'the big green today is not seasonal' (Tom Clark, 'January second')

We're starting the year with some exciting news. When Yasmine and I founded the Network for New York School Studies, our aim was always to run it for a while, and then to hand it over to others to run, the idea being that it moves from hands to hands, friends to friends, taking on new shapes whilst remaining true to the collaborative, non-hierarchical, inclusive, informal, interdisciplinary, and international ethos underpinning it. Babies, bereavement, and a pandemic meant that this has taken a little longer than originally planned, but we are really delighted to announce our handover of the Network to a so-called second generation of co-directors, Nick Sturm and Rosa Campbell. Nick and Rosa will be known to many of you already, and we are thrilled to be leaving the Network in their hands. I will continue to send this monthly newsletter, so do keep reaching out to me if you have news you would like to share, but get in touch with Nick and Rosa if you have ideas for events, funding, or directions the Network might take from here. In the meantime here's a message from them: 

As the “second generation” of Network directors, we’re honoured to take up the mantle, and look forward to extending Rona and Yasmine’s work fostering an open, inclusive, and international space for critical-creative approaches to the New York School. With Rosa and Nick collaborating between Edinburgh, Scotland, and Atlanta, Georgia, respectively, the Network will continue to offer a robust and exciting series of online conversations and events in 2025 with the goal of hosting our next in-person symposium in late 2025/early 2026. The last lines of Alice Notley’s poem “How Spring Comes” come to mind as we adopt our new role: “Not saints but always pupils / pupils dilated fully black in full achievement of / gut-feeling. Joy.” Always pupils, guts and joy will be our guiding principles for the work we aim to do together in the years to come.

In other 'handover news', Jeffrey Lependorf, who has led The Flow Chart Foundation for the past six years, will be moving on to become Executive Director of another organization (stay tuned for an official announcement about that). A search is under way to hire an Interim Executive Director—details for those who might be interested in applying for the post can be found here. Jeffrey will remain at Flow Chart during the search process.

Bob Rosenthal and Ed Friedman are hosting another seven-evening reading series of New York Poets at the Bowery Poetry Club starting January 14th and featuring a whole heap of brilliant readers, including Andrei Codrescu, Anselm Berrigan, Donna Dennis, Tony Towle, Simon Pettet, Lee Ann Brown, Johnny Stanton, Marcella Durand, John Yau, Eddie Berrigan, Mitch Highfill, and Edwin Torres, among others. Details are on the attached flyer (photo by Rudy Burckhardt; design by Marc Nasdor).

On Saturday 4th January, 4-6pm, Poets House are holding a memorial tribute to David Shapiro. In person and on Zoom, longtime friends and fellow artists will pay tribute to David's life and work, including Elaine Equi, Mohammed Fairouz, Kate Farrell, Joanna Fuhrman, Jim Jarmusch, Rodger Kamenetz, Phil Kline, Phillip Lopate, Charles North, Ron Padgett, Daryl Pinckney, Lucy Sante, Tony Towle, James Venit, and John Yau. The event also features his new collection of prose, You Are The You, edited by Kate Farrell and out with MadHat Press. Details here.

On Sunday, January 26, at 2 pm ET, Karen Koch will lead the discussion of Kenneth Koch's 1994 collection, One Train, for the Kenneth Koch Book Club. Please save the dates (and start reading)! Contact [email protected] if you'd like to learn more about the Book Club.

The Flow Chart Foundation’s next Gathering day of presentations and performances will celebrate the Kenneth Koch Centennial. It will take place at their Flow Chart Space in Hudson, NY on Saturday, May 17th. Mark your calendars if you might be able to be in the area!

Wojciech Drąg has written an article based on a paper he presented at the online NYSS conference in September 2022; it discusses Calais, Vermont and its role in Brainard's personal and professional life. It's entitled '“Hurry-hurry to Vermont!”: Joe Brainard’s Rural Refuge', and is published by Polish journal Er(r)go. Theory–Literature–Culture: https://journals.us.edu.pl/index.php/ERRGO/article/view/16301/13913. 

Such a Thing as New York School: Print Culture, Publishing Communities, and American Poetry, by Nick Sturm, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press (date TBC but we will of course keep you posted). Such a Thing as New York School provides an account of how publishing practices give material forms to American literary communities and the group labels that describe them. Analyzing the emergence and transformation of the New York School as a print culture, this new literary history produces a dynamic portrait of the New York School as a form of literary production made and remade through an unexamined range of mediums, sites, and institutions.

If you weren't able to make the Ed Bowes retrospective in December, you can view several of his films online at edbowes.com. 

In the winter issue of The Yale Review, Megan Craig wrote about owning a blue denim jacket that once belonged to Willem de Kooning.

Daniel Felsenthal wrote about Joe Brainard's letters (Love, Joe, ed. Daniel Kane) in The Baffler.