Poetry Central was a loose collection of performance poets and audiences in the area of Rochester N.Y. Performances and readings were presented publicly under its sponsorship, originally at the. First Unitarian Universalist Church on Clinton Avenue, from about 1972 to about 1986, although there were some long periods when the collective was unable to find a space for presentation of these readings.

Activities

The group was originally formed by nationally recognized poet and museum arts teacher James Lavilla-Havelin

James Lavilla-Havelin

James Samuel Havelin is American poet, editor and educator. Havelin founded the poetry series Poetry Central in Rochester the early 1970s. He also edited the Poetry Central Newsletter, which provided information on literary events in the upstate New York region...

. The regular contributors to this collective included William Pruitt, Diane Baum; David Shevin, David Michael Nixon, Bobby Johnson, Wally Butts, and Joe M. Connelly. Poets reading at spaces provided by this collective included Anne Waldman; Michael McClure

Michael McClure

Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...

; Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso

Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers...

; Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

; Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...

; Diane Wakoski

Diane Wakoski

Diane Wakoski is a American poet who is primarily associated with the deep image poets, as well as the confessional and Beat poets of the 1960s.-Biography:...

; Robert Bly

Robert Bly

Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...

; and occasionally fiction writers would appear as well, such as award winning mystery writer Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch

Edward Dentinger Hoch was an American writer of detective fiction. Although he wrote several novels, he was primarily known for his vast output of over 950 short stories.-Biography:...

; as well as regionally known writers from the western N.Y. area, such as Buffalo playwright Emanuel Fried. The collective was also well known for providing the Rochester area with a stage for open readings, where writers of every kind could present their work in recital to the public. Activities also included sponsorship for readings and the teaching of writing poetry in public schools; support for publications by local authors; introduction of poetry readings in local bars and coffee-houses; the occasional public-access television broadcast of readings; placement of poetry on sign-cards in high-profile public places, such as bus-stops; attempts to network with similar collectives in other cities.

Context

The collective was heavily influenced by the poetics of the Beat generation

Beat generation

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

, and by the poetics that developed out of that movement, spreading throughout the so-called 'cultural revolution' of the 1960s. However, money was always tight, and contributor personalities occasionally clashed; but the collective really began to fall apart during the presidency of Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

, when the culture and general tenor of American life began to drift seriously right-ward. Since Poetry Central represented a democratic approach to poetics, community interest in the collective dwindled as Americans re-defined themselves as essentially selfish and profit-driven, and unconcerned with the content or outcome of cultural conflict. By the mid-1990s, American poetry as a viable mode of cultural change and exchange had been disempowered. Poetry itself continues; but regardless of the need for collectives such as Poetry Central, the will does not appear to be there, in many areas of America, including western N.Y.

Legacy

Although few of the original contributors to Poetry Central remain in the Rochester area, and their continuing poetic activity is largely unknown, Poetry Central does appear to have left a legacy of hope for writers in the Rochester area, as a moment when poets came together and defined themselves, without surrender to cultural definitions surrounding them.