I am pleased to announce that Kenneth Goldsmith has been appointed this year's Fellow in Poetics & Poetic Practice at Penn's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. Among Kenny's activities as Fellow will be to teach a writing seminar called "Uncreative Writing" (the course description begins thus: "It's clear that long-cherished notions of creativity are under attack, eroded by file-sharing, media culture, widespread sampling, and digital replication. How does writing respond to this new environment?").

For more about the CPCW Fellow in Poetics & Poetic Practice, see

http://writing.upenn.edu/projects/poeticsfellow.php

For Kenny's EPC page, go to

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/goldsmith/

For the recorded webcast of Kenny's September 21, 2000 visit to the Writers House, see

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~wh/webcasts/goldsmith.html

Kenneth Goldsmith took a BFA in sculpture, is a visual artist of great range, publishes as an innovative poet and has created and continually edits what is by far the most comprehensive web site of visual, concrete and sound poetry (UbuWeb). His most recent work includes DAY, HEAD CITATIONS, and SOLILOQUY.

His earlier books and compact discs include Tizzy Boost, a collaboration with Bruce Andrews (1993); 73 Poems, published by Permanent Press (Brooklyn, NY, 1994) with essays by Robert Mahoney, John Schaefer, and Geoffrey Young; No. 111 2.7.96-19.20.96 (The Figures, 1997); and Fidget (Coach House Books, 2000). Fidget is Goldsmith's transcription of every movement made by his body during thirteen hours on Bloomsday (June 16), 1997. Originally commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art as a collaboration with vocalist Theo Bleckmann, Fidget attempts to reduce the body to a catalogue of mechnical movements by a strict act of observation. The online edition of Fidget at www.chbooks.com includes the full text, a self-running Java applet version written by programmer Clem Paulsen, and a selection of RealAudio recordings from Theo Bleckmann's vocal/visual performance at the Whitney on Bloomsday, 1998.

In her afterword to No. 111 2.7.96-19.20.96, Marjorie Perloff has written that it "is an encyclopedic poem based on words ending in the sound ah, a collection of words drawn from conversation, books, phone calls, radio shows, newspapers, television and especially the internet, arranged alphabetically and by syllable count so as to create a Gargantuan poetic reference book or archive of the argot of our times."

Al Filreis
Kelly Professor of English
Faculty Director, the Kelly Writers House
Director, the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis