The No Mountains Poetry Project was a unique and popular interdisciplinary program of workshops, live readings, recordings, and letterpress broadsides located in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston is a city in Cook County, Illinois, United States, situated on the North Shore (Chicago), North Shore along Lake Michigan. A suburb of Chicago, Evanston is north of Chicago Loop, downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skok ...

during the 1970s. Its objectives were to bring poets and writers together with academic and non-academic audiences in non-traditional settings, to encourage poetry-as-performance, and to collaborate with the book and poster arts. The project was the result of a collaboration between

TriQuarterly ''TriQuarterly'' is a name shared by an American literary magazine and a series of books. The journal is published twice a year under the aegis of the Northwestern University Department of English and features fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama ...

magazine, Amazingrace Coffeehouse, The Whole Earth Center, and the Ravine Press.

Participants

The series featured leading practitioners in a wide variety of styles. Diane di Prima and Anne Waldman represented the

Beat Beat, beats, or beating may refer to: Common uses * Assault, inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact * Battery (crime), a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact * Battery (tort), a civil wrong in common law of inte ...

tradition. Ed Dorn was a member of the

Black Mountain poets The Black Mountain poets, also called projectivist poets, were a group of mid-20th-century American ''avant-garde'' or postmodern poets based at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Historical background and definition Although it lasted ...

. John Hawkes was a proponent of

postmodern literature Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, and intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimen ...

Robert Coover Robert Lowell Coover (February 4, 1932 – October 5, 2024) was an American novelist, Short story, short story writer, and T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation ...

and William H. Gass worked in the style that has come to be known as

metafiction Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story ...

. And

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German Americans, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambien ...

has been characterized as a rock star “pulp” writer. Poet essayist, and short-story writer Tess Gallagher and poet Laura Jensen provided strong voices from the Pacific Northwest. Several of the No Mountains Poetry Project participants went on to achieve Poet Laureate status. Diane di Prima was appointed Poet Laureate of San Francisco, Mark Strand was the fourth US Poet Laureate Library of Congress Information Bulletin, https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/strand/strand.pdf and

Galway Kinnell Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) was an American poet. His dark poetry emphasized scenes and experiences in threatening, ego-less natural environments. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1982 collection, ''Se ...

was Poet Laureate for Vermont.

Locations

The workshops took place on the campus of

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

, primarily for the academic community. The performances for the larger community took place either at Amazingrace Coffeehouse (845 Main St., Evanston, IL) or the Whole Earth Center (530 Dempster St., Evanston, IL). The Charles Bukowski reading sold out all 400 seats available. The Whole Earth Center served as distributor for the authors’s books and the broadsides.

Broadsides

The limited edition broadsides were printed by The Ravine Press on a No. 4

Vandercook Vandercook & Sons was a manufacturer of proof presses, founded in 1909 by Robert Vandercook. They dominated the 20th century proof press industry by developing the first and the most widely used proof presses that did not rely on gravity for th ...

proof press on Arches paper. The color illustrations were done by Amazingrace using the hand-pulled

screen printing Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen in a "flood stroke ...

process. Print runs varied from 150-199. Advisors were

The Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatoria ...

on paper and ink, and the

Newberry Library The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities. It is located in Chicago, Illinois, and has been free and open to the public since 1887. The Newberry's mission is to foster a deeper understanding of our wo ...

on typography. Complete sets are available for viewing at the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

Special Collections and the

Northwestern University Library Northwestern University Libraries is the main academic library system of Northwestern University. Northwestern Libraries host a total of 8,198,268 printed or electronic volumes. In addition, its libraries contain 229,198 maps, 211,127 audio fi ...

Archives, Amazingrace Coffeehouse collection.

Performance & Publication History

References

{{reflist * * * * Beat poetry