Anne Waldman. poet, activist, co-founder with Allen of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) is seventy-two years old today. Happy Birthday, Anne!
Inveterate world-traveler, she’s currently in Mexico City at the moment (at Casa del Lago, the off-campus Cultural Center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, for the 2017 Poesia En Voz Alta)
Later this month in New York (April 27) she will be celebrated at The Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church (another institution she helped to found – she was the former Artistic Director) at a special 50th Anniversary Gala there
Voices Daughter of A Heart Yet To Be Born is her most recent full-length collection from Coffee House Press – “Waldman appropriate the idea of (William) Blake’s unborn spirit of Thel to explore artists and activist’s roles during the Anthropocene”
Here’s Anne at Naropa last summer – “An Evening of Poetry and Dialogue with Anne Waldman”
Here’s Anne interviewed in Paris (by Vincent Broqua and Olivier Brossard for Double Change) a few weeks later
And here’s Anne speaking at Harvard at “A Provocation” – a pre-election poetry reading, sponsored by the Woodberry Poetry Room, in October, shortly before the fateful election.
“Keeping the word safe for poetry” – It’s a 24-hour-a-day job, but Anne’s right at the forefront.