The lost Public Access Poetry tapes now online

The Poetry Project's April 2011 fundraiser included restoration of 31 lost tapes of a show called Public Access Poetry. Now that school is back in session, the Project has put them up for public viewing! The show, which took place in 1978-79 on public access TV, was produced by Poetry Project stalwarts Greg Masters, Gary Lenhart, David Herz, Didi Susan Dubelyew, Daniel Krakauer, Bob Rosenthal and Rochelle Kraut. As the Project website states:

PAP programs featured half-hour readings by a wide range of poets and performers who could roughly be categorized as “downtown,” more often than not linked in one way or another with the Poetry Project. The cable TV series lasted two seasons (one live, the other recorded for later airing) and was produced with little-to-no broadcasting experience by the PAP personnel.

Forty-six fragile open-reel videotapes of these shows were preserved and, in 2009, were donated to the Poetry Project by the PAP team. A grant and subsequent anonymous support supported the preservation and digitization of 31 of the original tapes.

In April 2011, The Poetry Project, in collaboration with Anthology Film Archives, presented a two-program screening series at Anthology – one featured highlights from various episodes of Public Access Poetry and another showed three full episodes.

The Poetry Project, dedicated to making the Public Access Poetry archive available to the public, as envisioned by its producers more than 30 years ago, is happy to be collaborating with PennSound to accomplish this. Fifteen tapes remain to be transferred to complete this digital archive.

Video hosting courtesy PennSound.

You can view the videos, which include readings and performances from the likes of Ron Padgett, John Godfrey, Alice Notley, Eileen Myles, Jim Brodey, Paul Violi, Susie Timmons, Ted Berrigan, Tim Dlugos, Arthur Russell, Ted Greenwald, Jackson Mac Low, and more more more, here. If you'd like to learn more or donate to the final stages of preservation, write to the Poetry Project at [email protected].