November 2015

September 2016

October 2016

November 2016

Akilah Oliver Reading From 'she said dialogues', April 1999 @ The Poetry Project

Akilah Oliver Reading 'she said dialogues', April 1999

Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading in the Sanctuary at The Poetry Project

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Reading @ The Poetry Project

Julie Patton - March Lions Before Lambs: a score to settle (translations welcome)

Tricksters - Ry Dunn

Les Miserables Overture (Bottle Freak Remix) - Samuel Breslin

Monday Reading Series

Talk Series: Hans Ulrich Obrist on Etel Adnan

Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Co-director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris. Since his first show “World Soup” (The Kitchen Show) in 1991 he has curated more than 250 shows. Obrist’s recent publications include A Brief History of Curating, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating But Were Afraid to Ask, Do It: The Compendium, Think Like Clouds, Ai Weiwei Speaks, Ways of Curating, along with new volumes of his Conversation Series.

Etel Adnan was born in Beirut in 1925.  She is a poet, essayist, and visual artist. In 2003, MELUS, the journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, called Adnan “arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab-American author writing today.” She currently lives in Paris, France.  Her complete bio can be read on her website.

Hans Ulrich Obrist - Talk Series - Nov. 10th, 2014

Friday Reading Series

Claudia La Rocco’s recent and ongoing interdisciplinary collaborations include projects with the performance company Findlay//Sandsmark, the sound artist Martijn Tellinga and the composer Phillip Greenlief. La Rocco founded thePerformanceClub.org, which won a 2011 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and focuses on criticism as a literary art form. She is a member of the Off the Park poetry press and contributes frequently to the New York Times and ARTFORUM. She is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts’ graduate program in Art Criticism and Writing, and teaches at such institutions as Princeton University, Arizona State University and Movement Research. La Rocco has had residencies at Stanford University, Headlands Center for the Arts and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Process Space on Governors Island. She has performed at such places as Danspace Project (NYC), the Center for New Music (SF), Counterpath Press (Denver) and the Mount Tremper Arts Festival (NY). Badlands Unlimited is publishing her selected writings in fall 2014.

Karinne Keithley Syers is an interdisciplinary artist, participant-historian of the NYC performance community, and creator of things that resemble plays from a distance, including Another Tree Dance (2013), Montgomery Park, or Opulence (2010). She founded and co-edits 53rd State Press, and leaves trails of audio, video, and ukulele covers via her website fancystitchmachine.org.


Claudia La Rocco & Karinne Keithley Syers - Dec. 5th, 2014

Monday Reading Series

Diana Hamilton‘s first book, Okay, Okay (Truck Books 2012) deals primarily with women crying at work. Three chapbooks came out this year, or will soon enough: 1. Universe (Ugly Duckling Presse), a long poem about examples in moral philosophy, 2. Some Shit Advice (The Physiocrats), in which the speaker provides advice about shitting, and 3. 23 Women to Kiss Before You Die (Make Now Press), a collection of four poems about consent, female sexuality, and the quotidian.

Nicolas Mugavero lives and works in Raleigh, North Carolina. He co-curates orworse.net and orworsepress.net with Chris Sylvester and Shiv Kotecha. He has published books with Troll Thread Press and Gauss PDF. His poetic practice can best be described as one of diminishing returns.

Diana Hamilton & Nicolas Mugavero - Dec. 8th, 2014

Wednesday Reading Series

Ed Sanders is a poet, historian and composer. Sanders’  books include Tales of Beatnik Glory, 1968, a History in Verse; The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg; The Family, a history of the Charles Manson murder group; and Chekhov, a biography in verse. His 1987 collection, Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century, won an American Book Award. His selected poems, 1986-2008, Let’s Not Keep Fighting the Trojan War, was published by Coffee House Press. In 2011, Da Capo Press published his memoir of the 1960s, Fug You. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in verse, an American Book Award for his collected poems, and a 2012 PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Prize. Sanders was the founder of the satiric folk/rock group, The Fugs.  He lives in Woodstock, New York with his wife, the essayist and painter Miriam Sanders, and both are active in environmental and other social issues.

Park McArthur is an artist from North Carolina living in New York. Solo shows include Essex Street, New York; Lars Friedrich, Berlin; Yale Union, Portland, OR. Her writing has been included in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics and The Happy Hypocrite. “Other forms of conviviality: the best and least of which is our daily care, the most of which is our collaborative work,” an essay co-written with Constantina Zavitsanos was included in Women & Performance: A journal of feminist theory’s special issue We are Born in Flames. She is co-editing the book Beverly Buchanan: 1978-1981 with Jennifer Burris Staton.

Ed Sanders & Park McArthur - Nov. 19th, 2014

Wednesday Reading Series

Joshua Clover is the author of two books of poetry and two of cultural history and theory. His new book of poetry, Red Epic, is forthcoming from Commune Editions (spring 2015) and a book on the political economy of struggle, Of Riot, will be published by Verso in spring 2016. His column “Pop & Circumstance” appears monthly in The Nation, and he has completed collaborative work including articles and essays, book manuscripts, and conference organization with Jasper Bernes, Aaron Benanav, Juliana Spahr, Chris Chen, Annie McClanahan, Louis-Georges Schwartz, Tatiana Sverjensky, and Chris Nealon. He is a founder of the 95¢ Skool and Durruti Free Skool, and recently co-organized the Poetry and/or Revolution conference. He is a professor of English Literature at the University of California Davis; in Spring, he will convene a Residential Research Group on culture and finance capital at the University of California Humanities Research Institute.

Joshua Clover - March 4th, 2015

Wednesday Reading Series

Alice Notley has published over thirty books of poetry, including (most recently) Songs and Stories of the Ghouls, Negativity’s Kiss, and the chapbook Secret I D. With her sons Anselm and Edmund Berrigan, she edited both The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan and The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan. Notley has received many awards including the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award, the Griffin Prize, two NEA Grants, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. She lives and writes in Paris, France.

Alice Notley - April 15th, 2015

Friday Reading Series

STEFANO HARNEY
Stefano Harney teaches in Singapore at Singapore Management University. He is one of the artistic directors for the upcoming Bergen Assembly Triennale in Norway in 2016. He is founder with Tonika Sealy of the art and education collective Ground Provisions, and with Emma Dowling of the organisational anti-consultancy Immeasure.

FRED MOTEN
Fred Moten is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, Hughson’s Tavern, B. Jenkins, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (with Stefano Harney), The Feel Trio and The Little Edges. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc., through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Stefano Harney & Fred Moten - April 24th, 2015

Monday Reading Series

Ted Rees’ recent work has appeared in Asphodel, The Drunken Boat blog, Elderly, and Armed Cell, with work forthcoming in Tripwire and ON Contemporary Practice’s monograph on New Narrative. Chapbooks include The New Anchorage (Mondo Bummer, 2014) and Outlaws Drift in Every Vehicle of Thought (Trafficker Press, 2013).

Tyrone Williams is the author of five books of poetry, c.c. (Krupskaya Books, 2002), On Spec (Omnidawn Publishing, 2008), The Hero Project of the Century (The Backwaters Press, 2009), Adventures of Pi (Dos Madres Press, 2011) and Howell (Atelos Books, 2011). He is also the author of several chapbooks, including a prose eulogy, Pink Tie (Hooke Press, 2011).

Ted Rees & Tyrone Williams - Oct. 5th, 2015

Wednesday Reading Series

Michael Leong is the author of e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012). He has also published numerous chapbooks, most recently Li Po Meets Oulipo (Belladonna*, 2015) andFruits and Flowers and Animals and Seas and Lands Do Open (Burnside Review Press, 2015).

Keston Sutherland is the author of Neocosis, Hot White Andy, Stress Position, The Stats on Infinity, The Odes to TL61P, Jenkins, Moore and Bird and other poems. His Poetical Works 1999-2015 was recently published by Enitharmon. He has published many essays, lots of them on Marx, and a book of critical theory and literary criticism, Stupefaction.

Michael Leong & Keston Sutherland - Oct. 21st, 2015

Monday Reading Series

Angel Nafis is a Cave Canem Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, Union Station Magazine, MUZZLE Magazine, Mosaic Magazine, and Poetry Magazine. She has represented the LouderArts Poetry Project at both the National Poetry Slam and the Women of the World Poetry Slam in 2011. She is an Urban Word NYC Mentor and the founder, curator, and host of the quarterly Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon reading series. She is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics, 2012). Facilitating writing workshops and reading poems across the United States and Canada, she lives in Brooklyn.

Bridget Talone is the author of the chapbook In the Valley Made Personal, published by Small Anchor Press. Recent work has appeared in The Atlas Review, White Elephant, The New Delta Review, and Salt Hill Journal. She lives in Queens.

Bridget Talone & Angel Nafis - November 2nd, 2015

Friday Reading Series

Morgan Bassichis is a writer and performer whose plays include When the Baba Yaga Eats You Alive and The Witch House. Morgan’s essays have appeared in the Radical History Review, Captive Genders, and other edited volumes.

Brian Fuata is a Sydney based artist working in text and narrative performance of Samoan descent. He has performed and exhibited live and mediated works extensively in Australia since 1999. Fuata works both independently and in WrongSolo, a performance art duo with artist Agatha Gothe-Snape formed in 2009.

Morgan Bassichis - November 6th, 2015

Wednesday Reading Series

Cristina Rivera-Garza is the award-winning author of six novels, three collections of short stories, five collections of poetry and three non-fiction books. She has translated, from English into Spanish, Notes on Conceptualisms by Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman; and, from Spanish into English, “Nine Mexican Poets edited by Cristina Rivera Garza,” in New American Writing 31.

Prageeta Sharma is the author of four poetry collections: Bliss to Fill, The Opening Question, Infamous Landscapes and Undergloom. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at University of Montana and is co-director of the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race and Creative Writing, held at University of Montana in April 2014 and March 2015.

Prageeta Sharma & Cristina Rivera Garza - November 11th, 2015

Oral History Interview with Reverend Michael Allen

The Poetry Project’s Managing Director, Nicole Wallace, and Volunteer Archivist, Will Edmiston, interviewed Rev. Michael Allen via telephone on February 18, 2012. Allen was the Rector of St. Mark’s Church from 1959-1970. As Rector, he upheld the long-standing tradition at St. Mark’s of welcoming artists of all genres to perform at the church, and believed that artists “were among the few…doing theology.” This engagement in the arts was formalized in 1966 when Allen agreed to help administer a federal grant through St. Mark’s Church which launched The Poetry Project, Theater Genesis and The Film Project. Michael Allen passed away in September of 2013 at the age of 85.

Michael Allen was born on Oct. 16, 1927, in Paris. He lived in France and Spain until he was 6, and then moved to the U.S. He graduated from what is now the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. Then he went to New York as an assistant priest at Grace Church, and then was rector at St. Marks for 11 years. “He was a tireless crusader for justice, particularly in the lives of the poorest and most marginalized among us,” wrote Rev. Mike Kinman, who succeeded Rev. Allen at Christ Church Cathedral. Read more about Allen at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Michael Allen Oral History Interview - February 18th, 2012

Wednesday Reading Series

Aaron Kunin is the author of Cold Genius (Fence, 2014) and four other books of poetry and prose. He lives in California.

Charles North is the author of ten books of poems, most recently What It Is Like: New and Selected Poems (2011) and Complete Lineups (2009). The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight (2001) was a finalist for the inaugural Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award. He has published a collection of essays on poets, artists and critics, No Other Way (1998), and collaborative works with artists and other poets, including Translation (2014) with Paula North.

Aaron Kunin & Charles North - November 18th, 2015

Friday Reading Series

Risa Puleo Talk: How to Look at Monsters?

Risa Puleo will look at two types of “monsters”–those persons deviating from the physical norm of a group, be it through difference in ability, race, sex or gender– especially prevalent in 17th Century Europe: hermaphrodites and hirsute women to examine how Baroque portraiture preserves, displays and reproduces the monstrous body. Co-created by early modern gynecology as it intersects with the Spanish colonial project and the rise of collecting art, objects and people, monsters challenged the social categories of Animal and Human; Male and Female in the early modern era and offer an alternative for challenging these categories today. Puleo’s talk will be followed by a discussion moderated by Jennifer Miller.

Risa Puleo is a curator and writer living in Brooklyn, NY.

Talk Series: Risa Puleo in Conversation with Jennifer Miller - November 13th, 2015

Friday Reading Series

Lara Durback is a poet who has been living in Oakland for 10 years. She has published books collectively under NoNo Press and Mess Editions. You can see her printed and/or written work in Drift Magazine, Mrs. Maybe, Bombay Gin, the UK journal Hi Zero, and Tripwire. Her archiving work is online at deepoakland.org. In 2013, with designer Andrew Kenower, she produced the letterpress publication Field Work: Poems on the Occasion of Mark diSuvero at Crissy Field for SFMOMA. She has taught a letterpress printing course at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. Lara is a founding member of the new press collective Material Print Machine at the Omni Commons in Oakland, https://omnicommons.org. Her book is forthcoming from Publication Studio Oakland: psoakland.com.

Aldrin Valdez is a Pinoy painterpoet. They grew up in Manila and Long Island and currently live in Brooklyn. Aldrin studied at Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts. They have been awarded fellowships from Queer/Art/Mentorship and Poets House. Their work has been published in Art21 Magazine, ArtSlant, BRIC Blog, The Cortland Review, In the Flesh Magazine, and Uncompromising Tang.

Lara Durback & Aldrin Valdez - December 11th, 2015

Ted Greenwald (1942-2016) was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, and lived in New York City his entire life. He wrote daily for over 50 years and published more than 30 books. A central figure in the second-generation of the New York school and a major influence on language writing, as a poet he is sui generis, they broke the mold. His work combines rigorous formal invention, a keen ear for plain talk, and a finger on the pulse of the life of the times. Three books of work from the 1970s are newly published, The Age of Reasons (Wesleyan), Common Sense (Wesleyan), and Own Church (Spuyten Duyvil). Other recent books include Comma Fork / Moving Parts and In Your Dreams (BlazeVOX), as well as the memoir of his childhood and youth, Clearview/LIE (United Artists). Greenwald was an integral part of The Poetry Project community having served as Newsletter editor in the 1970s as well as having been a longtime board member.

Off the Hook

He is gone now
Taking his body with him
When all the time
I thought it was
The beauty of his mind
I loved

from COMMON SENSE

Ted Greenwald Memorial - September 16th, 2016

Bill Berkson moved through life with compassion, grace, and humor. His generous spirit nourished and inspired those around him.

An Example, Worthwhile

Single point perspective got fudged.
The bird in the house flies in the eye of the god
Lounging at length across the field, a simple song.
One has to envision language or it’s no help.
Know history backwards.
Lay into life.

Bill Berkson Memorial Reading - September 14th, 2016

This event is a part of the “GIANT NIGHT: The Poetry Project at 50” platform series.

Thought of as the pre-spirit of The Poetry Project, Paul Blackburn gave the first “official” reading of The Poetry Project on September 22, 1966. His poetry, translations, and organization and recording of early downtown readings, exerted a steady and widespread influence across a wide range of aesthetic practices. In his lifetime Blackburn published thirteen books of original poetry as well as five major works of translation. Twelve other books were published posthumously. The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn (1985) and The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn (1989) are both available from Persea Books, and a reprint of Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry, is due out from New York Review Books in 2016.

Join us for this kick-off event in “GIANT NIGHT: The Poetry Project at 50” as we read Blackburn’s work. With Kimberly Lyons, Ammiel Alcalay, Simone White, Martha King, Basil King, Jerome Rothenberg, Marcella Durand, Bob Holman, David Henderson, Anne Waldman, Rochelle Owens, George Economou, Mark Weiss, Patricia Spears Jones, Brenda Coultas, Gregg Weatherby, Carlos Blackburn and Joan Blackburn. We will also listen to some tracks from Blackburn’s 1966  inaugural Poetry Project reading.

In.On.Or About The Premises: A Reading & Celebration Of Paul Blackburn - September 28th, 2016

Special Event. Hosted by Monday Night Readings Coordinator, Judah Rubin. 

Yoshimasu Gozo, born in Tokyo, has given performances worldwide, and has received many literary and cultural awards, including the Takami Jun Prize, the Rekitei Prize, the Purple Ribbon, and the 50th Mainichi Art Award for Poetry. This reading coincides with Gozo’s Alice Iris Red Horse: Selected Poems of Yoshimasu Gozo from New Directions and will feature Gozo in performance with special guests.

Special Event: Yoshimasu Gozo - September 23rd, 2016

Wednesday Reading Series

Sara Deniz Akant is a Brooklyn-based educator, poet and performer. She is the author of Babette, selected by Maggie Nelson for the Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize, as well as Parades (Omnidawn, 2014), and Latronic Strag (Persistent Editions, 2015). She studies writing at the CUNY Grad Center and teaches at Medgar Evers College. Her work has appeared most recently in The Brooklyn Rail, The Bennington Review, jubilat, and Lana Turner.

Jasmine Gibson is a Philly jawn now living in Brooklyn and soon to be psychotherapist for all your gooey psychotic episodes that match the bipolar flows of capital. She spends her time thinking about sexy things like psychosis, desire and freedom. She has written for Mask Magazine and LIES Vol II: Journal of Materialist feminism, Queen Mobs, NON, The Capilano Review and has published a chapbook, Drapetomania (Commune Editions, 2015).

Sara Deniz Akant & Jasmine Gibson - October 5th, 2016

Monday Reading Series

Jameson Fitzpatrick is the author of the chapbook Morrisroe: Erasures, which comprises 24 versions of a single text by the late artist Mark Morrisroe, and his poems have appeared in The Awl, BuzzFeed Reader, Poetry, Prelude, and elsewhere. He lives in New York, where he teaches writing at NYU.

Ali Power is the author of the book-length poem A Poem for Record Keepers (Argos Books, 2016) and the co-editor of the volume New York School Painters & Poets: Neon in Daylight (Rizzoli, 2014). From 2008 to 2015, she was an editor at Rizzoli Publications in New York. Currently, she is pursuing a master’s degree in social work at New York University and co-curates the KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series.

Jameson Fitzpatrick & Ali Power - October 10th, 2016

Wednesday Reading Series

Todd Colby has published six books of poetry. His latest book, Splash State, was published by The Song Cave in 2014. Todd’s most recent poetry and art have appeared in Poetry, Columbia: a journal of literature and art, Denver Quarterly, and Brooklyn Rail. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Adam Fitzgerald is a poet, editor, essayist and educator. In 2013, his first book of poems The Late Parade was hailed by the New York Times Sunday Book Review as “a new and welcome sound in the aviary of contemporary poetry.” He serves as contributing editor for Literary Hub and curates monthly poetry features. Recent poems can be found in Poetry, The New Yorker, BOMB, Granta, and elsewhere. In 2014, with poets Dorothea Lasky and Timothy Donnelly he co-founded The Home School. He teaches at Rutgers University and New York University and this spring at Poets House. His newest book of poems, George Washington, was just published by W. W. Norton’s historic Liveright imprint in September.

Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, and critic. He is the author of Southness (Lunar Chandelier Press, 2016) and Swimming Home (Nightboat Books, 2015), as well as The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (Princeton University Press, 2004). He is the editor of Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art (MIT Press, 2002; reprinted 2013). He lives in New York City, where he curates “Readings in Contemporary Poetry” at Dia:Chelsea. Raphael Rubinstein has characterized Katz as “A 21st-century flâneur whose wanderings range from the sidewalks and subways of New York City to the crowded beaches of Rio de Janeiro.”

Todd Colby, Adam Fitzgerald & Vincent Katz - October 12th, 2016

Friday Reading Series

Join us in the Parish Hall for bilingual readings in Spanish and English with authors and translators from the Señal Series, featuring: Luis Felipe Fabre (with translation by John Pluecker), Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal (reading Sor Juana), Pablo Katchadjian (with Rebekah Smith), and Florencia Castellano (with translation by Alexis Almeida). Señal Series (founded in 2015) is a co-publication between BOMB Magazine, Libros Antena Books, and Ugly Duckling Presse, that publishes two chapbooks a year, linked either thematically, conceptually, or trans-historically, troubling received ideas around what the terms “contemporary” and “Latin America” might represent.

Señal Series Celebration - October 15th, 2016

Monday Reading Series

Anaïs Duplan is the author of Take This Stallion. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in/on: Hyperallergic, Boston Review, The Journal, FENCE, PBS Newshour, the Ploughshares blog, Asymptote Journal’s blog, and other places. She directs the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program in Iowa City where she is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Christopher Soto aka Loma (b. 1991, Los Angeles) is a poet based in Brooklyn, New York. He was named one of “10 Up and Coming Latinx Poets You Need to Know” by Remezcla. He was named one of “30 Poets You Should Be Reading” by The Literary Hub. He was named one of “7 Trans & Gender Non-Conforming Artist Doing the Work” by the Offing. Poets & Writers honored Christopher Soto with the “Barnes & Nobles Writer for Writers Award” in 2016. Christopher Soto’s first chapbook “Sad Girl Poems” was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. His work has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese. He is currently working on a full-length poetry manuscript about police violence and mass incarceration. He founded Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color with the Lambda Literary Foundation and cofounded The Undocupoets Campaign. He interned at the Poetry Society of America and received an MFA in poetry from NYU.

Anaïs Duplan & Loma (Christopher Soto) - October 17th, 2016

Wednesday Reading Series

Keith Waldrop is the author of Selected Poems (Omnidawn 2016), Transcendental Studies (U of California Press, National Book Award 2009), and more than a dozen other books of poems. He has also published a novel, Light While There Is Light (Dalkey Archive), a book of collages, Several Gravities (Siglio), and translated Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil and Poems in Prose as well as contemporary French authors Anne-Marie Albiach, Claude Royet-Journoud, Paol Keineg, Jean Grosjean etc. He is retired from teaching at Brown University and, with Rosmarie Waldrop, edits Burning Deck Press in Providence, RI.

Rosmarie Waldrop’s most recent books are Gap Gardening: Selected Poems, and Driven to Abstraction (New Directions). Her novels, The Hanky of Pippin’s Daughter and A Form/of Taking/It All, are now available in one volume from Northwestern UP; her collected essays, Dissonance (if you are interested), from U of Alabama Press. She has translated 14 volumes of Edmond Jabès’s work (her memoir, Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès, is out from Wesleyan UP) as well as books by Emmanuel Hocquard, Jacques Roubaud, and, from the German, Friederike Mayröcker, Elke Erb, Peter Waterhouse, Gerhard Rühm, etc. With Keith Waldrop, she edits Burning Deck Press.

Keith Waldrop & Rosmarie Waldrop - November 2nd, 2016

This event is a part of the “GIANT NIGHT: The Poetry Project at 50” platform series.

Participants will answer some or none of the following half-questions: What’s it mean for The Poetry Project to be The Poetry Project right now, in the East Village, in 2016, which is or was considered “downtown” at points? Is “downtown” a sign, a sigh, a thing, an active nothing, or a something else? Can we have a retrospective season and dissolve nostalgia at the same time? Is there anyone out there listening at all? (If so, peace). Do poets in this town still need real physical centers to go experience the work out front? And what does “need” mean? And what does “real physical centers” mean? And what does “out front” mean? Event will be followed by a mellow reception in lieu of a Q&A. Curated by Anselm Berrigan and hosted by Stacy Szymaszek. With John Godfrey, Ariel Goldberg, Erica Hunt, Sophia Le Fraga, John Yau, and Steve Zultanski.

GIANT NIGHT: (Re)Defining Downtown - November 9th, 2016

TASCAM DR-40

Anselm Berrigan - March 20, 2019

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue 20th Anniversary - June 12, 2019

Lyn Hejinian & Jacqueline Waters - February 22, 2017

House Party is a digital performance and publication series out of The Poetry Project with readings, songs, dances, writings and prompts from the past, present, and future. Within each issue, we'll also be sharing a living list of resources, emergency grants, and other recommendations.

Davey Davis - David Wojnarowicz

Wednesday Reading Series: Youmna Chlala & Jennifer Firestone—   January 29th, 2020

Hosted by Kyle Dacuyan.

Youmna Chlala is an artist and a writer born in Beirut based in New York. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Paper Camera (Litmus Press, 2019). She is the recipient of a 2018 O. Henry Award, a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and the Founding Editor of Eleven Eleven {1111} Journal of Literature and Art. Her writing appears in BOMB, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Bespoke, Aster(ix), CURA and MIT Journal for Middle Eastern Studies. She has exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, The Drawing Center, Art In General, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Dubai Art Projects, Hessel Museum of Art, and MAK Center for Art and Architecture. She participated in the 33rd Bienal de Sao Paulo, 2017 LIAF Biennial in Norway and the 11th Performa Biennial. She is co-editing a new series for Coffee House Press entitled Spatial Species (2021). She is a Professor in Humanities and Media Studies and Writing at the Pratt Institute.

Jennifer Firestone is the author of five books of poetry and four chapbooks including Story (Ugly Duckling Presse), Ten, (BlazeVOX [books]), Gates & Fields (Belladonna Collaborative), Swimming Pool (DoubleCross Press), Flashes (Shearsman Books), Holiday (Shearsman Books), Waves (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), from Flashes and snapshot (Sona Books) and Fanimaly (Dusie Kollektiv). She co-edited (with Dana Teen Lomax) Letters To Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community (Saturnalia Books) and is collaborating with Marcella Durand on a book entitled Other Influences about feminist avant-garde poetics. Firestone has work anthologized in Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Songs, & Stories for Children and Building is a Process / Light is an Element: essays and excursions for Myung Mi Kim. She won the 2014 Marsh Hawk Press' Robert Creeley Memorial Prize. Firestone is an Associate Professor of Literary Studies at the New School's Eugene Lang College and is also the Director of their Academic Fellows pedagogy program.

Youmna Chlala & Jennifer Firestone - January 29th, 2020

Friday Reading Series: Harmony Holiday & Lily Jue Sheng with Nyle Genevieve— January 10th, 2020

Hosted by Nicole Wallace.

Harmony Holiday is a writer, dancer, archivist, director, and the author of four collections of poetry, Negro League Baseball, Go Find Your Father / A Famous Blues, Hollywood Forever, and A Jazz Funeral for Uncle Tom. She founded and runs Afrosonics, an archive of jazz and everyday diaspora poetics, and Mythscience, a publishing imprint that reissues and reprints works from the archive. She worked on the SOS, the selected poems of Amiri Baraka, transcribing all of his poetry recorded with jazz that has yet to be released in print and exists primarily on out-of-print records. Harmony studied Rhetoric at UC Berkeley and taught for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. She received her MFA from Columbia University and has received the Motherwell Prize from Fence Books, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and a NYFA Fellowship. She is currently completing a book of poems called M a à f a and an accompanying collection of essays and memoir, Love is War for Miles, both to be released this fall, as well as a biography of jazz singer Abbey Lincoln.

Lily Jue Sheng works between moving image, collage, text, performance, and installation. Nyle Genevieve makes video art, comics, zines, music, and handmade apparel. They met in college at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and are both based in New York City. Nyle's series 'Winds of Change' and 'Never Sit' merge anthropomorphic existential crisis and female desire with doing everything yourself. She also plays drums for Nandas. Lily's video work 'Five Movements (五種流行之氣)' has expanded into select performances at The Knockdown Center (with Anjuli Rathod) and Roulette Intermedium (with Anjuli Rathod and Nyle Genevieve). 'Five Movements' uses cinema to describe feelings of melancholia -- the sensations of dreaming, and disrupting, myths surrounding the home. The third performance at The Poetry Project will include an expanded spoken word and unique subtitles in Shanghai dialect and English by Lily and a performed music score by Nyle.

Harmony Holiday & Lily Jue Sheng With Nyle Genevieve January 10th, 2020

Monday Reading Series: A Steve Abbott Reader— February 24th, 2020 

Hosted by Kyle Dacuyan.

Join us in celebration of Beautiful Aliens: A Steve Abbott Reader (Nightboat Books, 2019) edited by Jamie Townsend, with an afterword by Alysia Abbott. In this long awaited, first ever retrospective of Steve Abbott's work you'll find writing, illustrations, and comics by this Gay Liberation hero and foundational Bay Area underground writer. Throughout the night we'll hear from the book's editor Jamie Townsend; Steve Abbott's daughter, Alysia Abbott; as well as friends, correspondents, and admirers of Abbott including Nayland Blake, Alexander Chee, Todd Colby, Ariel Goldberg, Hugh Ryan, Rakesh Satyal and Sarah Schulman.

About Beautiful Aliens: A Steve Abbott Reader—

The first retrospective collection of writing, illustrations, and comics by a hero of the Gay Liberation movement and Bay Area underground writing.

Beautiful Aliens: A Steve Abbott Reader (Nightboat Books, 2019) is a landmark collection representing the visionary life's work of beloved Bay Area luminary Steve Abbott. It brings together a broad cross-section of literary and artistic work spanning three decades of poetry, fiction, collage, comics, essays, and autobiography, including underground classics like, Lives of the Poets and Holy Terror, rare pieces of treasured ephemera, and previously unpublished material, representing a survey of Abbott's multivalent practice, as well as reinforcing his essential role within the contemporary canon of queer arts.

Steve Abbott (1943—1992) was a poet, critic, editor, novelist, and artist based in San Francisco.

Jamie Townsend is a genderqueer poet and editor living in Oakland. They are half-responsible for Elderly, an ongoing publishing experiment and hub of ebullience and disgust. They are the author of Pyramid Song (above/ground press, 2018), and Sex Machines (blush, 2019) as well as the full-length collection Shade (Elis Press, 2015). An essay on the history and influence of the literary magazine Soup was published in The Bigness of Things: New Narrative and Visual Culture (Wolfman Books, 2017). They are the editor of Beautiful Aliens: A Steve Abbott Reader (Nightboat, 2019) and Libertines in the Ante-Room of Love: Poets on Punk (Jet Tone, 2019).

Launch For Beautiful Aliens: A Steve Abbott Reader — February 24th, 2020

Friday Reading Series: Elaine Kahn With Coco Gordon Moore & Bridget Talone—  February 21st, 2020 

Hosted by Laura Henriksen.

Join us for the New York City launch of Elaine Kahn's latest book Romance or The End (Softskull Press, 2020). In this highly anticipated collection of chaotic and gutting love, Kahn frays the literary membrane between narrative and self to give us this magnetic work of seduction, contortion, and repulsion. Elaine Kahn will be joined by Coco Gordon Moore and Bridget Talone.

Elaine Kahn is the author of Romance or The End (Soft Skull, 2020) and Women in Public (City Lights Publishers, 2015). Her writing has appeared in Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat, Poetry Foundation, Art Papers, and elsewhere. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and teaches at the Poetry Field School. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Coco Gordon Moore is a visual artist and poet. She is the author of "A Sketch of Romance" and "Today I Hate The Sun". The proceeds from her latest chapbook went to The Brooklyn Community Bail Fund and her upcoming book will help aid Red Dot Campaign; a non profit working to destigmatize the period as well as collecting tampons and pads for shelters and underfunded schools. Last year Gordon Moore put together a group show at Reena Spauings gallery in efforts of creating a space of affordable art and working to raise money and awareness for the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund. She continues to try and find ways to use art as a tool for reparations.

Bridget Talone is the author of The Soft Life and lives in Philadelphia. Recent work has appeared in A Perfect Vacuum, Pouch Mag, and Elderly.

Elaine Kahn With Coco Gordon Moore & Bridget Talone - February 21st, 2020

12/16/1981, Cookie Mueller reading with Pedro Pietri

PietriBrooksMuellerShange

Cookie Mueller

Sarah Schulman, 1990

Amiri Baraka Symposium

Ntozake Shange & Gwendolyn Brooks read at The Poetry Project.

Ntozake Shange & Gwendolyn Brooks

Ted Joans & Jayne Cortez

Sound recording using live loops by Edo Wallad of his own poem, “Carousel” from Pesta Sebelum Kiamat

Edo Wallad - Carousel

Live from St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery in Manhattan's East Village, The Poetry Project has  promoted, fostered and inspired the reading and writing of contemporary poetry since 1966. 

The Poetry Project

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