The Project Papers

Ed Friedman edited the Project Papers beginning in the fall of 1987. Issues, usually four pages in length, were published (and distributed free-of-charge) at each of the 1987-88 Wednesday night readings. Most of the issues consisted of one or two poems by each of the poets who were reading on a particular program.

The Project Papers imprint was also used to publish articles that offered useful and concise perspectives on the Poetry Project’s history, aesthetics, and organizational mission. Generally, these articles originated from the Poetry Project’s Annual Symposiums, either as lectures or opening statements from panel discussions. Lewis Warsh’s special issue of Project Papers was a set of diary entries reprinted from one of his early collections.

After the 1987-88 season,  the weekly publication of Project Papers was discontinued. After Spring 1988, issues appeared sporadically. Some of the lectures/talks/essays appeared in the Poetry Project Newsletter before being published as Project Papers. Lori Landes produced all the transcriptions-from-tape which resulted in finished articles. The Sonnets Lecture by Ted Berrigan was an edited transcription of a lecture given at the Poetry Project in 1979 and was issued to coincide with The Sonnets panel at the 1989 Symposium.

Thank you to Ed Friedman for providing us with all of the background information, and to Will Edmiston for compiling and archiving the Papers. Please click on an author’s name to download a pdf.