Kenneth Goldsmith
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Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) is an American
poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
and
critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...
. He is the founding editor of
UbuWeb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philosop ...
and since 2020 is the ongoing artist-in-residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
, where he teaches. He is also a senior editor of
PennSound PennSound is a poetry website and online archive that hosts free and downloadable recordings of poets reading their own work. The website offers over 1500 full-length and single-poem recordings, the largest collection of poetry sound-files on the ...
at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
. He hosted a weekly radio show at
WFMU WFMU is a listener-supported, independent community radio station, licensed to East Orange, New Jersey. Since 1998 its studios and operating facilities have been headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. It broadcasts locally at 91.1 Mhz FM, in ...
from 1995 until June 2010. He has published ten books of poetry, notably ''Fidget'' (2000), ''Soliloquy'' (2001), ''Day'' (2003) and his American trilogy, ''The Weather'' (2005), ''Traffic'' (2007), and ''Sports'' (2008). He is the author of three books of essays, ''Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age'' (2011), ''Wasting Time on The Internet'' (2016), and ''Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb'' (2020). In 2013, he was appointed the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
's first poet laureate.


Early life and career

Born in
Freeport, New York Freeport is a village in the town of Hempstead, in Nassau County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York state. The population was 43,713 at the 2010 census, making it the second largest village in New York by population. A settlemen ...
, he was trained as a
sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
at the
Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...
and graduated with a BFA in 1984. Goldsmith worked for many years within the art world as a text-based artist and sculptor before becoming a writer.


Conceptual poetic practice

Motivated by his own 2007 manifesto "Uncreative Writing" and notion that "any language can be poetry", Goldsmith has been the editor of one continuous project of innovative poetics, comprising both the study and practice of conceptual poetry as a writer, academic, and the curator of the archives at
UbuWeb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philosop ...
. In his own words, "I guess what I write is poetry. But I clearly don’t write traditional poems. I’ve never written a sonnet. Poetry is so generous that it can take a hybrid practice like mine and claim it as its own and support it in a way fiction isn’t able to." He places conceptual poetic practice within the realm of activist poetry. His process, which involves self-induced constraints, has produced 600 pages of rhyming phrases ending with the sound ''r'', sorted by syllables and alphabetized (''No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96'', 1997), everything he said for a week (''Soliloquy'', 2001), every move his body made during a thirteen-hour period (''Fidget'', 2000), a year of transcribed weather reports (''The Weather'', 2005) and one edition of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', September 1, 2000, transcribed as ''Day'' (2003). Goldsmith's practice embraces the performance of the writer as ''process'' and
plagiarism Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
— as ''content''. Creative and critical responses to his work are archived at the Electronic Poetry Center with several being consolidated in ''Open Letter: Kenneth Goldsmith and Conceptual Poetics (2005)''. Notable addressees of Goldsmith's work include those of the literary critics
Marjorie Perloff Marjorie Perloff (born September 28, 1931) is an Austrian-born poetry scholar and critic in the United States. Early life Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany exacer ...
,
Craig Dworkin Craig Dworkin is an American poet, critic, editor, and Professor of English at the University of Utah. He is founding senior editor of Eclipse, an online archive of 20th-century small-press writing and 21st-century born-digital publications. Ed ...
, Sianne Ngai,
Robert Archambeau Robert Archambeau (18 April 1933 — 25 April 2022) was a Canadian ceramic artist and potter. He also had an academic career in post-secondary art studies. Personal history Born in Toledo, Ohio, United States in 1933, he immigrated to Can ...
, and
Johanna Drucker Johanna Drucker (born May 30, 1952) is an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. Her scholarly writing documents and critiques visual language: letterforms, typography, visual poetry, art, and lately, digital art aest ...
, as well as poets
Bruce Andrews Bruce Andrews (April 1, 1948) is an American poet who is one of the key figures associated with the Language poets (or '' L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' ''poets'', after the magazine that bears that name). Life and work Andrews was born in Chicago and studied ...
,
Christian Bök Christian Bök, FRSC (; born August 10, 1966 in Toronto, Canada) is a Canadian poet known for unusual and experimental works. He is the author of ''Eunoia'', which won the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. Life and work He was born "Christian Boo ...
,
Darren Wershler-Henry Darren Wershler, also known as Darren Wershler-Henry, (b. 1966) is a Canadian experimental poet, non-fiction writer and cultural critic. Wershler was the senior editor of Coach House Books between 1997 and 2002, where the works he edited include ...
,
Christine Wertheim Margaret Wertheim (born 20 August 1958) is an Australian-born science writer, curator, and artist based in the United States. She is the author of books on the cultural history of physics, and has written about science, including for the ''New Yo ...
and
Caroline Bergvall Caroline Bergvall (born 1962) is a French-Norwegian poet who has lived in England since 1989. Her work includes the adaption of Old English and Old Norse texts into audio text and sound art performances. Life and education Born in Hamburg, Germ ...
.


Broadcast events and collaborations

Goldsmith hosted a weekly show on
WFMU WFMU is a listener-supported, independent community radio station, licensed to East Orange, New Jersey. Since 1998 its studios and operating facilities have been headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. It broadcasts locally at 91.1 Mhz FM, in ...
, the New Jersey-based freeform radio station, from 1995 until June 2010, using the broadcast name of "Kenny G". The show was an extension of Goldsmith's writing experiments, his pedagogy and
UbuWeb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philosop ...
. His programs were titled (for various extended periods) "Kenny G's Hour of Pain," "Anal Magic" and "Intelligent Design." He has also had numerous collaborations with musicians and composers. In 1993, Goldsmith embarked on a collaboration with avant-garde vocalist
Joan La Barbara Joan Linda La Barbara (born June 8, 1947) is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited w ...
, resulting in a CD and book ''73 Poems'' published by Brooklyn's Permanent Press. In 1998, the
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
commissioned vocalist
Theo Bleckmann Theodor Raoul Bleckmann (born 28 May 1966) is a German singer and composer. Biography Bleckmann was born in Dortmund, West Germany. He planned to be an ice skater before becoming a vocalist. In 1989 he moved to New York City and recorded his ...
to stage an interpretation of ''Fidget''. In 2004, Goldsmith released a CD with People Like Us called ''Nothing Special'' and has done many radio performances with Vicki Bennett. The next year he collaborated with guitarist
Alan Licht Alan Licht (born June 6, 1968) is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist. Biography Licht was born in New Jersey in 1968. His earliest mus ...
to stage an evening length performance of ''The Weather'', as well as excerpts from ''Fidget''. He has also collaborated with musician
David Grubbs David Grubbs (born September 21, 1967) is an American composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist. He was a founding member of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol. He has also played in Codeine, The Red Krayola, Bitch Magnet and The Wingdale ...
with texts from ''Fidget''. In 2006, he performed in the ''TRANS-WARHOL, Chamber Opera'', a
libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...
based on his book ''I'll Be Your Mirror; The Andy Warhol Interviews''. The project was a collaboration with choreographer Nicolas Musin, composer Philippe Schoeller and
Ensemble Alternance Ensemble may refer to: Art * Architectural ensemble * ''Ensemble'' (album), Kendji Girac 2015 album * Ensemble (band), a project of Olivier Alary * Ensemble cast (drama, comedy) * Ensemble (musical theatre), also known as the chorus * ''En ...
. The opera premiered at the Bâtiment des forces motrices in
Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
, in March 2007. Goldsmith has written about
experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...
on the articl
A Popular Guide to Unpopular Music
and has curated many musical events and compact discs. He was a musical curator for the Whitney Museum of American Art's ''The American Century, Part 2'', which included ''73 Poems''. In 2004, he curated a CD for the
Sonic Arts Network Sonic Arts Network was a UK-based organisation, established in 1979, that aimed to enable both audiences and practitioners to engage with the art of sound through a programme of festivals, events, commissions and education projects. Its honorary ...
in London called ''The Agents of Impurity''. In 2006 he organized a CD for the
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple na ...
called ''The Body is a Sound Factory''. Also in 2006, he organized an 8-hour-long performance at the Sculpture Center (New York City) of
Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...
's ''Vexations'
"Pianoless Vexations" (UbuWeb)
for any instrument other than piano.


Conceptual art projects

In 2009, Goldsmith co-curated the exhibition ''Intermission: Films From a Heroic Future'' at the
Canadian Centre for Architecture The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA; french: Centre Canadien d'Architecture) is a Architecture museum, museum of architecture and research centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 1920, rue Baile (1920, Baile Street), between r ...
. The exhibition surveyed the evolving relationship between speed and space and the accelerating pace of life through different artistic films from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From 26 July to 31 August 2013, Goldsmith curated a conceptual art project called '' Printing out the Internet'' in collaboration with LABOR and UbuWeb, that invited the public to print and send pages from the Internet to an art gallery in Mexico City, with the intention to literally print out the entire Internet. Goldsmith dedicated the exhibition to
Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the tech ...
, an Internet activist who committed suicide while facing federal charges of illegally downloading and disseminating millions of files from the digital library
JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...
. As Goldsmith said in an interview, "The amount of what he liberated was enormous — we can’t begin to understand the magnitude of his action until we begin to materialize and actualize it. This project tries to bring that point home." By the end of the project, Goldsmith had accumulated over 10 tonnes of paper from more than 20,000 contributors. In
Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400  ...
at the “Hillary: The Hillary Clinton Emails,” a work on display in a balcony jutting out over a supermarket at the Despar Teatro Italia during the 58th Biennale of Visual Arts, Clinton made a surprise visit on Tuesday September 10, 2019, to this work of political theater and performance art, where she spent an hour reading her emails. The exhibition created by the American poet and artist Kenneth Goldsmith is displayed from May 9, 2019, until November 24, 2019, curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi. During her appearance, she said that the attention given to her emails was one of the “strangest” and most “absurd” events in U.S. political history, adding, “Anyone can go in and look at them. There is nothing there. There is nothing that should have been so controversial.” In 2022, Goldsmith premiered "Retyping a Library," a monumental new intervention for the gallery on the ground floor of
Kunstnernes Hus Kunstnernes Hus (Norwegian for "Artists' House") is an art gallery in Oslo, Norway. It is Norway's largest gallery under the direction of artists, and has served as a major center for exhibits of Norwegian and international contemporary art. It i ...
in
Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
. At the center of the exhibition space, more than two hundred boxes are arranged to form a cube that resembles a minimalist sculpture. Inside each box there is a manuscript on onion skin paper that bears witness to the titanic task the artist has set himself: to copy all the volumes in his library with a typewriter. The press release claims, "Retyping a Library could either be a stoical exercise in attention or a well-conceived scam. It is certainly a celebration of literature and the daily work it takes to produce it."


Teaching

He teaches in the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
's English Department. His courses have included "Uncreative Writing," "Interventionist Writing," and "Writing Through Art and Culture," among others. In addition, Goldsmith has run a graduate seminar at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...
entitled "Publishing as Project." He taught uncreative writing at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
during 2010 on an Anschutz Distinguished Fellowship in American Studies.


Recognition

In October 2007, a documentary film of Goldsmith's life and practice, ''Sucking on Words'', by filmmaker Simon Morris was screened at
Shandy Hall Shandy Hall is a writer's house museum in the former home of the Rev. Laurence Sterne in Coxwold, North Yorkshire, England. Sterne lived there from 1760 to 1768 as perpetual curate of Coxwold. He is remembered for his novels ''The Life and Op ...
in Coxwold, England, and in London. The film was premiered at the Eccles Center at the
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
in London and subsequently screened at the Oslo Poetry Festival in November 2007. On May 11, 2011, Goldsmith was featured at President and Mrs. Obama's celebration of American poetry at the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
. He read works by
Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...
and
Hart Crane Harold Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 – April 27, 1932) was an American poet. Provoked and inspired by T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, '' The Brid ...
, as well as from his work ''Traffic''. Other performers that day included:
Billy Collins William James Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York (retired, 2016). Collins ...
,
Common Common may refer to: Places * Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland * Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts * Cambridge Common, common land area in Cambridge, Massachusetts * Clapham Common, originally com ...
,
Rita Dove Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the posit ...
,
Alison Knowles Alison Knowles (born 1933) is an American visual artist known for her installations, performances, soundworks, and publications. Knowles was a founding member of the Fluxus movement, an international network of artists who aspired to merge diffe ...
,
Aimee Mann Aimee Elizabeth Mann (born September 8, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter. Over the course of four decades, she has released more than a dozen albums as a solo artist and with other musicians. She is noted for her sardonic and literate lyr ...
, Jill Scott and
Steve Martin Stephen Glenn Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and musician. He has won five Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2013. Additionally, he was nominated ...
and the
Steep Canyon Rangers Steep Canyon Rangers is an American bluegrass band based in Asheville and Brevard, North Carolina. Though formed in 2000, the band has become widely known since 2009 for collaborating with actor/banjoist Steve Martin. In 2013, the Steep Canyon ...
. During the afternoon, Goldsmith led a poetry workshop for high school students with the first lady. In 2012, Goldsmith's book ''Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age'' was awarded the Association Study of the Arts of the Present Book Prize. The next year, he was appointed the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
's first Poet Laureate. His tenure included a series called, ''Uncontested Spaces: Guerilla Readings'', in the MoMA Galleries where, as part of his Poet Laureate program, writers were invited to choose works in MoMA's collection, develop a response, and then select a space in the Museum galleries in which to perform the resulting readings and texts. Participants included
David Shields David Shields is the author of twenty-four books, including '' Reality Hunger'' (which, in 2019, ''Lit Hub'' named one of the most important books of the past decade), ''The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead'' (a New York Times bes ...
,
Sheila Heti Sheila Heti (; born 25 December 1976) is a Canadian writer. Early life Sheila Heti was born on 25 December 1976 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her parents are Hungarian Jewish immigrants. Her brother is the comedian David Heti. Her father wanted ...
,
Rick Moody Hiram Frederick Moody III (born October 18, 1961) is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel ''The Ice Storm'', a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 19 ...
,
John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger and producer who "deliberately resists category". Zorn's avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jaz ...
,
Stefan Sagmeister Stefan Sagmeister (born August 6, 1962) is an Austrian graphic designer, storyteller, and typographer based in New York City. In 1993, Sagmeister founded his company, Sagmeister Inc., to create designs for the music industry. He has designed alb ...
,
Charles Bernstein Charles Bernstein may refer to: * Charles Bernstein (composer) (born 1943), American composer of film and television scores * Charles Bernstein (poet) Charles Bernstein (born April 4, 1950) is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary sc ...
,
Christian Bök Christian Bök, FRSC (; born August 10, 1966 in Toronto, Canada) is a Canadian poet known for unusual and experimental works. He is the author of ''Eunoia'', which won the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. Life and work He was born "Christian Boo ...
,
Vanessa Place Vanessa Place (born 1968) is an American writer and criminal appellate attorney. She is the co-director of the Los Angeles-based Les Figues Press. Place has also worked as an occasional screenwriter on television shows such as '' Law & Order: Sp ...
,
Maira Kalman Maira Kalman is an American artist, illustrator, writer, and designer known for her painting and writing about the human condition. She is the author and illustrator of over 30 books for adults and children and her work is exhibited in museums a ...
,
Heidi Julavits Heidi Suzanne Julavits (born April 20, 1969) is an American author and was a founding editor of '' The Believer'' magazine. She has been published in ''The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2'', ''Esquire'', ''Culture+Travel'', ''Story'', '' Zoetrope ...
,
Alex Ross Nelson Alexander Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an American comic book writer and artist known primarily for his painted interiors, covers, and design work. He first became known with the 1994 miniseries ''Marvels'', on which he collaborated wi ...
,
Vito Acconci Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational p ...
, and others. Every Friday, from January to July 2013, Goldsmith himself contributed readings in the galleries. He was awarded the 2016 Prix d'Honneur from the Festival international du livre d'art et du film in
Perpignan Perpignan (, , ; ca, Perpinyà ; es, Perpiñán ; it, Perpignano ) is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the ...
, France. From 16 to 18 March 2018, Goldsmith was honored by a symposium at the
Onassis Cultural Center The Alexander S. Onassis Foundation () was created by Aristotle Onassis to honor the memory of his son Alexander, who died at age 24 in an airplane crash in 1973. Aristotle Onassis died in 1975, and had directed in his will that half of his estate ...
in Athens
Shadow Libraries: UbuWeb in Athens
which included symposia, performances and exhibitions. Participants included
Peter Sunde Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (born 13 September 1978), alias brokep, is a Swedish entrepreneur and politician. Sunde is of Norwegian and Finnish ancestry. He is best known for being a co-founder and ex-spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent sea ...
of
The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute mag ...
, Marcell Mars,
Tom McCarthy Thomas McCarthy (also Tom and Tommy) may refer to: Academia *Thomas A. McCarthy (born 1940), American professor of philosophy *Thomas J. McCarthy (born 1956), American professor of polymer chemistry at the University of Massachusetts *J. Thomas Mc ...
, Dušan Barok,
Emily Segal Emily Segal is an artist, writer, and creative director, born in 1988. She is a founding member of the art collective K-HOLE, a trend forecasting group. She has lectured on branding and consumer culture at the DLD conference, MoMA PS1, the Serpen ...
,
People Like Us (band) People Like Us was a South-African Hi-NRG band from the mid-1980s who had success with their song "Deliverance". Early careers Producers Paul Crossley and Terry Owen were working with another South African group called Shiraz (band) during ...
,
Craig Dworkin Craig Dworkin is an American poet, critic, editor, and Professor of English at the University of Utah. He is founding senior editor of Eclipse, an online archive of 20th-century small-press writing and 21st-century born-digital publications. Ed ...
, David Desrimais, Dina Kelberman, and Coco Sollfrank. The event was organized and curated by Ilan Manouach. On June 4, 2018, the Institute of Advanced Studies at the
University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continuo ...
awarded Goldsmith its Honorary Fellowship. Goldsmith was named the 2020 recipient of the Prix François-Morellet for Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Poetics, and Pragmatics of UbuWeb. In July 2021, Goldsmith's
UbuWeb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philosop ...
was selected by The United States
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
for inclusion in the historic collection of Internet materials. The citation, in part read, "We consider buWebto be an important part of this collection and the historical record."


Controversy

On March 13, 2015, Goldsmith read his poem "The Body of Michael Brown" at the "Interrupt 3" event at
Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
. The poem was a reading of the
autopsy An autopsy (post-mortem examination, obduction, necropsy, or autopsia cadaverum) is a surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse by dissection to determine the cause, mode, and manner of death or to evaluate any di ...
report issued by the St. Louis County Coroner's Office on the shooting of Michael Brown, an African-American teenager who was shot and killed by a white police officer in
Ferguson, Missouri Ferguson is a city in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. It is part of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. Per the 2020 census, the population was 18,527. History What is now the city of Ferguson was founded in 1855, when William B ...
, on August 9, 2014, setting off local protests that spread to many cities nationwide. Goldsmith explained his process on
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
: "I altered the text for poetic effect; I translated into plain English many obscure medical terms that would have stopped the flow of the text; I narrativized it in ways that made the text less didactic and more literary." The reading was met with
controversy Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite d ...
. Brown University professor
John Cayley John Howland Cayley (born 1956) is a Canadian pioneer of writing in digital media as well as a theorist of the practice, a poet, and a Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University (from 2007). Education After moving to the United Kingdom in ...
stated that the video recording of the poem will not be released to the public, as requested by the poet. Goldsmith said that he is, "requesting that Brown University not make public the recording of my performance of 'The Body of Michael Brown'. There's been too much pain for many people around this and I do not wish to cause any more."


Personal life

He lives in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
with his wife, artist
Cheryl Donegan Cheryl Donegan (born 1962) is an American conceptual artist.
, and his two sons.


Selected bibliography

*''No 105''. New York: Beans Dear Press, 1992 *''Tizzy Boost'', with Bruce Andrews, The Figures, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 1993 *''No. 110 10.4.93-10.7.93'', Artists Museum, nddz, Poland, (1993) *''No. 109 2.7.93-12.15.93'', Bravin Post Lee, New York, New York (1994) *''6799'', Zingmagazine Press, New York (2000) *''Kenneth Goldsmith'' (e-book), Electronic Poetry Center, Buffalo, New York (2002) *''Day'', The Figures, Great Barrington, Massachusetts and Berkeley, CA (2003) *''I'll be your mirror : the selected Andy Warhol interviews : 1962-1987'', Carrol & Graf, New York (2004) *''Kenneth Goldsmith and Conceptual Poetics'', with Lori Emerson and Barbara Cole, Open Letter, Strathroy, Ontario (2005) *''Spring'', with James Siena, Michael Bixler, Winifred Bixler, Didymus Press, New York (2005) *''
John Cage uncaged is still cagey'', with David Antin and John Cage, Singing Horse Press, San Diego, California (2005) *''Weather'', Make Now, Los Angeles (2005) *''Sucking on Words'', (an interactive poetry experience distributed on DVD) Cornerhouse Press, York, England (2007) *''Kenneth Goldsmith : street poets & visionaries : selections from the UbuWeb Collection'', with Craig Leonard, Mercer Union, Toronto (2008) *''Traffic'', Make Now, Los Angeles (2007) *''Sports'', Make Now, Los Angeles (2008) *'' Uncreative writing : managing language in the digital age'', Columbia University Press, New York (2011) *'' Against Expression: an anthology of conceptual writing'', with Craig Douglas Dworkin, Northwestern University Press, Evanston Illinois (2011) *''Dog Ear'', with Erica Baum and Beatrice Gross, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, New York (2011) *''Seven American deaths and disasters'', Powerhouse Books, Brooklyn, New York (2013) *''Kenneth Goldsmith: theory'', Jean Boite Editions (2015) *'' Capital: New York, Capital of the 20th Century'', Verso (2015) *''Against Translation'', Jean Boite Editions (2016) *''Wasting Time on the Internet'', Harper Perennial, New York (2016) *'' The Ideal Lecture (In Memory of David Antin)'', Het Balanseer, Belgium (2018) *'' Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb,'' Columbia University Press (2020)


References


External links


Kenneth Goldsmith-UbuWebKenneth Goldsmith page at the Academy of American PoetsKenneth Goldsmith Entry from the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American PoetryKenneth Goldsmith, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldsmith, Kenneth American male poets 1961 births Living people Jewish poets University of Pennsylvania faculty Princeton University fellows American radio DJs People from Freeport, New York 21st-century American poets 21st-century American male writers