Poetry and Politics Research Cluster presents:

A talk and workshop with Joan Retallack, followed by a poetry reading at Felix Kulpa Gallery in downtown Santa Cruz.

Joan Retallack’s most recent publication Procedural Elegies  / Western Civ Cont’d / (Roof Books) was the poetry volume named by Artforum as a best book of 2010. Other poetry includes Memnoir (Post-Apollo, 2004), How To Do Things With Words (Sun & Moon Classics, 1998), Afterrimages (Wesleyan, 1995), and Errata 5uite (Edge Books, 1993), chosen by Robert Creeley for the Columbia Book Award of that year. Her critical books include Gertrude Stein: Selections (2008) for which she wrote an extensive introduction to Stein’s work,  and The Poethical Wager (2004)—both from University of California Press. Poetry & Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary (2006, Palgrave MacMillan) is co-edited with Juliana Spahr; MUSICAGE: John Cage in Conversation with Joan Retallack (1996, Wesleyan University Press) won the America Award for Belles-Lettres. She is a recipient of a Lannan Poetry Award, two Gertrude Stein awards, and National Endowment for the Arts funding for an artist’s book project—Westorn Civ Cont’d, An Open Book. She has recently written the introduction for a new, corrected edition of Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas in Meditation, forthcoming from Yale University Press. Her current projects are “The Reinvention of Truth” and “The Bosch Bookshelf.” Retallack lives in the Hudson Valley where she is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities at Bard College.

Poetry and Politics is a research cluster of the Institute for Humanities Research, which has provided staff support for this
event. Sponsored by the UC Humanities Network. Cosponsored by the Center for Cultural Studies, the Hitchcock Poetry Fund, and the Literature Department.