Yardmeter XVI, Saturday, February 12th, 7 p.m.

Come show some love at Yardmeter!

Yardmeter 16 presents a night on the farm

with a writing and photography collaboration

by Dana Matthews and Richard Giles,

poetry readings by Julian T. Brolaski and Billy Merrell,

music by David Brown,

and artwork by Stephen Olivier.

This all happens Saturday,

February 12th, 7 p.m.,

at Shelton Walsmith's studio.

Please bring your own beverage.

About our presenters:

Richard Giles is a farmer, father, and friend. Has for eleven years grown organic vegetables in a valley among the Catskill Mountains, shipping about half of them to New York City. He writes in the winter when the mountains are quiet. Before this he farmed in Mississippi and then Alabama and even lived briefly in New York City before coming back to farming in the Catskills.

Alabama-born, Brooklyn-based artist Dana Matthews’s work includes toned, hand-tinted or b/w silver gelatin portfolios of female nudes, mystical landscapes, an extensive study of baptismal fonts in the rural South, color portraits of hip young Catskill farm workers and many more fine art prints.

Julian T. Brolaski is the author of gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011) and the chapbooks Hellish Death Monsters(Spooky Press 2001), Letters to Hank Williams (True West Press 2003), The Daily Usonian (Atticus/Finch 2004), Madame Bovary’s Diary (Cy Press 2005) and A Buck in a Corridor (flynpyntar 2008). Brolaski’s second full length book, Advice for Lovers, is forthcoming from City Lights in spring 2012. Brolaski lives in Brooklyn where xe is an editor at Litmus Press, curates vaudeville shows and plays country music with Juan & the Pines. New work is on the blog hermofwarsaw.

Billy Merrell is the author of Talking in the Dark, a poetry memoir (Scholastic, 2003), and a co-editor for The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About LGBTQ and Other Identities (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2006), which received a 2006 Lambda Literary Award. With his husband, Nico Medina, he is co-author of Go Ahead, Ask Me (Simon Pulse, 2009). Billy serves as Web Developer for Poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets. He lives in Brooklyn, a block away from Green-Wood Cemetery, where he can be found stealing clippings to root in his backyard garden.

David Brown is a drummer, singer, and songwriter who plays in the Washington, DC-based soul band Poor But Sexy. PBS is releasing its first full-length Let's Move in Together on February 15. David has played on records by Travis Morrison (of the Dismemberment Plan), Played Tomorrow, and the Andalusians (Dischord Records). He performed on a forthcoming free jazz record with the violinist Jean Cook. For Yardmeter 16, he's going to play solo acoustic versions of PBS songs. Photo by Jon Pack.

After studying the classics under his father’s tutelage, Stephen Olivier began studying photography at the Massachusetts College of Art. In 2000 he moved to Brooklyn and worked as senior preparator for Juan Puntes and his Chelsea galleries, White Box and The Annex, until 2003 when he began painting full-time. In 2005 and 2006, he was a resident at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, Florida. He currently lives and works in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. He has exhibited his work in New York City, Boston, Provincetown, Miami, Atlanta, and Berlin.