Vocable Void: Lyn Hejinian & David Meltzer

Programmed by Ava Koohbor

Lyn Hejinian and David Meltzer join us for Vocable Void, where language unfolds in between music and words: a poetic possibility of forms. Hejinian is a poet, essayist, teacher, and translator; her most recent book is The Unfollowing (Omnidawn Books). Meltzer is author of more than forty books, including poetry, fiction, essays, anthologies, and interviews. His most recent volume of poetry is Stunt Man (Omerta Publications).

Lyn Hejinian is a poet, essayist, teacher, and translator. Her academic work is addressed principally to modernist, postmodern, and contemporary poetry and poetics, with a particular interest in avant-garde movements and the social practices they entail. She is currently the codirector (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross- genre work by poets, and the coeditor (with Jane Gregory and Claire Marie Stancek) of Nion Editions, a chapbook press.

David Meltzer began his literary career as a Beat poet during San Francisco’s poetry renaissance of the 1950s. In 2011, Meltzer was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. He taught for over thirty years, and continues to give public talks.

Programmer Ava Koohbor is a native Farsi speaker, poet, and visual artist who lives in San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in various publications such as Streetnotes, Amerarcana, Eleven Eleven, and Dusie. Her chapbook Triangle Squared was published by Bootstrap Press. She is currently working on a project with poet Patrick James Dunagan involving translation of the poetry of Hafez into English.