This summer, Foundlings Press is partnering with Artpark to welcome nine poets and writers as the inaugural class of a new literary “mini-residency” program.
Participants in this generative residency will spend a day or more at Artpark in Lewiston, New York, taking in the site’s 150 acres of natural beauty, dramatic views of the Niagara River and Gorge, and ambitious schedule of arts programming ranging from a hot air balloon escape act to a workshop in translating the language of trees. The writers will produce new work springing from their experiences, and Foundlings Press will publish these in an end-of-season, limited-edition publication. Some writers will also give performances or teach workshops while in the area.
Artpark’s 2023 Resident Poets and Writers are Ana Božičević, Robert Giannetti, Joshua Thermidor, Philip Metres, Julianne Neely, Drew Pisarra, Hilary Plum, Zach Savich, and Spencer Williams.
“I am excited by this new program to advance Artpark’s mission of exploring and celebrating the human experience, cultivating independent thought and inquiry,” said Artpark President Sonia Clark. “The kind of collisions this residency will produce—between the natural and the human intervention, between artistic disciplines and places of origin, between those making and those engaging with art—is uniquely possible at Artpark and deeply rooted in Artpark’s history.”
Residency highlights vibrant arts of New York’s western frontier
The 2023 residency program begins in May, pairing poet Julianne Neely with Katie Holten, an artist and activist based in New York City and Ardee, Ireland. Holten’s unconventional work at the intersection of art, activism, ecology, language, and history includes most recently a “Tree Language” and “Tree Alphabet,” based on the medieval Irish Ogham alphabet, and explored in her new book The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape (Tin House, 2023).
“Artpark is an artist’s reverie,” said 2023 Poetry Resident Julianne Neely. “Its rich history of situating sculpture, performance, poetry, and music against the landscape makes it the ideal place to amalgamate influences and grow my practice alongside another artist. I’m excited to be a part of this extension of Artpark’s cultural heritage.”
The residency also highlights the rich literary landscape of the entire Western Frontier of New York State, featuring visiting or resident writers from summer programs by the Just Buffalo Literary Center in Buffalo, New York and the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York—highlighting New York’s north-south culture corridor of Niagara, Erie, and Chautauqua counties.
Poet Ana Božičević will make a trip north to Artpark for her daylong mini-residency following her performance at Silo City on July 22 as part of Just Buffalo’s Silo City Reading Series, while poets Zach Savich and Philip Metres will make their visit from the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, where they will be teaching writers in residence.
Other visitors will be welcome to explore literary engagement at Artpark through a series of open-air workshops in partnership with Artpark Bridges, a year-round community engagement program. The Plein Aire Poetry Writers' Workshop Series, led by Artpark Bridges Director Cynthia Pegado and resident poet Robert Giannetti, will take place in Artpark’s Emerald Grove and be free and open to the public. The workshops series will begin on June 27 at 7:30pm on the Artpark Emerald Grove stage with Sensing Resonance, a participatory performance by Pegado, Giannetti, and saxophonist Patrick Perez, involving audience prompts and an artist Q&A.
Artpark, the 150-acre New York State Park and celebrated cultural institution atop the Niagara Gorge in Lewiston, New York, is currently celebrating its 50th consecutive summer of avant-garde art and performance for the public. This season features the North American premier of the spectacular cantata Carmina Burana as reimagined by the Barcelona street theatre troupe La Fura dels Baus; a hot air balloon escape act by the French performance group Cirque Inextremiste; performances by musical acts including Modest Mouse, the Barenaked Ladies, and Buddy Guy; the 13th annual Artpark Fairy House Festival, now under the direction of acclaimed Ukrainian impresario Vlad Troitskyi; and the Artpark Strawberry Moon Festival celebrating indigenous cultures of the Buffalo-Niagara region.
“I love that this residency showcases the tremendous natural and cultural significance of New York’s Western Frontier,” said Aidan Ryan, publisher of Foundlings Press and curator of the Artpark residency. “I’m excited to see—and then share with the world—what these writers produce here.”
About the poets and writers
Ana Božičević is a poet, translator, teacher, and occasional singer. Ana grew up in Zadar, Croatia before coming to the States. Her next book New Life is forthcoming from Wave Books in 2023. She is also the author of Povratak lišća /Return of the Leaves, Selected Poems in Croatian (Hrvatsko Društvo Pisaca/Croatian Writers Society, 2020); Joy of Missing Out (Birds, LLC, 2017); the Lambda Award-winning Rise in the Fall (Birds, LLC, 2013), and Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009). She received the 40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism award from Feminist Press, and the PEN American Center/NYSCA grant for translating It Was Easy to Set the Snow on Fire by Zvonko Karanović (Phoneme Media, 2015). The anthology of translations The Day Lady Gaga Died: An Anthology of Newer New York Poets (Peti Talas/Fifth Wave) she co-edited with Željko Mitić appeared in Fall 2011.
Ana has a MFA in Poetry from Hunter College. At the PhD Program in English at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York she studied New American poetics and alternative art schools and communities, and edited lectures by Diane di Prima for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. Ana has read, taught, and performed at Bruce High Quality Foundation University, Bowery Poetry Club, Brooklyn Poets, Harvard, Naropa, San Francisco State University Poetry Center, the Sorbonne, Third Man Records, University of Arizona Poetry Center, and The Watermill Center. Her poetry workshops explore image, performance, and the lyric. She is on the board of the Ruth Stone Foundation and is a supporter of the Ruth Stone House in Vermont.
Robert M. Giannetti, former owner of Bob’s Olde Books in Lewiston, New York, received his B.A. from Niagara University and a Ph.D. in Renaissance English literature from Duquesne University. After Army service, several teaching assignments, a stint on a garbage truck, foundation work, and business ventures around the country he settled in Western New York, where he now devotes himself to writing and collaborative work with artists and musicians.
Giannetti’s publications include The Frontier: Poetry and Prose (2017), Drawn by the Creek (2003), and Winter Vision (2011), which was translated into Polish and published in Warsaw in a bilingual edition and awarded the Best Book of Poetry prize at the 34th International November of Poetry festival in Poznan, Poland. In 2014 Giannetti was honored by the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection with the publication of a limited edition chapbook of his poems in celebration of National Poetry Month. In 2018 he was awarded the Homer Medal, European Medal of Poetry and Art, established in Brussels in 2016 to recognize outstanding individuals whose work presents universal messages to the world with simplicity and beauty. Also in 2018, he was one of 20 poets from around the world invited to attend an International Poetry Week with Chinese poets in Sichuan Province, China, and his contributions were published in a bilingual anthology of the proceedings. In addition to many poetry readings he has also performed in concert with the Harmonia Chamber Singers and as part of the duo, Voice and Viola, he founded with classical violist, Leslie Bahler.
Joshua Thermidor is a poet and photographer based in Buffalo, New York. His photos have appeared in Time Magazine, The Washington Post, NBC News, and more. He is an MFA Candidate at The Iowa Writers Workshop.
Philip Metres is the author of ten books, most recently Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon, 2020) The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (University of Michigan, 2018), winner of the 2019 Evelyn Shakir Award (Arab American Book Award in Non-Fiction), Pictures at an Exhibition: A Petersburg Album (University of Akron Press, 2016), the widely-praised Sand Opera (Alice James, 2015), and I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (Cleveland State, 2015).
His work—including poetry, translation, essays, fiction, criticism, and scholarship—has garnered a Lannan fellowship, two NEA fellowships, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Hunt Prize, the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Watson Fellowship, the Lyric Poetry Prize, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. Metres has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.” His poems have been translated into Arabic, Farsi, Polish, Russian, and Tamil. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He lives with his family in Cleveland, Ohio.
Julianne Neely earned her MFA degree from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship, the 2017 John Logan Poetry Prize, and a Schupes Fellowship for Poetry. She is currently an English Department Fellow and PhD student at the Buffalo Poetics Program. Her work is interested in how the lyric “I” is used in technological poetic representations to showcase the gendered self in contemporary female experimental poetry. She is the author of the chapbooks Stray Selfies (Foundlings Press “Strays” Series, 2021), afFect theory (Garden Door Press, 2020), and The Body Beside Herself (Slope Editions, 2018).
A participating poet in A Gathering of the Tribes' two-day literary marathon at The Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as Its Kept, Drew Pisarra is the author of two short story collections (You’re Pretty Gay and Publick Spanking) and two sonnet collections (Infinity Standing Up and Periodic Boyfriends). A recent grantee of the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, Curious Elixirs: Curious Creators, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, he is also an experimental playwright with two plays slated to premiere in NYC later this year: Click and Price in Purgatory.
Hilary Plum is the author of Excisions (Black Lawrence), a volume of poetry; Hole Studies (Fonograf Editions), an essay collection; the novel Strawberry Fields, a novel; and two earlier books of prose. Her work has received the Fence Modern Prize in Prose, the Great Lakes College Association Award New Writers Award, and other honors. She teaches at Cleveland State and in the NEOMFA program, and she serves as associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. www.hilaryplum.com.
Zach Savich is the author of six books of poetry, including Daybed (Black Ocean, 2018), and two books of nonfiction, including the memoir Diving Makes the Water Deep (Rescue Press, 2016). His work has received the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Colorado Prize for Poetry, and the CSU Poetry Center's Open Award, among other honors. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, the Brooklyn Rail, Boston Review, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Volt, and elsewhere. He is an associate professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art. His newest collection, Momently, is forthcoming from Black Ocean.
Spencer Williams is a trans writer from Chula Vista, California. She is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection TRANZ (Four away Books, 2024) and the chapbook Alien Pink (The Atlas Review, 2017). She received her MFA in creative writing from Rutgers University-Newark and is currently a PhD student in poetics at SUNY, Buffalo.
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Established in 1974 as a collaboration between New York State Parks and the nonprofit Artpark & Company, Artpark welcomes artists to enjoy and be inspired by the dramatic scenery and rich history of the Niagara River Gorge, and welcomes visitors and locals to enjoy the art and experiences created on its 172 acres. Over the decades, Artpark has hosted tens of thousands of avant garde visual artists, cutting-edge performers, beloved bands and musicians, poets and writers, and more, earning a worldwide reputation as a special place to make and experience art. This living cultural legacy weaves into the area’s history and present-day significance to Western New York’s Indigenous population, the more recent history of investment in sustainable power that both shaped and funded the site, and the Niagara River and Gorge’s extraordinary natural beauty.