Kelly Writers House Daily

democracy at 10th & A

2009-11-09T14:34:00.003-05:00

Today marks the release of episode 25 of our PoemTalk (full name: "PoemTalk at the Writers House") podcast series, co-sponsored by PennSound and the Poetry Foundation of Chicago. This episode features a discussion of Alice Notley's poem "I the People." You can find the link to this new podcast and the 24 other episodes by going to the PoemTalk site. Be sure, too, to check out Alice Notley's PennSound page and note there that you'll find recordings of Notley's fine reading at the Writers House.

featured in iTunes

2009-11-06T11:50:00.003-05:00

As of this writing (Friday morning), the Kelly Writers House is featured on iTunes - in the music store under "writers & writing." Click here and you'll be taken to a link directly to iTunes. Writers House audio in iTunes: a sampling of 50 of our programs, and the complete run of our podcast series.

conversation about crime fiction Nov 10

2009-11-03T09:38:00.003-05:00

Our annual "Bernheimer Symposium" (held in memory of Penn Comparative Lit professor Charles Bernheimer, who died tragically young) this year happens on Tues Nov 10 at 6 PM. This year the program is a conversation about crime fiction - with Lenny Cassuto and S.J. Rozan (pictured at right). Cassuto has published among other books an anthology of American crime fiction. Rozan is a New Yorker & author of 11 crime novels. Thanks to Kate Levin for making this ongoing annual event possible. Here is your link to our calendar entry - all info.

transcribing the world

2009-11-01T07:28:00.005-05:00

Kenny Goldsmith, every other year, teaches a year-long seminar which is a collaboration of the Writers House/Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) and the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art). We at KWH adore what Kenny's doing in this course. This year Kenny and the students are transcribing the world. Yes, that's what they're doing--no more or less than that. Next year Kenny will be teaching his famous "Uncreative Writing" course. If you are interested in taking it, contact Gregory Djanikian at (215) 573-CPCW.

last night's Second Life poetry session

2009-10-30T06:28:00.002-04:00

Here's our Faculty Director's avatar - Alf Fullstop - teaching modernist poetry last night to a group of folks from around the world (one from Puerto Rico, another from Hong Kong) in Second Life's virtual Kelly Writers House.

put down the cheese, Alf

2009-10-29T08:30:00.004-04:00

At left you see an avatar, Alf Fullstop, preparing to lead a seminar in the virtual Kelly Writers House in Second Life this very night - Thursday, October 29. The poem on the wall, WCW's "Between Walls," is the third of three poems Alf will be teaching. This is our first quasi-formal venture into Second Life with friends of the Writers House. SL gurus we know have built a gorgeous Writers House there, with an Arts Cafe, a living room with a green couch, an upstairs seminar room, a garden. Quite nice. The other night Alf was "in there" and saw wine and cheese on a table in the living room. He learned to "pick up" the cheese and began eating it. Two days later he was back in SL, trying to interact with another avatar, and found that he was still eating the cheese. We need to teach Alf how to put down the cheese.

fall comes to 3805 Locust

2009-10-26T18:34:00.001-04:00

Today we release the 22nd in our series of Kelly Writers House podcasts. This one features 5 excerpts from the vast archive of our programs - all having, in one way or another, to do with autumn. Autumn comes to 3805 Locust. Have a listen. The podcast features Ellen Yin (founder of Fork restaurant), Tom Devaney (from his poem "At Franklin's Grave"), former longtime KWH director Kerry Sherin Wright ("Autumn Lullaby"), Eileen D'Angelo ("Love Letter to a Moody Sea") and Ben Lerner (excerpt from "Doppler Elegies").

new Facebook page

2009-10-23T17:02:00.004-04:00

We at KWH are pleased to announce that we have a new Facebook page. Here it is. Please have a look and become a friend. You'll find announcements of upcoming events, links to audio and video clips, comments and updates from members of the KWH community, photos, of course a list of and links to our many friends: poets worldwide, students, Penn alumni, emergent writers and eminent writers, prospective students, supporters...

KWH & Inquirer join forces

2009-10-16T13:02:00.002-04:00

We're pleased to announce a new partnership between the Kelly Writers House and the Philadelphia Inquirer, a project coordinated on our side, in part, by Povich Writer-in-Residence Dick Polman. This collaboration has now produced the Penn page in "Student Union 34": college.philly.com/penn. Through this effort, young Penn journalistic writers will be regularly published in the city's premier newspaper. (Do, please, check the web address above regularly for new entries, stories, essays, and features.) Today the site features Steven Waye's article about how pop culture-infused sermons abound in Fishtown.

Jen Scappettone

2009-10-15T06:16:00.001-04:00

Our friends at PennSound were pleased a few months back to add a new author page: that of Jennifer Scappettone. Jen has been to the Writers House twice recently. Her page now includes a Segue/Bowery Poetry Club reading; both audio and video of a session she did at KWH with Lyn Hejinian, hosted by Rachel Levitsky; another session in which she read a series of her poems; and a conversation, done as a PennSound podcast.

New Zealander hung out

2009-10-13T22:28:00.003-04:00

Wystan Curnow, art critic and poet, last spring spoke at the Writers House on curating as a critical practice. The event was shown live on KWH-TV and is already available as a video recording. Wystan was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1939, and studied English and History at the University of Auckland, and took his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Yes, Penn. So his two-week visit here was actually a return to his alma mater many many years later. One afternoon during his visit he joined Al Filreis, Charles Bernstein and Bob Perelman to record a PoemTalk episode on a poem by Louis Zukofsky--which was released recently. Then everyone went downstairs for his very good talk on curating. Have a look.

ArtsEdge residency supports artists

2009-10-11T08:06:00.002-04:00

Last year was the first year of our ArtsEdge artist-in-residence program, which we're doing in collaboration with the department of fine arts in Penn's School of Design. We offer housing, workspace, and a significant rent subsidy--and, if apt, a course to teach. Greg Romero was our first ArtsEdge-er, a playwright. During his time as artist-in-residence he staged a play-in-progress at the Writers House and, at the time, the Philly Fringe Festival blog ran an entry about it.

when George Oppen turned 100

2009-10-09T16:02:00.002-04:00

Our pal Tom Devaney organized a celebration of George Oppen's 100th birthday - and the event happened at the Writers House in April '08. Soon after, we set up a special PennSound page with links to audio recordings of the presenters. Now we've released a PennSound podcast featuring a 23-minute excerpt from that event. The photo here was taken that night - George Economou, Michael Heller, Tom Devaney and Tom Mandel, listening to Ron Silliman present on Oppen.

My Third Eye Sees...

2009-10-08T10:41:00.003-04:00

Last Friday, Write-On! head coaches Rachel Shepard (C'11), Collin Schenk (C'11), and Zachary Lyons (C'12), introduced a group of Lea Elementary School 6th, 7th and 8th graders to their third-eyes. Using a writing exercise adapted from Kenneth Koch's Wishes, Lies and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry, Lea students and their Write-On! coaches collaborated to write a series of poems that discover and reveal the differences between what is seen, what is known, and what is imagined. You can read their poems here, on the Lea Elementary page. We hope you'll check the page regularly for new student poems. Write-On! is Kelly Writers House's literacy outreach program that introduces West Philadelphia students to reading and discussing literature, as well as writing and presenting their own creative writing. Write-On! is supported by The Esther T. Saxon Fund, established by Penn alumni Brian (W'90)and Jerilyn Perman (C'91).

Jerome Rothenberg today

2009-10-07T06:40:00.003-04:00

Today: Jerome Rothenberg and others will talk about romantic & postromantic poetry at 5 PM. Join us! Click on the calendar entry for this program and find out more. Come at 5 PM and stay for the reception at 6:30 (good eats) and then stay for the 7 PM poetry reading. Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over eighty books of poetry and several assemblages of traditional and avant-garde poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred (1968, Doubleday), Shaking the Pumpkin (1972, Doubleday), Revolution of the Word (1974, Seabury-Continuum Books), and Poems for the Millennium Volumes 1 and 2 with Pierre Joris (1995 and 1998, University of California Press). A Book of Witness, his twelfth book of poems from New Directions, appeared in 2002 (New Directions), and a thirteenth book, Triptych, appeared in 2007 (New Directions). A first translation into French of Technicians of the Sacred was published by Jose Corti in Paris in 2008, and a nineteenth-century prequel to Poems for the Millennium, co-edited with Jeffrey Robinson, appeared in early 2009. His second collection of literary essays, Poetics & Polemics 1980-2005, appeared at the end of 2008, and new books of poems scheduled for 2009 and 2010 include Gematria Complete, Concealments & Caprichos, and Retrievals: Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010.

the sun is not the sun

2009-10-06T08:56:00.002-04:00

Last spring, Matthew Abess, Cecilia Corrigan, Ned Eisenberg, Kim Eisler, Trisha Low, and Kaegan Sparks explored the topography of testimony to life in extremis (in particular, the Holocaust). This followed from the course on the problems of representing the Holocaust, taught every other year in the Writers House, where the issue is most discernible in discussions of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, the poems of Paul Celan, the study of survivors made by Terrence Des Pres, and the videotaped survivor testimonies housed at Yale University. That's the intellectual geneology or paths that converged, roughly speaking, and this group, led by Matt, journeyed along it quite a bit further. They made a presentation at the Writers House; now we have both audio and video recordings of the event available. The Holocaust course is being taught again in KWH's Arts Cafe. Anyone who wants to sit in on a session should call (215) 573-9749.

invisible cities - puppet show

2009-10-03T19:28:00.003-04:00

Last spring Tom Devaney's creative writing class created and performed a puppet show in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), called "New Invisible Cities." The project was inspired by Italo Calvino's dream-like masterpiece, Invisible Cities. The students and Tom worked with Beth Nixon's Ramshackle Enterprises. Now you can watch a video that will give you a good sense of the project and the show.

Nick Spitzer was here

2009-10-02T20:55:00.002-04:00

Nick Spitzer, an musical ethnographer who loves to talk about the nexus of cultures that is New Orleans, came to the Writers House back in May (Alumni Day) to tell some "stories and songs from the road." He's of course the producer and host of public radio's "American Routes." Of course we made a video of the event - also downloadable audio. Our Faculty Director Al Filreis happily introduced Nick, grateful that a few years ago he found us at the Writers House and instantly understood the experiment in creative learning community we were trying.

Fanny Howe's "2002"

2009-10-01T09:49:00.003-04:00

Back in October 2003 the Writers House hosted a weekend-long gathering called "Poet-invasion Poetics." On Friday night we went around the room (Arts Cafe at KWH) and most participants read and/or talked. We recorded this session. The next night we held a giant group reading. Among the seminar participants: Rod Smith, Mark McMorris, Ron Silliman, Michael Fried, Erica Hunt, Tracie Morris, Saskia Hamilton, Tim Carmody, Jo Park, Jessica Lowenthal, Kathy Lou Schultz.

Recently our friend Jenny Lesser went back to Fanny Howe's Friday night reading. Jenny listened to the recording and segmented the two poems. They are: "Far and Near" and the poem called "2002". Of course we've added these to PennSound's Fanny Howe page.

proudly Penn

2009-09-29T20:01:00.003-04:00

Each year Penn publishes a booklet-sized guide called Proudly Penn, and we at KWH are proud once again to be in it. Prouder still to be paired on a page with our friends at XPN 88.5 FM. (We've been partners with XPN in producing "Live at the Writers House" monthly since 1997.) Our entry features our "Writers without Borders" series--our effort to introduce local audiences to international writers in our usual intimate give-and-take setting. Our first "Writers without Borders" event takes place on October 13. Join us! Click on the image above for a larger view.

we remember Gil Ott

2009-09-28T15:47:00.002-04:00

Gil Ott died in 2004 and is sorely missed in Philly poetry scenes, and (to be specific about one of many such sites where we miss Gil) at the Writers House where Gil was fairly regularly a member of audiences for PhillyTalks, poetry readings, book celebrations for poetry-world colleagues (especially Philly poets). Original Writers House hub member and poet Kristen Gallagher edited a book of commentary and critical response to Gil's work (published by Chax Press) and in the fall of '01 we hosted a Gil Ott celebration, co-organized by then-director of KWH Kerry Sherin and also Kristen Gallagher. For about a year PennSound's Gil Ott page featured the whole recording of the 1.5-hour event and also segmented single mp3s of each reader. But today we're releasing the 17th PennSound podcast - a 23-minute excerpt of the whole event, edited by Steve McLaughlin. Here's a link to the PennSound podcast page.

the digerati came in '99

2009-09-27T08:04:00.003-04:00

At left: John Brockman with Warhol and Dylan on the day Dylan visited The Factory.

John Brockman's world in the 1960s was a humming electronic world, in which multiple films, tapes, amplifiers, kinetic sculpture, lights and live dancers or actors are combined to involve audiences in a total theater experience. His Intermedia Kinetic Experiences permitted audiences simply to sit, stand, walk or lie down and allow their senses to be Saturated by Media. His 1969 book was By the Late John Brockman.

Yes, Brockman, the sci/tech literary uber-agent, the Happenings organizer in the 1960s and in recent years the creator of "Third Culture" and a leader of the digerati (cyber-intellectuals), came to the Writers House in 1999 along with six of the digerati. John Brockman & Al Filreis co-moderated a discussion about digital culture.

The digerati we met that night were: Maris Bowe of word.com; Jason McCabe Calacanis, a Silicon Alley Reporter; Luyen Chou of Learn Technologies; Steven Johnson of feed.com; Katinka Matson of EDGE; Frank Moretti of Columbia University's Center for New Media, Technology and Learning; Stefanie Syman of feed.com; Bob Stein of Night Kitchen. At left: John Brockman in '99.

See more:

[] the KWH calendar entry for this event: LINK
[] the KWH digerati page: LINK
[] Daily Pennsylvanian article covering the event: LINK
[] Wired exec ed Kevin Kelly's essay about Third Culture: LINK
[] an account of the day Dylan visited the Factory and Brockman was there: LINK

Volume Zero: Uncovering Louis I. Kahn's Baltic Origins

2009-09-24T19:35:00.005-04:00

On Monday, October 5 at 6 pm in the Arts Cafe, Becca Kantor (C '10), granddaughter of architect Louis I. Kahn (B.Arch '24), will present on her trip to Estonia to research Kahn's early years. Funded by a grant from Kelly Writers House, Kantor explored rural farmhouses, art nouveau apartments, and a castled island as part of her research towards writing a novel. Kahn was the Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture at the School of Design from 1957 until his death in 1974 and The Richards Medical Research Laboratories on Hamilton Walk is among Kahn's most influential works. His extensive archives are a part of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania.

Kathleen Fraser video

2009-09-23T06:22:00.005-04:00

What a treat for us last night! Kathleen Fraser, the great poet who lately has been doing a lot with visual art (and the making of artbooks), was visiting us, having come all the way from the Bay Area. She gave a reading from a series of visual poetic texts. Which is one reason why we're glad we have a video record of the event, so you can see what we saw live in the Arts Cafe. Click here and watch. Fraser was introduced by our own Michelle Taransky.

we're on TV

2009-09-19T07:09:00.002-04:00

In 1999 KWH was into one of its innovations, as usual. This time it was online pre-freshmen advising. Students admitted through the early-decision process (in mid-December) who expressed an interested in KWH and in writing were assigned to our Faculty Director Al Filreis as advisees, and (although they were all over the country) the advisory group formed around a series of lively email exchanges. The local ABC TV affiliate picked up the story and ran this piece, which we've preserved in video. Click here to watch.