by VINCENT TINGUELY

Since her start as assistant director of the St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York, Anne Waldman has been a non-stop poetic whirlwind. In the '70s, she was part of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review, and with Allen Ginsberg, she co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Her latest book (she's written dozens) is Dark Arcana: Afterimage or Glow, a Vietnam travel journal featuring a cover and photos by Patti Smith. The Mirror got in touch with Anne Waldman at her New York apartment.

Mirror: Has your poetry always had a more performative, interactive approach?

Anne Waldman: Speaking from the point of view of a person writing in America, and coming of age in the '60s and so on, I very much feel part of what I like to call the "outrider" lineage that really started after World War II and was an hommage to the so-called modernists. The primary communities out of that New American Poetry were the Beat literary movement, the New York school, the wonderful San Francisco Renaissance, and the Black Mountain school. With writers that were associated with the term "Beat," there was a shared connection through open form, through spontaneous composition, through performance, through ecology, through Buddhism, through jazz. So I've been associated somewhat with the Beat literary movement, being a much younger member (laughs). Certainly in my case there's a lot of connection to the poetries of other cultures, and my own interest and practice in Tibetan Buddhism. Quite a range! And of course at Naropa, a lot of emphasis on the oral and on the sense of collaboration and performance - I mean, poets have always performed, we can talk about those earlier kinds of traditions… So, yes, I love to get up and stomp around! Vocalize my work!

M: What's your impression of today's poetry scene? Compared to the '60s, how do you think things have evolved?

AW: I like to invoke a sense of "rhizome" - this root system that has a lot of different ways that it can go, and rather than vertically it moves horizontally. With all the activities of the last year leading up to the invasion of Iraq, poets seem very much involved with the protests and being heard and actually quoted on occasion (laughs)! Thanks to things like the Poetry Project and Naropa and other off-the-beaten-track arts centres there are festivals and convocations, and poets are on the Internet too. We're also seeing more infrastructure folk who are interested in creating Temporary Autonomous Zones for poetry and the arts, and also small presses. So I'd say the idea of being a poet in the world has expanded. There's so much zine activity, performance activity, mixing up the forms, working out of cut-ups, out of dreams. With the younger generations, we see very talented folk coming to the Jack Kerouac school and being very serious about their commitment. I love working with younger folk and encouraging them to keep it going. We have to just create these alternative creative modes, or go insane (laughs)!

ANNE WALDMAN PERFORMS AT THE FESTIVAL VOIX D'AMERIQUES SHOW BODY AND SOUL, ACCOMPANIED BY HER NEPHEW, DEVIN WALDMAN, ON SAX. WITH URSULA RUCKER, BERNARD FALAISE, ALEXIS O'HARA, CATHERINE KIDD AND NAH-EE-LAH, MONDAY, FEB. 16, 8:30PM, SALA ROSSA (4848 ST-LAURENT), $8

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