In addition to the presenters speaking at the Robert Duncan Symposium on April 22-24, CPP is proud to announce our very exciting (and very famous!) keynote speakers, Nathaniel Mackey and Michael Palmer. Please find their bios below.
Michael Palmer is invoked by name in Robert Duncan’s “In Wonder [Passages],” from Ground Work II: In the Dark. (“FOR MICHAEL PALMER who also may work alone.” His association with Duncan was longstanding, stretching back to the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference, continuing through shared time on the faculty at San Francisco’s New College. Palmer has been a steward of Duncan’s work in the years since his death, most recently providing an introduction to the single volume publication of Ground Work by New Directions in 2006.
Palmer is the author of many books of poetry, including Company of Moths (2005); Codes Appearing: Poems 1979-1988 (2001); The Promises of Glass (2000); The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995 (1998); and At Passages (1996), all published by New Directions; Sun (1988); First Figure (1984); Notes for Echo Lake (1981); Without Music (1977); The Circular Gates (1974); and Blake’s Newton (1972). In 2008, New Directions published Active Boundaries: Selected Essays and Talks.
He lives in San Francisco.
Nathaniel Mackey’s involvement with Robert Duncan’s poetry began with the dissertation he wrote at Stanford University on Duncan’s Open Field poetics. His essays on Duncan’s poetry, especially its serial component, are groundbreaking; his monograph “Gassire’s Lute: Robert Duncan’s Viet Nam War Poems” is one of the best sustained readings of Duncan’s poetry we have. In his own poetry, Mackey has expanded the open field of Duncan’s poetry but has also struck out for new territory, discovering places uniquely his own in an ever-expanding body of work.
Mackey’s books of poetry include Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), which won the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry; Whatsaid Serif (1998); School of Udhra (1993); and Eroding Witness (1985). From a Broken Bottle, Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, his series of epistolary novels, has four parts so far: Bedouin Hornbook (1986), Djbot Baghostus’s Run (1993), Atet A.D. (2001), and Bass Cathedral (2008). His essays have been collected in Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (1993) and Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (2005).
He lives in Santa Cruz and teaches at the University of California.
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[...] Keynote speakers Nathaniel Mackey Michael Palmer [...]