May Network News

This has been a month of more literary losses, of Jerome Rothenberg and Helen Vendler and David Shapiro and Paul Auster (whose introduction to Joe Brainard's Collected Writings gave rise to Jonathan Lethem's 'I Remember'-structured tribute to Auster in the Guardian). Each, for many reasons, will be missed and treasured.

On Saturday 18th May we will be celebrating Joe Brainard's life and legacy, at the Flow Chart Foundation's annual Gathering. I Remember Joe: A Gathering will feature readings, talks, participatory poem-making, and more, with confirmed presenters including Lucy Sante, Matt Wolf, John Yau, Betsy Porritt, Jeffrey Lependorf, Ann Lauterbach, Tyhe Cooper, and Paolo Javier. Daniel Kane can't make it, but we're looking forward to the publication, in October, of Love, Joe: The Selected Letters of Joe Brainard by Columbia University Press, which Daniel has edited.

In late April I spent a week as a visiting professor at the University of Wroclaw in Poland, at the invitation of Brainard scholar Wojciech Drag. During my time there I was excited to learn about the various translations and Polish versions of Brainard's I Remember, including 

• I remember, translated by Krzysztof Zabłocki (Lokator, 2014): https://lokatormedia.pl/i-remember-joe-brainard (The translator retained the original title.)
• Wrocław. Pamiętam, że [Wrocław: I remember that...], by multiple authors (Fundacja na Rzecz Kultury i Edukacji im. T. Karpowicza, 2015): http://dolnoslaskosc.pl/pamietam-wroclaw/ (A collaborative project with contributions from ca. 250 residents of Wrocław, cataloguing memories of the city from the post-war period to the present day.)
• Szczecin, Pamiętam, że [Wrocław: I remember that...], by multiple authors (crowdfunded project, 2016): https://www.facebook.com/szczecinpamietamze/ (An analogous collaborative project devoted to the city of Szczecin. The second volume is about to be published.)
• Pamiętam, by Piotr Stankiewicz (Relacja, 2021): https://relacja.net/product-pol-859-Pamietam-Piotr-Stankiewicz.html (The Polish title is the Polish word for "I remember". Most of the book is concerned with growing up in Poland in the 80s and early 90s. At the back of the book, it says, "The content is mine, although it is not really mine - it is ours. It belongs to all of us, born in Poland in the 1980s." The author was born in 1983.)

Talking to scholar Joanna Orska, who is writing a book about the influence of Polish poet-translators from the "Literatura na Świecie" circle, I also learned about the rich interest in Poland in translating the poetry of the New York School more widely. This includes three editions of an anthology prepared by Piotr Sommer with a wide choice of American poets in it (Ashbery, O'Hara, Schuyler, Koch - no Guest); individual books of poems by O'Hara, Ashbery (Three Poems as the individual publication, translated by Andrzej Sosnowski), Schuyler, and Padgett (not so much of the second and third wave generally, and no women), and "Nest of Ninnies" (translated by Sosnowski and Pióro) and "One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays" (by Sommer).

In other news, New York School-affiliated/adjacent poets Ann Lauterbach (Door), Ben Lerner (The Lights), and Cole Swenson (And And And) are among the longlisted poets for the 2024 Griffin Prize.

On Wednesday 8th May Eileen Myles and Emily Johnson are reading at The Poetry Project, followed by Joyelle McSweeney and Eleni Sikelianos on Wednesday 15th May. Peter Gizzi and John Yau are reading there too on Wednesday 29th May. McSweeney also wrote about Alice Notley for Paris Review.

On May 16th, Shira Dentz will lead the Flow Chart Foundation's next Close Reading in a Virtual Space event, in a read-through and discussion of a "[A straight rain is rare...]" by Lyn Hejinian.

On May 22nd, 4.30pm, at Keble College Oxford, Poetry at Keble's Adam Phillips Seminar will focus on the work of Peter Gizzi.