The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church
131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY 10003

ABOUT THE MARATHON

There are three things to consider when the New Year’s Day Poetry Marathon sweeps you into its gracefully uncouth embrace — what it is, what it was, and who you will be when it’s over. An untamed gathering of the heart’s secret, wild nobility — over 140 poets together revealing not just that a better life could exist, but that it already does, sexy and wise, rancorous and sweet, big hearted and mad as hell. An avenging engine of resistance and eager vehicle of the nascent year. The Marathon measures its success through insurrectionist reframings of the universe, an in-it-together courage that crafts a community out of the riot of lineages and traditions we all emerge from. This collective effort also helps fund as many as 85 additional events every year — not to mention The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Recluse and legendary workshops. It’s our largest fundraiser of the year, and arguably the most inspired ongoing literary event in the city.

Since Anne Waldman gathered 31 poets at the very first marathon on January 2, 1974, countless forward-facing luminaries have thrown their voices into the cauldron — among them Eric Bogosian, William S. Burroughs, Spalding Gray, Jackson Mac Low, Ed Sanders, Pedro Pietri, Helen Adam, John Cage, Joe Ceravolo, John Giorno, Ted Berrigan, Yoko Ono, Amiri Baraka, Gordon Matta Clark, Jim Carroll, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, Steve Cannon, Hannah Weiner, Kathy Acker, Arthur Russell, Gerard Malanga, Suzanne Vega, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Philip Glass. The list grows every year, as does the roster small press publishers and local restaurants who donate deliciousness in the form of astounding books, journals and food. We’re not so secretly in love with them all — and with the 75 selfless volunteers too who keep the Marathon running.

Whether you stay for a little while or for the long haul, whether you’re part of the standing room only experience at sunset or with the handful of diehards as the final poet reads her last word in the predawn sanctuary, you will be transformed for the year to come. Your presence helps launch a great flare into the otherwise impenetrable darkness of the 21st century night. And in that flash, you will become what you were always meant to be, eager practitioner of the infinite, uncommodifiable, uncategorizable, rough around the elegant edges and ready for the world to hit you with its best shot. Get lost, end times — our calendar is all opening days. Come on in, new year, we’d like to introduce you to your own gigantic possibilities.

December 17-19, 2015
Thursday-Saturday at 8:00PM
$25 General / $20 Danspace members

DANSPACE PROJECT
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY 10003

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Two fearless legends of NYC performance come together at Danspace Project for their first ever collaboration.

Meredith Monk, currently celebrating her 50th Season and one “one of contemporary music’s great innovators” (Classical Review), is a leader in interdisciplinary performance and an originator of extended vocal technique. As part of the evening Monk will be joined by members of her Vocal Ensemble to present selections from a new work-in-progress, Cellular Songs, a lyrical meditation based in part on her study of epigenetics.

“Anne Waldman’s work is the antithesis of stasis…She is a force of nature…a flame” (Quarterly Conversation). Waldman, a poet, author, playwright, and activist, co-founded (with Allen Ginsberg) the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery.

Both notorious for their mesmerizing stage presences, Monk and Waldman’s paths have crossed many times; this is the first time they will appear on stage together. Danspace is thrilled to present this singular night of new work, solo sets, and some delightful surprises.

Meredith Monk by Julieta Cervantes, Anne Waldman by Nina Subin.

International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong (IPNHK)
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

More information to come…

THE POETRY PROJECT PRESENTS: NATHANIEL DORSKY + ANNE WALDMAN

This fall New York City will be treated to a plethora of opportunities to see the work of Nathaniel Dorsky, who since 1963 has crafted a body of work comprising an astonishing number of exquisite and luminous experimental films. The subject of a career retrospective at this year’s New York Film Festival (September-October), Dorsky will return to NYC in November for this very special event, presented in conjunction with The Poetry Project.

Born in NYC in 1943, Dorsky is both an experimental filmmaker and a film editor, as well as the author of the seminal book, DEVOTIONAL CINEMA. As Richard Suchenski writes, Dorsky employs objects in his films as “decontextualized and sometimes unmoored from their surroundings, allowing connections to develop which resonate not only between shots but also across the films as a whole, encouraging more active forms of awareness.” Dorsky’s work asks the viewer to consider the film’s object to be irreducibly human. In DEVOTIONAL CINEMA, he writes, “In a flash, the uncanny presence of the poetic and vibrant world, ripe with mystery, stands before us” and, indeed, his films evince a form tantamount to a filmic poetry.

This event will showcase three films (two of them among his most recent), as well as featuring the filmmaker in conversation with poet Anne Waldman, for a discussion of his work’s relationship to poetry and language.

SARABANDE 2008, 15 min, 16mm, silent
PRELUDE 2015, 20 min, 16mm, silent
INTIMATIONS 2015, 18 min, 16mm, silent

Total running time: ca. 55 min (plus discussion)

The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church
131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY 10003

Public Talk

Poet, performer, educator and activist Anne Waldman discusses her experiences as a member of the New York School, a loosely affiliated group of artists and writers who lived and worked in New York City in the mid-20th century. The group and its achievements were recently celebrated in New York School Painters and Poets: Neon in Daylight (Rizzoli, 2014).

Presented by MFA Art Writing.

Free and open to the public.

School of Visual Arts
132 West 21st Street
6th floor
New York, NY

Nathaniel Dorsky at Anthology Film Archives

Nathaniel Dorsky, born in New York City in 1943, is an experimental filmmaker and film editor who has been making films since 1963. Dorsky, as Richard Suchenski writes, employs objects in his films as “decontextualized and sometimes unmoored from their surroundings, allowing connections to develop which resonate not only between shots but also across the films as a whole, encouraging more active forms of awareness.” Dorsky was a visiting instructor at Princeton University in 2008 and he has been the recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation among others. He took part in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and, in 2015, his work will be the subject of a complete retrospective at the New York Film Festival. Presented in conjunction with Anthology Film Archives, this program will present three films, Prelude (2015), Intimations (2015), and Sarabande (2008), as well as featuring the filmmaker in conversation with poet Anne Waldman on the nature and relationship of film with poetry and language in his work.

Please note, this event will be held at Anthology Film Archives, starting at 7:30PM, Monday, 11/23.

2015 Conference, Brussels, Belgium
4th Annual Meeting of the European Beat Studies Network (EBSN)
28-31 October 2015, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Saturday, October 31, 2015; 11:30 am – 1 pm
Panel 18:  Ecocritical Readings of the Beats III: “From Print to Digital: The Ecopoetics of (No-)Nature”

• David ARNOLD: “Poetry without Nature: Buddhism and Ecopoetics in the Writing of Joanne Kyger”
• Laura MARTIN: “Anne Waldman’s Transformation of Kerouac’s Ecopoetics of Water”
• Julie ANDREYEV: “Canine Haiku” (with film projection)

Read more here.