A  Tribute    to  C.D.  Wright  November  9  &  10,  2016  

 

 Laynie  Browne  is  the  author  of  twelve  collections  of  poetry  and  two  novels.  Her  most  recent  collections  of  poems  include  P  R  A  C  T  I  C  E  and  Scorpyn  Odes.  Forthcoming  books  include  a  collaboration  with  Bernadette  Mayer  titled  The  Complete  Works  of  Apis  Mellfica,  a  novel,  Periodic  Companions,  with  drawings  by  artist  Noah  Saterstrom  and  a  collection  of  poems,  You  Envelop  Me.  She  is  the  recipient  of  a  2014  Pew  Fellowship  in  the  Arts  for  poetry  and  teaches  at  University  of  Pennsylvania  and  Swarthmore  College.  

   

   

Born  and  raised  in  Japan,  and  based  in  New  York  since  1976,  Eiko  Otake  is  a  movement-­‐based  multidisciplinary  performing  artist.  For  over  forty  years,  she  has  worked  as  Eiko  &  Koma  performing  worldwide.    For  the  50  plus  works  they  have  co-­‐created,  both  Eiko  and  Koma  handcrafted  sets,  costumes,  sound,  and  media.    

Eiko  is  currently  presenting  a  solo  project,  A Body in Places,  which  opened  with  A Body in a Station,  a  twelve  hour  performance  at  Philadelphia’s  Amtrak  station  in  October  2014.  Photo  exhibition  A Body in Fukushima,  a  collaboration  with  photographer  William  Johnston,  tours  with  the  project.    

A  recipient  of  a  MacArthur  Fellowship,  the  Samuel  H.  Scripps  American  Dance  Festival  Award,  the  Dance  Magazine  Award,  and  an  inaugural  USA  Fellowship  and  the  Duke  Performing  Artist  Award,  Eiko  regularly  teaches  at  Wesleyan  University,  NYU,  Colorado  College.    

 

 Peter  Gizzi  is  the  author  of  seven  collections  of  poetry,  most  recently,  Archeophonics,  In  Defense  of  Nothing:  Selected  Poems  1987-­‐2011,  and  Threshold  Songs.  He  has  also  published  several  limited-­‐edition  chapbooks,  folios,  and  artist  books.  His  honors  include  the  Lavan  Younger  Poet  Award  from  the  Academy  of  American  Poets,  and  fellowships  in  poetry  from  The  Howard  Foundation,  The  Foundation  for  Contemporary  Arts,  The  John  Simon  Guggenheim  Memorial  Foundation,  and  The  Judith  E.  Wilson  Visiting  Fellowship  in  Poetry  at  Cambridge  University.  He  works  at  the  University  of  Massachusetts,  Amherst.    

 

 

 

 

 Camille  Guthrie  is  the  author  of  Articulated  Lair:  Poems  for  Louise  Bourgeois  (2013),  In  Captivity  (2006),  and  The  Master  Thief  (2000),  all  published  by  Subpress.  She  has  two  chapbooks,  Defending  Oneself  (Beard  of  Bees.com)  and  People  Feel  with  Their  Hearts,  included  in  the  Another  Instance  chapbook  series  (Instance  2011).  Her  poems  have  appeared  in  such  journals  and  websites  as  the  Academy  of  American  Poet’s  Poem-­‐a-­‐Day  series,  Chicago  Review,  Conjunctions,  The  White  Review,  The  Volta,  and  many  others.  

She  has  written  about  poetry  for  the  Poetry  Foundation’s  blog  Harriet  and  for  The  Huffington  Post.  She  lives  in  upstate  New  York  with  her  two  kids  and  teaches  literature  at  Bennington  College.  

 Catherine  Imbriglio  is  the  author  of  two  books  of  poetry,  Parts  of  the  Mass  (Burning  Deck,  2007),  which  received  the  2008  Norma  Farber  First  Book  Award  from  the  Poetry  Society  of  America,  and  Intimacy  (Center  for  Literary  Publishing,  2013),  which  received  the  2013  Colorado  Prize  in  Poetry.  Her  poetry  and  criticism  have  appeared  in  After  Spicer  (John  Vincent,  ed.),  American  Letters  &  Commentary,  Aufgabe,  Conjunctions,  Contemporary  Literature,  Denver  Quarterly,  Epoch,  New  American  Writing,  No:  A  Journal  of  the  Arts,  Petri  Press,  Pleiades,  Web  Conjunctions,  Voltage  Poetry  and  elsewhere.  A  selection  of  her  poetry  was  anthologized  in  the  Iowa  Anthology  of  New  American  Poetries,  ed.  Reginald  Shepherd  (University  of  Iowa  Press,  2004).      She  teaches  in  the  Nonfiction  Writing  Program  at  Brown.        

   

Richard  Leo  Johnson  is  an  internationally  acclaimed  guitarist/composer.    His  idiosyncratic,  self-­‐taught  style  is  characterized  by  complexity,  emotion  and  hauntingly  unfamiliar  harmonies  created  through  ‘found’  tuning.    The  New  York  Times  has  said  his  “down-­‐home  materials  can  be  enveloped  in  eerie  near-­‐electronic  wails,  quasi-­‐orchestral  surges  and  spiky  percussive  sounds.”    He  has  released  six  records,  including  two  from  the  prestigious  Blue  Note  Label,  Language  and  Fingertip  Ship.    Johnson  is  also  a  photographer  whose  work  documents  life  and  landscape  in  North  Louisiana  and  South  Arkansas  in  the  late  70’s  and  mid  80’s.    His  photographic  work  is  held  in  private  and  public  collections  and  has  been  exhibited  at  the  New  Orleans  Museum  and  The  Arkansas  Arts  Center.  

William  Johnston  received  his  BA  from  Elmira  College  in  Elmira,  New  York,  and  his  MA  in  Regional  Studies  East  Asia  and  PhD  in  History  and  East  Asian  Languages,  both  from  Harvard.    Other  institutions  where  he  has  studied  include  Nanzan  University  and  Nagoya  University,  both  in  Nagoya,  Japan,  and  Tokyo  University.    In  addition,  he  has  spent  a  year  as  a  Visiting  Professor  and  Research  Scholar,  The  International  Research  Center  for  Japanese  Studies,  Kyoto,  Japan.    He  is  Professor  of  History,  East  Asian  Studies,  and  Science  in  Society  at  Wesleyan  

 

 

 

 

University  in  Middletown,  Connecticut.  During  the  2014-­‐15  academic  year  he  was  Edwin  O.  Reischauer  Visiting  Professor  of  Japanese  Studies  at  Harvard.    Most  of  his  publications  focus  on  the  history  of  disease  and  medicine  in  Japan.    At  present  he  is  working  on  a  book  about  the  history  of  cholera  in  nineteenth-­‐century  Japan.    After  many  years  of  doing  landscape  photography  with  large  format  cameras,  he  started  collaborating  with  Eiko  Otake  on  the  “A  Body  in  Places”  project  in  2014.  They  have  traveled  three  times  to  Fukushima,  Japan,  and  have  also  worked  in  many  other  locales,  including  Bennington,  Vermont,  Indian  Point,  New  York,  and  Santiago  and  Valparaiso,  Chile.  Work  from  this  project  has  been  exhibited  in  numerous  locations,  including  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  Fine  Arts  in  Philadelphia,  the  Galleries  of  Contemporary  Art  at  Colorado  State  University,  Colorado  Springs,  Wesleyan  University,  and  Centro  Cultural  Gabriela  Mistral,  Santiago,  Chile.  It  also  has  appeared  in  numerous  publications  including  The  New  York  Times.  

   

 Joan  Retallack  is  a  poet  and  essayist  —  author  of  The  Poethical  Wager  and  Procedural  Elegies  /  Western  Civ  Cont’d  /  –  an  Artforum  Best  Book  of  2010.  Other  poetry  includes  Memnoir,  Mongrelisme,  How  To  Do  Things  With  Words,  and  Afterrimages.  She  is  John  D.  &  Catherine  T.  MacArthur  Professor  Emerita  of  Humanities  at  Bard  College.  

Steve Stern is the author of a number of novels and short story collections, including The Frozen Rabbi and The Wedding Jester, which won the National Jewish Book Award. A recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, he teaches at Skidmore College in upstate New York. He considers his long friendship with CD Wright as one of the most defining elements of his life.

 

   

 

Amish  Trivedi  is  the  author  of  Sound/Chest,  has  poems  in  New  American  Writing,  Kenyon  Review,  Typo,  and  other  places,  and  has  an  MFA  from  Brown’s  Program  in  Literary  Arts.  Book  reviews  he  has  written  have  been  in  Jacket2,  Pleiades,  and  Sink  while  music  reviews  have  been  in  The  Rumpus.  He  is  a  Ph.D.  candidate  at  Illinois  State  University.