Jaime Groetsema and Amanda Rybin Koob

Interlude: Rereading the beginning

Featuring Anne Waldman

Black and white image of a woman and man holding a large quilt. — Ethel Sampson’s historical quilt from 1937.

Are archives necessarily institutional? Is an archive simply a collection of things representing something? Does it matter if the collection of things is metaphorical, commercial, or virtual? Must the materials of the archive represent an event and must they include a nod to the longevity of narrative and the pursuit of preservation? Is an archive still an archive if it is inaccessible? (I’ve written more specifically about archives and language over at Reconfigurations.)

Jaime Groetsema: Whenever I think about archives or the material culture that could possibly constitute them, I try to define what an archive is.

'Here I am out in the woods …'

Alternative communities and writing, part 1

Jaime Groetsema and Amanda Rybin Koob

Collage of text and image. Text includes printed biographies of faculty. — Collage of program material for Summer Writing Program, courtesy of Naropa University. Photograph © Jaime Groetsema.

The Summer Writing Program came out of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (JKS) at Naropa University. JKS was officially established in 1974 along with what has been called the Visiting Poetic Academy, the Summer Institute, amongst other conventions, and now the Summer Writing Program (SWP).

Naropa Archive Recording Title: Alternative Communities and Writing Date of Recording: June 9, 2003 &nbs

COMMUNITY PRAXIS IN NAROPA AUDIO ARCHIVES is written collaboratively by Jaime Groetsema and Amanda Rybin Koob, two librarians who have worked with the archival collections at Naropa University. We use the Naropa University Archives as a framework to ask questions about what a multigenerational community writing practice can be.

By examining Naropa’s archival audio recordings we will highlight moments and figures from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (JKS) Summer Writing Program (SWP), and specifically those that explore ideas of community praxis, poetics, and archives through lineages incubated at Naropa.

This is us thinking through these histories and philosophies as well as our own current experiences and practice as librarians. We will occasionally invite other Naropa affiliates, including presenters from these recordings, to think with us.

JAIME GROETSEMA is a bibliothecary, a freelance researcher, paleographer, and editor. Jaime’s work has recently appeared in Full Stop Quarterly, Reconfigurations, Hypnerotozinia Polyphony, the Center for Book Arts, and others. Jaime is the Technical Services, Archives, and Special Collections Manager at Naropa University and is the Reviews Editor for Newfound Journal.

AMANDA RYBIN KOOB (she/her) is a writer and librarian living in Colorado. Her research interests include antiracist praxis in libraries and library support for creative practitioners. She is coeditor of The Index, a quarterly letterpress anthology, and former Director of Library and Archives at Naropa University.

Jacket2 Commentaries feature invited posts by poets and scholars who take a close, serial look at poetry scenes, archives, poetic concerns, or theoretical clusters. Commentaries, although curated, are not edited by Jacket2 staff. We welcome your comments. Send queries and notes to Jacket editors here.