Threads Talk Series

THREADS, a series of talks devoted to the art of the book, includes poets, artists, and publishers. It explores and enriches relationships between various strands of book culture that are often approached in isolation: poetry and writing; visual and performing arts; collaboration; design; printing; independent publishing; literary history; critical theory; and material culture.

The premise for the series was very similar to the kind of interdisciplinary approach to the book that has interested us all along. A book is never more successful than the relationship between its parts; the philosophical and material connections between writing, art, design, typography, translation, and distribution is more significant than excellence in any isolated area.

The talks were originally recorded before a small studio audience, then made available to the public on PennSound, and are now collected here in written form for the first time.

THREADS began in March 2009 and concluded in October 2012. There were twelve speakers: Alan Loney; Charles Alexander; Simon Cutts; Buzz Spector; Jerome Rothenberg; Cecilia Vicuña; Jen Bervin; Kathleen Walkup; Johanna Drucker; Keith Smith; Richard Minsky; and Emily McVarish.

Kyle Schlesinger is an American poet, book publisher and illustrator. Born in Providence, Rhode Island he holds a BA from Goddard College and Ph.D. in English from the University at Buffalo where he studied with Robert Creeley, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, and other faculty in the Poetics Program. Schlesinger is the author of Hello Helicopter (BlazeVox, 2007) and Mantle (Atticus Finch, 2005 w/ Thom Donovan). His artists' books include Schablone Berlin (Chax Press, 2005 w/ Caroline Koebel), which includes art by Sixten (street artist), A Book of Closings (2004) and Moonlighting (2005).