Barbara Barg (April 29, 1947 — May 22, 2018) was a poet, writer, and musician. Barg was born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in

Forrest City, Arkansas Forrest City is a city in and the county seat of St. Francis County, Arkansas, United States. It was named for General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a notable Confederate war hero who later became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Shortly ...

. After studying with poet Ted Berrigan at

Northeastern Illinois University Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) is a public university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. NEIU serves approximately 5,000 students in the region and is both a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution and Asian American and Nat ...

in Chicago, she moved to New York City and became involved in a number of individual and collaborative projects on the downtown poetry/music scene in the late 1970s-1990s. She performed frequently at venues like The Kitchen,

Bowery Ballroom The Bowery Ballroom is a New York City live music venue located at 6 Delancey Street in Manhattan's Bowery neighborhood. The venue has enjoyed a fabled reputation among musicians as well as audiences. In 2013, industry insiders polled by ''Roll ...

, St Mark's Poetry Project, Bowery Poetry Club,

Nuyorican Poets Café The Nuyorican Poets Cafe is a nonprofit organization in the Alphabet City, Manhattan, Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican Movement, Nuyorican (Puerto Rican New Yorker) art movement, and has b ...

, Fez,

CBGB CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in the East Village, Manhattan, East Village in Manhattan, New York City. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for ''Cou ...

, Luna Lounge, Sidewalk Cafe's The Fort, Mercury Lounge, Galapogos, The Sculpture Center, The Open Center, as well as One World Poetry Festival (Amsterdam) and The International Festival of the Poets (Rome). With writer Maggie Dubris she co-founded the all-women cult band "Homer Erotic" (1991 to 2000), which came to life during a lull in poetry readings in the early 90s. The group was composed of seven women interested in music and poetry as performative art forms. She has also performed with Pauline Oliveros,

Elliott Sharp Elliott Sharp (born March 1, 1951) is an American contemporary classical music, contemporary classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, performer, author, and visual artist. A central figure in the Avant-garde music, avant-garde and experimenta ...

Z'EV Z'EV (born Stefan Joel Weisser, February 8, 1951 – December 16, 2017) was an American poet, percussionist, and sound artist. After studying various world music traditions at CalArts, he began creating his own percussion sounds out of indu ...

, Janene Higgins, Monique Buzzarté and other experimental artists and musicians. Her poetry is attuned to notions of poetic ethnologies, and what she called "voluntary evolution" ("evolution for the hell of it") and "whatever other notion I get in my head". Barg most recently lived in Chicago, and was on faculty at The Chicago School of Poetics, and was writing screenplays for Jump Room Films.

Death

On May 22, 2018, Ellen Floren's official Facebook page revealed in a post that Barg had died. She was 71.

Books

* ''The Origin of THE Species'', photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe (

Semiotext(e) Semiotext(e) is an independent publisher of critical theory, fiction, philosophy, art criticism, activist texts and non-fiction. History Founded in 1974, ''Semiotext(e)'' began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Syl ...

) * ''Obeying the Chemicals'' with photographs by

Nan Goldin Nancy Goldin (born 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the Bohemian style, bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing w ...

(Hard Press)

Recordings

* ''Yield'' (with the band Homer Erotic, 1998 - Creme de la Femme) * ''Homerica the Beautiful'' (with the band Homer Erotic, 1999 - Bobby Previte's Depth of Field label) * ''Calling You Home'' (with the band Coyote Poets of the Universe, 2008 - Square Shaped Records) * ''Holding Patterns'' (with the band Zanana, 2005 - Deep Listening )

Literary Anthologies

Barg's works have appeared in the following literary anthologies. * ''American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century'' (Four Walls Eight Windows) * ''Poems for the Nation: A Collection of Contemporary Political Poems'' (Seven Stories Press) Edited by

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...

, Andy Clausen and Eliot Katz * ''AM LIT: Neue Literatur Aus Den USA'' (Edition Druckhaus / Germany) Edited by Gerard Falkner and Sylvere Lotringer * ''Out of This World: The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery; 1966-1991'' (Crown Publisher, Inc). Edited by Anne Waldman (with foreword by

) * ''The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book'' (

Southern Illinois University Press Southern Illinois University Press or SIU Press, founded in 1956, is a university press located in Carbondale, Illinois, owned and operated by Southern Illinois University. The press publishes approximately 50 titles annually, among its more th ...

) Edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews

Audio Anthologies

Barg has contributed to numerous

sound art Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary Time-based media, time-based Artistic medium, medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in Cross-genr ...

anthologies, including

's multi-artist compilation CDs ''State of the Union'', ''Beneath the Valley of the Yahoos'', ''Phone Noir'' (with Fem Noir), ''Late 20th Century Sexual Practices'', ''One World Poetry'' (a multi-artist compilation recorded at Amsterdam's ''One World Poetry Festival''), and ''Sugar Alcohol & Meat'' (produced by

John Giorno John Giorno (December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019) was an American performance poetry, poet and performance artist. He founded the not-for-profit production company Giorno Poetry Systems and organized a number of early multimedia poetry experim ...

Poetry Systems). Barg's audio work features in three multi-artist compilation

cassette tape The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog audio, analog magnetic tape recording format for Sound recording and reproduction, audio recording and playback. Invented by L ...

s: ''

Noise Fest Noise Fest was an influential festival of no wave noise music performances curated by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth at the New York City art space White Columns. It ran from June 16th to June 24th, 1981. Sonic Youth made their first live appear ...

'' (with the band Avant Squares), and twice on ''

Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine'' was an audio cassette magazine publication on cassette active from 1983 to 1993. Originally intended as a subscription bimonthly, it was launched on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to create an avant-guard med ...

'' (in #1 and #5) (both with

Barbara Ess Barbara Ess (born Barbara Eileen Schwartz; April 4, 1944 – March 4, 2021) was an American pinhole camera photographer, No Wave musician and ''Just Another Asshole'' editor. She taught photography at Bard College since 1997; who in 2024, along w ...

).
Barbara Ess and Barbara Barg, ''You Who Know No Pain'' (7:07) track on ''

'' #1

References

External links

Barbara Barg official site

The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery

The Allen Ginsberg Project

* ttps://www.jumproomfilms.com/ Jump Room Films official site {{DEFAULTSORT:Barg, Barbara Poets from Arkansas 20th-century American women writers Writers from Little Rock, Arkansas Northeastern Illinois University alumni Musicians from Little Rock, Arkansas 1947 births Living people Musicians from Memphis, Tennessee Musicians from New York City American women poets 20th-century American poets