The Bowery Program in Applied Poetics

Bowery Arts & Science, Ltd.
announces
Study Abroad on the Bowery: A Certificate Program in Applied Poetics
at the Bowery Poetry Club
Summer 2006 Session
August 13-August 27, 2006

(Study Abroad on the Bowery offers a Certificate in Applied Poetics at the end of the session. We operate much as study abroad programs do, accepting applicants from a range of colleges and universities, as well as the unaffiliated.)

“Who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts”
from "HOWL," Allen Ginsberg.

Wandering? Wondering? Here is an opportunity to literally make history…in your own words and with your own actions. Beginning August 13, 2006, a small group of humans will venture into a new terrain of study: a poetics program which umbilically links poetry to the world, that believes poets have a real job, a critical job, and that, together, we can create a place for poetry. The curriculum: Writing, Performance, Activism, and Direct Study with some of the most exciting and relevant writers working today, and two astonishing seminars as anchors. Our hub is the club – the Bowery Poetry Club, an artist-run safe house situated in a neighborhood with a rich, culturally diverse, poetic history.

This semester will include writing, performance, cultural activism, and direct study with some of the most exciting and relevant writers working today. The Bowery Poetry Club is the hub—situated in a neighborhood with a rich, culturally diverse poetic history. Students will take advantage of a rigorous curriculum in Applied Poetics with six distinct component courses:

1. Writing Lab: Lisa Jarnot, one of poetry’s great young voices and the editor of The Letters of Robert Duncan, leads this participatory workshop forum, designed to inspire new poems, new forms, new modes of thinking.

2. Hip-Hop Poetry Lab: Celena Glenn, voted Best Local Poet in Downtown’s Readers Poll (not so shabby when your “Local” is NYC) will lead this one-day workshop on cross-breeding Hip-Hop and Poetry on the Stage. Fashionista, techno gear, and politics will set the frame.

3. Cyber Poetics, Conceptual Poetics Lab: Journey to the edges of the mind and science as literature as total poet Brian Kim Stefans invites students to explore the possibilities in the hyper-cyber and to contextualize contemporary performance poetics.

4. Poetics Lab: Kristin Prevallet, dean, renowned poet, author of a new book on Helen Adam, introduces and discusses the larger philosophical and cultural contexts of East Village Poetics. each student will receive a Sourcebook with writings by/about the Visiting Writers in the program which will serve as the basic text.

5. Performance Lab: Sheri-D Wilson, the “Queen of Canadian Spoken Word” travels south to kick your poems into orbit. She will direct the stuient performances, and , with Bob Holman and dormer student Edith Corrra, the Six Gallery recreation. Expect an intense, hand-on, all-consuming experience.

6. Poetry Now! The East Village Scene, A Seminar: This seminar will include panel discussions, live interviews, and performances to illuminate the roots and traditions of the historical and present cultures of the Downtown Poetics. Expected participants include: John Giorno, Erica Hunt, David Henderson, Celena Glenn, Steve Cannon, Miguel Algarin, Willie Perdomo and Sapphire. This being the First Katrina Anniversary, we will follow this event by putting our poetry into action with a Mega-Marathon Benefit, produced by former SAB student Nick Bredie, whose internship involved working with NOLA art groups, and summer SAB participants. The conclusion of the Seminar will be a re-creation of the fabled Six Gallery Reading, where Ginsberg first read Howl, performed by the summer students.


7. Howl! Fifty Years Later: A Seminar: The afternoon will open with a three-hour seminar featuring authors who contributed to The Poem that Changed America: Howl! Fifty Years Later, edited by Ginsberg scholar and activist Jason Shinder, who will preside over the event. Expect performances, talks, and a ton of audience participatuion with Amiri Baraka, Alicia Ostriker, Robert Polito, David Gates, Bob Rosenthal, Gordon Ball, Kurt Brown. At 5pm, there will be a celebratory community reading of the entire poem, conducted by Maestro Edwin Torres. At 6pm, SAB students will share their own poetry. And at 8pm, Original Beat and the Father of Contemporary Black Literature Amiri Baraka will perform with Amina Baraka and the great Newark jazz ensemble, Blue Ark.

8. Activism: Katrina Benefit/Poetry Is News: Each student will participate in behind-the-scenes action/creating, producing and promoting the First Anniversary Katrina Benefit at the BPC. Students will also help develop nationwide events for Poetry Is News, a collective project to find a place for the imaginative and creative use of language in the political arena, as overseen by Nathaniel Siegel.


Cost:
2-week Summer Session: $485
Includes the six component courses and source book. Includes consultations with an advisor to establish your internship project. Includes admission to The Bowery Poetry Club. Does not include meals, housing, or transportation.



Study Abroad on the Bowery core faculty are: Artistic Director: Bob Holman (poet, performer, founder & proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, Visiting Professor of Writing, Columbia University School of the Arts). Dean of Poets: Kristin Prevallet (poet, translator, professor, faculty of The New School, The Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking). Co-Director: Anne Waldman (poet, performer, editor, professor, cofounder with Allen Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University, Chair, the Summer Writing Program). Faculty Advisor: Alan Gilbert (poet, editor, independent scholar, author of Wesleyan UP’s Another Future: Poetry and Art in a Postmodern Twilight).


About Bowery Arts & Science
www.boweryartsandscience.org
Bowery Arts and Science is a nonprofit organization seeking to preserve and enhance the oral tradition of poetry via live readings, media documentation and creation, and to restore poetry to the center of our culture, as it is in oral cultures. Our mission includes a strong educational component, introducing all manner of poetries to students of all ages; the preservation of endangered languages via the valuation of the poetry of these cultures; and the infusion and integration of poetry with other arts and the daily life of the citizenry.

To apply, please address a letter of intent and interest along with a writing sample of up to ten pages to:
Study Abroad on the Bowery
Admissions
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
New York City, NY 10012

For further information:
www.boweryartsandscience.org/212-334-6414

“Who ate the lamb stew of the imagination
or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the
rivers of Bowery…”
-- from "HOWL," Allen Ginsberg.


Wandering around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go?

We hope you will join us…on the verge! and on the Bowery!

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