last night's Second Life poetry session

Here's our Faculty Director's avatar - Alf Fullstop - teaching modernist poetry last night to a group of folks from around the world (one from Puerto Rico, another from Hong Kong) in Second Life's virtual Kelly Writers House.

put down the cheese, Alf

At left you see an avatar, Alf Fullstop, preparing to lead a seminar in the virtual Kelly Writers House in Second Life this very night - Thursday, October 29. The poem on the wall, WCW's "Between Walls," is the third of three poems Alf will be teaching. This is our first quasi-formal venture into Second Life with friends of the Writers House. SL gurus we know have built a gorgeous Writers House there, with an Arts Cafe, a living room with a green couch, an upstairs seminar room, a garden. Quite nice. The other night Alf was "in there" and saw wine and cheese on a table in the living room. He learned to "pick up" the cheese and began eating it. Two days later he was back in SL, trying to interact with another avatar, and found that he was still eating the cheese. We need to teach Alf how to put down the cheese.

fall comes to 3805 Locust

Today we release the 22nd in our series of Kelly Writers House podcasts. This one features 5 excerpts from the vast archive of our programs - all having, in one way or another, to do with autumn. Autumn comes to 3805 Locust. Have a listen. The podcast features Ellen Yin (founder of Fork restaurant), Tom Devaney (from his poem "At Franklin's Grave"), former longtime KWH director Kerry Sherin Wright ("Autumn Lullaby"), Eileen D'Angelo ("Love Letter to a Moody Sea") and Ben Lerner (excerpt from "Doppler Elegies").

new Facebook page

We at KWH are pleased to announce that we have a new Facebook page. Here it is. Please have a look and become a friend. You'll find announcements of upcoming events, links to audio and video clips, comments and updates from members of the KWH community, photos, of course a list of and links to our many friends: poets worldwide, students, Penn alumni, emergent writers and eminent writers, prospective students, supporters...

KWH & Inquirer join forces

We're pleased to announce a new partnership between the Kelly Writers House and the Philadelphia Inquirer, a project coordinated on our side, in part, by Povich Writer-in-Residence Dick Polman. This collaboration has now produced the Penn page in "Student Union 34": college.philly.com/penn. Through this effort, young Penn journalistic writers will be regularly published in the city's premier newspaper. (Do, please, check the web address above regularly for new entries, stories, essays, and features.) Today the site features Steven Waye's article about how pop culture-infused sermons abound in Fishtown.

Jen Scappettone

Our friends at PennSound were pleased a few months back to add a new author page: that of Jennifer Scappettone. Jen has been to the Writers House twice recently. Her page now includes a Segue/Bowery Poetry Club reading; both audio and video of a session she did at KWH with Lyn Hejinian, hosted by Rachel Levitsky; another session in which she read a series of her poems; and a conversation, done as a PennSound podcast.

New Zealander hung out

Wystan Curnow, art critic and poet, last spring spoke at the Writers House on curating as a critical practice. The event was shown live on KWH-TV and is already available as a video recording. Wystan was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1939, and studied English and History at the University of Auckland, and took his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Yes, Penn. So his two-week visit here was actually a return to his alma mater many many years later. One afternoon during his visit he joined Al Filreis, Charles Bernstein and Bob Perelman to record a PoemTalk episode on a poem by Louis Zukofsky--which was released recently. Then everyone went downstairs for his very good talk on curating. Have a look.