Tuesday, April 07, 2009

a New Zealander among us

Wystan Curnow, art critic and poet, spoke at the Writers House this evening on curating as a critical practice. The event was shown live on KWH-TV and is already available as a video recording. Wystan was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1939, and studied English and History at the University of Auckland, and took his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Yes, Penn. So his two-week visit here is actually a return to his alma mater many many years later. This afternoon he joined me and Charles Bernstein and Bob Perelman to record a PoemTalk episode on a poem by Louis Zukofsky--which will be released in a few months. Then we all went downstairs for his very good talk on curating. Have a look.