audio archives

Archival poetics at Naropa, part 2

Baraka at the American Poetry Archives

People surround Amiri Baraka who speaks at a table in front of an open window.
Unattributed photo from the Naropa Archives. Photographed in the archive by Jaime Groetsema.

Steve Dickison, writer, teacher, and Director of the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State, manages a large collection of audio recordings dating back to 1954. He begins his contribution to the 2012 Naropa Summer Writing Program panel “Archival Poetics and the War on Memory” by discussing the difficulty of cataloging recordings so listeners don’t have to just “wade in unknowingly.” 

Just in case it could last

Archival poetics at Naropa

Columns of copymaster cassette tapes from the Naropa Archives in a drawer
Copymaster cassette tapes in the Naropa audio archives, photographed by Amanda Rybin Koob.

It would be a worthy metaproject to attempt to trace instances of this concept of “archives” in the JKS SWP audio and video archive — patterns, evolutions, and contradictions — but here, we look just briefly at one potent recording, the 2012 JKS SWP opening panel “Archival Poetics and the War on Memory” (this panel takes its name from Steven Taylor’s June 2007 essay “Remember the Future: Archival Poetics and the War on Memory” published in Beats at Naropa (Coffee House Press, 2009).

Recording (Naropa’s archive): Archival Poetics and the War on Memory
Date: June 11, 2012
Featured panelists: Anne Waldman, Stacy Szymaszek, E. Tracy Grinnell, Steve Dickison, Eleni Sikelianos, and Steven Taylor

Syndicate content