Babar in Exile #21: Till Death Do We Part

Babar in Exile continues it’s November tradition with “Till Death Do We Part”, a reading that celebrates our vociferous dead and the living who go right on singing despite it all. Presiding over the departed will be Vampyre Mike Kassel (1953-2008), who will be honored with the release of Bat Flower, a new compilation of his mixed-genre work by Deborah Fruchey and Last Laugh Productions. Representing the living will be Chris & Deirdre Trian, original denizens of the Café Babar readings who have been partnered for 47 years. Fantastic and skilled performers, they will each do a set of poetry and (if we’re lucky) song, and Chris will also be displaying some of his paintings during the event. We’ll have multiple genres, media, and states of being, meaning something for everyone on this fine autumn eve. With, as always, our fab open mic, which for this occasion will ask participants to read one poem from a departed Babarian along with their own. Books will be available to read from.

So come on down to check out a slice of Bay Area poetry history, now and in the making, and make your way home with a bindle full of inspiration and a thimbleful more hope for the species.

Babar in Exile #21: Till Death Do We Part
a revival of the Cafe Babar, Paradise Lounge, and Club Chameleon reading series

featuring

Chris Trian
Deirdre Trian
and the work of Vampyre Mike Kassel

and you, in our spooky open mic

Hosted by Richard Loranger and Paul Corman-Roberts

PERFORMER BIOS

Chris Trian was born in Hollywood, CA, and raised in San Francisco. He is a veteran of the bars and cheap hotels and poetry readings of North Beach. He has a full-length collection of poetry, When There’s No More Room in Heck, the Darned Will Walk the Earth, published by Zeitgeist Press, and has pieces in Howl magazine and the Street Spirit newspaper. He lives and writes with Deirdre Trian.

Deirdre Trian was born in Oakland, CA, and grew up in San Francisco after spending her first five years in Berkeley. She wrote from an early age since her great aunt and mother both wrote. Since her mother was blinded by spinal meningitis before she was born, Deirdre helped her to write by correcting spelling, et al. She has been writing since then with Christopher Trian, with whom she’s spent 47 years. She has been going to poetry readings with Chris throughout that time.

Born in 1953 in Boston, “Vampyre” Mike Kassel moved to San Francisco in 1974 and was given his nickname by an audience at the Mabuhay Gardens who called for “Vampire Mike.” In 1980 Mike’s play Bat Soup, a musical comedy version of Dracula, ran for 86 performances at the Hotel Utah. His bands included The Hellhounds, The Fabulous Dumonts, The Bones of Kryptos, the Welfare Cheats, and the ‘60s homage band The Mysterious Icewyrms. He established himself as a spoken word powerhouse in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s at the Cafe Babar and the Above Paradise Lounge. He had seven books, including Going for the Low Blow (Zeitgeist Press, 1989); I Want to Kill Everything (Zeitgeist Press, 1990); Graveyard Golf (Manic D Press 1991); The Worlds According to Loki (Valknot Publishing, 2001); and Toxic Vaudeville (Ajax Press of San Francisco, 2007). His work has been translated into German, Czech and Russian. He also wrote for the Western Edition newspaper, the quarterly Yggdrasil, and the Sunday magazine of the San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner. Mike died suddenly of pneumonia on March 22, 2008. Two posthumous books have emerged, The Dead Poet Talks Back (Zeitgeist Press 2009) and the newly released Bat Flower: Poems, Plays, and Other Perversions (Last Laugh Productions, 2019).