We wrap up this week by taking a look back at
Hanuman Presents!, a filmic tribute to Raymond Foye and Francesco Clemente's influential press of the same name, directed and produced by Vivien Bittencourt and
Vincent Katz. The performances that form the heart of this film took place at the St. Mark's Poetry Project that took place on May 18, 1989.
Introduced by Foye, the film was edited by by David Dawkins and Henry Hills, and features an impressive line-up of poets spanning two generations — Gregory Corso, Elaine Equi, Bob Flanagan, Amy Gerstler, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Hell, Herbert Huncke, Katz, Taylor Mead, Cookie Mueller, Eileen Myles, Rene Ricard, David Trinidad, John Wieners — reading from their work. As Foye notes in his opening comments, all of Hanuman's living authors are included in the event. While the poets and the poems are wonderful enough on their own, the performances are cleverly accompanied by abstract images from the films of Rudy Burckhardt.
Running just shy of forty-three minutes, Bittencourt and Katz's film is both a stunning time capsule and testimony to the power of Foye and Clemente's innovative press. You can start watching by clicking here. Be sure you don't miss Bittencourt and Katz's tribute to Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, filmed at the Knitting Factory in 1988, which is also available on the same page.
Today we're highlighting a recent addition to the author page of poet and
Jacket2 guest editor emerita
Divya Victor: a series of home recordings made on March 9th of this year of a number of poems from her latest book,
Curb (Nightboat Books, 2021). In total there are seven tracks. The first half dozen are "Curb 3," "Curb 4," and "Curb 5," along with the notes to those respective poems, while "Frequency (Alka's Testimony)" rounds out the set. These recordings were made in coordination with
PoemTalk episode #173, which is focused on these seven pieces.
On
Victor's PennSound author page you'll find an archive of work spanning nine years, starting with a 2009
Emergency Series reading at our own Kelly Writers House. That's followed by a 2010 reading of
Hellocast Feral Cat Attack (with participant-collaborators) for Les Figues Press, a 2012 St. Mark's Poetry Project reading with
Vanessa Place, 2014 readings at Videofag and Counterpath, and "Cicadas in the Mouth," her
Leslie Scalapino Memorial Lecture in Innovative Poetics (which you can read as well as watch). Jumping forward to 2017, theres video of her reading "W is for Walt Whitman's Soul" at BookThug, and then a trio of readings from 2018: a Wexler Studio Recording Session and a Kelly Writers House conversation with
Laynie Browne, both recorded on April 20th, along with a July reading with Cat Tyc for Living Poetry at the Hudson Area Library. In addition to her recent PoemTalk appearance, Victor was also the subject of
episode #133, which focuses on her "W Is for Walt Whitman's Soul." Click
here to start exploring this treasure trove of recordings.
Our most recently-created author page is for New York-based Argentine poet
Lila Zemborain. While relatively modest in scope the collection of recordings you'll find there nevertheless spans more than twenty years and includes both readings and interviews with the poet.
Our earliest recording comes from the Monday reading series at the St. Mark's Poetry Project and features Zemborain reading with Greta Goetz on February 28, 2000. Next up there's a May 2008 reading with
Leonard Schwartz as part of the
Belladonna* Reading Series and Zemborain's appearance on Schwartz's radio program
Cross Cultural Poetics from that same spring. Jumping forward five years we have another appearance on
Cross Cultural Poetics, this time recorded live at our own Kelly Writers House on April 16, 2013. That's followed by a 2017 multi-author reading as part of the
Segue Series reading at Zinc Bar and a 2018 reading at McNally Jackson Books, which was co-sponsored by The Operating System, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Belladonna*. Finally, from just short of a year ago we have video footage of Zemborain reading from "Rasgado/Torn" in New York City.
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