A Generation of Inspiration and Community
40 years, 100+ poets, and a candy dish full of Advil, the Poetry Project at St. Marks Church in the Bowery in the East Village is a place for poets to congregate.
While the Poetry Project might be a haven, a community, or just a reading venue for poets on tour, the Poetry Project is also a not-for-profit by any means adventure, a place to debate, celebrate, and most importantly, instigate social change and justice by means of poetry and language. Poets Anne Waldman and Stacy Szymaszek talk about the East Village, views on community and the future of the Poetry Project.
Anne Waldman was the director of the Poetry Project from 1966-1978, has published over 40 books of poetry and prose, and is the director of the M.F.A. Writing and Poetics program at the Naropa Institute. Stacy Szymaszek is the current director of the Poetry Project. Her most recent book is Emptied of All Ships (Litmus Press, 2005). Boog City editors David Kirschenbaum and Christina Strong conducted email interviews with poets Anne Waldman and Stacy Szymaszek, past and current Directors of the Poetry Project, August 2007.
Q: Speaking of community, Anne, how did the poetry project serve the East Village community when you were the director. Stacy how will the Poetry Project reach out to the East Village community when the neighborhood is changing:
AW: The initial funding was from the Office of Economic Opportunity under Lyndon Johnson (heavens that admin seems light years away!) which was specified for "alienated youth" on the Lower East Side. Most of us were certainly alienated by the American War in Viet Nam, and were involved with alternative activities in and around poetry and the arts, and benefits and the like which used the space. The space was key to a range of activities. The readings were by contribution, the workshops were free and generated a lot of participants. We had a library and the means for mimeo production which benefited a lot of folk on the premises...plus jobs for locals. Ted Berrigan "put up the chairs". We served the community by being open and welcoming and we built on & continued the whole downtown scene which had historical precedence in the Deux Magots series and more...It was a place for people to come together. With a focus on poetry and community. We cultivated an amazingly sophisticated LISTENING audience. I remember Edwin Denby speaking of that - how attuned the audience was. As Allen Ginsberg once said "St Mark's was my Poetry Church". So the implications are of a sacred space for poetry and poets and poetry community activists -infrastructure poets I like to call them.
SS: I think being located in a church and a church as progressive as St. Mark’s really amplifies the message that this is a place where you can come and feel welcome and comfortable, if one is comfortable having a different experience with language. Even the way the church is situated triangular facing 2nd Ave. with a sitting area appeals. Joel Kuszai recently talked at the Project about how real estate structures life. The East Village has changed and many of our constituency of poets are commuters, however, given the struggle for space, the streets around the project are still teeming with poets and poetry readers and punks and shopkeepers. Quite a few still live here with the ominously out-of-sync but rapidly replicating bank branches. Anselm recently pointed out that as long as the trains and buses are running people will come to us. But I think you are asking how will we reach out to the people who are currently living in this neighborhood, how will we know of each other’s existence? Which is a fine place to begin. From a practical administrative perspective we have increased the number of newsletters that we’ll distribute via the office to neighborhood cafes and bookstores. We’ll make use of our outdoor bulletin board which at the moment features poems by Sparrow and Hettie Jones as well as a sneak preview for fall, we’ll post signs on reading nights earlier in the day – these small actions gain momentum and inspire bigger ideas. The Project is also a part of the St. Mark’s Church community and the possibility of some collaborative programs between the arts projects and the church are in the works. It’s another opportunity for us to reach local audiences that wouldn’t otherwise know about us.
Q: Regarding funding, Stacy what are the needs that you'd like to be taken care of and advanced but can't because of lack of funds? Perhaps technological for example, or better, someone to transcribe and digitize all those recorded readings? Anne, what were the funding issues in your day?
SS: I would love to be the one to see the Project to a place where increasing the stipends for readers, pay for support staff and salaries for employees is viable and sustainable. Our operating costs go up every year but our income doesn’t necessarily correspond. Fund development would also allow for more technical equipment (more preservation options), website development and larger scale programming and publishing projects. I see a path for realizing this goal during my term, or at least leaving the next Director in an even more able situation, then again I have the idealism of a new Director who inherited a solid, healthy Project from Anselm Berrigan. Our recorded readings are being attended to though all I can say at the moment is stay tuned for more news later in the year.
AW: Just being able to maintain doing what we were already doing. After the 2 year grant ended and I was Director by then ('68), we had to seek the funding to pay $25 for readings, workshop & staff salaries (I had one - $7,000 a year? - from the Parks Department and had to pick up the paycheck at the building by the Central Park zoo for a couple of years). Support came from Noble Foundation, Kaplan Fund, NY State Council etc. We got some support for the World from the Coordinating council of Literary Magazines. Modest amounts that went far in those days.
Q: Stacy, what are your plans for your term? Fresh voices? More symposiums? More media, video for example?
SS: My plans are to continue to improve what we do well. The Project’s curatorial philosophy is solid and provides for a remarkable range of poets thoughtfully paired. I look forward to applying my sensibility to the Wednesday Reading Series. I believe the symposiums were no longer financially viable (also the reason for the hiatus of The World), and I know they are missed. This is in the “lack of funds” list. Many of my goals involve the aspect of the job less visible to the general public and pertain to organizational well-being: board development, fund development. A couple of ideas feel too delicate at this stage to publicly document and may not be able to be implemented during my first year. The Project creates and thrives on “outrider” energy and Corrine Fitzpatrick, Arlo Quint, Akilah Oliver, John Coletti, David Vogen and everyone else bringing in season 42 are here because we have chemistry, with each other, with this place, and this feeling extends outward.
Q: Anne, can you talk about your days as director and what you've seen changed between then and now, e.g., the neighborhood, the poproj itself, the poetry world as a whole, and what do you think about these changes?
AW: Change is inevitable. And there are new generations of writers- the
post-post mod (post Holocaust/post bomb?) independents, free of the shackles of so-called "schools", and male dominated heroic scenes. Women are so much more empowered in recent decades. Cutting teeth on different wars, more sophisticated info tools - internet, cell phones etc. Faster hook-ups. Swifter activism projects. What does not change is the will to change, of course. The Lower East Side neighborhood - the economics of that - gentrification etc. might be seen as problematic and I would hope that the energy of what occurs here can spread to other needier neighborhoods. The poetry culture if you will, however seems alive and healthy - there are so many more venues currently than there were in the "old days" - and if the proliferation of the MFA programs - careerism isn't your style, there are still alternatives outside the "credentialed" universe. I find the spirit is essentially the same at the Project – and it's still the place to go when you hit town as a poet. There's a species of inspiration and going-the-extra-mile that's rare in many institutions. Like the Kerouac School at Naropa, it's still a relatively young experiment...and perhaps ultimately a "temporary autonomous zone" in the grand scheme of things. But it will have made a mark.
Q: Would you define the act of running a nonprofit as a political one? How so?
AW: Sure. There's still a bit of the gift-economy model. Much is given away from this community. It's not about the profit. It's more about sustainability.
SS: I do think of it in a political context. We are an organization that cares about language, specifically poetry. George Lakoff famously has written about the use of language to dominate politics and why conservatives are so good at it. The radical use of language in poetry and, more and more post 9/11, in expressing an unpopular to the power monger view is threatening. It means that people’s minds aren’t being controlled and mind control through fear is a tool of this democracy. I was at the Breaking it Down panel that Anne and Tonya Foster organized, and I found it to be very instructive. Rachel Levitsky talked about “building into our projects multiple identities, cultures, perspectives, experience, bodies…” and this is also a political assertion we make in the public arena.
Q: For both of you, the poetry project is sometimes seen as an insider's group, do you agree with this image and if so, what do you think can be done about this, if anything.
AW: I think there needs to be more of a breakdown of perceived cliques, possibly determined by race and class. Tonya Foster and I organized an event at the Bowery Poetry Club (a healthy sister-project to The PP) last April entitled: Breaking It Down: The Aesthetics of Common Ground. With Cecilia Vicuna, Edwin Torres, Akilah Oliver, Christopher Stackhouse and others. It was to present new work, ideas, and talk a bit about race and other barriers to fuller community spirit. It was a start. Conversation came up on the Newyorican Café, Cave Canem, and the whole downtown neighborhood. I'd been having some interesting conversation with Amiri Baraka about his history with the NY School. And the trust Frank O'Hara had in him when he had supposedly cut off from all his former buddies. Also interesting to me his deep friendship with Ed Dorn and his weeping at the Dorn memorial at St Mark's in reading Ed's Tribe poem - and how he was the only black person in the room. Why is that? Or it could be the other way around in some instances. It's interesting to notice. I've been acknowledging Amiri's influence on my own performance work or my interest in other non-western cultures being a lifelong study. How have writers been cross-fertilized, cross culturalized?
If you look at the history of the Project it's certainly been more than an insider's group, but there is a sense of "insider" lineage as well that's important to keep things going. But I think the identity biz is flexible and improvisatory. There's a distinct line from Paul Blackburn, Joel Oppenheimer, myself, former directors, assistants, teachers and advisers, editors - many bastions of the New American Poetry yet way beyond that too-but whatever it is it's not "official verse culture" in Charles Bernstein's words. The famous workshops with Bernadette Mayer & Alice Notley that forged new generation and movements. (Bernstein picking up on Bernadette's experiments etc). Alan Kornblum was encouraged to become a publisher and editor (of Toothpaste and later Coffee House Press) after taking Dick Gallup's workshop. The web-work is amazing and endless. The inter-connectedness is wild! I think of what the Project offered my own mother Frances LeFevre Waldman and so many others in the way of community and am so very grateful. The place was always inter-generational. I am grateful to Ron Padgett, Maureen Owen, Eileen Myles, Bob Holman, Bernadette, Ed Friedman, Anselm Berrigan - all those who kept it going and will continue to- Stacy, Corinne. Such good-hearted folk! Many many persons too numerous to name.
SS: When the news went out that I was the next Director I got an email from Ron Silliman saying something to the effect of, nobody ever again is going to accuse the Project of honing to a single, coterie aesthetic.. For people who don’t know me yet, he could be referring to the fact that I am a Midwesterner who has only lived in NYC for 2 years, or that when my poetics are associated with a tradition it’s not New York School, or any number of other things. I understand how this impression came to be and was once accurate, and I think Anne’s point about insider lineage is an element of our foundation to appreciate, but the organization has necessarily and exponentially grown while still remaining solidly wed to the mission. To assert a point: funding agencies that support us value openness and diversity. The whole notion is something that was put out there in the 70’s and may still be bouncing around in people’s minds, a reflex critique of the Project that doesn’t hold water anymore. It’s totally realistic for arts organizations to have a particular aesthetic bend. The Project supports work that can't be summed up easily but in an attempt to state it: avant-garde, hybrid, literary, performative, mixed genre, politically informed, language and post-language. Rachel Levitsky describes the Belladonna Books project as featuring “work committed to advancing collective thought,” which the Poetry Project also values. In this context we are inquisitive and vigorous in expanding the range of our inclusions.
Q: For both of you, what are your thoughts about the poetry project community and who are you trying to reach.
AW: I am interested in probing writing and performance and the conversations thereof and people who put their lives next to and inside poetry. These people continually show up.
SS: Christina asked me, additionally, if I think that community exists. To begin there, I mean, I think the person who runs the Project needs to have community on their periodic table. It’s elemental.
Community is a complex living thing and it can be frustrating and painstaking but we are involved in many all the time. I also think that community is plural. People tend to think community should be cohesive and romantic, but that is what memory enhances after the work. It’s not a cohesive ONE, but I believe the cadres are reconcilable and the work is fueled by love of humanity. Who do I want to reach: young people, readers, writers, artists, activists and thinkers who are looking for something they haven’t found and hey, it’s us, people who may not need us as keenly but who recognize our value and support us in whatever way.
Q: It's our hope that the poetry project lasts until the world ends. But do either of you worry or think about the possibility of it’s having to end, and do you have any plans in place to help thwart that?
AW: I think the paradigm of this experiment is good for other places - all over the world. And I've seen projects inspired by Naropa - work as well "out there". I was just at a conference in Wuhan, China on the Yangtze River – a conference on 20th century American Poetry with a double focus on Langston Hughes and Language Poetry, a terrific idea. There was a great deal of interest there in the projects I've helped shape and create, outside the academy, so to speak. The tape and video Archive is very important, as it is at Naropa. That will allow future generations (if the technology allows this) to hear the work, grapple with the thinking and see that some people on the planet were not just hell bent on destroying one another.
SS: It’s possible that in the future the Project will be dealing with a less friendly funding climate, though the majority of our support is through membership and donations. If the Poetry Project ends in our lifetimes I think it would be a result of a catastrophic shift. More likely, the Project would morph to meet whatever demands are before it in order to continue. An “emergency plan” doesn’t formally exist but options have been discussed. Whoever is responsible for the Project if and when should be ready to thwart and adapt. As Anne implies, all things end, so we do want to continue to document and archive our time.
Q: Admitting and guessing that the poetry project is not the easiest place to manage, what do you see are the best skills one could have in dealing with the place, other than a sense of humor? And perhaps a certain amount of chemical intake?
AW: Being organized, ALWAYS following through, communication, generating compassion and empathy and the sense that we are all creative people, not simply administrators. And building on what's going on. Coming forward with an idea for a series, a magazine. Being open to folk organizing something like the two Poetry Is News events, as Ammiel and I did with help from Kristen Prevallet and Alan Gilbert. Or the Olson Now event. Having the space serve the community.
SS: Perfect: organization, communication, openness, empathy. I would add a certain willingness to give pause to your own ego and serve the mission, to make people feel attended to and that they have opportunities to realize their work, and to be interested in more than what you like. I’m not big on chemical intake but we do have a candy dish of Advil.
Q: We’re curious that if you’ve noticed a high or low turnout in regard to the readers what that causal relationship was. This is a highly subjective question of course, but we’re wondering what makes a "successful" reading? And is that so important?
AW: That the person is engaged yet not neurotically grasping vis a vis their own work or merely talking to themselves or a coterie but that is IS taking to people and can also be intimate. That's there a generosity in the movement off the page and awareness of the environment. That the event or "act" of reading is investigative, even magical. A "high energy construct" in Olson's term. And gratitude for the occasion which is ultimately a precious one.
SS: As a curator I appreciate a large audience but it’s not a primary factor in the success of a reading. As a grant writer who is reporting on people “served” it becomes relevant and even important, but that’s something apart from the art of the reading. There is a bit of an attendance lag around the winter holidays, but other than that the causal relationship is hard to generalize. The best readings are when the poets and the audience create rapport and a fly by night community: addresses and works are exchanged and you leave the scene believing that seeds have been planted.
Q: Stacy, how are you going to promote the work of writers who are not so published, and have never read at the project but have been around for a while.
SS: This type of writer you describe is not to be overlooked. During the last two years of working with Anselm I learned a lot about being a curator, and how to access quality regardless of how many publications a person has. The Recluse has also addressed these poets thereby making them a little more published.
While the Poetry Project might be a haven, a community, or just a reading venue for poets on tour, the Poetry Project is also a not-for-profit by any means adventure, a place to debate, celebrate, and most importantly, instigate social change and justice by means of poetry and language. Poets Anne Waldman and Stacy Szymaszek talk about the East Village, views on community and the future of the Poetry Project.
Anne Waldman was the director of the Poetry Project from 1966-1978, has published over 40 books of poetry and prose, and is the director of the M.F.A. Writing and Poetics program at the Naropa Institute. Stacy Szymaszek is the current director of the Poetry Project. Her most recent book is Emptied of All Ships (Litmus Press, 2005). Boog City editors David Kirschenbaum and Christina Strong conducted email interviews with poets Anne Waldman and Stacy Szymaszek, past and current Directors of the Poetry Project, August 2007.
Q: Speaking of community, Anne, how did the poetry project serve the East Village community when you were the director. Stacy how will the Poetry Project reach out to the East Village community when the neighborhood is changing:
AW: The initial funding was from the Office of Economic Opportunity under Lyndon Johnson (heavens that admin seems light years away!) which was specified for "alienated youth" on the Lower East Side. Most of us were certainly alienated by the American War in Viet Nam, and were involved with alternative activities in and around poetry and the arts, and benefits and the like which used the space. The space was key to a range of activities. The readings were by contribution, the workshops were free and generated a lot of participants. We had a library and the means for mimeo production which benefited a lot of folk on the premises...plus jobs for locals. Ted Berrigan "put up the chairs". We served the community by being open and welcoming and we built on & continued the whole downtown scene which had historical precedence in the Deux Magots series and more...It was a place for people to come together. With a focus on poetry and community. We cultivated an amazingly sophisticated LISTENING audience. I remember Edwin Denby speaking of that - how attuned the audience was. As Allen Ginsberg once said "St Mark's was my Poetry Church". So the implications are of a sacred space for poetry and poets and poetry community activists -infrastructure poets I like to call them.
SS: I think being located in a church and a church as progressive as St. Mark’s really amplifies the message that this is a place where you can come and feel welcome and comfortable, if one is comfortable having a different experience with language. Even the way the church is situated triangular facing 2nd Ave. with a sitting area appeals. Joel Kuszai recently talked at the Project about how real estate structures life. The East Village has changed and many of our constituency of poets are commuters, however, given the struggle for space, the streets around the project are still teeming with poets and poetry readers and punks and shopkeepers. Quite a few still live here with the ominously out-of-sync but rapidly replicating bank branches. Anselm recently pointed out that as long as the trains and buses are running people will come to us. But I think you are asking how will we reach out to the people who are currently living in this neighborhood, how will we know of each other’s existence? Which is a fine place to begin. From a practical administrative perspective we have increased the number of newsletters that we’ll distribute via the office to neighborhood cafes and bookstores. We’ll make use of our outdoor bulletin board which at the moment features poems by Sparrow and Hettie Jones as well as a sneak preview for fall, we’ll post signs on reading nights earlier in the day – these small actions gain momentum and inspire bigger ideas. The Project is also a part of the St. Mark’s Church community and the possibility of some collaborative programs between the arts projects and the church are in the works. It’s another opportunity for us to reach local audiences that wouldn’t otherwise know about us.
Q: Regarding funding, Stacy what are the needs that you'd like to be taken care of and advanced but can't because of lack of funds? Perhaps technological for example, or better, someone to transcribe and digitize all those recorded readings? Anne, what were the funding issues in your day?
SS: I would love to be the one to see the Project to a place where increasing the stipends for readers, pay for support staff and salaries for employees is viable and sustainable. Our operating costs go up every year but our income doesn’t necessarily correspond. Fund development would also allow for more technical equipment (more preservation options), website development and larger scale programming and publishing projects. I see a path for realizing this goal during my term, or at least leaving the next Director in an even more able situation, then again I have the idealism of a new Director who inherited a solid, healthy Project from Anselm Berrigan. Our recorded readings are being attended to though all I can say at the moment is stay tuned for more news later in the year.
AW: Just being able to maintain doing what we were already doing. After the 2 year grant ended and I was Director by then ('68), we had to seek the funding to pay $25 for readings, workshop & staff salaries (I had one - $7,000 a year? - from the Parks Department and had to pick up the paycheck at the building by the Central Park zoo for a couple of years). Support came from Noble Foundation, Kaplan Fund, NY State Council etc. We got some support for the World from the Coordinating council of Literary Magazines. Modest amounts that went far in those days.
Q: Stacy, what are your plans for your term? Fresh voices? More symposiums? More media, video for example?
SS: My plans are to continue to improve what we do well. The Project’s curatorial philosophy is solid and provides for a remarkable range of poets thoughtfully paired. I look forward to applying my sensibility to the Wednesday Reading Series. I believe the symposiums were no longer financially viable (also the reason for the hiatus of The World), and I know they are missed. This is in the “lack of funds” list. Many of my goals involve the aspect of the job less visible to the general public and pertain to organizational well-being: board development, fund development. A couple of ideas feel too delicate at this stage to publicly document and may not be able to be implemented during my first year. The Project creates and thrives on “outrider” energy and Corrine Fitzpatrick, Arlo Quint, Akilah Oliver, John Coletti, David Vogen and everyone else bringing in season 42 are here because we have chemistry, with each other, with this place, and this feeling extends outward.
Q: Anne, can you talk about your days as director and what you've seen changed between then and now, e.g., the neighborhood, the poproj itself, the poetry world as a whole, and what do you think about these changes?
AW: Change is inevitable. And there are new generations of writers- the
post-post mod (post Holocaust/post bomb?) independents, free of the shackles of so-called "schools", and male dominated heroic scenes. Women are so much more empowered in recent decades. Cutting teeth on different wars, more sophisticated info tools - internet, cell phones etc. Faster hook-ups. Swifter activism projects. What does not change is the will to change, of course. The Lower East Side neighborhood - the economics of that - gentrification etc. might be seen as problematic and I would hope that the energy of what occurs here can spread to other needier neighborhoods. The poetry culture if you will, however seems alive and healthy - there are so many more venues currently than there were in the "old days" - and if the proliferation of the MFA programs - careerism isn't your style, there are still alternatives outside the "credentialed" universe. I find the spirit is essentially the same at the Project – and it's still the place to go when you hit town as a poet. There's a species of inspiration and going-the-extra-mile that's rare in many institutions. Like the Kerouac School at Naropa, it's still a relatively young experiment...and perhaps ultimately a "temporary autonomous zone" in the grand scheme of things. But it will have made a mark.
Q: Would you define the act of running a nonprofit as a political one? How so?
AW: Sure. There's still a bit of the gift-economy model. Much is given away from this community. It's not about the profit. It's more about sustainability.
SS: I do think of it in a political context. We are an organization that cares about language, specifically poetry. George Lakoff famously has written about the use of language to dominate politics and why conservatives are so good at it. The radical use of language in poetry and, more and more post 9/11, in expressing an unpopular to the power monger view is threatening. It means that people’s minds aren’t being controlled and mind control through fear is a tool of this democracy. I was at the Breaking it Down panel that Anne and Tonya Foster organized, and I found it to be very instructive. Rachel Levitsky talked about “building into our projects multiple identities, cultures, perspectives, experience, bodies…” and this is also a political assertion we make in the public arena.
Q: For both of you, the poetry project is sometimes seen as an insider's group, do you agree with this image and if so, what do you think can be done about this, if anything.
AW: I think there needs to be more of a breakdown of perceived cliques, possibly determined by race and class. Tonya Foster and I organized an event at the Bowery Poetry Club (a healthy sister-project to The PP) last April entitled: Breaking It Down: The Aesthetics of Common Ground. With Cecilia Vicuna, Edwin Torres, Akilah Oliver, Christopher Stackhouse and others. It was to present new work, ideas, and talk a bit about race and other barriers to fuller community spirit. It was a start. Conversation came up on the Newyorican Café, Cave Canem, and the whole downtown neighborhood. I'd been having some interesting conversation with Amiri Baraka about his history with the NY School. And the trust Frank O'Hara had in him when he had supposedly cut off from all his former buddies. Also interesting to me his deep friendship with Ed Dorn and his weeping at the Dorn memorial at St Mark's in reading Ed's Tribe poem - and how he was the only black person in the room. Why is that? Or it could be the other way around in some instances. It's interesting to notice. I've been acknowledging Amiri's influence on my own performance work or my interest in other non-western cultures being a lifelong study. How have writers been cross-fertilized, cross culturalized?
If you look at the history of the Project it's certainly been more than an insider's group, but there is a sense of "insider" lineage as well that's important to keep things going. But I think the identity biz is flexible and improvisatory. There's a distinct line from Paul Blackburn, Joel Oppenheimer, myself, former directors, assistants, teachers and advisers, editors - many bastions of the New American Poetry yet way beyond that too-but whatever it is it's not "official verse culture" in Charles Bernstein's words. The famous workshops with Bernadette Mayer & Alice Notley that forged new generation and movements. (Bernstein picking up on Bernadette's experiments etc). Alan Kornblum was encouraged to become a publisher and editor (of Toothpaste and later Coffee House Press) after taking Dick Gallup's workshop. The web-work is amazing and endless. The inter-connectedness is wild! I think of what the Project offered my own mother Frances LeFevre Waldman and so many others in the way of community and am so very grateful. The place was always inter-generational. I am grateful to Ron Padgett, Maureen Owen, Eileen Myles, Bob Holman, Bernadette, Ed Friedman, Anselm Berrigan - all those who kept it going and will continue to- Stacy, Corinne. Such good-hearted folk! Many many persons too numerous to name.
SS: When the news went out that I was the next Director I got an email from Ron Silliman saying something to the effect of, nobody ever again is going to accuse the Project of honing to a single, coterie aesthetic.. For people who don’t know me yet, he could be referring to the fact that I am a Midwesterner who has only lived in NYC for 2 years, or that when my poetics are associated with a tradition it’s not New York School, or any number of other things. I understand how this impression came to be and was once accurate, and I think Anne’s point about insider lineage is an element of our foundation to appreciate, but the organization has necessarily and exponentially grown while still remaining solidly wed to the mission. To assert a point: funding agencies that support us value openness and diversity. The whole notion is something that was put out there in the 70’s and may still be bouncing around in people’s minds, a reflex critique of the Project that doesn’t hold water anymore. It’s totally realistic for arts organizations to have a particular aesthetic bend. The Project supports work that can't be summed up easily but in an attempt to state it: avant-garde, hybrid, literary, performative, mixed genre, politically informed, language and post-language. Rachel Levitsky describes the Belladonna Books project as featuring “work committed to advancing collective thought,” which the Poetry Project also values. In this context we are inquisitive and vigorous in expanding the range of our inclusions.
Q: For both of you, what are your thoughts about the poetry project community and who are you trying to reach.
AW: I am interested in probing writing and performance and the conversations thereof and people who put their lives next to and inside poetry. These people continually show up.
SS: Christina asked me, additionally, if I think that community exists. To begin there, I mean, I think the person who runs the Project needs to have community on their periodic table. It’s elemental.
Community is a complex living thing and it can be frustrating and painstaking but we are involved in many all the time. I also think that community is plural. People tend to think community should be cohesive and romantic, but that is what memory enhances after the work. It’s not a cohesive ONE, but I believe the cadres are reconcilable and the work is fueled by love of humanity. Who do I want to reach: young people, readers, writers, artists, activists and thinkers who are looking for something they haven’t found and hey, it’s us, people who may not need us as keenly but who recognize our value and support us in whatever way.
Q: It's our hope that the poetry project lasts until the world ends. But do either of you worry or think about the possibility of it’s having to end, and do you have any plans in place to help thwart that?
AW: I think the paradigm of this experiment is good for other places - all over the world. And I've seen projects inspired by Naropa - work as well "out there". I was just at a conference in Wuhan, China on the Yangtze River – a conference on 20th century American Poetry with a double focus on Langston Hughes and Language Poetry, a terrific idea. There was a great deal of interest there in the projects I've helped shape and create, outside the academy, so to speak. The tape and video Archive is very important, as it is at Naropa. That will allow future generations (if the technology allows this) to hear the work, grapple with the thinking and see that some people on the planet were not just hell bent on destroying one another.
SS: It’s possible that in the future the Project will be dealing with a less friendly funding climate, though the majority of our support is through membership and donations. If the Poetry Project ends in our lifetimes I think it would be a result of a catastrophic shift. More likely, the Project would morph to meet whatever demands are before it in order to continue. An “emergency plan” doesn’t formally exist but options have been discussed. Whoever is responsible for the Project if and when should be ready to thwart and adapt. As Anne implies, all things end, so we do want to continue to document and archive our time.
Q: Admitting and guessing that the poetry project is not the easiest place to manage, what do you see are the best skills one could have in dealing with the place, other than a sense of humor? And perhaps a certain amount of chemical intake?
AW: Being organized, ALWAYS following through, communication, generating compassion and empathy and the sense that we are all creative people, not simply administrators. And building on what's going on. Coming forward with an idea for a series, a magazine. Being open to folk organizing something like the two Poetry Is News events, as Ammiel and I did with help from Kristen Prevallet and Alan Gilbert. Or the Olson Now event. Having the space serve the community.
SS: Perfect: organization, communication, openness, empathy. I would add a certain willingness to give pause to your own ego and serve the mission, to make people feel attended to and that they have opportunities to realize their work, and to be interested in more than what you like. I’m not big on chemical intake but we do have a candy dish of Advil.
Q: We’re curious that if you’ve noticed a high or low turnout in regard to the readers what that causal relationship was. This is a highly subjective question of course, but we’re wondering what makes a "successful" reading? And is that so important?
AW: That the person is engaged yet not neurotically grasping vis a vis their own work or merely talking to themselves or a coterie but that is IS taking to people and can also be intimate. That's there a generosity in the movement off the page and awareness of the environment. That the event or "act" of reading is investigative, even magical. A "high energy construct" in Olson's term. And gratitude for the occasion which is ultimately a precious one.
SS: As a curator I appreciate a large audience but it’s not a primary factor in the success of a reading. As a grant writer who is reporting on people “served” it becomes relevant and even important, but that’s something apart from the art of the reading. There is a bit of an attendance lag around the winter holidays, but other than that the causal relationship is hard to generalize. The best readings are when the poets and the audience create rapport and a fly by night community: addresses and works are exchanged and you leave the scene believing that seeds have been planted.
Q: Stacy, how are you going to promote the work of writers who are not so published, and have never read at the project but have been around for a while.
SS: This type of writer you describe is not to be overlooked. During the last two years of working with Anselm I learned a lot about being a curator, and how to access quality regardless of how many publications a person has. The Recluse has also addressed these poets thereby making them a little more published.