Workshop
Poetry Meets Performance; Five-Session Workshop with Maya Martinez
Studying small press books and little magazines, one quickly becomes familiar with a common refrain on the colophon of many of these publications, as in Ted Berrigan’s A Feeling for Leaving: “Published at The Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church In-The-Bowery, New York.” In addition to recognizing The Poetry Project as an experimental epicenter for readings, performances, and workshops, the pervasiveness of these notes reminds us that the Project is also one of the main sites where poet-organized alternative publishing communities have emerged and thrived. This workshop, led by Nick Sturm, will examine the capacious archive of literary artifacts that have been published at The Poetry Project, from workshop magazines to satirical literary newsletters to children’s poetry. Reading across a sampling of these publications, we will trace how the use of different mediums and printing technologies create and change communities. How does small press publishing, with its political and aesthetic commitments, become a poetics? Sixty years of Poetry Project publications introduce us to a history of answers to that question.
