Material Poetics: Book Art & Printed Matter - A digital recording of this reading and symposium featuring the world of Johanna Drucker and Charles Alexander, co-sponsored by University of the Arts. See the Writers House calendar entry for more about this event. Listen: the whole program 1:02:30 (RealVideo) Charles Alexander, "Near or Random Acts" (0:04:55) (MP3)

Johanna Drucker is a printer and a scholar whose scholarship centers on visual representations of language and the history of experimental poetry, the alphabet, and artists' books. She is the author of The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination (Thames and Hudson, 1995); The Century of Artists' Books (Granary Books, 1995); and The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923 (University of Chicago Press, 1994). She is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Charles Alexander's books of poetry include Hopeful Buildings (Chax Press, Tucson, 1990) and arc of light / dark matter (Segue Books, New York, 1992), Pushing Water: parts one through six (Standing Stones Press, Morris, MN, 1998), and Pushing Water: part seven (Chax Press, Tucson. 1998), and Four Ninety Eight to Seven (Meow Press, San Diego, 1998). He edited Talking the Boundless Book: Art, Language, & the Book Arts (Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 1996). He is the founder and director of Chax Press in Tucson, Arizona. During this event, Charles Alexander read from a poem then in progress, "Near or Random Acts." In 2004 the poem is being published as a book by Singing Horse Press (2004), available from Small Press Distribution. This event was co-sponsored by the University of the Arts, Singing Horse Press, and the Kelly Writers House. Writers House Webcast Archive