Kristin Prevallet

At the University of Buffalo, Prevallet catalogued the archive of Helen Adam and her scholarly archive is a part of The Poetry Collection. She edited the definitive volume of Helen Adam’s work (A Helen Adam Reader, published by the National Poetry Foundation), which contextualizes Helen Adam within Robert Duncan's circle in The San Francisco Renaissance, as well as Adam's influence on Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation.

Her work has been published in numerous anthologies including The Body In Language (CounterPath Press, edited by Edwin Torres), I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing By Women (University of Iowa Press), Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts & Affections (Edited by Arielle Greenburg and Rachel Zucker, University of Iowa Press), and Telling it Slant: Avant-garde Poetics of the 1990s (edited by Mark Wallace, University of Alabama Press).

"Navigating the New Chaos: Anne Waldman’s Collaborations with Visual Artists" Jacket #27 (April 2005); previously published in mark(s) quarterly of the arts.

"Helen Adam’s Sweet Company: The Collages" Riding the Meridian v2 n2

"Jack Spicer’s Hell in Homage to Creeley" Jacket #7 (April 1999)

Prevallet's poem “Lyric Infiltration” from her second book Scratch Sides: Poetry, Documentation and Image-Text Projects is analyzed by Redell Olson in “Reading and Writing Through Found Materials: From Modernism to Contemporary Practice.” Olson writes, “The use of the term ‘cut-up’ places Prevallet’s procedural work in relation to the strategies of previous writers such as Tristan Tzara, Brion Gysin, and the Oulipo founder Raymond Queneau, and can also be related to the chance-based operational writing of John Cage and Jackson Mac Low. The work of Prevallet is unusual in that it does not dispense with either the term ‘lyric’ or the process of lyric writing but uses it as a basis for her procedural work.”

Elizabeth Jane Burnett describes her 2004 performance of “Cruelty and Conquest” at Naropa University as “playing with audience response as a feminist poetry that explores the ways in which the body is transacted.”

"Writing is Never By Itself Alone: Six Mini Essays on Relational Investigative Poetics." Fence (Spring/Summer 2003)

"The artful wordiness of materials: Joe Brainard & Poetry" Jacket #16 (March 2002)

"Interview with Kenward Elmslie" Jacket #16 (March 2002)

"The Exquisite Extremes of Poetry: Watten and Baraka on the Brink" Jacket #12 (July 2000)

Since the early 1990s, she has been teaching writing and literature courses for a variety of universities and art institutions including Bard College's Writing and Thinking Workshop, Pratt Institute, Naropa University, Poet’s House, and The Poetry Project. From 2003-2006, she worked with Anne Waldman and Bob Holman to start a school for poets at the Bowery Poetry Club, the venue which defined the New York downtown poetry scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Kristin Prevallet (b. 1966) is an American poet, essayist, and teacher. Her poetic work incorporates conceptual writing and trance, and her performances are rooted in feminist performance art and spoken word. Everywhere Here and in Brooklyn, I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time, and Trance Poetics are among her poetic books.