Lisa Yau was a participant in a seminar for Philadelphia teachers I taught a few years ago. I’m excited & proud of what she has done with the project she undertook in our poetry seminar. https://theteachersinstitute.org/2022/05/02/teacher-artist-and-students-convert-a-south-philly-wall-into-an-expression-of-culture-and-belonging/
This morning I went walking in my West Philadelphia neighborhood, masked and carrying my Nikon with new Vivitar telephoto lens. I found some birds in the sun: goldfinches in a neighbor’s sunflower and some house sparrows way up in a Sycamore.
This spring (along with Lily Applebaum & Anna Strong Safford) I have taught a seminar in which the participants are Philadelphia public school teachers. The students of one teacher are grade schoolers who are multi-lingual (mostly from immigrant families). The curriculum unit she is drafting—to use in her class next...
Students in Kenneth Goldsmith’s yearlong seminar on Duchamp in this video perform their own Infrathins while circled around M.D.’s Glass at the PMA. Here’s the video: https://media.sas.upenn.edu/app/public/watch.php?file_id=220704
This bronze-and-glass sculpture by Jasper Johns is part of a series of flashlights. This one—dated 1960—is on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
As a member of the Philadelphia poet laureate governing committee, I’m pleased to pass along the link for those who wish to apply for the position as our city’s laureate: https://libwww.freelibrary.org/programs/poet-laureate/ (You can see that the administration of the laureate program has shifted from the Mayor’s office to that of...
The Free Library of Philadelphia is proud to now be leading the Poet Laureate Program. I am honored to continue as a member of the Poet Laureate Selection Committee. We will be accepting submissions from young poets in all styles including written and spoken word, ages 13-18 who are interested in...
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, Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60; 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (2021); and The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems. His new book is The Classroom & the Crowd: Poetry & the Promise of Digital Community (2025). He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 315,000 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.