Creating the Network for New York School Studies

In 1976, New York School poet Bernadette Mayer urged her students: 'change the language, and don't ever get famous'. In the intervening decades, New York School poetry has both changed the language and got famous, bringing an increasingly diverse public to a state of 'happy awareness' (Koch) of the open, democratic, interdisciplinary forms and styles of this multi-generational avant-garde. To date, however, although research on New York School poetry is growing and numerous contemporary poets identify as members of the School, there is no identifiable network through which researchers and creative practitioners can connect and collaborate. This means that there have been few cross-disciplinary or collaborative ventures in this area, and that the global potentialities of New York School connections have yet to be developed. This project therefore inaugurates the Network for New York School Studies, formalising for the first time an intellectual and creative global union of academics, poets, and other cultural practitioners including curators, artists, and musicians. Through a series of interactive, accessible, intersectional public events, including symposia, workshops, and performances, and via a bespoke new website, the Network will enable novel interactions between academics, creative practitioners, cultural organizations, and members of the public, as well as facilitating the free exchange of ideas across national borders, disciplinary boundaries, and cultural sectors. In so doing, the Network will support the development of innovative critical and creative projects, the breaking down of barriers between academia and other artforms, and the transfer of scholarly and creative outputs to audiences not usually effectively reached by academic research.

The 'New York School' of poetry coalesced in the 1950s, when founding members Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest, and Kenneth Koch discovered that they shared several key values, including a desire to avoid high seriousness in their poetry; an interest in blurring the lines between poetry and artforms such as dance, painting, and cinema; a belief in the value of collaboration; and a love for the city that brought them together. As subsequent generations of New York School poets have followed them, a distinctive critical ethos has been cultivated around the School. In response to their aesthetics and politics, scholars of New York School poetry tend to orient their writing around four main tenets: 1) a belief in the importance of sociability and collaboration to the production of creative work; 2) an attentiveness to the environment out of which poetry emerges; 3) an understanding that socially-situated poetry offers crucial sites of resistance; 4) an advocacy of poetry as a non-hierarchical public activity that has the potential to build communities.

Using the ethos of the School poets as its model, the Network for New York School Studies will advocate for, support, and emphasize the value of community-based public poetry initiatives by collaborating with grassroots poetry organizations, such as Poets&Critics in Paris, Poets House and the Poetry Project in New York, and Apples and Snakes in London. This will enable us not only to showcase and engage with the best contemporary poets whose work has been shaped by the New York School, but also to help realize the missions of the organizations in question, whether in 'promoting a deeper conversation between individuals, communities, and cultures' (Poets House) or in 'championing the development of extraordinary artists' and 'creating inspiring experiences for audiences' (Apples and Snakes). The Network will emphasize and demonstrate that innovative scholarship and creative practice is not the preserve of elite institutions, but, rather, an ongoing and evolving public process of discussion, exploration, and sharing of ideas, knowledge, and ways of knowing, learning, and understanding the value of culture.

The Network for New York School Studies brings academics together with poets and other cultural practitioners, as well as creative organisations, to forge new alliances and host a series of multi-faceted events that will engage international public audiences in encountering and appreciating poetry. The project's Network will stimulate novel interactions across various forms of creative output and audience. A key component of the project's agenda is outreach: the Network will actively support poets and creative organisations, and enable the transfer of scholarly and creative outputs to wider publics and audiences not usually effectively reached by academic research, or, indeed, by poetry. This will be achieved through a combination of facilitated discussions, workshops, readings and performances of poetry and music, and collaborations with creative organisations, as well as a range of outputs relevant to the project's beneficiaries, including a blog, podcast series, published pamphlet featuring poetry performed at Network events, and website which will function as a living archive of Network activities.

The PI and Co-I have designed the project's series of activities and range of outputs with three main beneficiary groups in mind (see below). In order to do so, we have liaised with the Project Partners to discuss their needs, agendas, constraints, and priorities, particularly with regards shared ambitions to both cultivate new talent and showcase poets of renown, engage diverse audiences in poetry's living traditions, and enhance the role that poetry can play in building communities. We have also consulted with and listened closely to the needs of contemporary poets: both PI and Co-I have considerable experience supporting poets and organising public poetry events, and are aware of the issues surrounding the limited availability of opportunities for performance, networking and skills development, publication. The PI and Co-I have also curated and witnessed first-hand the joy and stimulation that poetry events provide for members of the public, including those who do not initially consider themselves 'poetry people': for instance Alice Notley's reading at the scoping event was described as 'life-changingly great' and 'extraordinary' by members of the audience. Using the collaborative, interdisciplinary, inclusive, and joyful ethos of the New York School as its model, this project will be particularly impactful for:

1) Contemporary Poets: by providing them with opportunities to extend their cultural capital through public performances to new, global audiences, peer and mentor networking, leadership experience, increased visibility to scholars, and publication.

2) Creative Organisations: by offering activities and outputs that will raise their profiles, diversify and internationalise their audiences, promote their ongoing projects and collections, offer a model for future events, and strengthen their missions to foster, inspire, and stimulate dialogue on the reading and writing of contemporary poetry.

3) Members of the Public: by embedding dynamic, engaging, inclusive, affordable, and accessible events within local communities, bringing globally-renowned poets to perform and discuss their work alongside local and regional artists, and offering blended activities that demystify academic research and poetry (in both its written and performed varieties).

The long-term ambitions of the project are wide-reaching. The Network is designed to cultivate future avenues to impact that are both high-yielding and unbounded in their international and future possibilities. In supporting emerging scholars in collaborative, interdisciplinary research, and in giving poets and performers a public platform (and members of the public the chance to engage with their work), the Network will enable others to develop specific, implementable, impactful plans for future projects in this and related fields of study and creative practice.