Kristin Prevallet (b. 1966) is an American poet, essayist, and teacher. Her poetic work incorporates conceptual writing and

trance Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the dir ...

, and her performances are rooted in feminist performance art and

spoken word Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an oral tradition, ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetic ...

. ''Everywhere Here and in Brooklyn'', ''I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time'', and ''Trance Poetics'' are among her poetic books.

Early life

Prevallet grew up in

Denver Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

, Colorado. Her parents were both public school teachers. Before dying of cancer at the age of 46, her mother fulfilled her vows to become a Sister of Loretto. Prevallet studied

poetics Poetics is the study or theory of poetry, specifically the study or theory of device, structure, form, type, and effect with regards to poetry, though usage of the term can also refer to literature broadly. Poetics is distinguished from hermeneu ...

with

Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than 60 books. He is associated with the Black Mountain poets, although his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. Creeley was close with Charle ...

and

media studies Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but it mos ...

with

Tony Conrad Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both ...

at the

University at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public university, public research university in Buffalo, New York, Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. ...

. Since the early 1990s, she has been teaching writing and literature courses for a variety of universities and art institutions including

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains within the Hudson River Historic District ...

's Writing and Thinking Workshop, Pratt Institute,

Naropa University Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named after the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university ...

, Poet's House, and

The Poetry Project The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church was founded in 1966 at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village of Manhattan by, among others, the poet and translator Paul Blackburn. It has been a crucial venue for new and experimental poetry ...

. From 2003 to 2006, she worked with

Anne Waldman Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political acti ...

and

Bob Holman Bob Holman is an American poet and poetry activist, most closely identified with the oral tradition, the spoken word, and poetry slam. As a promoter of poetry in many media, Holman has spent the last four decades working variously as an author ...

to start a school for poets at the

Bowery Poetry Club The Bowery Poetry Club is a New York City poetry performance space founded by Bob Holman in 2002.Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). ''Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam.'' Chapter 26: What the ...

, the venue which defined the New York downtown poetry scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Writing

At the

University of Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public university, public research university in Buffalo, New York, Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. ...

, Prevallet catalogued the archive of

Helen Adam Helen Adam (December 2, 1909 in Glasgow, Scotland – September 19, 1993 in New York City) was a Scottish poet, collagist and photographer who was part of a literary movement contemporaneous to the Beat Generation that occurred in San Francisco d ...

and her scholarly archive is a part of

The Poetry Collection A University at Buffalo Libraries Special Collection, The Poetry Collection is a collection devoted to 20th-century poetry in English and English translation. Founded in 1937 by professor and poet Charles D. Abbott, the university's first director ...

. She edited the definitive volume of

’s work (''A Helen Adam Reader,'' published by the

National Poetry Foundation The National Poetry Foundation (NPF) is a book publisher founded in 1971 by Carroll F. Terrell who built its reputation with Burton Hatlen at the University of Maine in Orono. Today it publishes poetry by individual authors as well as both journ ...

), which contextualizes Helen Adam within Robert Duncan's circle in The San Francisco Renaissance, as well as Adam's influence on

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 ...

and the

Beat Generation The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by members o ...

. Prevallet's poem "Lyric Infiltration" from her second book ''Scratch Sides: Poetry, Documentation and Image-Text Projects'' is analyzed by Redell Olson in “Reading and Writing Through Found Materials: From Modernism to Contemporary Practice.” Olson writes, "The use of the term ‘cut-up’ places Prevallet’s procedural work in relation to the strategies of previous writers such as

Tristan Tzara Tristan Tzara (; ; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, c ...

Brion Gysin Brion Gysin (19 January 1916 – 13 July 1986) was a British-Canadian painter, writer, sound poet, performance artist and inventor of experimental devices. He is best known for his use of the cut-up technique, alongside his close friend, the ...

, and the

Oulipo Oulipo (, short for ; roughly translated as "workshop of potential literature", stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques. It wa ...

founder

Raymond Queneau Raymond Auguste Queneau (; ; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo (), notable for his wit and cynical humour. Biography Queneau, the only child of Auguste Que ...

, and can also be related to the chance-based operational writing of

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...

and Jackson Mac Low. The work of Prevallet is unusual in that it does not dispense with either the term ‘lyric’ or the process of lyric writing but uses it as a basis for her procedural work." Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Elizabeth Jane Burnett describes her 2004 performance of "Cruelty and Conquest" at

as "playing with audience response as a feminist poetry that explores the ways in which the body is transacted." Her work has been published in numerous anthologies including ''The Body in Language'' (CounterPath Press, edited by Edwin Torres (poet), Edwin Torres), ''I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing By Women'' (University of Iowa Press), ''Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts & Affections'' (Edited by Arielle Greenburg and Rachel Zucker, University of Iowa Press), and ''Telling it Slant: Avant-garde Poetics of the 1990s'' (edited by Mark Wallace, University of Alabama Press).

Selected works

Poems

* "Tale of Caw" * “Quadrants” (for John Sims' Rhythm of Structure) * A Glassful of Tea and Sugar in the Mouth * "I Live in a Borrowed and Often Tender Multiplicity" * "What She Said" ("Kristin Prevallet." PennSound. Univ. Pennsylvania CPCW.)

Books

* ''Trance Poetics'', Wide Reality Books, 2014. * ''Everywhere Here and in Brooklyn'', Belladonna Series, 2012. * ''A

Reader: Selected Poems, Collages and Music'', edited with an introduction by Kristin Prevallet, The National Poetry Foundation, 2007. * ''I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time'', Essay Press, 2007. * ''Shadow Evidence Intelligence,'' Factory School, 2006. * ''Scratch Sides: Poetry, Documentation, and Image-Text Projects,'' Skanky Possum Press, 2003. * ''Perturbation, My Sister: A Study of Max Ernst's Hundred Headless Woman,'' First Intensity, 1997.

Articles and essays

* A Burning is Not A Letting GoCited: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/05/metaphors-are-all-we-have-to-describe-memory-kristin-prevallets-a-burning-is-not-a-letting-go-at-guernica
"Writing is Never By Itself Alone: Six Mini Essays on Relational Investigative Poetics."
Fence (Spring/Summer 2003)

Jacket No. 27 (April 2005); previously published i

Jacket No. 16 (March 2002)

Jacket No. 16 (March 2002)

Riding the Meridian v2 n2

Jacket No. 12 (July 2000)

Jacket No. 7 (April 1999)
"Gathering vs. Collecting (Correspondence with Jackson MacLow)"
Slought Foundation (undated)

References

External links

Official website

Kristin Prevallet
at Academy of American Poets website {{DEFAULTSORT:Prevallet, Kristin 1966 births Living people Modernist women writers American women poets 21st-century American poets 21st-century American women writers