Wednesday

Anne Waldman has been an active member of the international “outrider” experimental poetry community for several decades as writer, sprechstimme performer, professor, editor, magpie scholar, infra-structure and cultural/political activist. This evening she will be joined by frequent collaborators Ambrose Bye, Steven Taylor, Douglas Dunn and Akilah Oliver. Waldman grew up on Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village where she still lives, and bi-furcated to Boulder, Colorado in 1974 when she co-founded The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University, the first Buddhist inspired school in the West. She currently serves as Artistic Director of its celebrated Summer Writing Program. Waldman is the author of over 40 books of poetry including Kill or Cure, Marriage: A Sentence, Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, and Manatee/Humanity (2009) (all published under the Penguin Poets imprint), as well as Fast Speaking Woman (City Lights) and the Iovis trilogy (Coffee House Press).  She is editor of The Beat Book (Shambhala Publication) and co-editor of The Angel Hair Anthology (Granary Books), Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action ( Coffee House) and Beats at Naropa (Coffee House, 2009 ). Her work has been published in translation into books in French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, German and Chinese. She has been a student of Buddhism since 1962, and an ambassador for the “public space” revival of poetry, appearing on stages from Berlin to Bombay to Beijing. She has been instrumental in encouraging poetry projects world-wide and has helped organize programs in Vienna and Indonesia. She has also collaborated with artists Elizabeth Murray, Richard Tuttle, Donna Dennis and Pat Steir as well as filmmaker Ed Bowes.

Ambrose Bye is the composer, musician and producer for/of the CD “Matching Half” with Anne Waldman & Akilah Oliver (Farfalla McMillen Parrish 2009). He also composed the music & produced “The Eye of The Falcon” with Anne Waldman.  Visit his MySpace page.

Steven Taylor is a poet, musician and ethnomusicologist. He is the author of False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk Underground (Wesleyan University Press, 2003). He has toured and recorded with Allen Ginsberg, Kenward Elmslie, the Fugs.

Douglas Dunn is a dancer and choreographer. Visit his company Douglas Dunn and Dancers at douglasdunndance.com.

Poet Akilah Oliver‘s latest book is A Toast in the House of Friends (Coffee House Press, 2009). She currently lives and teaches in Brooklyn.