Anne Waldman, renowned experimental and activist poet, entered room 451 of Sturm in flowy linen splendor on Friday at 5:30 p.m. for a lecture to DU students, faculty and community members. Her words and movements alike held the gravity of performance as she described her life and inspirations with vigor.

The audience, comprised of 30 students and teachers of poetry and other creative minds, clung to her every rapid word as Waldman shared her wealth of poetic knowledge and experience with the students of DU’s creative writing program.

As part of the Writer-In-Residence program, Waldman hosted three free workshops last weekend, as well as a reading on Saturday night and a lecture on Friday evening.

Amy Flansburg, a senior double major in Ecology and Biodiversity and English from Centennial, attended Waldman’s writing workshops on Wednesday and Friday. She described the very informal setting of the workshops.

“It was very equitable. People would bring a piece forward and other people would play instruments while that person spoke their piece,” she said. “Ambrose, Anne’s son, is a sound engineer so he helped us out by recording and adding spontaneous noise to the pieces.”

Flansburg felt that the most valuable aspect of participating in the workshops was the ability to collaborate with other artists. She described a poem in which she added imitation birdsong to create atmosphere.

“It really clicked to me. I felt like I was also contributing to that poem in a unique way,” she said. “I think it made me realize that just writing the words is not really telling the entire story.”

The recipient of many awards and author of over 40 books and small press editions of poetry and poetics, Waldman co-founded Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder. Her poetry is recognized in the lineage of Whitman and Ginsberg, as well as in the Beat, New York School and Black Mountain trajectories of the New American Poetry, according to creative writing professor Eleni Sikelianos.

Waldman’s talk on Friday began with a five-minute recorded musical-poetic collaboration with son Ambrose Bye, followed by a description of her life as a multifaceted artist. Bye is a musician and composer and frequently collaborates with Waldman.

Waldman discussed her childhood in New York City where she was born in 1945 and the effects of growing up in a war-torn country, which shaped her later beliefs.

“I grew up clutching a dog tag in New York City public schools,” she said.

She introduced herself to the audience with a distinctive description, leaving it to them to decipher her cryptic words.
“I am a hairy bag of water with a few scars and a restless larynx,” she said.

Her anecdotal discussion established her use of poetry to embrace and create tradition, community, repetition, comedy, spirituality, unity, political voice and emphasized the power of orature and the efficacy of performance poetics.
“I was drawn to the power of poetry in the public space,” she said.

She told stories of her visits to Berkeley during the ‘70s and involvement in the language poets’ movement as well as the difficulty of being labeled a New York School poet while trying to create her own poetic identity apart from her city of origin.

Waldman conveyed a deep concern for the state of the modern world and a hope that the poetic voice could aid in the remedy.

“This is a very scary time. We are in the dark ages. We should tread carefully on our planet,” she said.

She challenged the audience to use poetry to preserve cultural tradition while also catalyzing social change.

“Pick your endangered thing and make it your totem,” she said.

The post-speech discussion  and Q&A centered on the role of technology and digital recording as a form of repetition and its role within the experience of poetry and music. English professor and poet Bin Ramke praised human anecdotes as the purest form of repetition of history and tradition.

“Your sitting here and telling us these stories is a gift unlike almost any other,” he said to Waldman.

Anne Waldman remains a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and Director of Naropa’s Summer Writing Program, which comes highly recommended by DU’s creative writing faculty. Penguin Poets released Waldman’s most recent poetry book, “Gossamurmur,” in April.