The Flow Chart Foundation partners with other organizations as well as directly producing programming toward fulfilling its mission. Events are announced through our Mailing List, social media (Instagram & Facebook), and through local listings and partner organizations. All virtual programs are presented with live close-captioning. Details about and documentation of past events from this year can be found below, and for prior years here.
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Close Readings in a Virtual Space
Favorite poets leading participatory group thinking-and-reading-through workshops of single poems.
Events & Performances
Panel discussions, presentations, poetry readings, music, theater, dance, and other performances.
Installations & Exhibitions
Art & poetry exhibitions in the Flow Chart Space in Hudson.
Annual Gatherings
Gatherings are day-long deep-dive symposia dedicated to a single poet or writer, and typically held in the Spring.
CLOSE READINGS IN A VIRTUAL SPACE
CLOSE READINGS IN A VIRTUAL SPACE is a free, participatory virtual series (taking place via Zoom) features some of our favorite poets leading intimate, virtual group reading-thinking-and-reading-through workshops, usually on single, “challenging” poems. The poets—neither explicitly teaching nor explaining—serve as expert tour-guides for us to explore each featured poem as a group. Whether already well-versed in the “close reading” of poems or having never been quite sure you’ve been "getting it," CLOSE READINGS IN A VIRTUAL SPACE provides a friendly gathering space for us to take a refreshing deep dive into poetry. Each event lasts about an hour and concludes with a brief reading by our special guest poet.
Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge leads a thinking-and-reading-through of Elizabeth Willis
On Thursday, March 6th, 2025, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge led a thinking-and-reading-through of “I Didn't Invent the World” by Elizabeth Willis, followed by a short reading of her own work.
Born in Beijing, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the author of fourteen books of poetry including Hello, the Roses, Empathy, I Love Artists and A Treatise on Stars, which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her collaborations include works in theater, dance, music, and the visual arts. She received the Bollingen Prize for poetry in 2020.
Samiya Bashir leads a thinking-and-reading-through of Carl Phillips
On Thursday, February 20th, 2025, Samiya Bashir led a thinking-and-reading-through of “Rubicon” by Carl Phillips, followed by a short reading of her own work.
Samiya Bashir is a multi-media poet, writer, librettist, and artist whose solo and collaborative work has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, exhibited, screened, experienced, and Oxford comma’d from Berlin to Düsseldorf, Amsterdam to Accra, Florence to Rome, and across the United States. Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her fourth collection, I Hope This Helps, is forthcoming in Spring 2025. Bashir lives in Harlem, NYC.
Eugene Ostashevsky leads a thinking-and-reading-through of Lyn Hejinian
On Thursday, February 6th, 2025, Eugene Ostashevsky led a thinking-and-reading-through of “The Unfollowing: 7” by Lyn Hejinian, followed by a short reading of his own work
EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY is a poet and translator whose writing has been described as “translingual” because of its focus on multilingualism and linguistic interference. HisThe Feeling Sonnets (Carcanet, NYRB Poets, 2022) examines the effect of speaking a nonnative language on emotions, parenting, and identity. An earlier book, The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi (NYRB Poets, 2017), discusses communication difficulties between pirates and parrots.As a translator, Ostashevsky is best known for his editions of the Russian avant-garde, such as OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (Northwestern UP, 2006). His more recent translations include Lucky Breaks by the Ukrainian fiction writer Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions, 2022).His work has appeared in Best American Poetry(US) andThe Forward Book of Poetry(UK), and won the National Translation Award (US), the City of Münster International Poetry Prize (DE), the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD fellowship (DE), and other prizes.
Omar Berrada leads a thinking-and-reading-through of Henry Dumas
On Thursday, January 23rd, 2025, Omar Berrada led a thinking-and-reading-through of “The Zebra Goes Wild Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Henry Dumas, followed by a short reading of his own work
Omar Berrada is a writer and curator whose work focuses on the politics of translation and intergenerational transmission. He is the author of the poetry collection Clonal Hum (Obultra, 2020), and the editor or co-editor of several books, including The Africans, on racial dynamics in North Africa (Kulte, 2016); La Septième Porte, a posthumously published history of Moroccan cinema by Ahmed Bouanani (Kulte, 2020); and Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets (Litmus, 2024). His writing was included in numerous exhibition catalogs, magazines and anthologies, including Frieze, Bidoun, Asymptote, The University of California Book of North African Literature (UC Press, 2012), and Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry (Texas UP, 2020). He grew up in Casablanca and currently lives in New York
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Elisa Gabbert leads a thinking-and-reading through of John Berryman
On Thursday, January 9th, 2024, Elisa Gabbert led a thinking-and-reading-through of “Dream Song 29” by John Berryman, followed by a short reading of their own work
Elisa Gabbert is the author of seven collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, most recently Any Person Is the Only Self (published in June 2024 by FSG). Her other books include Normal Distance, The Unreality of Memory, and The Word Pretty. She writes the On Poetry column for the New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper’s, the Atlantic, the Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, the Believer, the Yale Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Providence.
EVENTS & PERFORMANCES
Philippe Soupault, Poetry, Prose, and Interviews
Saturday, August 16th, Flow Chart Space
On Saturday, August 9th, a reading and discussion took place at the Flow Chart Space in Hudson about Gregg Ellis’ Philippe Soupault, Poetry, Prose, and Interviews. Ellis read from his new book of translations of Soupault’s poems and prose, while Eric Longo and Mark Dow will complemented the readings with excerpts of the original French texts and a selection of Ashbery’s more “surrealistic” poems. Please note: the video recording of this event got corrupted. The audio file for the event is below:
Gregg Ellis (left) was raised in the United States and has been living in France for a number of years. Philippe Soupault, the French Surrealist, was born outside of Paris, wrote poetry, novels, plays, art reviews, literary criticism, and ran a number of radio broadcasts during his life. Mr. Soupault has been in Mr. Ellis’s interest field for a long time and his translations of Mr. Soupault have appeared in a number of reviews.
Mark Dow (right) is the author of Plain Talk Rising, "Feedback" and Other Conversation Poems, and co-editor (with Kevin Pask) of the Westron Wynde blog. He has written about John Ashbery for The Miami Herald, Boston Review, and PN Review. He is also the author of American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons.
The Flow of the Poem's Display of Itself Discussion
Saturday, August 9th, Flow Chart Space
On Saturday, August 9th, a reading and discussion took place at the Flow Chart Space in Hudson about Carrie Hunter’s The Flow of the Poem’s Display of Itself. Hunter’s book channels John Ashbery’s seminal long poem Flow Chart revealing an extended reflection on influence, community, and what it means to spend one’s life reading and writing poetry.
Hunter read from her book, followed by a panel discussion on Flow Chart and poetry communities in the NY School and the Bay Area by Hunter, Marcella Durand, and Ann Lauterbach with an introduction by Roof publisher James Sherry.
[Left to Right Carrie Hunter, Marcella Durand, Ann Lauterbach, and James Sherry]
Carrie Hunter received her MFA/MA in the Poetics program at New College of California, was in the Black Radish Books publishing collective, and edited the chapbook press, ypolita press. She is the author of four full-length collections of poems, The Flow of the Poem's Display of Itself (Roof Books, 2025) Vibratory Milieu (Nightboat Books, 2021), and two from Black Radish Books, Orphan Machines and The Incompossible. She lives in San Francisco and teaches ESL.
Marcella Durand is the author of several books of poetry, including A Winter Triangle, forthcoming from Fordham University Press in Fall 2025 and the recipient of the 2024 Poetic Justice Institute Prize. Other books include To husband is to tender (Black Square Editions, 2022), The Prospect (Delete Press, 2020), The Garden of M./Le Jardin de M., translated by Olivier Brossard and published in a bilingual edition by joca seria, 2016, and a book-length translation of Michele Metail’s constraint-based work, Earth’s Horizons/Les Horizons du sol, (Black Square Editions, 2020). She is the co-editor with Jennifer Firestone of Other Influences: The Untold History of Avant-Garde Feminist Poetry, published by MIT Press in Fall 2024, and the 2021 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art. She lives and works in the Lower East Side, where she also engages in local ecology advocacy and monitoring urban wildlife.
Ann Lauterbach’s eleventh poetry collection Door (Penguin 2023) was short-listed for the 2024 Griffin International Poetry Prize. She received a 2025 NYSCA grant for her forthcoming work“The Meanwhile”. Recent writings include Untitled (Event)in Felix Gonzalez-Torres Photostats(Siglio 2020); Art of the Unbeautiful True, in Mina Loy Strangeness is Inevitable (Princeton University Press 2023), Topos Non Topos : Notes on David Novros (Paula Cooper Gallery 2023).Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship, she teaches at Bard College.
James Sherry is the author of 15 books of poetry and prose. His selected works, Comin’ ‘Round, is just out (Chax Press, 2025).Selfie: Poetry, Social Change & Ecological Connection was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2022. His most recent poetry book, Entangled Bank, was published by Chax Press in 2016. Since 1976, he has edited Roof Books and Roof Magazine, publishing nearly 200 titles of seminal works of language writing, flarf, conceptual poetry, new narrative, and environmental poetry. He started The Segue Foundation, Inc. in 1977, producing over 5,000 events of poetry and other arts in NYC. For more, see jamessherry.net.
Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant Garde Poetry Discussion
Friday, August 1st, Flow Chart Space
On Friday, August 1st, a conversation took place at the Flow Chart Space in Hudson between poets Joan Retallack, erica kaufman and Evelyn Reilly, introduced and facilitated by Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone, co-editors of Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry.
The evening served to celebrate the new anthology, and was a rare chance to hear these three writers discuss their long friendship, mutual influences, "experimental spirit," and the enduring impact of Retallack's work and "The Poethical Wager," which, as Retallack writes, is "a certain poetics of responsibility with the courage of the swerve."
[above L to R: erica kaufman, Evelyn Reilly, Joan Retallack, Marcella Durand, and Jennifer Firestone]
poet, writer, and teacher, erica kaufman, is the author of three books of poetry: POST CLASSIC, INSTANT CLASSIC (both from Roof Books), and censory impulse (Factory School). she is co-editor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards and a collection of archival pedagogical documents, Adrienne Rich: Teaching at CUNY, 1968–1974. recent poems can be found in Ursula and e-flux. kaufman's prose, focused on contemporary feminist poetics and pedagogy, appears in: The Color of Vowels: New York School Collaborations; Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein; The Supposium: Thought Experiments & Poethical Play in Difficult Times; Urgent Possibilities, Writings on Feminist Poetics & Emergent Pedagogies; Reading Experimental Writing; and The Difference is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems. she is the director of the Bard College Institute for Writing & Thinking where she is also Writer-in-Residence.
Evelyn Reilly is a New York-based poet, scholar and environmentalist. Her books include Styrofoam, Apocalypso and Echolocation, published by Roof Books; Hiatus, published by Barrow Street Press; and Having Broken, Are which was recently published by BlazeVOX. Styrofoam is widely read and written about as an example of ecopoetics and avant-garde experimentation. Reilly's poetry and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She is co-curator of the OtherWords Reading Series in Great Barrington, MA and also a member of the Steering Committee of the climate activist group 350NYC.
Joan Retallack is a poet and essayist with a background in philosophy and visual arts. Poetry volumes include Errata 5uite (Edge Books) chosen by Robert Creeley for a Columbia Book Award; AFTERRIMAGES (Wesleyan); How To Do Things With Words (Sun & Moon Classics); Procedural Elegies / Western Civ Cont’d (Roof Books)—an Artforum Best Book of 2010. She has received a Lannan Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize, and two Gertrude Stein Awards. Her friendship with John Cage led to MUSICAGE (Wesleyan), a volume of their conversations on Cage’s compositional poetics. Retallack’s The Poethical Wager (California) is a widely influential sequence of experimental essays on ethics and poetics, as well as the form of the essay itself. In 2018, Litmus Press published The Supposium: Thought Experiments and Poethical Play in Difficult Times, edited by Retallack as documentation and continuation of a MoMA event she organized in collaboration with Black Dada artist Adam Pendleton. BOSCH’D—Fables, Moral Tales & Other Awkward Constructions (Litmus Press, 2020) rejiggers ancient and contemporary wagers on textual forms of “poethical courage.” With gravitas and humor, Retallack considers our species’ best and worst proclivities in medias res of the Anthropocene.
Marcella Durand is the author of several books of poetry, including A Winter Triangle, forthcoming from Fordham University Press in Fall 2025 and the recipient of the 2024 Poetic Justice Institute Prize. Other books include To husband is to tender (Black Square Editions, 2022), The Prospect (Delete Press, 2020), The Garden of M./Le Jardin de M., translated by Olivier Brossard and published in a bilingual edition by joca seria, 2016, and a book-length translation of Michele Metail’s constraint-based work, Earth’s Horizons/Les Horizons du sol, (Black Square Editions, 2020). She is the co-editor with Jennifer Firestone of Other Influences: The Untold History of Avant-Garde Feminist Poetry, published by MIT Press in Fall 2024, and the 2021 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art. She lives and works in the Lower East Side, where she also engages in local ecology advocacy and monitoring urban wildlife.
Jennifer Firestone is the author of five books of poetry: Story (Ugly Duckling Presse); TEN (BlazeVOX [books]); Gates & Fields (Belladonna* Collaborative); Flashes (Shearsman Books); and Holiday (Shearsman Books). Firestone co-edited with Marcella Durand Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-garde Poetry (MIT Press), Letters To Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community, co-edited with Dana Teen Lomax (Saturnalia Books) and co-authored LITtle by LITtle with photographer and urban geographer, Laura Y. Liu. Firestone has work anthologized in Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Songs, & Stories for Children and Building is a Process / Light is an Element: essays and excursions for Myung Mi Kim. She is an Associate Professor of Literary Studies and Chair of Writing at the New School’s Eugene Lang College.
John Ashbery’s 98th Birthday Reading
Saturday, July 26th, Christ Church
On Saturday, July 26th at Christ Church in Hudson, a group of readers came together to celebrate Ashbery’s 98th birthday by reading some of his works at the Christ Church in Hudson, where Ashbery was a long-time parishioner, and his final resting place.
Readers include: Eugene Richie, Rosanne Wasserman, Emily Skillings, Karin Roffman, Evan Craig Reardon, Joseph Richie, Charles North, Tracie Morris, Ann Lauterbach, Justin Jamail, Ry Cook, Mandana Chaffa, and Dara Barrois/Dixon.
Daniel Rothbart : Plus Fugitif que la Lumière Closing Reception Performance
Saturday, July 12th, Flow Chart Space
On Saturday, July 12th, 2025, on the occasion of the closing of Daniel Rothbart’s exhibition, Plus Fugitif que la Lumière, master shakuhachi (traditional Japanese bamboo flute) player Jeffrey Lependorf performed an improvised musical meditation in response to the work.
Daniel Rothbart (Left) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. Artwork in his exhibition is featured in the book More Fugitive Than Light: Poems of Rome, Venice, Paris, 2016-2017, with collages by Daniel Rothbart, a collaboration between scholar and poet Richard Milazzo and the artist. Rothbart is best known for his “immersive sculptures” which, in the words of Juan Puntes, “conjure fluid, futuristic life forms—reimagining our bond with the natural world.” He is also a collagist who guilefully introduces sculptural imagery into found postcards, photographs, and film stills.
Jeffrey Lependorf (Right) , former Executive Director of The Flow Chart Foundation, serves currently as the Executive Director of the John Cage Trust, and also directs the summer Art Omi: Music International Musicians Residency, a program he created 25 years ago. A composer and master player of the shakuhachi(traditional Japanese bamboo flute), he received his undergraduate degree from Oberlin Conservatory, and his masters and doctorate degrees from Columbia University. His “Masterpieces of Western Music” audio-course, part of Barnes & Noble’s “Portable Professor” series, can be accessed through audible.com.
Bowlahoola: A Performance in a Conditional Mood
Saturday, May 31st, Flow Chart Space
On Saturday, May 31st, 2025, Kate Kremer performed Bowlahoola, which unfolds as a sequence of five monologues in the conditional tense, at The Flow Chart Space.
Bowlahoola asks what could happen, what might have happened, what we wish would happen: these hypotheticals emerge from and chafe against the harrowing conditions we’re living in.
Travestying the legal tool of the hypo, crisscrossing five centuries and five continents, taking up questions of abortion, privacy, white feminism, preemptive warfare, climate catastrophe, and the carceral state, Bowlahoola weaves and tangles what ifs until it becomes impossible to anchor any speaker in a particular identity. Instead, the monologues—performed by longtime collaborators Kate Kremer and Bryce Payne—become portraits of the ways we privilege hypothetical over actual lives, and the real devastations that result.
This version of Bowlahoola, specially created for The Flow Chart Foundation ran about an hour and twenty minutes.
Bowlahoola was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Kate Kremer (Left) is a playwright and publisher. Frequently using archives as sites for addressing the ways that our ethics, feelings, and intimacies are conditioned by the systems that we live and love within, her work has been described by Mac Wellman as “way ahead of the curve.” Kate’s plays have been produced at JACK in Brooklyn, the Figge Art Museum, the Public Theater (Weasel Festival), Dixon Place, SFX Fest, the Motor Company, the Wild Project, Brooklyn College, and Stagefemmes. Charlatans was selected for the Bushwick Starr Reading Series and was a finalist for the Princess Grace Award. She’s been a finalist for the Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation Award, shortlisted for the Tom LaFarge Award and the Leslie Scalapino Award, and received an honorable mention for the Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers. An excerpt from Kate’s long-form solo performance The Intimacy—which premiered at the Flow Chart Foundation last year—is forthcoming in Fence, Issue 42. Kate is the editor of the experimental play publishing organization 53rd State Press and currently teaches playwriting at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.
Bryce Payne (Right) has spent the majority of хуг adult life making performing/performance art in New York City. Xyr work has been formed by a lifetime of connections made on stages, sidewalks, dancefloors, web applications, and subway cars. Xe hopes to maintain xyr humanity in a web of structures designed to exhaust or pervert xem; xe hopes to encourage your efforts to do the same. Insta: @the.nice.bryce
Stink Horn: a mycological musical performance-lecture by Siôn Parkinson
Friday, May 9th, Flow Chart Space
On Friday, May 9, 2025, the John Cage Trust, in collaboration with The Flow Chart Foundation, presented Artist, musician, and author Siôn Parkinson in an intimate performance-lecture—part talk, part live musical experiment—exploring the strange, multisensory world of the stinkhorn fungus.
Drawing from his book Stinkhorn: How Nature’s Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change the Way We Listen (Sternberg Press), Siôn lead an evening of music and mycology. Like composer John Cage, his twin passions for music and mushrooms have shaped a radical approach to sound. Yet while Cage sought silence in his fungal forays, Siôn finds Stink⎯an element that links sound and smell, the real and the hallucinated, opening up new ways of listening and composing.
Siôn’s performance was accompanied by a recording of John Cage’s "Child of Tree" (1975), a work for amplified plant materials, performed by D’Arcy Philip Gray (2014) and presented courtesy of Mode Records.
Dr Siôn Parkinson is an artist, musician, performer, and author investigating our sensory relationship with the more-than-human world. He is a research fellow at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, where he is investigating the olfactory heritage of fungi—mushroom odors that hold cultural or historical significance due to their associations with particular places, objects, and traditions. Insta: @sionparkinson
One Thing Follows Another: Sarah Rosenthal & Valerie Witte
Thursday, May 8th, Flow Chart Space
On Thursday, May 8th, 2025, on the occasion of the publication of the new book, One Thing Follows Another Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, (Punctum), Sarah Rosenthal and Valerie Witte gave a series multimedia performances, followed by a discussion with Flow Chart's Eric Longo at the Flow Chart Space in Hudson, NY.
You can purchase the book HERE
Sarah Rosenthal is the author of Estelle Meaning Star (Chax, 2024), Lizard (Chax, 2016), Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil, 2009), and two books with Valerie Witte: One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life Through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer (punctum, 2025) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019). She edited A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area (Dalkey, 2010). Her collaborative film We Agree on the Sun has received Best Experimental Short, Berlin Independent Film Festival. A new film, Lizard Song, is on the film festival circuit. sarahrosenthal.net
Valerie Witte is the author of multiple poetry and hybrid books, including A Rupture in the Interiors (Airlie, 2023, finalist for the 2025 Oregon Book Award); and One Thing Follows Another (punctum, 2025) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019), both in collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal. Her work has also appeared in publications such as VOLT, Diagram, Interim, and The Hunger. She has participated in residencies through The Hambidge Center, Ragdale Foundation, and La Porte Peinte Center for the Arts. She previously served as a member of Kelsey Street and Airlie Press. valeriewitte.com
SLEEPERS AWAKE: Oli Hazzard & Emily Skillings
Saturday, February 8th, Flow Chart Space
On Saturday, February 9th, 2025, on the occasion of the publication of his collection, SLEEPERS AWAKE (FSG), Oli Hazzard was joined by Emily Skillings for a poetry reading and discussion at the Flow Chart Space in Hudson, NY.
Oli Hazzard is the author of three books of poems, including Sleepers Awake (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025), and a novel, Lorem Ipsum (Prototype, 2021). He lives in Glasgow and teaches at the University of St Andrews.
Emily Skillings is the editor of Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works by John Ashbery. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Yale, NYU, and Columbia.
INSTALLATIONS & EXHIBITIONS
ANNUAL GATHERINGS
Kenneth Koch Centennial: A Gathering
Saturday, May 17th, Flow Chart Space
On the occasion of 100 years since his birth, The Flow Chart Foundation presented daylong Gathering celebrating the legacy of Kenneth Koch featuring talks, readings, screenings, and short performances.
Guest speakers included: Andrew Epstein, Anthony Atlas, David Lehman, Dorothea Lasky, Emily Setina, Jordan Davis, Mitch Sisskind, and Susannah Hollister.
Performers & playwrights included: Corinne Donly, Diane Exavier, Jess Barbagallo, Ry Cook, Erin Courtney, Zach Savich, Karinne Keithley Syers, Kate Kremer, Lisa Clair, Lucas Baisch, Nazareth Hassan, and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff.
Special thanks to the Koch Estate.