Kelly Writers House

A few days back--Jan. 19--the newest exhibit in our art gallery was celebrated at an opening party and presentation.A few days back--Jan. 19--the newest exhibit in our art gallery was celebrated at an opening party and presentation. The show is titled "Uncommonly Selected: Rorschach Drawings by Jessica Nissen," and the opening featured a talk about Rorschach-derived poetry by Diana Sue Hamilton. As is almost always the case, if you go to our web calendar entry for this event you will see links to the video recording (streaming video) and audio recording (downloadable MP3).

Jessica Nissen splits her time between NYC, where she works as a scenic artist for the entertainment industry and Vermont, where she keeps a studio and occasionally teaches in the Art Dept. of Middlebury College. Nissen received an MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art in 1998, a BA from Middlebury College in 1990 and earned undergraduate credits from the Rhode Island School of Design and Tyler. She has been a fellow at The Corporation of Yaddo and the Chautauqua Institution. Since 1991 she has exhibited extensively and has participated both as an artist and as an organizer/curator in several large-scale interdisciplinary art events.

Emma Morgenstern gave a lunchtime talk recently at the Writers House to present her research into the survival of Judeo-Spanish language and culture in Greece. She travelled to Rhodes and Thessaloniki on a grant given her through our Heled Travel & Research Grant (made possible by my former student, Mali Heled Kinberg in memory of her mother). Audio and video recordings of the event are now available. Links to both are here.

At Kelly Writers House we are preparing to present the 79th episode of our monthly radio program, aired on WXPN-FM (xpn.org), called "Live at the Writers House." (So-named because during the first two seasons we actually went live to the air from 3805 Locust Walk in Philadelphia. Holy cow.) Here is an announcement about our newest episode, with a bit of looking back at the show's 13 years.

We at PennSound wish you a happy Thanksgiving by way of a new episode in the PennSound Podcast series. Here we feature excerpts from six poems of giving thanks. Hardly Rockwellian but we think you'll be stirred by this little grateful anthology all the same. I'm especially moved by Robert Creeley's poem here.

This is the 19th in our podcast series. For links to all the others, just go here.

Here "I" am - my 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.

"Whenever We Feel Like It" is a new poetry series. It's put on by Committee of Vigilance members Michelle Taransky and Emily Pettit. The Committee of Vigilance is a subdivision of Sleepy Lemur Quality Enterprises, which is the production division of The Meeteetzee Institute. Yeah, yeah. There have been three readings so far, the most recent quite recent: October 21. Click here for information about all three events and audio recordings divided by poet. On October 21: Sanae Lemoine, Joshua Harmon, and Andrew Zawacki.

A few weeks ago I wrote about having invited six poets each to teach a short poem to high-school student. I commented in particular about teaching the constraints of the haiku and its possible special connection to high-school kids’ understanding of poetry today — what with their sense of extreme limits (texting, Twitter’s 140 characters, etc.).

University of Pennsylvania: PENNsound, writing.upenn.edu/pennsound and Kelly Writers House webcasts. A stellar project at Penn, PENNsound is “committed to producing new audio recordings and preserving existing audio archives.” Here you can listen to readings from 1950s to today and often find great extras and links to other exciting websites.

In her 1986 book Parts of a Wedding, Alice Notley published a poem I especially admire, called "I the People." (It was republished in Grave of Light: New & Selected Poems, 1970-2005.) The text of the poem is here.

I am the host of a new podcast series called "PoemTalk." At least we think it'll be a new series. On August 2, we recorded a pilot show and now friends and colleagues are having a listen. Once we've heard their responses, we'll decide whether we will go ahead. The plan is to produce a new show every two weeks, beginning in September. In each show I introduce and play a PENNsound recording of one poem, and then I, with three guest poet-critics, discuss it, its influences and manifestations, for about 30 minutes.