[Wgcp-whc] Poetics Group

[Richard Deming]

Dear All,

On behalf of Jean-Jacques Poucel, Nancy Kul, and myself--welcome  
everyone to a new semester, a new academic year, and a new season of  
the Beincke Library/Whitney Humanities Center Working Group in  
Contemporary Poetics, a group dedicated to discussing poetics and  
poetries in the international avant-garde, experimental, or modernist  
traditions and modes.

Here's a quick glance at this semester's sessions and visitors. This  
semester we will be joined by poets Majorie Welish and Peter Gizzi to  
discuss their work.  In the spring we have confirmation that Lyn  
Heijinian will join us.


Here is the schedule for this term's sessions.

Sept 18--1st session, reading the work of Marjorie Welish.
Oct 9--visit from Marjorie Welish.
Oct 23--discuss work of Peter Gizzi
Nov 6--Visit from Peter Gizzi
Dec 11--TBD.

The sessions are on Fridays from 3-5 in Rm 116 of the Whitney  
Humanities Center.  All interested parties are welcome to join us.

As you'll note, our first pair of sessions is devoted to Marjorie  
Welish.  Welish is an accomplished painter, art critic and poet.  It  
is difficult to find someone so invested and successful at  
interdisciplinary work.

Here is her official bio:


Marjorie Welish is an artist/critic whose practice encompasses both  
poetry and painting. Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish  
(Slought, 2003) consists of papers given at a conference on her  
writing and art at the University of Pennsylvania.

A Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellow in 2007, she taught seminars in  
art criticism at the University of Frankfurt, where she also worked to  
complete Oaths? Questions?, done in collaboration with James Siena.  
Other art grants and fellowships awarded her: Adolph and Esther  
Gottlieb Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Fifth Floor  
Foundation, International Studio Program, Pollock-Krasner Foundation,  
and Trust for Mutual Understanding. Marjorie Welish lives in New York  
City where she regularly teaches at Columbia University and Pratt  
Institute. Her paintings are represented by Bjorn Ressle Fine Art in  
New York and are in the following public collections: Collection  
Werner Kramarsky, New York; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New  
York; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; New York Public Library, New  
York; Rutgers (University) Archive for Printmaking Studios, New  
Brunswick, NJ; Smith College, Northampton, MA. Her book of art  
criticism is Signifying Art: Essays on Art after 1960 (Cambridge  
University Press, 1999).

Isle of the Signatories (2008) is her most recent book of poems;  
others are Word Group (2004), and The Annotated 'Here' and Selected  
Poems (2000), this last a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize from  
the Academy of American Poets. All are published by Coffee House  
Press. Welish has received poetry grants and fellowships from the  
Djerassi Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and  
New York Foundation for the Arts. She was the Judith E. Wilson  
Visiting Fellow in Poetry at Cambridge University in 2005.


This link leads to files of Welish reading at UPenn and elsewhere:
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/linking-page/Welish.html

Here's a link to some of Welish's most recent pieces of art criticism.
http://www.observer.com/2009/style/whatsits-and-thingamabobs


Links to some images of her paintings are here:
http://slought.org/images/2002.Welish/



In a day or two we will let you know that the reading packets of her  
poems will be ready to be picked up (I'll let everyone know where and  
when).  This should prove to be a terrific semester, so please do  
encourage anyone who might be interested to join us or at least get on  
out mailing list.


Onward!
Richard Deming, Co-Coordinator