Gary Lenhart on 'Public Access Poetry'
Note: Public Access Poetry was broadcast on Manhattan Cable TV from 1977 to 1978. The show was independently produced by a group of poets associated with the St. Mark’s Poetry Project — a team consisting of Greg Masters, Gary Lenhart, David Herz, Daniel Krakauer, Bob Rosenthal, Rochelle Kraut, and Didi Susan Dubelyew.
Samba-poesia
Poetry in the streets
In December, I spent a vibrant night at the Cooperifa spoken word salon on the South Side periphery of São Paulo. The open-mic sessions take place every Wednesday at the bar of Zé Batidão, a neighborhood gathering spot in Jardim Guarujá, where up to 300 people of all ages converge weekly to listen to and perform poems. Over the last eleven years, Cooperifa (the name is a compound of cooperativa and periferia) has become well-known in São Paulo and throughout Brazil for uniting and strengthening, through poetry, a community that is marginalized in both social and geographic senses. Sérgio Vaz, a poet and founder of Cooperifa, is widely recognized as a community leader; in 2009, Época magazine named him one of the hundred most influential people in Brazil. Indeed, Cooperifa spoken word is something of a popular movement that has spread beyond São Paulo.