Sanctuary: Kay Gabriel and Anne Waldman on The Poetry Project

Since its conception in 1966, The Poetry Project has been a sanctuary and platform for the poets of New York. Sitting together in The Poetry Project’s long-standing home, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Anne Waldman, one of the project's founders, and the poet Kay Gabriel, who helps run it now, talk about the project's heady early days and its deep roots in New York City's cultural landscape.
Kay Gabriel is The Poetry Project’s Media and Publications Coordinator. She is author to A Queen in Bucks County (Nightboat, 2022) and Kissing Other People or the House of Fame (Rosa Press, 2021; Nightboat, 2023). With Andrea Abi-Karam, Gabriel co-edited We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat, 2020), a finalist for the Publishing Triangle and Lambda Literary Awards. She has been part of the editorial collective for the Poetry Project Newsletter since 2019.
Anne Waldman’s most recent books include Bard, Kinetic, a memoir with poetry, essays and interviews. She is co-editor with Emma Gomis of New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archive. The Burroughsian opera Black Lodge, with music by David T. Little and libretto by Waldman, premiered at Opera Philadelphia in 2022. She collaborated with Pat Steir on Cry Stall Gaze and on Steir’s Kairos catalogue. She is a founder of The Poetry Project and the Kerouac School, where she curates and teaches.
A film by Rava Films  
Directed by Rafael Salazar Moreno 
Produced by Ava Wiland
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A person who develops art and a curator who deals with art differ in their views and intentions. Only when the bear is killed are the skills distributed. A bearskin no longer lives. It must serve another purpose, it is no longer warm and alive, it is no longer a bear. The bear is the art in this parable and the fur is the artwork. The difficulty is always finding the bear, confronting it and killing it. When the curator looks at the finished bear skin, he cannot imagine what it means to hunt a bear.