Edwin Torres

December 11, 1999

Digital recordings of the December 11, 1999 reading, performance, and informal conversation led by Al Filreis with the poet and performance artist at the Kelly Writers House.

See the Kelly Writers House calendar entry for more about this event.

"It is obvious that Edwin Torres is the bastard love child of Mayakovsky and Parra, midwifed by Apollinaire." -- Christian Haye in The Poetry Project Newsletter.

About the brilliant Nuyorican poet and performance worker Edwin Torres a writer for New York Magazine wrote, "It's hard to wrestle meaning from the shreds of language he tosses out. And on paper, Torres seems to make as much sense as a Port Authority schizophrenic." "It is obvious that Edwin Torres is the bastard love child of Mayakovsky and Parra, midwifed by Apollinaire," writes Christian Haye in The Poetry Project Newsletter. Torres reads at the Poetry Project, Dixon Place, P.S. 122 and the Performing Garage.

This year Torres performed with Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein as part of the Improvisation in Poetry program there. His CD, Holy Kid, has recently been released.

He won the Nuyorican Poets Cafe's First Annual Prize for Fresh Poetry. New York Press pronounced him Best Performing Poet this year saying: "His bent for soul bending language play is without equal." Ethan Petitt of Nose Magazine says "instead of sounding things', he 'things' sounds, so that words and meanings go ka-plunk like soft percussion." Some of his widely diverse influences include Wallace Stevens, Mayakovsky, Duchamp, Dada, Fluxus, and even Butoh. Torres' books include _I Hear Things People Haven't Really Said_ and _Lung Poetry_, and new from Subpress, _Fractured Humorous_.

The program was co-sponsored by the Kelly Writers House, the "PennAdvance Program" of the School of Arts & Sciences, & the Highwire Gallery. This event was followed by a reading downtown at the Highwire Gallery (139 N. 2nd St.), with Mytili Jaganaathan.