Virtual Poetry Project (ISSN 1947-9409)

Virtual Poetry Project

  1. The VPP is the Poetry Project at the New Media Lab. It is a journal dedicated to showcase the use of new media for poetry creation. It is virtual because a hard-copy of this journal cannot be obtained, since it runs in the virtual space provided by an Apache server, and its content is made of bits and pieces of code. Digital formats are the targeted media of these creations.

  2. The VPP is also a demonstration of what can be accomplished using open source tools. The multimedia framework used for the development of this project is provided by the UbuntuStudio Linux distro. The journal uses the Open Journal System, and is hosted in a Linux server located at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

  3. This journal will present a series of dossiers dedicated to particular works, including critical approaches that will offer tools to understand the relationship established between poetic creation and new media. Marshall McLuhan’s proposal stating that “the medium is the message” has been push forward by poets who researched the different media that could serve as material support for poetic expression. Changes in technology and media have affected poetic expression throughout history. The experiments undertaken by Brazilian Concretistas (such as Haroldo and Augusto de Campos) are good examples of how this idea developed: they emphasized the visual, plastic aspect of the written word. Today, with the diversification and availability of digital technologies, poets are making use of the possibilities they offer.

  4. The VPP is a space available to connect artists and scholars around the world through web 2.0 technologies, building a web of resources and a network of people interested in these new forms of experimental poetry. The Open Journal System (the software used for this publication) provides tools for the building of an online community of people committed to research the field of poetic expression.

Members of the Poetics Group are invited to register and submit materials for publication.  You can register here:
http://nml.cuny.edu/poetryproject/vpp/index.php/vpp/user/register
The first issue is already online, it can be seen at the following address:
http://nml.cuny.edu/poetryproject/vpp/index.php/vpp/issue/current

EILEEN MYLES: The Importance of Being Iceland

Eileen Myles, author of more than 20 volumes of poetry, fiction, articles, plays and libretti, gives a reading/talk on her new book The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. She will be joined by writers and GC doctoral candidates Corey Frost and Erica Kaufman. Corey Frost is the author of My Own Devices, a collection of travel stories, and Erica Kaufman is the author of Censory Impulse.

Friday October 2nd, 2009 6:30 pm, Room TBA
Event followed by informal reception.  Cosponsored by The Center for Humanities

And so we meet again.

The GC Poetics Group had an open meeting tonight, 9/11, at the Graduate Center, the first of the fall semester. There were a dozen members in attendance, a bottle of wine and some crackers were dispatched, and a long list of exciting upcoming events was discussed.

It was agreed, as well, that this blog space should be opened up to the group membership in general for announcements, suggestions, musings, debates, or even poetry. If you have something you want to add, you can do so yourself – just write to us (gcpoetics@gmail.com) and we’ll set you up with a blog user account.

Boog City Small Press Book Fair

This Saturday and Sunday: two days of books and readings from New York’s small press scene, at the 3rd annual Boog City Festival’s Small Press Fair. A number of current and former Grad Center writers will take part, including Ammiel Alcalay, Karen Weiser, Erica Kaufman, Tim Peterson, and Corey Frost.

The schedule is at http://welcometoboogcity.com/bc59.pdf.

September 12th and 13th, 2009, 12-8:30PM at Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Ave. in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Advancing Feminist Poetics and Activism: A Gathering

September 24th-25th
Belladonna* celebrates ten years of publishing and supporting the feminist avant-garde with a two-day conference on feminist poetics and activism. The conference launches on Thursday, September 24, with panels focusing on radical language processes and political thought, culminating in keynote performances by Kathleen Fraser, Erica Hunt, and Eileen Myles. On Friday, September 25, we will continue the conversation with a broad spectrum of panels focusing on a variety of topics including: the body as discourse, ecopoetics, multilingualism, exile and language, and writing from marginalized positions. The conference will conclude with a performance/collaboration between Carla Harryman, Catriona Strang & Christine Stewart, Sally Silvers, Lila Zemborain & Cecilia Torino. Other panelists and presenters include: Caroline Bergvall, Dodie Bellamy, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Zhang Er, Jeanne Heuving, Ann Lauterbach, Joan Retallack, Anne Waldman, Renaldo Wilson, and many others.
Onsite registration required. See http://belladonnaconference.blogspot.com for a complete schedule and registration information, or contact belladonnaseries@gmail.com.
The GC Poetics Group is proud to co-sponsor this event with Belladonna and with Center for the Study of Women and Society, the Ph. D. Program in English, and the Center for Humanities.

Image Music Text: May 15th

It’s our semiannual student and faculty reading, it’s a chance to see and hear what your colleagues are writing and thinking, it’s the last Poetics Group event of the academic year, and it’s the Apollonian counter-balance to the Dionysian revels afterwards. And it’s happening in the English Department lounge (4406) on May 15th, from 5 pm sharp to 6 pm.

This year, we will hear short readings from current students David Letzler, Ben Miller, Reagan Lothes, Claudia Pisano, Karinne Keithley, and Matt Lau; recent graduates Nick Powers, Andy Fitch (collaborating with Jon Cotner), and Ramsey Scott; as well as GC faculty Mario DiGangi and Ammiel Alcalay.

Poems for the Millennium

April 3rd

JEROME ROTHENBERG and JEFFREY ROBINSON, with MARY ANN CAWS, MAUREEN McLANE, and RICHARD SIEBURTH

We are very excited to announce that the editors of Poems for the Millennium Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic & Postromantic Poetry will be with us to read from and discuss their new anthology. Like its two twentieth-century predecessors, Poems for the Millennium, volumes 1 and 2, this gathering sets forth a globally decentered approach to the poetry of the preceding century from a radically experimental and visionary perspective.  The range of volume three and its skewing of the traditional canon illuminate the process by which romantics and post-romantics challenged nineteenth-century orthodoxies and propelled poetry to the experiments of a later modernism and avant-gardism.  Joining Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson in the open discussion that follows the reading are three distinguished scholars and translators, Mary Ann Caws, Maureen McLane, and Richard Sieburth.

“Rothenberg and Robinson have dedicated this project to an intensification and expansion of the vital and vivacious contexts of the ongoing project of human thought. They present us not with the fixity of a canon but with the unfixity of our world.” — Lyn Hejinian

Friday, April 3, 2:00 pm, in Room 9207.

Lisa Robertson and Sina Queyras

On March 20th, we are proud to have a visit from two acclaimed Canadian poets who have both done remarkable things with the lyric essay form. Coach House Books, Canada’s preeminent avant-garde small press, has recently published Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip by Lisa Robertson and Expressway by Sina Queyras. The authors will read from their work and participate in a discussion.

Friday, March 20, 6:00 pm, in Room 9204. CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York.

SHOWCASE SHOWDOWN

Don’t forget! Our second annual showcase of new books by Grad Center students is Thursday. It will feature Andy Fitch, author of Sixty Morning Walks; Erica Kaufman, author of Censory Impulse; Anna Moschovakis, author of I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone; and Simone White, author of Dolly. The authors will read from their books and interview each other.

Thursday, Feb. 26, 6:30 pm, in Room 4406 (English Department Lounge).