Poets Theater at Burchfield Penney Art Center
Poetry and theater are inextricably linked dating back to their common roots in religious ritual. The term "Poets Theater," however has a specific contemporary meaning. It refers to a body of work composed as avant-garde theater by post World War Two American poets exploring the performative aspects of language and poetry.
In their forthcoming book, The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theatre: 1945-1985, co-editors Kevin Killian and David Brazil explain: "With new interest in poetry as a performative art, and with prewar experiments much in mind, the young poets of postwar America infused the stage with the rhythms and shocks of their poetry. From the multidisciplinary nexus of Black Mountain, to the Harvard-based Cambridge Poets Theater of Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, to the West Coast anarchy of Robert Duncan, Helen Adam, and Michael McClure, these energies manifested themselves all at once, and through the decades have continued to grow and mutate, innovating a form of writing that defies boundaries of genre."
Last month the University at Buffalo's Poetics Program presented an evening of performances at the new Burchfield Penney Art Center based on rarely performed plays housed in the UB Poetry Collection . Works by Robert Duncan, Barbara Guest, and Hannah Weiner were among those performed.
Tonight at 7 p.m. at the Burchfield Penney, Kevin Killian — the founder of the San Francisco Poets Theater — will stage a production of his original, full-length work "Celebrity Hospital" with the assistance of performers drawn from the ranks of Poetics Program volunteers.
Killian is a West Coast based poet, novelist, critic and playwright. He the author of a collection of poetry, Argento Series (2001), two novels, Shy(1989) and Arctic Summer (1997), a book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows(1989), and two books of stories, Little Men (1996) and I Cry Like a Baby(2001). For the San Francisco Poets Theater Killian has written thirty plays, including Stone Marmalade(1996, with Leslie Scalapino) and Often (2001, with Barbara Guest). In 1996, he received the PEN Oakland /Josephine Miles Award.
--R.D. Pohl
