This month, Chris Funkhouser visits the studio to discuss the life and work of poet, translator, musician, and professor Cole Heinowitz. Chris and Cole played music together in multiple Hudson Valley ensembles; we listen to audio from those projects as well as archival recordings of Cole reading her poetry.
Poet Ray'd Yo: Cole Heinowitz Tribute
Cole Heinowitz's PennSound Page
Satan's Black Acid Bandcamp Page
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Cole Heinowitz was born and raised in San Diego, California. She earned a BA in creative writing and comparative literature from the University of California San Diego and an MA and PhD in comparative literature from Brown University. Prior to coming to Bard College, she taught literature and Spanish at Brown University, Brandeis University, and Dartmouth College.
Dr. Heinowitz joined the faculty at Bard College in 2004 and became full professor in 2021. Her mind and personality were magnetic and singular. She combined a mesmerizing presence, uncommon perceptions, and a deep and intense enthusiasm for scholarship and art and the community of learning.
An accomplished writer, musician, translator, and scholar, Cole Heinowitz’s unique gifts spanned many literary-historical fields, genres, and languages. She was the author of three books of poetry: Daily Chimera (Incommunicado, 1995), Stunning in Muscle Hospital (Detour, 2002), and The Rubicon (The Rest, 2007). She translated widely from Spanish into English, concentrating on 20th-Century Latin American poetry. Translated works include Advice from 1 Disciple of Marx to 1 Heidegger Fanatic (Ediciones Sin Fin, 2023; Wave Books, 2013) and Bleeding from All 5 Senses (White Pine, 2020), both by Mexican infrarrealist poet Mario Santiago Papasquiaro; A Tradition of Rupture, the collected essays of Argentine poet and fiction writer Alejandra Pizarnik (Ugly Duckling, 2019); and Primeval Wing by Mexican poet Mara Larrosa (forthcoming from Ediciones Norteadas). Dr. Heinowitz’s translations from French include Succubations & Incubations: Selected Letters of Antonin Artaud (Infinity Land, 2020).
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Christopher Funkhouser is a writer, musician, and multimedia artist who has authored of two scholarly monographs, Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archeology of Forms, 1959-1995 and New Directions in Digital Poetry. I have taught Communication and Media courses at NJIT since 1997, and was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Multimedia University, Malaysia, in 2006. As a publisher he worked closely with Amiri Baraka and Kamau Brathwaite, and many other writers and artists. He was commissioned by the Associated Press to prepare digital poems for the occasion of Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, and in 2016 he performed at the Whitney Museum’s Open Plan: Cecil Taylor exhibition. Christopher is a Contributing Editor at PennSound, host of the POET RAY’D YO radio program at WGXC (Hudson, NY), and is a member of the improvisational musical ensemble Most Serene Congress.
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"Specific Objects" is a monthly freeform discussion hosted by Miriam Atkin that invites artists from a variety of disciplines to describe, ponder, interrogate, interpret, and celebrate their current projects. The focus is on guests who live and work in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region, though people will occasionally visit from farther afield. Tune in to learn what artists in your neighborhood are thinking and making right now.
Miriam Atkin is a Catskills-based writer whose work concerns the possibilities of poetry as a medium in conversation with avant-garde film, music, and dance. She is cofounder of Pinsapo, an international publishing collective, and teaches writing around the Hudson Valley region at Bard College and the Otisville Correctional Facility.
Intro music: "Sing Out" by Joanna Mattrey
