An article published in Tablet magazine about Charles Bernstein mentions PennSound, Jacket2, and the Kelly Writers House—and Penn: But my bond with Charles also formed around the University of Pennsylvania. I told him I had graduated from Penn in 1991, where I’d studied early American lit with Dr. Elisa New, which was...
My favorite recordings of poems for January 2020 — from the PennSound archive: Claudia Rankine, “A Thing” Charles Olson, “Letter 14” Ted Pearson, “Hard Science” Wallace Stevens, “The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain”
We here at 3805 Locust Walk are thrilled to announce that MAYA ARTHUR (C’18) has been selected as the inaugural Kelly Writers House Post-Baccalaureate Fellow. The KWH Post-Bacc Fellows project extends a central objective of the Writers House: to direct resources toward opportunities, learning experiences, and foundational support to young...
Thanks to the work of Luisa Healey, PennSound staffer, we have now segmented (into audio clips arranged by topic) the “Close Listening” conversation Charles Bernstein hosted with Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge in 2006. PennSound’s Berssenbrugge author page is HERE. And here are the segments: Close Listening with Charles Bernstein, April 28, 2006...
It’s that time of year. For counting blessings & discerning why we’re grateful. The ModPo team, based here at the Kelly Writers House, makes ModPo (ever expanding, ever further elaborating) available to you as truly a labor of love. Can you tell? We just love doing this, and reaching out...
During her visit to Kelly Writer House as a KWH Fellow, Lydia Davis spent an hour with me in conversation. In the course of the house I asked her to read several of her pieces and we were then able to discuss these in detail. Thanks for Domenic Casciato of...
On December 5, 2016, Jed Rasula visited the Kelly Writers House to talk about Dada — and in particular about his recent book on the subject. Here, below, is a 6-minute excerpt from that discussion, in which Al Filreis attempts to get Rasula to talk about how anyone could teach...
Thanks to George Drury and Lois Baum, PennSound has recently added a stunningly good cache of audio recordings from the “Word of Mouth” series, originally aired on WFMT at Loyola University, Chicago. Among these recordings is a conversation among Langston Hughes, John Sellers, James Cotton and Otis Spann, moderated by...
Recently, in honor of William J. (Billy Joe) Harris, Tracie Morris performed five poems. Now Dylan Leahy of the PennSound staff has segmented the video I shot of the performance. These five video segments are available at Jacket2 magazine HERE.
Michael Hennessey, one of the founding participants of the PennSound archive, and now its Editor, stopped by the Kelly Writers House a few months back and joined me in the Wexler Studio. We played and discussed five recordings Mike has chosen from among the tens of thousands of recordings available...
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (Columbia University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a book about online pedagogy. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 265,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Founder/Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House—intro video ][ events calendar
Convener/teacher, “ModPo.” an open online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry—overview of the course ][ intro video
Publisher of Jacket2 magazine—my Jacket2 commentary series ][ "First Readings"
Producer/host, PoemTalk podcast series—co-sponsored by Kelly Writers House & the Poetry Foundation
Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing—Creative Writing ][ RealArts internships ]
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 15 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more
Teacher, "Representations of the Holocaust"—a course on survivor testimony ][ my holocaust site
Click on the image for information about the book.