Introduction by Zoe Brezsny. The Woodberry Poetry Room is proud to partner with Cambridge’s own Staircase Books for a reading to celebrate the launch of Archivist Scissors, a new collection by poet, performer, cultural activist, and literary life-force Anne Waldman.

Expertly fusing the personal and political, art and activism, the poems in Archivist Scissors document some of the legendary relationships Waldman has cultivated over her storied career, invoking such luminaries as Barbara Guest, Joe Brainard, Martha Diamond, and Alex Katz. Of the book, Eleni Sikelianos writes, “I love these fragments and memories, the poet collecting shards of story, life, close to her.” Peter Gizzi remarks, “The collection is such a lyrically beautiful and meaningful demonstration of [Waldman’s] unwavering commitment to both acknowledging and being a part of an inspired community," to which he adds, "I love this book.” 

Waldman's reading will take place in the Edison-Newman Room at Houghton Library, followed by a reception and book-signing in the Woodberry Poetry Room. 

In-Person Attendance: Edison-Newman Room, Houghton Library. Free and open to the public. No registration required.

Online Attendance: Livestreaming available via the WPR YouTube channel.

Poet, performer, professor, literary curator, and cultural activist Anne Waldman has been a prolific and active poet and performer for many years, creating radical hybrid forms for the long poem, both serial and narrative, as with Marriage: A Sentence, Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, Manatee/Humanity, and Gossamurmur, all published by Penguin Poets. Her most recent works include The Velvet Wire with No Land (Granary Books, 2024); Rues du Monde (Apic Press, Algiers, English and French, 2024); Bard, Kinetic (Coffee House Press, 2023), a memoir with poetry, essays, and interviews; New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archive (Nightboat Books, 2022), which she co-edited with Emma Gomis; Para Ser Estrella a Medianoche (Arrebatos Libros, English and Spanish, 2021); and the forthcoming Mesopotopia (Penguin, 2025).

Waldman is the author of over sixty books of poetry, including the thousand-page feminist epic The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (Coffee House Press, 2011), which won the PEN Center Literary Award for Poetry. She was a founder of the Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, and its Director a number of years; then went on to found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University with Allen Ginsberg and Diana di Prima in 1974 and its celebrated MFA Program. She has continued to work with the Kerouac School as a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and Artistic Director of its annual Summer Writing Program.

Photo credit: Nina Subin.