On the morning of New Year’s Day, along the sleepy streets of the East Village in Manhattan, scarf-bundled crowds trickled into St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery to attend a 12-hour poetry reading that has been a spiritually cleansing downtown tradition since the 1970s. To its devotees, the gathering’s hypnotically lengthy programming of readings and avant-garde performances provides a dependably radical initiation into the new year.
Hosted by the Poetry Project, the nonprofit organization that has operated out of the historic church since the 1960s, the marathon serves as its biggest annual fund-raiser. About 150 writers, artists and dancers take their turns onstage until about midnight. Its performers have included William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Yoko Ono, Amiri Baraka and Patti Smith. Years ago, the poet John Giorno might have provided participants with a bowl of LSD-spiked punch; these days, young attendees head to the church directly after partying at all-night raves.
Sunlight poured through stained-glass windows as guests settled in for the long haul ahead. Beneath the church’s paint-peeling ceiling, many sat cross-legged in nooks and corners, unpacking the blankets and dog-eared paperbacks they had brought with them. A few parents wearing beanies sat in chairs with their babies in tow, and a woman walked her terrier down a crowded aisle.
Book Launch for Patricia Spears Jones’s The Beloved Community
Patricia Spears Jones works truly toward her title in poems and friendship — in her newest work, The Beloved Community, she imagines a horizon of dignity and care, and writes with clear-eyed candor of the incremental effort required. Change accrues over daily moments of effort and attention, with poems of rich, lyrical regard.
Featuring a reading from Patricia Spears Jones with music performances from Jason Kao Hwang, Janice Lowe, and Luke Stewart.
We hope you can join us for a pre-event reception at 7 pm!
This in-person event will also be livestreamed via The Poetry Project’s YouTube.
The citations, established in 1985 by Governor Mario M. Cuomo and the State Legislature to promote fiction and poetry in New York, are awarded biennially under the aegis of the New York State Writers Institute. Awardees serve for two years in their honorary positions and each receives a $10,000 honorarium.
Woodson will receive the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction and Jones will receive the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for Poetry at a ceremony hosted by University at Albany President Havidán Rodríguez to take place at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 22, 2023, at the University at Albany’s Campus Center West Auditorium.
The NYS Author and NYS Poet ceremony serves as the official kickoff event for the 6th Annual Albany Book Festival presented by the NYS Writers Institute. That event takes place from 10:30 a.m. through 4:15 p.m. Saturday, September 23, 2023, where Woodson and Jones will appear at an informal conversation at 10:30 am and take questions from the audience in the Campus Center West Auditorium.
These events are free and open to the public and will be held at UAlbany’s Uptown Campus, 1400 Washington Avenue. More information can bee found at albanybookfestival.com.
New Yorks Laureates
The awardees are chosen by panels of jurors, including students, convened by the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany.
Both laureates came originally from the American South before putting down deep and lasting roots in New York City. Jacqueline Woodson, one of the most beloved children’s authors of her generation, moved to Brooklyn from Greenville, South Carolina at the age of seven. Patricia Spears Jones, born and raised in Arkansas, came to New York in the 1970s and quickly became a key figure in the poetry community.
Join us for our Albany Book Festival kickoff event: the installation ceremony for our new NYS Author Ayad Akhtar and NYS Poet Willie Perdomo.
Akhtar will receive the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction and Perdomo will receive the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for Poetry at a special ceremony to be held 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, at the University at Albany’s Campus Center West Auditorium.
The NYS Author and NYS Poet ceremony serves as the official kickoff event for the 4th Annual Albany Book Festival hosted by the NYS Writers Institute — 10:30 a.m. through 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25.
Both events are free are open to the public and will be held at UAlbany’s Uptown Campus, 1400 Washington Avenue.
“These two outstanding writers with New York roots are worthy recipients of these prestigious honors. We celebrate their singular literary excellence and how each embodies the vitality of literary art in New York State.”
that was the motto on top of a Texas-themed bar on Fifth Avenue back in the late 70s, early 80s. There was a giant Armadillo on the roof. sometimes I think we are in the too much is not enough era for real. Too much lying, not enough truth telling Too much male preening not enough acknowledgement of women–mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, lovers, friends. Not enough.
But then again there can ever be too much fun and not enough laughter. So on my birthday, I posted a silly picture of me at end of my first full week in Roanoke, Virginia, far from Brooklyn, even farther from my Delta based home town. It’s very green here. The highways are very wide. There are creeks and creeks flood. Birds are making noise. Spring comes a little earlier in the South–even so there has been too much rain and not enough infrastructure to handle climate changing. There are bills in the Assembly to remove RACIST LAWS that have been on Virginia’s books since 1913, but many Republicans refuse to repeal hem –like it would take an hour. There are people fighting to keep mountains mountains and rivers unpolluted, but greed is more than enough to fight for short term gain forgetting the long term damage. The lies are killing us. Greed is killing us. I for one am not interested in this grabbing of every resource for the profit of a few. But too many people are like that armadillo on top of a bar: armored, exposed and frankly too scared to listen to their own truth.
It’s my birthday and I want us to grow our moral selves–demand truthtelling; mitigate greed; protect mountains, rivers, streams, land; proffer JUSTICE for all; sing beautiful songs; dance wonderful dances; watch ourselves flourish instead of just survive. I guess this is a kind of prayer. But hope is always a kind of prayer.
My apartment is a swirl of piles: clothes, toiletries, documents—the stuff you need when you take a big trip. And I am about to take a big trip, to Virginia for 4 months. I have been appointed the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University. Dara Weir, whom I met at Hollins when I was a visiting poet; Natasha Tretheway, whose father taught there and other poetic luminaries are past appointees. This is a big deal and it comes on top of many expected and unexpected professional achievements since 2014-15. I am getting used to being a 4 decades overnight success.
Of course, these opportunities do not come helter-skelter. I’ve been published as a poet since my early 20s and have worked to become the best poet I can be and yes I am still growing as a poet and thinker and activist, and as I have grown, the opportunities have come. I am glad I stayed the course.
And that is is something I hope that many of us do as we are daily assaulted with lies particularly from the political right –you know the people who create Middle East Peace Plans that don’t exactly include all of the people who would have to make it work; the people who are now making legal immigration more difficult; the people who claim they can’t bake a cake for same sex couples because it’s against their religion (there’s no such prohibition in the Bible, there’s no Cake commandant. And everyone is tired because the briber in chief constantly tweets stupid, mean and occasionally important stuff. It really is hard to live in a morally corrosive time and have like a desire for truth, beauty and justice. But hey, think of it as being against the mainstream which is corrupt. The Right is running all but the House of Representatives (thank you Nancy Pelosi) and a few major institutions that think liberal and democracy are good things. So we poets and artists have a very important role to play outside that mainstream. And we ought to play it loud and louder.
Over the past two weeks, I went to 2 memorials (there could have been 3, but I could only do 2)-Jan. 19 for Kwame Shaw, whom I may have met in passing while hanging out in the experiemental jazz world of the 80s–I know his adopted daughter Klare and so I went for her and her mother, his ex-wife. The event at St. Mark’s Church was all about music and remembrances. Henry Threadgill, Amina Myers and during the repast, David Murray made us all understand why for Shaw, Jazz was a religion. Then on January 26, what seemed like the entire downtown art world came out for John Giorno’s Memorial. An elegant and beautifully staged event from the rose petals on the sanctuary stage to the perfect video loop and the musical offerings by Meredith Monk, Michael Stipe, Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye. Linda Yablonsky, Penny Arcade, Lynne Tillman, Bob Holman were a few of the writers who read from Giorno’s memoirs. The Black activist Jazz freak and the gay Buddhist poet had this in common: a powerful desire to make a difference in the world and the energy and ideas to make that difference happen. Shaw brought the powerful music of the AACM and other Black creative musicians to a larger audience as a way to build up the foundation of Black intellectual acuity. Giorno worked tirelessly to bring gay eroticism into the mainstream, to allow poetry to examine his sexuality and explorations. Both were activists, serious activists–Shaw organized for SNCC, open doors for Blacks in the media, created JazzTracks and Giorno started a fund in support of the first victims of HIVAIDs–he literally saved lives or allowed those dying a measure of dignity. He was a serious practioner of Buddhism. Both men left behind unlikely and loving partners. The memorial I could not make it to was Steve Dalachinsky who like his best friend and frequent nemesis Steve Cannon came to symbolized bohemian New York. and from what a year turned into a huge carnival of poetry, anecdote, music and cheer. These men all were bohemians in NYC. A New York that is quickly slipping away under the huge condos and corporate logos of these corrosive times. These men all lived LOUD lives and well we need to start matching that largeness with our own. June Jordan would so agree with me.
Sanctuary, St. Mark’s Church, Giorno Memorial
So I will take my NYC energy South and do my best to do good work and maybe just maybe bring some ideas and provocations to bear in and out of the classroom. Because when poets stop telling the truth, we all suffer. I am a poet and I don’t like suffering.
Are any of you looking for a boost to your writing career? Do you need some sound, serious criticism, THE CUTTHROAT MENTORSHIP PROGAM is an alternative to writing conferences and writing programs. We have a great faculty in all genres. And, we are registering now for mentorships through the fall. Call 970-903-7914 to register. SPACE IS LIMITED.