Join us to remember and celebrate the life and work of Bernadette Mayer (12 May 1945 – 22 November 2022) by taking part in a Poetry Marathon Reading of Mayer’s book-length poem Midwinter Day (1982).
Bernadette Mayer was an influential avant-garde writer associated with the New York School poets of the mid-20th century. Like her artist sister Rosemary Mayer, she garnered visibility during the second-wave feminist movement in the US. Midwinter Day demonstrates Mayer’s experimental poetic forms that examine the complexities of gender and sexuality within the intimate interactions and attachments of family life. In this epic poem, written over the course of one day, Mayer carries the reader through her daily routines as a woman, mother, romantic partner and writer living in Lenox, Massachusetts, in December 1978.
It has become an international tradition to hold annual marathon readings of Midwinter Day in December, and this event will be the first of its kind hosted in Bristol. Reading aloud and listening together over an extended period of time is an opportunity for participants to experience the written word in an embodied and durational way.
The Marathon Reading takes place at Spike Island and is organised in collaboration with the Bristol Poetry Institute. Excerpts of the text will be performed by Bristol-based poets including Sophie Dumont, Carrie Etter, Holly Corfield-Carr, Samantha Walton and Muneera Pilgrim.
If you would like to participate in reading aloud, please email diana.lage@spikeisland.org.uk.
Ways of Reading is hosted on the occasion of Rosemary Mayer’s exhibition Ways of Attaching.
Curated by Diana Lage in collaboration with MA Curating, UWE Bristol and Spike Island.
DR REBECCA KOSICK
Dr Rebecca Kosick is a poet, translator, and scholar who works in a variety of traditional and experimental text-based formats. She is the author of Material Poetics in Hemispheric America and the poetry collection Labor Day and is translator/editor of the forthcoming Hélio Oiticica: Secret Poetics. Kosick is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Poetry and Poetics at the University of Bristol where she also co-directs the Bristol Poetry Institute.
BRISTOL POETRY INSTITUTE
The Bristol Poetry Institute exists for the advancement of poetry. The Institute works as a poetry hub and a focal point for poetry within the University and the City of Bristol. They actively encourage collaboration and engagement between University departments, local schools, the public, community partners and local organisations.
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