April New York School news

I know I'm always reaching for Schuyler, but isn't "this change in weather in early April / just what the sugarbush needed"?

Ron Padgett's newest collection, Pink Dust, came out last month. Reviewing it in The Daily Telegraph (where it was included in 'The Best Poetry Books of 2025 so far), Tim Keane said: "Pink Dust above all challenges its reader to slow down; to see if we too might be able to take it all in, wherever and whatever that might be. When we do, the untapped marvels lurking in the mundane can instill a curious joy." Ron recently read at The Poetry Project, introduced by Anselm Berrigan, and you can view that reading here. And you can read a poem from the collection, about Robert Creeley (and Alfred Noyes!), over at LitHub.

Pierre Joris died at the end of February - a brilliant poet, translator, anthologist, scholar, and collaborator (especially with Jerome Rothenberg), he will be greatly missed. 

Jennifer Soong has two new books out this month: her critical monograph, Slips of the Mind: Poetry as Forgetting, is out with the University of Chicago Press, and her fourth collection of poems, My Earliest Person, is out with The Last Books. It's available in the US via Asterism. 

Andrei Codrescu has also been busy - his How to Live under Fascism: poems & photos, came out with Black Widow Press on March 29, and he is also posting a weekly Substack column entitled 'Keep the Sabbath with me'. He is also the subject of a creative collage documentary film by Julian Semilian, titled Fish have no Psychiatrists: a Day with Andrei Codrescu. 

Alystyre Julian's film about Anne Waldman, Outrider, premieres this month. You can read about the film, executive produced by Martin Scorsese, and watch its trailer, here: https://www.outriderfilm.com/. It's on at Anthology Film Archives April 1-3, and will appear next at the RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina; it will also be part of the Schamrock Festival in Munich and Vienna later this year. On Wednesday, April 2, there will be a party celebrating Waldman's 80th birthday after the screening at Anthology Film Archives with a party beginning at 9:30pm at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, New York).

In late March, Glasgow University hosted a two-day symposium of panels and performances to honour Jerome Rothenberg’s contributions to poetics and explore his continuing influence on contemporary anthologies. Besides an exhibit of artifacts from his life and work, the event launched his new (posthumous) anthology The Serpent and the Fire: Poetries of the Americas from Origins to the Present(2024), co-edited with Javier Taboada. Participants included John Coyle, Felipe Cussen, Philip Davenport, Nia Davies, Montenegro Fisher, Allen Fisher, Jane Goldman, Martín Gubbins, Tamara de Inés Antón, Florian Kaplick, Rebecca Kosick, Peter Manson, Nicky Melville, Peter Middleton, Maggie O’Sullivan, Jèssica Pujol Duran, Jeffrey Robinson, Rachel Robinson, Calum Rodger, Matthew Rothenberg, Will Rowe, Robert Sheppard, Zoe Skoulding, Maria Sledmere, Javier Taboada, Chris Tanasescu, Scott Thurston, Rhys Trimble, Cecilia Vicuña, Juan Carlos Vilavicencio, and Carol Watts.

David S. Wallace wrote about Joe Brainard, and Daniel Kane's Love, Joe: the Selected Letters of Joe Brainard in The New Yorker.

In late March, Louis Cabri, Paolo Javier, Robert Manery, Nicole Markotić gathered at NYU for an event exploring poetry and small-press publishing in Canada, thinking about the legacies, both known and unknowable, of independent publishing initiatives in Canada, including their relationship to poetic communities, and the relationship between form, publishing, and public discourse. Paolo Javier will also be moderating an In Conversation event with Craig Thompson and Matt Madden on April 29th, in celebration of Thompson's new book, Ginseng Roots.

Mónica de la Torre and Tonya M. Foster will be reading at The Poetry Project at the end of the month, to celebrate their new books, Pause the Document and Thingifications:: Mathematics of Chaos (Ugly Duckling Presse).

This is NYS-adjacent really, but as a huge fan of Essex Hemphill (and John Keene and Pamela Sneed), it's really exciting to see that on April 23 there will be a launch at The Poetry Project of Love is a Dangerous Word: The Selected Poems of Essex Hemphill (New Directions, edited by John Keene and Robert F. Reid-Pharr). Love Is a Dangerous Word contains selections from Hemphill’s only published full-length collection, Ceremonies, alongside rarely seen poems from magazines and chapbooks. The evening will include readings and performances by John Keene, Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Pamela Sneed, Samiya Bashir, Jafari Sinclaire Allen, and more special guests.

For any London-based Frank O'Hara and/or Edwin Denby fans, Balanchine: Three Signature Works is currently being performed at the Royal Opera House. Denby described Balanchine as the 'one man who has taught me to see and hear more than anyone else.' There's a chapter in Sam Ladkin's new book, Perfectly Disgraceful, which looks at Balanchine's 'collaborative poetics ... as it illuminates O'Hara's marvellous prosody.'

With 'branches of sunshine,'

Rona