Poetic materials--new curriculum?

Hello everyone,

As you can see from the Events listings, Michael Basinski, David Larsen, and Jeanne Heuving are coming to town (or rather I should say Larsen will be reading before leaving town, right david?) to read together in the Artifact Reading Series on May 24. And because I've been on the end of that collaboration that is bringing Mike in from Buffalo, I've been thinking hard about the urgency with which I have wanted him to come here. Personally, I love the man like family and feel a deep affinity for his work, but what is it about this affinity, within the social context of my 6 years here in our Bay area poetry communities, that I have felt pressed to share?

I think that my urgency has something to do with wanting to generate local discussion and poetic activity around the physical "stuff," or material, of poems: our physical bodies and senses and how they enter into making and performing poems; the physicality--or lack thereof--of the poems themselves; the physical tools we use to make poems on and off the page; and the subject matter of poems: what is or can or might be included in them. In short, what counts as poems and what do we use to make them?

So, I'd like to propose a new nonsite curriculum around Poetic Materials as a place to generate such a discussion. If this topic resonates with you, please continue this thread, and we will see where it goes! I'm also hoping (as time and pay/day job permit)to begin posting--and inviting others to post--related materials to accompany the May 24 reading (with poets' permission, of course. Then, maybe the curriculum will continue in the wake of the reading. I'm also curious about how this curriculum might relate to or tie in with the archives and translation curricula. I suspect there could be some rich connections.

That's all for now. Let me know what you think. thanks,

wendy