Poets, Filmmakers Are 'Telling the Future Off' at Woodland Pattern

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A pair of West Coast poets will join a Milwaukee-based experimental filmmaker for a live performance at Woodland Pattern Book Center next week. Stephanie Young is the author of the poetry collections Telling the Future Off, Picture Palace and Ursula or University, as well as Pet Sounds, her recently released medley of restive love poems. Much of Young’s poetry explores topics of labor politics and examines unjust institutional practices, yet she also explores broader themes of activism and feminism in much of her work. Young also teaches at and directs the Graduate Programs at Mills College in Oakland, Calif.

Trisha Low, another Bay Area resident, writes lyrical poems that read like novels, deep and sometimes personal recollections that mix realism, surrealism and the completely unconventional. Her newest collection, Socialist Realism, was released this year as a follow-up to her 2013 debut, The Compleat Purge. Low has authored numerous articles, and her work was featured in the 2011 anthology, Against Expression. Her writing is ironic and relatable, self-deprecating and aspirational, oftentimes confessional and always artistic.

For current graduate student Zachary Epcar, California is where he was born and raised, but it is at UW-Milwaukee that he now studies. Epcar has already earned a name as a filmmaker, and his work has been screened at the San Francisco Film Festivals, the Rotterdam, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and elsewhere. He will appear alongside poets Young and Low for a screening of his film Billy at Woodland Pattern Book Center at 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 1.