New Writing Series reading with Evan Lavender-Smith and Carmen Giménez Smith, recorded May 1, 2013
Evan Lavender-Smith was born in Iowa in 1977. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and New Mexico State University. He is the author of From Old Notebooks (Blazevox, 2010) and Avatar (Six Gallery Press, 2011), Editor-In-Chief of Noemi Press, and Prose and Drama Editor of Puerto Del Sol. His writing has recently appeared in Fence, No Colony, Post Road, and Evergreen Review. He is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at New Mexico State University. He Lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of a memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds, four poetry collections— Milk and Filth, Goodbye, Flicker, The City She Was, and Odalisque in Pieces. She is the recipient of a 2011 American Book Award, the 2011 Juniper Prize for Poetry, and a 2011-2012 fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Howard Foundation. Formerly a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she now teaches in the creative writing programs at New Mexico State University, while serving as the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Puerto del Sol and the publisher of Noemi Press.
Source: libraries.ucsd.edu
New Writing Series readings by Michael Davidson and Rae Armantrout, April 10, 2013
Michael Davidson is a University of California, San Diego Distinguished Professor. He is the author of The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century(Cambridge U Press, 1989), Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material Word(U of California Press, 1997), Guys Like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics (U of Chicago, 2003). and Concerto for the Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body (U of Michigan, 2008). His most recent book, Outskirts of Form: Practicing Cultural Poetics was published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press. He is the editor of The New Collected Poems of George Oppen (New Directions, 2002). He is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent of which is The Arcades (O Books, 1998). He is the co-auathor, with Lyn Hejinian, Barrett Watten, and Ron Silliman, of Leningrad (Mercury House Press, 1991). He has written extensively on disability issues, most recently “Hearing Things: The Scandal of Speech in Deaf Performance,” in Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, Ed. Sharon Snyder, et al (Modern Language Association, 2002), “Phantom Limbs: Film Noir and the Disabled Body,” GLQ 9:1-2 (2003), Universal Design: The Work of Disability in an Age ofGlobalization, The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard Davis (Routledge, 2010), and “Pregnant Men: Modernism, Disability, and Biofuturity in Djuna Barnes,” Novel 54.3 (Summer, 2010). His new and selected poems is forthcoming from Coffee House Press.
Just Saying, Rae Armantrout’s most recent book of poems, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2013. Versed (Wesleyan, 2009), received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Next Life (Wesleyan, 2007), was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2007 by The New York Times. Other recent books include Money Shot (Wesleyan, 2011,) Collected Prose(Singing Horse, 2007), Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2004), The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001), and Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). Her poems have been included in anthologies such as The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine, (Chicago, 2012), American Hybrid (Norton, 2009), Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1993 and 2013), American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Language Meets the Lyric Tradition, (Wesleyan, 2002), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford, 2006) and The Best American Poetry of 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2011 and 2012. Armantrout received an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. She is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, San Diego. Writing in Poetry magazine, Ange Mlinko has said, “I would trade the bulk of contemporary anecdotal free verse for more incisive, chilling poetry like Armantrout’s.”
Source: libraries.ucsd.edu
If Nancy Was An Acid Freak by Joe Brainard
The Joe Brainard Archive is made up of materials collected by Robert Butts consisting primarily of diverse works by and regarding the popular New York artist and writer Joe Brainard (1942-1994). Brainard was the author of fifteen books of writing, the illustrator of numerous other books produced by members of the New York School, and a celebrated graphic artist whose work covered a broad range of sizes, styles and media. The Joe Brainard Archive consists of numerous examples of Brainard’s graphic work dating from 1962 to 1979, most of the books illustrated by Brainard, all of Brainard’s manuscripts and published writings, notebooks for Brainard’s I REMEMBER series and several other books, Brainard’s correspondence with members of the Butts family and correspondence to Brainard from Ned Rorem and Virgil Thomson, checklists of Brainard’s artistic production constructed by Robert Butts, and a selection of articles devoted to Brainard’s career. In addition to the Brainard materials, the Joe Brainard Archive also includes several lithographs by Alex Katz (b. 1927), an oil painting by Tom Clark, and a few ink sketches by poets Ron Padgett and Allen Ginsberg. There are also manuscripts of Ted Berrigan, Tom Clark and Rudy Kikel, in addition to broadsides and books written by New York School writers such as John Ashbery, Edwin Denby, and Kenneth Koch. The accessions processed in 1991 contain primarily original artworks by Joe Brainard in collaborations with Bill Berkson and Kenward Elmslie, including THE BABY BOOK (1965). Also included are correspondence, manuscript materials and photographs. The accession processed in 1993 comprises 16 letters and postcards from Joe Brainard to Robert Butts and one print by Andy Warhol.
The Joe Brainard Archive’s finding aid is available here.
Source: libraries.ucsd.edu
George Oppen
UC San Diego holds the literary papers of George Oppen (1908-1984), objectivist poet and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969. Most of the materials date from the period 1958-1978. Included are manuscripts and typescripts for all the poems contained in Oppen’s nine published books. Also included are drafts and fragments of unpublished poems, typescripts of published and unpublished essays, transcripts of Oppen’s verse, and copies of reviews of Oppen’s work. Of special interest are loose leaf pages of notes, and Oppen’s personal daybooks, all of which help to reveal his thinking about diverse subjects. The largest part of the collection consists of correspondence to Oppen from family members, editors, poets and other writers, and admirers of his work.
The finding aid for his manuscript collection can be found here. For other collections from our Archive for New Poetry, see our Archive for New Poetry manuscripts listing.
Source: libraries.ucsd.edu
A page from Hannah Weiner’s Book of Revelations manuscript.
Hannah Weiner was born on November 4, 1928, in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated from Providence Classical High School in June 1946. She attended Radcliffe College and graduated with a B.A., magna cum laude, in English Literature in 1950. After a brief marriage, she took various jobs in New York City, and began writing poetry around 1963. Her first book, The Magritte Poems, was published in 1966. In the late 60s, Weiner participated in several events within the visual arts scene in New York City. Her most notable “poetry event” was the International Code of Signals. In the early 70s, she commenced her primary body of written work, a series of experimental journals which were in part “clairvoyantly” dictated. I See Words became both her manifesto and method of composition.
Weiner’s Clairvoyant Journal 1974 was published by Angel Hair Books in 1978, followed by LittleBooks/Indians (Roof Books, 1980) and Nijole’s House (Potes and Poets, 1981). She became one of the most prominent individuals involved with the “language-centered” movement of poets and experimental prose writers. Her work was featured in Ron Silliman’s anthology, In the American Tree, Douglas Messerli’s Language Poetries, and The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book, edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews. She was awarded a creative writing fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1986. Other important collections of her poetry include Spoke (Sun & Moon Press, 1984), The Fast (United Artists Books, 1992), Silent Teachers Remembered Sequel (Tender Button, 1994), and We Speak Silent (Roof Books, 1996). Weiner’s manuscript Page, as well as selections from her Clairvoyant Journal and Little Books/Indianshave been published posthumously by various presses.
The papers of Hannah Weiner held at UC San Diego, covering the years 1946-2002, contain notebooks, typescripts of poems, prose works, typed transcriptions of notebooks, audiorecordings, and miscellaneous materials. Included are materials for Clairvoyant Journals 1974: March - June Retreat (1978), Code Poems: From the International Code of Signals for the Use of All (1982), The Fast (1992), The Magritte Poems (1970), and Spoke (1984).
Source: libraries.ucsd.edu
The Archive for New Poetry at UC San Diego is a comprehensive research collection of American poetry and poetics reflecting and documenting alternative approaches to writing in the English language that have emerged since 1945. Although the Archive includes mainstream and academic poets, particularly those whose works are antecedent to post-war American experimental writing, most of the collection focuses on the “New American” poets: the Black Mountain poets, the Objectivist movement, the San Francisco Renaissance, the New York School, and the language writers.
The Archive’s focus on documenting experimental work, including public performances and collaborative efforts, has led to extensive collecting beyond published poems. In addition to monographs, anthologies, and works on criticism and interpretation, the Archive has substantial holdings of literary manuscripts and correspondence, publishers’ and editors’ archives, broadsides, sound recordings, “little magazines” and ephemeral printings, artist’s books, concrete poems, and serials both established and short-lived. Use of these materials is supported by a reference collection of directories, bibliographies and other essential research tools.
The Archive was established in 1968 when Roy Harvey Pearce, Professor of Literature at UCSD, donated important first editions of post-war American poets to the UCSD Library. The collection now numbers over 35,000 volumes, 1,800 serial titles, over 700 poetry broadsides, extensive manuscript holdings, and over 1,500 audio recordings, all of which support intense research use by students, scholars and writers internationally. The Archive continues to grow, especially in the acquisition of small press publications and personal papers.
Among the unique materials in the Archive are sound recordings of New Writing Series readings held regularly at UCSD, and recordings made by Paul Blackburn, Susan Howe and others that document interviews, radio programs and other activities. Collections of personal papers, including those of Paul Blackburn, George and Mary Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, Susan Howe, Jackson Mac Low, Jerome Rothenberg, Lyn Hejinian, James Schuyler, and Clayton Eshleman, to name a few, and editorial files such as those of Donald Allen and of the Sun & Moon Press, provide evidence of editorial and writing processes, of publishing and scholarship, and of personal connections among these writers. In doing so, the Archive also documents in broader context the poetic movements that, through their works, these writers, editors and scholars have defined.
Bibliographic access to these materials is provided through our online catalog, ROGER, and MELVYL, the UC-wide online library catalogs.
A list of the manuscript collections that are part of the Archive are available here.
New Writing Series reading with Kate Greenstreet and Cynthia Arrieu-King
Kate Greenstreet’s new book Young Tambling will be out in January from Ahsahta Press. Her other books are case sensitive and The Last 4 Things, also with Ahsahta. Her poetry can be found in Colorado Review, Boston Review, Volt, Fence, Chicago Review, and other journals.
Cynthia Arrieu-King was raised in Louisville, Kentucky. She’s been a gopher for Mr. Rogers, a hauler at a pizza sauce factory, an echocardiographer, and is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Stockton College. Her book People are Tiny in Paintings of China was published by Octopus Books in 2010 and her collaborative chapbook with Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis By a Year Lousy with Meteors is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press in 2012. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Boston Review, Jacket, and Witness.
New Writing Series reading with Natalia Fedorova and Vanessa Place, performed March 11, 2013.
A talk/performance by Russian videopoet and scholar Natalia Fedorova on transnational media poetics and the current state of Russian experimental media art and literature. Pussy Riot is not even the half of it.Natalia Fedorova is a Russian new media artist, writer, literary scholar and translator. Natalia holds a PhD in literary theory from Herzen State University (St-Petersburg). She has written numerous publications on avant-garde poetry, kitetic poetry, concrete poetry, hyperfiction, literary text generators and video poetry, and is a curator and creator of VIDEO.txt, videopoetry festival in St- Petersburg. From 2011 to 2012, Natalia was a Fulbright postdoctoral researcher at the Trope Tank, MIT, and is currently a SPIRE post doctorate researcher with the ELMCIP group at the University of Bergen (Norway) and editor of e-lit and new media writing column in Rattapallax magazine (NY). Natalia is the author of a hyperfiction piece with multiple endings «7», and a boutes-rime novel Madame Ebaressa and a Butterfly, co-written with Sergeij Kitov, and a number of short prose fragments. In collaboration with Taras Mashtalir she founded Machine Libertine, a media poetry project .
Of Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman’s Notes on Conceptualisms, Mary Kelly said, “I learned more about the impact of conceptualism on artists and writers than I had from reading so-called canonical works on the subject.” Kenneth Goldsmith has called Vanessa Place’s work “arguably the most challenging, complex and controversial literature being written today.” Rae Armantrout has said, “Vanessa Place is writing terminal poetry.” A leading practitioner of conceptual poetry, Place is also a critic, criminal defense attorney, and co-director of Les Figues Press. Place lectures and performs internationally.
Eleni Sikelianos and Laird Hunt reading for the New Writing Series, February 20, 2013
Eleni Sikelianos has published six collections of poetry including Body Clock (2008), The California Poem (2004), and The Monster Lives of Boys and Girls, winner of the 2002 National Poetry Series, as well as a memoir, The Book of Jon (2004). Her numerous honors and awards include an NEA Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing. Her work has appeared in Grand Street, Sulfur, Chicago Review, and Fence, and she has collaborated with musicians, visual artists, and filmmakers. Sikelianos received an MFA from Naropa University and lives in Colorado where she is the Director of Creative Writing at the University of Denver.
Laird Hunt is the author of a book of short stories, mock parables and histories, The Paris Stories (2000), originally from Smokeproof Press, though now re-released by Marick Press, and four novels, The Impossibly (2001), Indiana, Indiana (2003), The Exquisite (2006) and Ray of the Star (2009) and The Kind One (2012) all from Coffee House Press. His translation of Oliver Rohe’s Vacant Lot is recently out from Counterpath Press. He is published in France by Actes Sud, and has novels either published or forthcoming in Japan and Italy. His writings, reviews and translations have appeared in the United States and abroad in, among other places, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Bomb, Bookforum, Grand Street, The Believer, Fence, Conjunctions, Brick, Mentor, Inculte, and Zoum Zoum. Currently on faculty in the University of Denver’s Creative Writing Program, he has had residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. He and his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, live in Boulder, Colorado, with their daughter, Eva Grace.
New Writing Series reading - Bob Perelman
Bob Perelman lived for many years in San Francisco where he edited Hills magazine and was influential in the growing language poetry movement. From 1977 to 1981 he coordinated the San Francisco Talks Series and edited Writing/Talks (1985) gathered from the series. His books of poetry include Braille (Ithaca House, 1975), Face Value (Roof Books, 1988), and Virtual Reality (Roof Books, 1993), Ten to One: Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 1999) and IFLIFE (Roof, 2006). He is also the author of two important books of theory and criticism, The Trouble with Genius (University of California, 1994), and The Marginalization of Poetry (Princeton, 1996). He lives in Philadelphia, where he is a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
Source: libraries.ucsd.edu
