Etel Adnan: New Author Page

Our latest PennSound author page is for Lebanese-American poet and painter Etel Adnan.

The earliest recording you'll find there is Adnan's 2006 appearance on episode #118 of Leonard Schwartz's program, Cross-Cultural Poetics, titled "Forms of Violence." Calling in from Paris, she "reads from her book In the Heart of A Heart Of Another Country (City Lights), and meditates on her mother city of Beirut and American violence, inner and outer."

Jumping forward to 2010, we have a Serpentine Gallery reading showcasing The Arab Apocalypse and a 2012 reading commemorating the release of Homage to Etel Adnan (Post-Apollo), which was held at The Green Arcade Books Ideas Goods and co-sponsored by The Poetry Center and Small Press Traffic. Adnan returned to the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London for a conversation with poet Robert Grenier, which we first announced on PennSound Daily in July 2016, just a few weeks after the event took place. This chat between two formidable authors served as the inaugural event for the exhibition, "Etel Adnan: the Weight of the World."

Finally, our most recent addition is a wonderful, lengthy interview with Jennifer Scappettone, which took place on September 23rd and 24th of last year. Seven thematic segments are presented to listeners, including "Home Life and School in Beirut," "Education in Philosophy and Beginnings in Painting," and "English-Language Poetry and US Politics from the Vietnam War through Today." We're grateful to Adnan for the opportunity to share her work with our audience, and to those who've made these recordings available to us. Click here to start browsing.

bpNichol Thirty Years On

bpNichol's grave marker (photo by Derek Beaulieu)

September 25th is the thirtieth anniversary of the passing of legendary Canadian multiform writer and performer bpNichol, and therefore an excellent opportunity to reconnect with his work. We're very proud to have counted Nichol among the very first poets to be featured on PennSound, and in the intervening fifteen years, our bpNichol author page — edited by Lori Emerson — has grown into a fascinating collection of artifacts from throughout his tragically foreshortened creative life.

It's a testament to Nichol's diverse interests that there we find work originally released on flexi-disc, LP, cassette, and even floppy disc. That last piece, 1984's "First Screening: Computer Poems" — initially written in Apple's BASIC programming language and converted into a Quicktime emulation in 2007 by a team of poets and media archivists — is a clear highlight of the collection. Another is a series of lengthy recordings (totaling nearly six hours) from Nichol's unfinished magnum opus, The Martyrology, made in 1983 and 1987. You'll find these and many more recordings by clicking here, and don't forget to check out our separate author page for The Four Horsemen. We'd also be remiss if we didn't point you in the direction of the official bpNichol archive, which is a truly marvelous resource.