fair trade vegan dark chocolate truffles (my review here) come in a pack of six, so sharing does actually come easy — but purchase a $27 duet pack of these and $2 will be donated to help the victims of Haiti through the Happy Hearts Fund, thus letting give with your chocolate while eating it too.

Get the pack by emailing nichole@nicobellaorganics.com or calling 609.792.5231. Fair trade chocolate, by the way, also gives chocolate producers a fairer share of the profits from the money you spent on the delectable desserts.

10. Write a love poem. The Valentine Peace Project collects poems about peace and love, written by individuals who want to share peace and love. Anyone can write a poem to contribute to the project, whether online or in their neighborhoods.

Photos via marmoset/Etsy, Do the Green Thing, Nicobella, Singular, WorldofGood.com

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Read two of my poems — “Cleaner” and “Longer,” from the series “By Degrees”– in the latest issue of Painted Bride Quarterly!

This issue just went online at the end of Sept. 2009 — but that doesn’t mean these poems are new. Painted Bride Quarterly accepted the poems back in August 2008; I submitted the poems to PBQ in January 2008. By the time the print version of this PBQ comes off the press in April 2010, my poems will have turned 3.

For a blogger, this kind of turnaround’s extra tortuous.

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Curious about sound poetry? No, I’m not talking about more of Elizabeth Alexander’s performance at the inauguration — a reading style n+1 describes as “American poetic singsong,” a convention that “ignores both the syntactic beat of vernacular English and the rhythm of syllabically metered lines, giving every poem the cadence of an automobile engine that (precious thing!) can’t quite turn over.”

I’m talking more dada and Raoul Hausmann, whose performance of fmsbw you can listen to here.

Now, you can listen to “invented words, sense and nonsense, and the creation of ‘meaning’ through sound” live at an upcoming Getty event, dubbed Explodity: An Evening of Transrational Sound Poetry. (via Give a Fig) As part of Getty’s programming around its exhibition on Russian avant-garde books, this event will feature readings of Russian Futurist zaum’ (“beyonsense”) and performances from real live contemporary sound poets.

The free event happens Wed., Feb. 4, kicking off with a reception at 5 pm at the Getty Research Institute Exhibition Gallery, with performances beginning at 7 pm in the Museum Lecture Hall. Make sure you RSVP to reserve a spot.

Image: Cover of Pomade (Pomada), Mikhail Larionov, 1913 / Getty

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>> Obama dildo: The Head O State pleasure toy‘s yours for $34.95. Marketing slogan: “You love your candidate. Let him love you back!” More on Obama paraphernalia at Salon.

>> Didn’t make it onto Al Gore’s guest list? Party at the Green Inaugural Ball 2009 via webcast, beginning 7:15 pm Cali time tonight.

>> Elizabeth Alexander and other poets at presidential inaugurations get ripped apart by Rudolph Delson in n+1. “Hoping to improve a presidential inauguration by commissioning a poem is like hoping to generate clean energy by commissioning angleheaded hipsters to provide the nation with an ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night; it is like hoping for Roe v. Wade and getting In Celebration of My Uterus.”

>> Watch videos of previous presidential inaugurations. (via fimoculous)

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>> New addition to the organic liquor list: Crop Harvest Earth Organic Vodka, which comes in regular, cucumber, or tomato flavors, the last of which may make part of a good morning drink for environmentalists who brunch.

>> New vegan Thanksgiving resource: In Plenty, Nicole Solomon offers up yummy vegan recipes for use with your community supported agriculture delivery.

>> The FDA’s been forced to redo its risk assessment of BPA (Bisphenol A); the original assessment was severely flawed due to conflicting interests with the plastic industry. The Environmental Working Group’s put together a BPA timeline: “From Invention to Phase-Out.” Earlier: FDA declared BPA’s safe despite many studies to the contrary.

>> Download a free guide, Pass Up the Poison Plastic: the PVC-Free Guide for Your Family & Home (PDF), courtesy of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. (via Worsted Witch)

Image via cropvodka.com

Update, 5/11/09: States start banning BPA in baby bottles.

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Mostly so I have it all in one place, here’s a to-be-continuously-updated list of the poetry and fiction I’ve published since I started green LA girl.

What’s v. clear: I’ve written a lot more blog posts than poems —

>> “Marmont,” “Ambrose,” “The Standard,” (poems) The Loudest Voice, Vol. 1, 2010.

>> “Cleaner,” “Longer,” (poems) Painted Bride Quarterly, 2009.

>> “ZZ,” “SS,” “RR,” “LL,” “VI. Industry: Veggie Cheese,” (poems) Fringe, 2008.

>> “Darwin I,” “Darwin II,” “Darwin III” (poems), How2, 2008.

>> “Sofitel,” “Shutters,” “Fairmont,” (poems) Shampoo, 2008.

>> “[alice thinks],” “[alice has a little fun],” [alice watches sunset],” “[alice watches sunset's relapse],” “[alice reads],” “[alice, naked],” (poems) Mad Hatter’s Review, 2008.

>> “Missed Encounters” (short story), ZYZZYVA, 2007.

>> “The Missing Eye” (short story), Hobart, 2007.

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The Environmental Atheist wants to know what I read, cuz I’m a lit-and-writing grad student, after all :) Ok — Actually, it’s just another meme:

A book that changed my life
Frank O’Hara‘s Lunch Poems. (scroll to the bottom for pretty sample poem)

A book I’ve read more than once
Nabakov’s Lolita. “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

A book I’d take with me if I were stuck on a desert island
Stitch N’ Bitch, assuming somewhat unrealistically that I have a buncha yarn to knit on this island.

A book that made me laugh
Any Human Heart by William Boyd. If you disagree with me, you’re a brutette — a brute in the making –

A book that made me cry
The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing. I’ve recommended this book to a lot of friends — and a few of them actually became quite depressed — to the point I demanded they take a break from the book.

A book that I wish had been written
Revenge of the Surrealists

A book that I wish had never been written
The Turner Diaries, which I read for a class as an undergrad. I wanna be clear: I don’t at all think the book should be banned or censored or not read in colleges — Just want a less racist and xenophobic world.

A book I’ve been meaning to read
The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’ve read excerpts and like all the reviews, and I follow Michael Pollan’s publications religiously. But I haven’t read the whole book.

I’m currently reading
I just finished The Iliad (Richmond Lattimore, trans), and started Teaching Literature earlier today.

My fave Frank O’Hara poem, titled “Song”:

Is it dirty
does it look dirty
that’s what you think of in the city

does it just seem dirty
that’s what you think of in the city
you don’t refuse to breathe do you

someone comes along with a very bad character
he seems attractive. is he really. yes. very
he’s attractive as his character is bad. is it. yes

that’s what you think of in the city
run your finger along your no-moss mind
that’s not a thought that’s soot

and you take a lot of dirt off someone
is the character less bad. no. it improves constantly
you don’t refuse to breathe do you

And I wanna know the literary tastes of Erin, groby, Summer, Russ, and Brian.

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