autobiography
Showing 14 items.
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The Poetry Center presents Basil Bunting, reading Briggflatts, his most celebrated long poem, and, by request, his earlier long poem, "Chomei at Toyama," at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, its Van Ness Avenue location. On a rare visit to the U.S., the Poetry Center/SFMOMA reading was Bunting's only West Coast stop on a month-long tour, visiting from his home in Northumberland, in England on the Scottish border. Bunting reads from the Fulcrum Press edition of his Collected Poems (1968); the later Oxford University Press edition, which followed Fulcrum publisher Stuart Montgomery's cover design featuring a black and white Barnett Newman drawing, wouldn't appear until 1978, two years after Bunting's appearance here. Though he doesn't appear on-screen, Lewis MacAdams was director of The Poetry Center at the time of Bunting's visit and reading.
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The Poetry Center presents poets Chris Nealon, visiting the Bay Area from Washington, D.C., on a program shared with Stephanie Young, appearing from Oakland. Nealon, in addition to this reading from his poetry, delivers The Poetry Center's annual George Oppen Memorial Lecture the following evening. Both events take place at the East Bay Media Center, in downtown Berkeley. The George Oppen Memorial Lecture, with these adjacent readings, is supported by the Dorothy A. Fowler Trust.
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The Poetry Center presents novelist-writer Darius James, and Val Jeanty, Haitian electronica composer-percussionist, in performance at The Lab in San Francisco. James performs excerpts from the newly issued edition of his novel Negrophobia: An Urban Parable (New York Review of Books, 2019), and from newer works in manuscript, all accompanied by Jeanty, electronic percussion. This performance is the second of a three-evening program in The Poetry Center's In Common Writers Series, supported by a grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund.
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The Poetry Center presents Diane di Prima and Kathleen Fraser, each reading from their work, following introductions by one another, on this Summer Solstice occasion. Fraser, at the time director of The Poetry Center, introduces di Prima, noting among her bibliography the autobiographical work-in-progress Recollections of My Life As a Woman, that would be published decades later, by Viking in 2001. di Prima reads from Dinners and Nightmares (Corinth Books, 1974), from her continuing long poem, Loba (Loba: Part 1 had come out from Capra Press the prior year, in 1973; she also reads new parts), and from her ongoing work, Revolutionary Letters, parts of which had been appearing since the late 1960s, with the City Lights Press Pocket Poets edition new in 1971. In her introduction of Fraser, di Prima notes they've known each other since meeting in New York City "in the Village" among the poets. Fraser reads from her books Change of Address (Kayak Books, 1966) and What I Want (Harper & Rowe, 1974), and from a number of smaller publications, introducing and commenting on her poems and her life trajectory throughout. She concludes by reading from unpublished work-in-progress.
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The Poetry Center presents Trisha Low performing pieces from The Compleat Purge (Kenning Editions, 2013) and Elaine Kahn from Women in Public (City Lights Books/Spotlight Series, 2015), followed by discussion and questions from the audience.
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The Poetry Center presents Joanne Kyger and Australian poet Robert Adamson, reading primarily from new works: Kyger's On Time (City Lights Books, 2015) and Adamson's Net Needle (Flood Editions, 2015.)
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The Poetry Center presents Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, reading and in conversation. Maryam Ivette Parhizkar opens, reading an assortment of her poems as published at The Brooklyn Rail, OmniVerse, Gramma, and Gesture, as well as unpublished work. Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle reads extended excerpts from her forthcoming debut book SIR (Litmus Press, 2019). Their readings are followed by a conversation with the audience. This event continues is the second evening of a two-night program in The Poetry Center's In Common Writers Series, supported by a grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund.
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The Poetry Center presents Langston Hughes reading from his poetry and providing an extensive autobiographical account of his development as a poet.
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The Poetry Center presents Jackie Wang and Lily Hoang reading at The Green Arcade. This event, debuting Jackie Wang's book Carceral Capitalism, is one of many programs featured across the U.S. during March 2018 as part of the Poetry Coalition series on The Body, sponsored in part by a Ford Foundation grant to the Poetry Coalition. Lily Hoang (introduced by Jackie Wang) opens, reading from A Bestiary (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2016). She is followed by Jackie Wang (introduced by Brandon Brown) reading from Carceral Capitalism (Semiotext(e) Interventions Series, 2018).
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The Poetry Center presents Michael McClure in a featured solo reading at the San Francisco Museum of Art (subsequently, SFMOMA) at its Van Ness Avenue location. McClure devotes his reading to his yet unpublished manuscript Fleas, "a book of childhood memories spontaneously composed on the typewriter in rhyme. They were written in the first three weeks of 1969." McClure reads, for what he says is the first time before an audience, "the last quarter of the book." The poems, he suggests, can be read as "a biological investigation of the realms of memory and the patterns in which memories are holographically stored, lighting up adjacent memories and leaping as fleas leap across the linoleum floor." McClure is introduced by Stan Rice, of the Creative Writing faculty at San Francisco State University.
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The Poetry Center presents Maw Shein Win, Carrie Hunter, Melissa Eleftherion, Aja Couchois Duncan, and Trevor Calvert reading from their contributions to The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange, an online community for poets to share and collaborate through chapbooks, hosted by The Poetry Center. Their readings are followed by a conversation with the audience.
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Theodore Roethke reading from his poetry, for the Poetry Center's inaugural reading.
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The Poetry Center presents Tom Clark reading and commenting on his poetry, from various works and from manuscript, and Vincent Katz reading from Swimming Home (Nightboat Books, 2015) and his translations of The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (Princeton University Press, 2004), among other work, at The Green Arcade bookshop in San Francisco.
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The Poetry Center presents Wanda Coleman, recipient of the 2011 Poetry Center Book Award, for The World Falls Away (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). Following an introduction by Book Award judge, Brenda Coultas, Coleman reads poems from: The World Falls Away, Greatest Hits: 1966–2003 (Pudding House Publications, 2004), Ostinato Vamps (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), and Bathwater Wine (Black Sparrow Press, 1998).