'If the wild light of this January day is true': January tidings from the Network

​Save the date! Our next symposium and poetry reading will take place in London on Saturday 27th May. There's more info on our website but as ever you can expect a day of poetry readings, conversation, and connection in an informal setting. Plans are still taking shape and we'll update you as and when they do, but we're not issuing a Call for Papers for this event. Everyone is welcome to attend, and there will be no registration fee.

Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson joined us in December for a discussion of their new book, All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge, which came out in late December, with the University of New Mexico Press. We talked about coterie, friendship, family, mentorship, groupings, self-construction, influence, correspondence as a form, poetry as lived experience, science/geology, thinking and space, and border crossing. Watch/listen here or on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PumGuCtphak. 

Patricia Hope Scanlan's dynamic small press Artery Editions has several gorgeous things either out or in the pipeline: Covodes by Robert Hampson (a series of 19 experimental odes documenting the pandemic, with accompanying music, 2021); Le Madame (a broadsheet with art work by Louise Bourgeois, and poems by Deborah Levy, Mine Kalyan and Scanlan, 2022); The Pente, A Book of Woe by John Wieners (a second edition of Ace of Pentacles incorporating the changes Wieners requested to be incorporated all the way back in 1966 but hadn't been done since, including the title change; with an introduction by Michael Seth Stuart and an afterward from Jeremy Reed, 2023); and Brighton Blues: A Tribute to Lee Harwood with poems by Jeremy Reed, poem by Anne Waldman, letters from Lee Harwood and John Ashbery, an essay from F.T. Prince and art from Derek Jarman., as well as an early recording of Lee Harwood reading his poems.

Tia Shearer Bassett is performing Kenneth Koch's poem-play Edward and Christine this Saturday, 2pm EST (running time approx. 80 mins, on Zoom): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/edward-christine-tickets-296927176177. Tia will also be performing on Tuesday Feb 7th and and Sunday March 5th.

Lisa Pearson from Siglio Press brings us the good news that a second printing of Bernadette Mayer's Memory is in the works and scheduled to be released next fall. Lisa's tribute to Bernadette is here: https://sigliopress.com/readings/thank-you-bernadette/.

Verve Poetry Festival returns in February (15th-19th), a wide-ranging festival of poetry that has much in common with the ethos and aesthetics of the Poetry Project and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and that features a wonderful line-up of events, poets, performers, and more, and things taking place in person and online. The full line-up is here.

There's a great review of John Yau's exciting new book, Joe Brainard: the Art of the Personal (Rizzoli, 2022), at The Brooklyn Rail. 

Two new works from Alice Notley are out in February with Fonograf: Early Works (edited by Nick Sturm) and The Speak Angel Series. Both are available for preorder.

Anne Waldman's Bard, Kinetic,  a multifaceted portrait of her life and praxis as a groundbreaking poet, is out with Coffee House Press this month.  There will be a celebration of the book on February 2nd at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, 6-9pm. She also has a book coming out in Algeria, in French and English with translation by Pierre Joris and Nicolle Peyrafitte, edited by Habib Tengour at Apic.

On January 10th, at the southeast corner of the southernmost grassy field in East River Park, just off the Houston Street entrance, Eileen Myles and Alice O'Malley held a press conference for an octogenarian London Plane Tree and survivor of Hurricane Sandy named Mathilde. Bringing together media, local politicians and educators, artists, community members, environmentalists and activists, the aim was to celebrate and protect the abundant biodiversity of East River Park, home to 120 varieties of birds, squirrels and endangered bumblebees, and offering people of all ages access to green space and the river. You can read more here.