Spring 2008 John Ashbery Poetry Series at Bard College

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.— The John Ashbery Poetry Series at Bard College presents a series of readings by acclaimed poets this spring. Free and open to the public, the readings, presented by The Bard Center, begin at 6:00 p.m.

On Tuesday, April 8, poet and visual artist Anne Tardos and Bard professor Michael Ives read from their recent work in the Weis Cinema of the Bertelsmann Campus Center.

Anne Tardos is the author of the multilingual performance work Among Men, produced as a radio play by the (WDR) West German Radio in Cologne. She has lectured and performed her works widely in the United States and Europe. Her books of multilingual poems and graphics include The Dik-dik’s Solitude: New and Selected Works; A Noisy Nightingale Understands the Tiger’s Camouflage Totally; Uxudo; Mayg-shem Fish; and Cat Licked the Garlic. Her most recent book of poetry, I Am You, was published by Salt in 2008; she is also the editor of Thing of Beauty: New and Selected Works, by Jackson Mac Low. Tardos’s multichannel video work, Apple Eaters, which premiered at the Kitchen in 1971, was restored and edited into a one-channel version in 2004 and is distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix. Her visual texts have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, 1993; the Venice Biennale (Fluxus Pavillion), 1990; Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bolzano, 1991; the New Museum, 1992; and the Neuberger Museum of Art, 1999. Her musical recordings include the CDs Music by Jackson Mac Low and Anne Tardos, Recorded Live at Roulette, 1999; A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute, collaboratively composed and performed with Jackson Mac Low; Open Secrets; and the cassettes Songs and Simultaneities and Gatherings.

Michael Ives’s work with the language/performance trio F’loom was featured on National Public Radio, on the CBC, and in several international anthologies of sound poetry. He is the author of The External Combustion Engine, from Futurepoem Books. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous magazines and journals both in the United States and abroad, including Sulfur, Conjunctions, New American Writing, Fence, Exquisite Corpse, and Denver Quarterly. He is a visiting assistant professor of humanities at Bard College.

Poet and novelist Forrest Gander and Bard professor Joan Retallack read from their recent work on Tuesday, April 29 (location to be announced).

Born in the Mojave Desert in Barstow, California, Forrest Gander grew up in Virginia and spent significant periods in San Francisco, Dolores Hidalgo (Mexico), and Eureka Springs, Arkansas, before moving to Rhode Island. He holds degrees in both English literature and geology. The author of numerous books of poetry, including Eye Against Eye, Torn Awake, and Science & Steepleflower, Gander also writes novels (As a Friend, forthcoming 2008 from New Directions), and essays (“A Faithful Existence”), and translates; his most recent translations are Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho; No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez-Colome, and, with Kent Johnson, two books by the Bolivian wunderkind Jaime Saenz: The Night and Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz. Gander’s poems appear in many literary magazines in the United States and abroad, and have been translated into half a dozen languages. Several books in translation are available in Mexico (Zumba el Transcurrir: Poemas Escojidos and Arrancado del Sueno), Chile (Traduciendo a Saenz y Otros Poemas), and the Netherlands (Twelve X 12:00). He has received two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative North American Poetry, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and awards from the Fund for Poetry, Howard Foundation, and Whiting Foundation. Gander lives in Rhode Island with poet C. D. Wright and their son, Brecht. As professor of English and comparative literature at Brown University, he teaches courses such as “Poetry/World/Mind,” “EcoPoetics,” “Latin American Poetry Live,” and “Translation Theory & Practice.”

Joan Retallack’s volume of poetry Memnoir was published simultaneously in 2004 in English and French. She is the author of six other poetry collections, including How To Do Things with Words, AFTERRIMAGES, and Errata 5uite, which won the Columbia Book Award. Her book of critical essays, The Poethical Wager, was published by the University of California Press, which will also bring out her book on Gertrude Stein. Poetry and Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary, coedited by Retallack and Juliana Spahr, was published by Palgrave/MacMillan. Retallack received a Lannan Foundation Literary Grant for Poetry in 1998 and the 1996 America Award in Belles-Lettres for MUSICAGE: John Cage in Conversation with Joan Retallack. Her WESTORN CIV CONT’D, a limited edition artist’s book, was produced at Pyramid Atlantic Studios in 1995–96 with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Retallack is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities at Bard College.

Since 1995, the John Ashbery Poetry Series has brought leading contemporary poets to Bard for readings and discussion in an intimate setting. For further information about the series, call The Bard Center at 845-758-7425.

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(3/28/08)

Editor's Note: To download high-resolution press photos, please click on the thumbnail images below.

Anne Tardos	Forrest Gander Photo: Berge

This event was last updated on 04-16-2008

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