ANNE WALDMAN—internationally acclaimed poet, performer, activist, and magpie scholar—has been a force in experimental “Outrider” poetics for over four decades, recognized in the lineages of the Beat, New York School, and Black Mountain traditions while raising the bar as a feminist and cultural activist. Author of more than 60 books, including the classic Fast Speaking Woman, the monumental Iovis Trilogy, and most recently Mesopotopia, her work spans epic poems, essays, performance, opera, and multidisciplinary collaborations. Anne was a co-founder of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and, with Allen Ginsberg and Diane di Prima, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. She remains a highly original “open field investigator” of consciousness, committed to the possibilities of radical shifts of language and states of mind to create new modal structures and montages of attention. Her work is prophetic, multidisciplinary, energetic, passionate, panoramic, and fierce at times.
"Anne Waldman is more rock 'n' roll than any rock 'n' roll performer I know." —THURSTON MOORE
"Anne Waldman is more rock 'n' roll than any rock 'n' roll performer I know." —THURSTON MOORE
Recent Books + Projects
April 11, 2026 6:30 pm: Spring Gala honoring with the Vicious Circle Award from The Poetry Society of New York
The Poetry Society of New York recognizes Anne Waldman for her visionary performance, activism, mentorship, and community-building in New York and beyond. Her work embodies poetry as both art and infrastructure—made collectively, carried forward, and continually renewed.May 18-19, 2026: Independent Beat Waves symposium, Lisbon, Portugal
Independent Beat Waves will feature Anne Waldman who will perform her poetry and discuss alternate visions of the university and of the universe itself.June 1 - 20, 2026: Naropa Summer Writing Program, Boulder, CO
METABOLIC THRUM
Directed by Anne Waldman (Founder), Jeffrey Pethybridge, Swanee Astrid
Value & Ethos of sonic transmission & printshop POETICS where the VOICE of SMALL PRESS eternally returns to the WHEEL.
Celebrate Allen Ginsberg’s Centenary!
Esteemed guest artists each week with workshops, lectures, panels, conversations, dharma art, cine-poetics, readings, printing, interdisciplinary collaboration.
50 years of Poetics Discourse with the Best Minds with No Help from A I !!!!
News
“Anne Waldman has written a new book that searches out the value of the imagination amidst imminent global catastrophe and ultimately teaches readers to work, build something of human value, as our world collapses. Mesopotopia undertakes a poetics of immersive, overwhelming world-historical awareness, and what emerges is a grounding human vision for the work of poets and artists, work which turns out to be surprisingly indispensable…. Waldman’s work is one of the great achievements of contemporary writing. Her poetry is always bright, prismatically intelligent, tough as nails, and full of glee, questioning, rage, love, sorrow, and visions of how we and she could be truer than we are.” —Hannah Burns for The Brooklyn Rail, Mar 2026
“The roles of language in ritual & tradition” interview in Interlocutor by Isabelle Sakelaris, Feb 11, 2026.
“This is one of the most complicated times to speak of harmony. Hard to put aside, ignore. Trying to make an inventory of experience, consciousness, impressions, struggles, emotions, loss of reason, ethical and moral calamity to make sense of this time…. A tall order for a book of poetry I had envisioned for quite a while, feeling the urgency of completing it during the time frame of 2025…. Thus, Mesopotopia was a way to cope and expand and release my burning cri de coeur.” —Anne Waldman, from the interviewReview of Archivist Scissors, “hanging out is of utmost importance: on Rainer Diana Hamilton's Lilacs and Anne Waldman's Archivist Scissors” by Kat Beaman, Commonplace Review, Dec 31, 2025
Poet Anne Waldman’s Star Turn, Jonah Raskin for Counter Punch, Dec 12, 2025
”Waldman is not all one thing or all another. She’s a living, breathing mosaic. Julian’s film [Outrider] shows as many different sides of her as can be shown.” —Jona RaskinDon Yorty on Bob Holman, Charles Bernstein, and Anne Waldman reading at KGB Bar, Dec 21, 2025
Live! From City Lights. Anne Waldman Discusses Mesopotopia. Dec 4, 2025.
Review by Nina Živančević for Rock and the Beat Generation, Nov 27, 2025.
”SHE STORMED into Paris like a hurricane and took us by surprise.” —Nina Živančević“Anne Waldman’s Continuing Voice in Outrider,” by Vera Dika, Millennium Film Journal, Oct 14, 2025
“Anne Waldman is one of the most important and irreducible living American poets.”
—Nick Sturm, Poetry Foundation