Resources
The second half of the 1970s and the early Reagan years saw an explosion of literary activity in the Bay Area. This page offers the beginning of an archive of this lively writing scene.
Bay Area Experimental Writing
Poetry readings, public talks, residencies, performances, literary presses and magazines flourished:
- The Grand Piano Reading Series
- Other Projects: San Francisco Poets Theater
- Presses & Magazines
- Other Events
- Media (Audio : Video : Photo)
An intense and comradely community and social life provided both backdrop and stimulus to the hectic pace of artistic activity. The Grand Piano recalls some of the events of these days. Others have recalled them too — e.g. poets
- Geoff Young and
- the late David Bromige
Change: l'espace amerique
A number of the Grand Piano authors, along with other Language poets, were featured in an issue of the Paris magazine Change. Steve Benson writes: "In early March 1981, Lyn sent a letter to Barrett, Bob, Charles Bernstein, Ron, and Steve, proposing that each would write a page on a topic that she named, the whole to serve as an introduction to a selection of Language writings in French translation that would appear in Change magazine, as part of the March 1982 issue focused on "L'espace amerique," edited (with an additional introduction) by Nanos Valaoritis. In 1989, our six-person introduction was retranslated into Serbian and published in an issue of Delo, in Yugoslavia." Download the introduction.
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