Public Access Poetry

Second Set of Recordings

Even if you were watching the innovation called cable TV in 1977 and 1978, what are the chances that you saw a show titled Public Access Poetry? Produced by Poetry Project stalwarts Greg Masters, Gary Lenhart, David Herz, Didi Susan Dubelyew, Daniel Krakauer, Bob Rosenthal and Rochelle Kraut, PAP programs featured half-hour readings by a wide range of poets and performers who could roughly be categorized as “downtown,” more often than not linked in one way or another with the Poetry Project. The cable TV series lasted two seasons (one live, the other recorded for later airing) and was produced with little-to-no broadcasting experience by the PAP personnel.

Forty-six fragile open-reel videotapes of these shows were preserved and, in 2009, were donated to the Poetry Project by the PAP team. A grant and subsequent anonymous support supported the preservation and digitization of 31 of the original tapes.

In April 2011, The Poetry Project, in collaboration with Anthology Film Archives, presented a two-program screening series at Anthology – one featured highlights from various episodes of Public Access Poetry and another showed three full episodes.

The Poetry Project, dedicated to making the Public Access Poetry archive available to the public, as envisioned by its producers more than 30 years ago, is happy to be collaborating with PennSound to accomplish this.

Funding to preserve Public Access Poetry was made possible through a Consulting Fund re-grant from the New York State Literary Presenters Technical Assistance Program (LitTAP). LitTAP is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), a State agency, and administered through Just Buffalo Literary Center. Additional funding was made possible through the generosity of two anonymous donors. All videos transferred by The Standby Program at MercerMedia with consulting support from Anthology Film Archives.

This is the second set of recordings. The first set can be found here.

May 26, 1977

Steve and Gloria Tropp

June 23, 1977

Lenny Neufeld, Kill Krosen, and Peter Gordon

July 28, 1977

Neil Hackman and Janet Hamill

August 11, 1977

Steve Hamilton and Michael Lally

September 15, 1977

Ed Friedman and Robert Kushner

September 29, 1977

Lenny Goldstein and Eileen Myles

December 29, 1977

Charles Bernstein

Hannah Weiner

January 29, 1978

Brian Breger and Chuck Wachtel

February 9, 1978

Tom Johnson

February 14, 1978

Lenny Goldstein, Tom Savage, Tony Towle, Bob Rosenthal, Greg Masters, David Herz, Gary Lenhart, and Rochelle Kraut

March 21, 1978

Jeffrey Cyphers Wright and Bob Rosenthal

May 8, 1978

Bob Heman and Mike Sappol

July 27, 1978

Rochelle Kraut, Barbara Barg, Jim Brodey, Bob Holman, Daniel Krakauer, Steve Levine, Greg Masters, Alice Notley, Simon Pettet, Michael Scholnick, Jeff Wright, and Gary Lenhart

Date Unknown

David Herz and Rebecca Klinger

These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the authors. © 2011 The Respective Authors. Used with the permission of The Poetry Project and the Respective Authors. Distributed by PennSound.