From the typewriter of Bernadette Mayer:
“Dear Laura, the mistress class will be about garbage, garbage in poetry, poetry about garbage, poetry that is garbage, only fooling — a garbage bag now becomes a poetry bag. The who, what, when, where, why of garbage, the taste, touch, sound, smell and sight of garbage.
Yours in poetic forms about garbage,
Bernadette
p.s. for instance: Ode to maggots.”
Please note: registration will be capped at 10 participants.
Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn, New York, and received her B.A. from the New School for Social Research in 1967. She is the author of more than two dozen volumes of poetry including Works and Days (2016), Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words: The Early Books of Bernadette Mayer (2015), Helens of Troy, NY (2013), Studying Hunger Journals (2011), Ethics of Sleep (2011), Poetry State Forest (2008), Scarlet Tanager (2005), Two Haloed Mourners (1998), Another Smashed Pinecone (1998), Proper Name and Other Stories (1996), The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), The Bernadette Mayer Reader (1992), The Formal Field of Kissing (1990), Sonnets (1989), and Midwinter Day (1982). From 1967 to 1969, Mayer and artist Vito Acconci edited the journal 0 TO 9, and in 1977 she established United Artists Press with Lewis Warsh. She was the Director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project from 1980 to 1984. Mayer has taught at Naropa Poetics Institute, New School for Social Research, College of Staten Island, and New England College. She lives beside the Poetry State Forest in East Nassau, New York.