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“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” —from the Heart Sutra
Based on personal study and experience, Anne Waldman will touch on the refuge and Bodhisattva vows, the Six Realms of Existence, “co-emergent wisdom” as well as a parallel vow to poetry, and the joys and contradictions therein. It will also reference Giorgio Agamben’s notion of being contemporary with one’s time as “looking into the darkness.” The presentation will be supplemented by reference to particular writers associated with the Beat Literary Movement as well as the presenter’s own poetry.
Anne Waldman is a poet, teacher, performer, and cultural activist who has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism since 1970. Waldman was one of the founders and directors of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery in NYC and went on to co-found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado with Allen Ginsberg in 1974. Waldman has taught poetics and performed her texts all over the world and has been an active collaborator with composer/vocalist Meredith Monk, choreographer Douglas Dunn, and painter Pat Steir. She was recently the keynote speaker at the Jaipur Festival in India in 2017 and performed at The Casa del Lago Voz Alta festival in Mexico City. With her son Ambrose Bye, and nephew, Devin Brahja Waldman, she is part of the Fast Speaking Music collective and recording label. She is the author of more than 40 books, including her newest title, Trickster Feminism, a book of protest, which is forthcoming from Penguin in 2018.