We're starting this week off with another Series Spotlight post, this time focusing on The Steel Bar Reading Series, curated by Jonathan Skinner in collaboration with his partner Isabelle Pelissier (whose sculpture studio provided the venue) during his time as a grad student at SUNY-Buffalo in the early oughts. While we've opted to catalogue the overall collection under that name, there are recordings from numerous other Buffalo venues — Rust Belt Books, the Just Buffalo Literary Center, the Albright-Knox Gallery, The Poetry Collection at UB, classes taught by Dennis Tedlock, and even the city's sidewalks — along with events held in Paris, Toronto, and New York City, recorded between 2000–2008.
Poets who participated in these readings include Alice Notley, Steve McCaffery, Brenda Coultas, Caroline Bergvall, Fiona Templeton, Julia Patton, Bruce Andrews, Paul Dutton, Christian Bök, Tom Raworth, Robert Grenier, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Bernadette Mayer, Stephen Rodefer, Cecilia Vicuña, Michael Basinski, Charles Alexander, Barbara Cole, and Peter Culley, among many others. We send our thanks to Kristen Hewitt and Katherine Zeltner for crucial help in preparing these recordings, without which this archive wouldn't exist.
To start listening, click here to visit our Steel Bar series page.
