we look forward to seeing you!

POETRY:
come see the poetry store’s latest work and get a poem from the poet herself! silvi alcivar will be writing on-demand poems and at 6:30pm she’ll read some poems, including excerpts from her new book “sometimes we must swarm.” (www.thepoetrystore.net)

MUSIC:
jamie mckenzie of pocket full of rye will be strumming her ukelele and filling the gallery with gorgeous song. hooray! (www.pocketfullofrye.net)

LOVE LETTERS:
help create a love themed art piece! join shannon weber, creator of www.LoveYou2.org, and help change the world one love note at a time by writing your own love note. no prep necessary. just bring your heart.

GALLERY:
the gallery opens at noon! yep, noon! come in early and check out the current show by silvi alcivar and sonya philip (sonyaphilip.com) and shop amazing art, jewelry, and clothing by in-house and local designers. read all about it and see a sneak peak of the show at www.secessionsf.com

the corporate holiday is here again. do something different. send your valentine* a one-of-a-kind poem. about anything you want.**

take advantage of the VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL: send your poem in a bottle w/a gift tag for $14! (offer only valid until feb.10th)

order your poem by post or poem in a bottle today! and/or check out my event calender to stop by, say hi, and get your poem in person (note: at some events you can even get your poem for free!)

And, A SUPER EXCITING UPCOMING EVENT: my very own gallery show at secession art & design! opening night feb. 11th 6:30-9:30pm. wine! music! poetry! all new poetry art pieces (birds galore!) & poetry jewelry (including cuff links!) & poetry butterfly art in collaboration with bug under glass. yay! come by!

*don’t think you have a valentine? here is a list of potentials: your lover, want to be lover, jilted lover, secret crush, not-so-secret crush, mom, dad, baby (especially your soon-to-be born or christened), brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew, children (biological, adopted, and/or given up for adoption), mom, lover, ex’s (yes, all of them), crush, co-worker, boss, landlord, aunt, uncle, dog, cat, bird, lizard, fish, grandma, grandpa, santa, satan (i.e. paradise lost), lover, old friends (yes, all of them), new friends, soon-to-be friends (yes, poems help you keep & make friends!), boyfriend, girlfriend, friendfriends (yes, all of them), acquaintances, fracquaintances, sculptor friend, painter neighbor, poet lover, your writer sister, reader dad, computer techie crush (see also: anyone who has ever said, “i’m as creative as a roll of toilet paper.”). see also: anyone in your life celebrating a birthday, wedding, anniversary, bar/bat mitzvahs, or reunion, and (did i mention) your lover!

**poetry subjects can include, but are not limited to: love (requited or not), gratitude, friendship, birds, coyotes, jellyfish, volcanoes, and fire.

i am also looking forward to what 2011 will bring! including: more weddings & a show at secession art & design in february!

stay tuned and, in the meantime, celebrate with me! the poetry store was just listed as one of daily candy SF’s favorite discoveries of 2010! hooray! check it out: here.

happy happy new year!

yours in poetry & gratitude,

silvi

p.s. the poetry store is on vacation (yay!) until january 5th. which means: you can still order poems & shop my etsy store, as long as you are patient enough to wait until i return to get your poetry goods. <3

this season, take back the sweater you got your mom, the tie you got your dad, the underwear you got your boyfriend.

instead, decorate mom’s mantle with a one-of-a-kind poetry art piece,  refresh dad’s nightstand with a framed poem, fill your book-loving boyfriend’s books with a custom bookmark poem, surprise a friend with a poem in a bottle, get your sister-in-law a piece of one-of-a-kind poetry jewelry, get grandma a framed butterfly poem, and order poems by post for your friends far and wide! every item can be made completely custom for the person you’re giving your gift to. who doesn’t love something made especially for them?

trust me, people love poems.** and who doesn’t want a custom gift made especially for them?

check out my etsy store: http://thepoetrystorepoet@etsy.com

come shop in person at madrone, bazarre bizaar, cal academy indie mart, renegade craft fair and more!: http://thepoetrystore.net/events/

order poems online: http://thepoetrystore.net/poems-by-post

see more sample work here & here. (note: because all work is one-of-a-kind, what you see pictured may not be for sale. all work is a sample of what you can order.)

don’t delay, put your order in today!

*bonus: the poetry store helps you look crafty, even if you’re not crafty at all!

**people who love poems: moms; dads; babies (especially the soon-to-be born or christened); brothers; sisters; cousins; nieces; nephews; children (biological, adopted, and given up for adoption); moms; lovers (new, old, jilted, wanna be); ex’s; crushes; co-workers; bosses; landlords; santa; satan (i.e. paradise lost); moms; old friends; new friends; soon-to-be friends (poems help you keep & make friends!); boyfriends; girlfriends; friendfriends; moms; acquaintances; fracquaintances; sculptors; painters; poets; writers; readers; computer techies (see also: anyone who has ever said, “i’m as creative as a roll of toilet paper.”); people celebrating birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, bar/bat mitzvahs, reunions; dogs; cats; birds; lizards; fish; grandmas; grandpas; (did i mention) moms!

some time ago, i had the wonderful fortune of meeting julie michelle, photographer extraordinaire, and master-mind & heart behind i live here: sf, a blog that features people who live here in san francisco through their own written words and a slide show of pictures taken by julie. browse just a few of julie’s photos, and i bet you’ll be struck by how they represent this city and its inhabitants in all of their whimsy, honesty, beauty, and humanity. that’s probably because julie herself is so much of all those things, and brimming with care and generosity, the kind that makes you feel comfortable, no matter how camera shy (like me) you might be. having a photo shoot with julie is like being reunited with a long-lost friend–you didn’t really expect it to happen, and then there you are, though you’re nothing more than strangers, feeling like you really know each other, or, at least, like julie knows something vital about you. and then, she captures it.

wanting to know more about this photographer turned friend, and to promote the upcoming i live here: sf show at SOMArts (opening night November 5th), i asked julie a few questions about how she got her start & how i live here: sf came to be. here’s what she had to say:

When did you know your camera would be such an important instrument in your life?

That’s a funny question. Because for most of my life, I never had a camera. I didn’t think about photography one way or another. So I went along my merry way, my whole life without a camera…until I moved to San Francisco in 2007. Then I became hyper-aware of my surroundings. All of a sudden, I had this literal compulsion to capture what I was seeing around me. My first year with a camera (actually, I took my first photos with a borrowed camera in the Lower Haight on Easter Sunday, 2008) was spent solely in pursuit of collecting all of the details and beauty that jumped out at me, and that came from my physical environment.

I was constantly in admiration of something, even the tiniest detail. Everything looked like a picture to me and I was unstoppable. I took it everywhere with me, and just trained myself. I’ve taken thousands and thousands of pictures since that first photo in April 2008. The city teaches me how to see, how to be a photographer. I wouldn’t be a photographer if I hadn’t come to live here.

Do you have a super power? What is it?

Ha. I’ve always been so focused on my flaws that I didn’t even conceive of having super powers! My mistake.

I don’t know if you’d call it a super power, but I have an occasional but rare ability to latch onto something that resonates with me, and devote all of my waking thoughts and energy to it. Or I guess you could also call that an obsessive personality. But I’d like to see it as a super power because that single-minded focus has allowed me to excel at things (at least at a personal level I feel competent with) in a short time. Photography is one such thing. I went from zero to 60 in such a short amount of time, considering the body of work I now have and the reception I’ve gotten for it.

If you could have any other super power, what would it be?

I would love to be able to understand and communicate with anyone, anywhere, in their native language. Not so much like being a linguist; I don’t have the time or brain power at this time of my life for that kind of study. No, I’d love to be able to walk through the Mission and be able to speak in any dialect of Spanish, that I hear. Or walk down Stockton Street and immediately be able to understand Cantonese, Mandarin.

How did I Live Here: SF get started?

This project wasn’t something I intentionally planned in the beginning. I had wanted to get more experience with portraiture, as up until that time (early 2008), I had not ever taken photos of people. I was thinking about how to get people to photograph for my own education.

I have a friend, a very talented magician/mentalist named Christian Cagigal, who needed head shots for a show at the Exit Theatre. I agreed to take his photos with the understanding that I really hadn’t a clue about portraiture, and if he liked the photos—great, if not—then we’d never tell anyone about them! We took his photos on a classic San Francisco foggy early morning in Golden Gate Park: near the deserted carousel, the trees around Sharon Meadow, the tunnel to Stanyan Street. It was my first attempt at ever purposefully taking someone’s photo, and I was so surprised and thrilled at how they turned out (having expected them not to be any good), that the experience fueled me to get more faces so I could practice. So that spark got me going.

However, the idea for a project per se did not occur to me until after a certain day in March 2009. I walked into the Queen of Sheba market at the corner of Sutter and Larkin on a rainy afternoon, after that photo shoot with Christian. I had ducked into the store trying to stay out of the rain and keep my camera dry (I’d been walking around the Tenderloin, taking photos). The owner, Ghalyia (sadly, she’s no longer there) and I struck up a conversation while she gave me tea and sweets and we waited for the rain to stop. She told me about her store, and her granddaughter, and how proud she was of President Obama and about how she came to the US from Yemen. I was so enchanted with her by the end of it all that I asked her if I could take her photo, and she said yes. When I got home, I wrote about the experience on my old blog, and within a day or two, had several emails from people saying that I should do more with people’s photos and stories of San Francisco. So those two occurrences coming together were basically how I Live Here:SF got started.

What are you I Live Here: SF goals and dreams?

Well, right now my main goal is surviving the installation! This has been a wild and amazing ride to get this show into SOMArts and next week is the big push to put all of these amazing prints and stories on the walls.

So I’m single-mindedly focused on that until the opening night, November 5. And then my next immediate goal after that is to catch up on my sleep and catch up with my friends who have been so patient and so supportive.

(Of course, I’ll be continuing I Live Here:SF for the foreseeable future. I’ll be resuming photo shoots after the show ends on November 30.)

After that, I’d love to see this gallery show continue in some form somewhere else in the city. I will always have new faces and new stories and I want to have locations in San Francisco to display them.

And probably, my biggest goal once the show is over is to see the viability of making a book from this project. It’s the Number One question that people ask me: Is there going to be a book of this project? I just haven’t had the time or the mental capacity to go about investigating that.

What’s the best thing about what you do?

I’m not exaggerating when I say that this project, and my discovery of photography in general, has been a life-changing experience. Which is amazing to me because all I wanted to do initially was learn how to take pictures of people. The cumulative effect of interacting with so many people has really opened me up. My perception of people around me has grown exponentially. Not just the people I take photos but all of the people in my environment. I look at them, finding their individual beauty/character (how would I photograph this person?), wondering how I would interact with them, what their stories would be. I am much more comfortable talking to people I don’t know and it’s much easier for me to adapt to different personalities. I wouldn’t call this a super power, but it feels pretty super.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Yes. I’d love people to consider volunteering for I Live Here:SF (if they live in the city, that is) and they can find out how to do that here: http://iliveheresf.com/?page_id=461

I would love people to come to my show at SOMArts in November. Either the opening night (http://iliveheresf.eventbrite.com/) or anytime during the month of November. The show closes on November 30 and there will be a closing night reception as well. Seeing the project online is one thing. Seeing all of these wonderful faces and stories in a real gallery is another. So please come to the exhibition.

You can keep in touch with Julie via her blog julieliveshere.com or via twitter (@juliemichelle) or the old-fashioned way: iliveheresf [at] gmail [dot] com. She’s always up for good ideas, collaborations, and new friends and connections.

The Poetry Store will be at SOMArts for the I Live Here: SF Retrospective’s opening and closing nights. Hope to see you there!

the poetry store is now making poetry jewelry, using the same process as poetry art pieces–found & reused materials with some words on ‘em to make a one-of-a-kind piece! right now, the jewelry line is very limited (as it’s my first run). if you’re interested in purchasing something, come and find me at the north beach art walk this weekend! (note: the square pieces pictured here also have an image and/or poem on the back!)

the poetry store also has a new series of art pieces! (see pics below) if you’re interested in purchasing something, again, come and find me at the north beach art walk this weekend! (or, send me an email.)

the poetry store is also honored to have this month’s window installation at the Femina Potens Gallery! all pieces are for sale through the gallery & they include my very own paintings, drawings, photographs, and of course, poems. if you’re in the bay area, check them out at market & sanchez in the castro. if you’re an out-of-towner, see some photos here (courtesy of julie michelle).

and last but not least, the poetry store is now making pieces in collaboration with bug under glass. yes, poetry & butterflies combined! right now we have a very limited number of pieces. (here are the pieces you can buy from me.)

thanks for all of your support & hope to see you soon!

yours in poetry,

silvi

how? help me have the most meaningful conversation! now and continuing a month from now!

STEP 1: i want to know: what do you want a poem about? and/or what do you consider poetry?

STEP 2: join the conversation on
gravity.com: http://tinyurl.com/2ew5vp3.
just log in & answer the question.
takes 3 minutes or less!

END RESULT: help me win $5000 to keep writing poems & teaching poetry to the elderly!

NOTE: YOU HAVE TO JOIN THE CONVERSATION ON GRAVITY. ANSWERS IN OTHER PLACES DON’T COUNT!

tell your friends, your lovers, your frienemies, anybody, everybody!

thank you!

yours in poetry & gratitude,
silvi

p.s. once you join, you can comment again and again! so when you want poems about something else, tell me! when you have more thoughts about what poetry means to you, tell me! when you have questions about poetry, ask!

i had never before imagined my own wedding, and suddenly, there i was, imagining myself someday having a wedding like this: a cozy lodge with a little bar and just a few tables, candles lighting the place, the magic of mountains and winter cold outside, a single barefoot musician playing acoustic guitar so beautifully that even the little kids stopped running, sat down, crossed their legs, craned their necks upwards, and watched.

what an honor it was to be sitting at a wooden bar on pieces of wood fashioned together to make a chair, sitting with my red royal, my carbon paper, my pre-prepped frames, learning about so many people and their relationships to each other, witnessing their love and admiration for the newly married couple, a & j. what an honor it was to invite them all to receive a special gift from the bride and groom—a poem, about anything they wanted, as a “thank you for coming to our wedding and being part of this day.”

for hours i talked to people and wrote poems, delighting in the fact that everyone asked for a poem for, or about, someone they loved. some poems made people laugh. some made people say, “wow.” and almost everyone asked, “how do you do that?” (to which i always say, “i’m not sure, but i feel really blessed that i can.) some poems even made some people cry. a best friend of the bride told me she went somewhere private to sob a little after reading her poem and she said her husband got choked up too and instead of crying he just said something like, “well, damn.”

admittedly, the song a & j danced to (an original by the barefoot guitarist) marked the fifteenth time in the night i almost cried. but it wasn’t just the music that got me. it was the love in the room amongst forty-five people who did not all know each other before hand, a love that was more than wedding day cordial; it was palpable, like honey dripping from people’s lips. i mean, i was a perfect stranger, hired to write poems, and yet every person i talked to felt like a friend.

in a toast, a’s brother said she was the kind of person who was comfortable anywhere—hobnobbing with socialites or drinking a beer on the back of a pick up. yes, that was precisely it, what made the night feel so perfect—a & j and the kind of people they surround themselves with, people who are genuine, easy to laugh, open. what a gift.

and what a gift this poet got from the magic of strangers meeting over a typewriter to celebrate love and friendship.

plus, i’ll never forget seeing the rocky mountains rising like teeth cutting tough skin. the guy sitting next to me on the plane telling me they called these the sawtooths. yes, i thought, perfect, like the remnants of some giant carcass spread over sun valley, the mouth of a great whale open wider than nature would ever allow.

it strikes me now that’s what the night was–love open as wide as human beings know how to allow.

note: the poetry store wedding services include writing poems on demand, providing frames and/or paper, creating a book of the poetry written at the wedding for the bride & groom to keep, creating poetry center pieces, creating poetry gifts, typing invitations and/or invitation address labels, and any thing else your heart might desire that fits into the scope of what the poetry store does, and, of course, that fits into a typewriter. prices vary depending on what services you’d like. interested in having the poetry store become part of your wedding? just ask.

the corporate holiday is here again. do something different. send your valentine* a one-of-a-kind poem. about anything you want.**

*including, but not limited to: love (requited or not), gratitude, friendship, birds, coyotes, jellyfish.

**don’t think you have a valentine? here is a list of potentials. pick one: your lover, want to be lover, jilted lover, secret crush, not-so-secret crush, mom, dad, baby (especially your soon-to-be born or christened), brother, sister, cousin, niece, nephew, children (biological, adopted, and/or given up for adoption), mom, lover (new, old, jilted, wanna be), ex’s (yes, all of them), crush, co-worker, boss, landlord, aunt, uncle, santa, satan (i.e. paradise lost), lover, old friends (yes, all of them), new friends, soon-to-be friends (yes, poems help you keep & make friends!), boyfriend, girlfriend, friendfriends (yes, all of them), acquaintances, fracquaintances, sculptor friend, painter neighbor, poet lover, your writer sister, reader dad, computer techie crush (see also: anyone who has ever said, “i’m as creative as a roll of toilet paper.”), anyone is your life celebrating a birthday, wedding, anniversary, bar/bat mitzvahs, or reunion, you dog, cat, bird, lizard, fish, grandma, grandpa, and (did i mention) your lover!