| Introducing Primary Source Working Group & the Collaborative Research Seminar on Archives and Special Collections organized by Mary Catherine Kinniburgh
The Primary Source Working Group on Special Collections, Archives, and Libraries provides a space for students, faculty, and staff who are interested in deep engagement with archives and special collections: for interrogating research methods, recovering histories and silences, and developing technical skills for professional experience.
Collaborative Research Seminar at NYPL. Photo by Alycia Sellie.
This spring, the pilot program of the Collaborative Research Seminar on Archives and Special Collections collectively discussed methods for engaging primary source materials in their research, grappling with a variety of questions, from citation management to what it means to encounter primary source materials as embodied readers in space and time. Seminar participants will document their experiences in a series of blog posts as examples of the possibilities primary research affords. Click here to read the first post by Lost & Found Editor Iris Cushing reflecting on reading The Floating Bear, a bi-monthly, mimeographed newsletter started in 1961 by Diane di Prima and LeRoi Jones. The post includes an introduction from Mary Catherine Kinniburgh, and a link to the catalog details for The Floating Bear. Click here to read the second post by Cory Tamler, a student in the PhD program in Theatre at the Graduate Center, CUNY, who brings her disciplinary background in performance studies to explore Valerie Solanas' self-annotation of SCUM Manifesto as a textual performance of becoming.
The Floating Bear mimeographed newsletter. Photo by Mary Catherine Kinniburgh with permission of the Maud / Olson Library.
Remembering Joanne Kyger
The major American poet, radiant mentor, and a central poet of the San Francisco Renaissance, Joanne Kyger was a generous friend and visionary presence to Lost & Found, and we deeply mourn her loss. Her work continues to be an inspiration for all of us.
Kyger's involvement with Lost & Found began in Series III with the publication of a selection of her letters “Communication is essential” Letters to & From Joanne Kyger”, edited by herself and Ammiel Alcalay. Joanne visited the Graduate Center in 2012 for a rare East Coast appearance giving a memorable and moving reading for the launch of Series III. Her reading was followed by a discussion with her old friend, prose writer and former Black Mountain College student Michael Rumaker. Click here to watch Kyger’s reading and discussion with Rumaker, introduced by Ammiel Alcalay.
 Joanne Kyger and Michael Rumaker reading for the Lost & Found Series III launch in May 2012.
Ammiel Alcalay in the Afterward of “Communication is essential” Letters to & From Joanne Kyger” writes of Kyger’s work and practice:
“For Kyger there is a constant and ongoing recognition that relying on received perception and memory is never enough, that such ties must be loosened through observation, vigilance, awareness, and active thought. It would be hard to think of another writer of her generation who has so steadfastly practiced this consciousness, almost as if her work provides an ever-present antidote—both playful and relentlessly focused—to the proliferation of both poetic and perceptual hot air, always bringing things and thought back into a phenomenal world that defies definition.”
Joanne Kyger will be deeply missed by all of us at Lost & Found.
Announcing Lost & Found Series VII, featuring Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Jack Forbes, and Julio Cortázar & Paul Blackburn
Lost & Found is excited to announce that Series VII will be published this fall, and will include an exciting range of archival texts from the radical pedagogy movement led by poets and writers from the West Coast to CUNY in the late 1960s and 1970s, to correspondences highlighting rich intimacies and friendships between landmark twentieth century writers, poets and translators including:
- Memos, course syllabi, notes and a chapter of an unpublished novel by lauded radical feminist, poet, and teacher Audre Lorde, edited by Miriam Atkin and Iemanjá Brown
- Teaching materials and memoirs of prolific novelist, filmmaker, teacher and activist Toni Cade Bambara, edited by Makeba Levan and Conor Tomás Reed
- Memos, journal entries, poetry, and speeches by revered poet, activist, and teacher June Jordan, edited by Talia Shalev and Conor Tomás Reed
- Correspondence, proposals, documents, and poetry by public scholar and radical pedagogue Jack Forbes, founder of the first university Native American Studies Program in the US, edited by William Camponovo with introduction by Jimmie Durham
- Letters between the great Argentinian exile writer Julio Cortázar and his first English translator, American poet and Lower East Side poetry scene-maker Paul Blackburn, edited by Ammiel Alcalay, Silvia Beato, Alison Macomber, Alexander Pau Soria, Jacqui Cornetta
Julio Cortázar, summer 1968 in Provence, France. Photo by Paul Blackburn. Used with permission of Joan Blackburn.
Stay tuned for more information on Series VII, which will be available later this fall!
If you haven't already, please consider purchasing Lost & Found for yourself or a friend. Buying our books is an excellent way to support collaborative archival research and alternative literary histories. You can purchase Lost & Found Series I - VI through Small Press Distribution, or directly from Lost & Found here, including individual chapbooks.
Thank you for your continued enthusiasm and support of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative.
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