Participating Witness: The Poetics Of Granary Books

For thirty-five years, Granary Books has brought together writers, artists, and bookmakers to publish work at the intersection of word, image, and page, engaging the province of the avant-gardes that emerge from the various strands of the New American Poetry, including collaborators affiliated with the New York School, Black Mountain, Beat, Ethnopoetics, Fluxus, concrete and visual poetry, book arts, and beyond, with nearly two hundred publications over the years.

The title of this exhibition, taken from Johanna Drucker’s recent essay about Granary in the CODEX Papers (Vol. 1, 2018), foregrounds what she calls a “vital combination of bringing forward and also generating works,” which embodies the spirit of Granary Books and its founder, Steve Clay. Here, it also serves as an organizing principle for the exhibition.

This exhibition features selected publications from 200­0­–2020, including limited-edition artists’ books, trade books, and other materials related to preparation and publication, the material foundations for engaging the “poetics” of Granary Books’ volumes. Forthcoming limited-edition artists’ books, including work by Jane Wodening, Timothy Ely, and Whit Griffin, will be on display for the first time.

Publisher Steve Clay holds Granary Book’s 2014 publication of A Book of Glyphs by Edward Sanders, while a Poets House staff person holds a photograph of Edward Sanders himself holding his original hand-produced edition.